There’s no other way to say this. I need to change.

According to every spiritual tradition I’ve ever come across, the point of life is to transcend the selfish, animalistic side of human nature and become a different order of being – service-oriented, humble, compassionate, accountable and tuned into the mystical, unseen side of life. In the presence of this type of transformed person, the human spirit is naturally magnetized and attracted – it hums with recognition and says ‘that’s it – I’m home.’ Even the most damaged, corrupt person has that subtle tuning fork somewhere inside them that knows what’s up.

No matter what’s happened in my life, I’ve never lost that attraction to a higher reality. My disillusionment with the Church as a teenager didn’t manage to snuff out my intrinsic sense of wonder and curiosity. Neither was my total lack of a responsible father or male role model quite enough to embitter me towards all authority… almost, but not quite. I still knew I wanted an Obi-Wan Kenobi in my story. I still had at least the desire to believe in something – the future, a sense of purpose, something Good.

That flicker of desire has led me into some incredible mentorships and experiences – artistically, personally etc. I’ve made huge efforts to cultivate and make space for this stuff. But when it comes down to it, where the rubber hits the road, my idealism hits a hard limit. And the limit is ME.

As Woody Allen once said: “I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member.” And no matter how much I want to be Bob Marley, I’m actually more like Woody Allen. Isn’t that a bitch?

But it’s true. I can imagine incredible things – the transformation of consciousness on the planet, the culmination of all prophetic vision, the evolution of humanity into a highly advanced race of Mother Theresas spreading goodwill throughout the universe… as long as I’m not involved. No matter how well-developed my imagination is, and no matter how far my adventures take me, my knee-jerk reflex in the arena of spirituality is to be an observer, a spectactor – a fanboy of the Divine. I’m the guy who hikes all the way to the lagoon and then doesn’t get in the water. “No, you guys go ahead. I’ll just be over here, in my knee-socks.”

Examples: Meditation. Does it make sense? Heck yeah; the whole world would probably change overnight if people would actually sit down and reflect for 15 minutes a day on what they’re really about. I encourage anyone to try it and watch what happens! Do I do it? Nope. Never have.

Therapy/12-Step etc: Does it help? Of course; there are countless stories of people overcoming insane obstacles through counselling of all kinds, including trauma therapy and AA, which if my Dad had stuck with it, I’d still have a Dad. So where do I sign up? Ummmmmmm….

Last one – health & healing. Is food medicine? Are we really what we eat? Are there ways to bring the body into balance, freeing up energy and resources for a longer and more fully-lived life? You betcha! Not only that, but if we were concerned about our holistic well-being, 3/4 of the world’s most evil industries would be brought to their knees, starting with tobacco, alcohol and genetically modified food. What’s not to like? Now can you point me to the nearest KFC??

We could talk about finances, organization, healthy boundaries, you name it. My point is, it has come to my attention that this pattern is creating serious dissonance in my life. Being in the bleachers isn’t cutting it anymore. And as I enter the realm of bringing my music and creativity into the world, developing friendships with far-flung folks everywhere and trying to share something authentic, my capacity for small-talk is almost nil. Especially in a blog. So here it is: the messy truth, me in the frying pan of the soul, trying to work it out. I’m sure I’ll still find time for the occasional random comment about what’s on TV or a 5-page treatise about the merits of a certain guitar or amplifier – but the truth is, that’s not the real story here.

I need to change, in order to believe in change. And I need to believe in change.

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Hey out there… just thought I’d post a general update before kicking things up a notch in general in this here site.

First of all, the album has been mixed. The past year has been a major re-adjustment back to LA life – even though we’ve been living in the woods – and the various gigs and situations around here have taken a front seat to getting my own thing together. Of course, you eventually realize that this process could go on Forever. So you just stay up late and do whatever it takes to focus on your love project.

Thanks to Jon Rezin for staying on my case, and getting me closer and closer to having my work out there where it belongs. Jon and I have gotten things sounding nice and fat, and in the next few weeks I’ll start previewing material and working on some YouTube action for your consideration…

So, summer in LA. I wonder if this is the last normal summer of my life. At this time of year, for people who actually have a finished project to promote, there are 50 places you could be on any given day, among lots of sweaty people with a guitar in your hand. That sounds great to me. Onwards & upwards!

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Eric is visiting us in our Topanga hideaway for a week. On the weekend we played a conference in San Diego, last night a bunch of neighbors came over for food and music, and tonight we fleshed out a song that’s been sitting around since we were in North Carolina last spring. At this rate, we should have some good things happening by the weekend!

During my time in LA, I had the pleasure of forming some musical partnerships that will be around for a lifetime. Looming tall among them are the members of my band, Heliotrope, which went through several incarnations but always included bassist Pancho Tomaselli and drummer Paul Gonzalez. Together we explored radically different kinds of music, pushing each other into uncharted territory where rock, funk, electronica and world music collide. At our gigs you were as likely to hear an obscure Stevie Wonder cover, a high adrenalin Latin jam, a sample-fueled, Portishead-inspired modern pop song, or a Hendrixian guitar blowout. After we included Colombian percussionist Shangó Dely, there was a much stronger African element in the mix, and Eli Brueggemann brought layers of deep texture and searching jazz sensibility with his virtuosic keyboard playing.

Whether playing ambient instrumental music in Woody Harrelson’s “O2 Bar” on Sunset Blvd while patrons got high sucking on hookahs – of oxygen – or doing our full-band thing at the über-eclectic Temple Bar in Santa Monica, we always found a way to win over audiences with our telepathic band interplay and our sheer love of music.

It was always our strength and our weakness: we wanted to play everything. But each of us agrees that it’s some of the best fun we ever had, and always look for any opportunity to play together again.

So… why “Heliotrope?”

Well for starters, it’s the name of a street in my old neighborhood of Koreatown. Every time I passed the street sign I thought, that’s a band name right there. (Many would later disagree, chiding us with alternate names like Helicopter, Hovercraft, Hello kitty and so on. We stood our ground of course.) But the actual meaning of the word is even better: A heliotrope is a particular flower, but more generally any plant or flower that follows the sun across the sky, literally facing it and turning as the sun moves… then turning back around at night to wait for it to rise again. What could be cooler than that?

Anyway, I eventually had to get out of LA to get some perspective, but the more time goes by, the more I feel it’s important to get this music out there. I’ve assembled the recordings we made together and made them available as an mp3 album download here on the site (click the music tab and look for Heliotrope). Hope you enjoy the tunes…

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Well, it’s raining in Portland, but it’s great to be back with my family. I look forward to bringing them down South to meet all the good people that made Eric and I feel so welcome and cared for over the last week… and I do believe we’ll be timing that trip in winter, to conveniently skip some of this gloomy Northwestern weather.

And now for my List of Highlights.

(1.) Most amazing culinary experience
Dumplings, by Eric’s aunt Faye. I don’t know what they’re made of, and I definitely don’t know what the sauce was (it made the most decadent Alfredo in Little Italy look like watered-down rice milk), and it’s probably best if I don’t know. All I do know is that it brought me close to weeping tears of joy. And it was very probably the first time in that kitchen that a white boy did a George Jefferson dance in front of the stove.

(2.) Second most amazing culinary experience
Sonny’s BBQ in Chattanooga, which was recommended in reverent tones by Eric’s cousin Veronica. You can’t see it from the road, so someone needs to tell you about it. Unfortunately when we went, the place was closed, no cars parked anywhere… in fact we wondered if they’d gone out of business. But Eric’s Mom was on the phone, and she said, “Just Knock. He’s there.” We looked at each other and knocked. Sure enough, the door opened and a scent wafted out into the dirt parking lot, pulling us inside. Sonny was indeed there, in a BBQ-smeared apron, and he said ‘Whatcha want?” Well, I got what I wanted: sweet Southern BBQ that I had envisioned since before we left for the trip, and as Eric and I sat by the Tennessee River and pigged out, it was so good I had to offer some to the old men sitting at a picnic table nearby.

(3.) Most ridiculous moment
At the last show, at a coffee house in Durham NC, I gave into an instinct to do a fake harmonica solo in the middle of ‘Mornin’ Train’. Some people thought it was a real harmonica for a minute, but it devolved quickly into a scream-fest tempered only by the wah-wah effect of my hand over my mouth. I’m starting to feel I owe these moments to Eric, where his very ideas of propriety and dignity are tested and new (low) benchmarks are set. Of course there was a real blues aficionado in the house, a radio DJ, who still managed to like our set but was visibly relieved when I told him that I’d be bringing a real harp next time.

(4.) Brush with the law
Eric did most of the driving on the tour because he knows his way around the region. All was going well. Then I took the wheel for all of FIVE MINUTES and we were pulled over by NC’s finest. “What’s the trouble, officer?” “Tail gating, sir.” Tail gating?? The truck in front of me was going about 35 in a 60mph zone, and I went around him as soon as I mustered up the courage to do it in front of a cop. Oops. So anyways…

(5.) Sound system trauma
Nothing too noteworthy on this trip; nothing like our gig in Texas where a component burned out and they had to evacuate the whole building in the middle of our show. The worst thing on this trip was when I broke a string in the very first song of our Nashville gig, with no backup guitar, and had to play with no low notes in front of 500 people for 40 minutes. But sound-wise, we really didn’t have ‘one for the books’ on this tour.

(6.) Worst decision
No backup guitar. And no electric guitar.

(7.) Best decision
Staying in Bakewell between shows whenever possible, where we ate home-cooked food and walked down country roads at night.

(8.) Unexpected highlight
Eric bought an accordion. An accordion!!!

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Durham, North Carolina. Part of our goal for this trip was to re-connect with Eric’s people down here and explore the possibility of a more in-depth tour in the future. A lot of those people are right here in Durham… this is where Eric went to college (Duke), where he first connected with the Bahá’ís, and where the One Human Family Gospel Choir was born. I attended a rehearsal last night, and you can definitely feel it: they’ve been doing this for a long time.

The response to the shows has been great. We’ve had people singing along with us quite a bit (even when they don’t know the songs), and when we cross into deep Moanin’ Sons territory they ask us if there’s more where that came from.

There’s so much potential in the Moanin’ Sons project it freaks us out a little. It’s almost like it just exists and we’ve stumbled upon it, like when you write a song that comes out so naturally that you can’t really say you ‘wrote’ it.

Part of it is just that there is some cultural work to be done in the States. The well of history and music in this country is so deep, you could spend your whole life delving into it and still only scratch the surface… but somehow in Eric and me connecting, it seems like we go from digging with a shovel to moving large amounts of earth with heavy equipment. And this feeling is intensified threefold whenever we’re in the South.

American roots music, especially in its 20th century African-American forms like blues and soul, was the reason I decided to take music seriously in the first place. I remember being the only kid at my school listening to Sonny Boy Williamson instead of Bon Jovi. But over the years I’ve wondered where that stuff fits into my own work, because during my time in other countries and then Los Angeles, I was immersed in Latin music, Electronica… everything but the blues. Most of all I was caught up in trying to find an expression of my own that didn’t owe too much to any one particular genre.

But with Moanin’ Sons, we both kick into another mode, sort of ethnomusicological reality show on wheels. We connect each other with certain things about music, and its relationship to race, religion and social change in America, that made us fall in love with it in the first place. People catch on to it pretty quick, because we all know there’s something under the surface here that needs to be explored… good, bad & ugly.

After spending a week in that headspace, I’m looking forward to coming back and letting the next step reveal itself. No doubt it will.

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People have been asking me for a long time why I don’t have an album out. Or a couple of albums. Or, say, eight or nine albums. It’s a really good question, since I’ve been producing other people’s projects for 15 years and constantly writing my own songs, performing them… even recording them. Man, if I had a dollar for every time someone asked me “Is that song recorded?”…

Well, it recently dawned on me that I could have a dollar for every song I record, and that I’d rather make my living with a guitar in my hand, telling my own story instead of someone else’s, traveling with my family instead of sitting in a studio all day (and all night). The last time I saw Carlos Santana, we had just performed together and he said, “when are you going to stop hiding behind guys like me?” (How’s that for an Artist’s Way moment?) Anyway, as usual, the man had a point.

I’ve been working on my own project, on and off for about four years. It started out as a basement experiment in a little backhouse we rented on the outskirts of Los Angeles, continued throughout our year in Mexico and really picked up during the dark, rainy winter on Vancouver Island. I started finding sounds and lyric ideas unlike any I’d created before, and for the first time I felt like my music felt like more than the sum of its influences… I could hear the Saskatchewan prairie boy in there, as well as the multicultural West Coast experience that was my life for a decade. It felt like the truth was coming out.

Actually, LA figures highly in the theme of this record… at least leaving LA. I had reached a point in my life where the noise of the music industry was louder than the music in my head. It was time to get out of that environment for awhile and be around something completely different, be unaware of the Billboard 200 and who was hired and fired at which record company. I found a lot of things to love about that city, and spent a lot of time unearthing every shred of authenticity I could find there, but it was time to move on.

That word: authenticity. The search for it is pretty much the subject of the whole album. All the songs are in some way about getting out of a haze of ideas that come from who-knows-where, and finding that authentic core that feels like home… even if in my case ‘home’ meant not having a home for awhile.

So to answer people’s question: why no album all these years? Honestly, there was no album because I found creative ways not to do one for a long, long time (more on that later). And now there’s an album. All the support from loved ones and colleagues, and from myself, is paying off. I’ll keep posting as it gets closer to release… right now I’m doing a few extra guitars and getting ready for the final mix. Shouldn’t be long… hold me to it!

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The Badasht Project is dedicated to the development of the arts as envisioned in the Bahá’í Writings, particularly music, which is described as ‘a ladder for the soul’. The project’s first endeavor was a series of public devotional gatherings centered around various art forms, and this CD was born from that experience. A lot of blessings have come from it in its first few months, and among them is that it’s brought me together with the perfect musical brother-in-arms.

Eric Dozier and I have known each other for awhile. We met in Atlanta in 1995, and ran into each other every few years after that, but we never had a chance to do any music together because we lived on opposite coasts. I was always blown away by his songwriting talent and his ability to motivate large groups of people to sing. Eric is like the Johnny Appleseed of Gospel choirs; they sort of spring up in his wake.

In 2005, a twist of fate landed us both on Vancouver Island. We figured there was a reason we were in that corner of the world at the same time, and eventually Eric and I started working on the songs for a devotional CD called Badasht vol. 1 – While the City Sleeps. It was partly a compilation of songs that each of us had already written, but by the end of the project we found a groove as a writing team and started collaborating on new music from the ground up.

The purpose of the Badasht CD was to present the Bahá’í Writings in a musical context unlike other projects we were aware of, and to combine our different backgrounds – musical and cultural – as an expression of the central Bahá’í principle of unity. The music itself is on the mellower side of what each of us does, as we were going for a meditative tone in general, but we couldn’t help ourselves – the Gospel and rock tendencies rear their heads at a few points, and inject a little bit of adrenaline into the proceedings.

It’s a pleasure to work with Eric, because he has a natural way of taking religious texts and making them sound fresh, relaxed and natural in a musical setting. His is a rare gift, and I’m learning a lot from Eric in that regard. One of the central purposes of music and art in history has been to illuminate the meaning and beauty of Sacred teachings, and we’ll always be looking for ways to contribute to that process in our work.

The odd song out here is the title track, ‘While the City Sleeps.’ It doesn’t quote the Writings, but instead tries to capture the moment when a burst of Divine Revelation hits the earth without anyone noticing but the most spiritually attuned. The song opens with the sound of the Persian ney, a flute used in Sufi whirling-Dervish music, and the lyric describes how every new spiritual Message is rejected when it doesn’t conform to our literal, physical interpretation of prophecy.

We’ve been playing this music at concerts more and more over the past year, and have noticed that some of the songs are becoming well-known enough by audiences for them to sing along note for note. People have contacted us from all over the world describing the different ways they use the Badasht CD in their devotional lives, and we’ll be doing more of this sort of thing in the near future – hence the ‘Vol. 1′…

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