Trevor Jones Music

Why Football Matters

2012-01-09T11:06:00.003-07:00

I read about this guy who didn't like football last week. He claims it's a brutal game which harks back to our gladiatorial times. I fully agree with his point but think it might serve him well to reassess whether that's such a bad thing. Has he been to Spain? They still fight bulls there. All they did was exchange the Roman lion for an animal which can't readily eat a human with its mouth.

I grew up playing football. My parents are both UT alumni and football was always on in the house. Come fall each year, it was time to go get weighed, fitted for pads and commit hours of each week and weekend to the game. I grew early and started out as a lineman, pushing around other early bloomers in cleats and ill-fitting football pants with the tail-bone pad sticking out above the ass in the back. Later on in high school my height dictated that I should be a receiver and defensive back. I was particularly awful at the latter, letting wideouts from North Denver burn me on out-routes I had no business covering.

But the experience taught me discipline and that we aren't made of glass, plus a little contact doesn't hurt anybody but in fact makes you stronger. One could disagree when the concussion-prone NFL is in question, more on that in a minute. Other than getting hit "over the middle", a term used to describe devastatingly unforeseen bodily damage on passing routes, by burly linebackers, the most uncomfortable feeling I can remember was on sunny yet cold days after it had snowed and iced over the night before. Getting tackled hurts. Getting tackled into the icy puddles that would form on the less than manicured soccer-cum-football fields in south Denver hurt your feelings. Your bones. The cold muddy slush covering your body under your pads for the next hours only added insult to injury. But it wasn't injury. And old coach of mine used to ask if your issue was "an owie or an injury", an important distinction for anyone who's thinking about being a cry baby at any point. "No blood, No foul", is how people insensitive to dangling limbs or internal bleeding might phrase it.

More-over than making ya' tougher, football serves a severely important social function, just like gladiator games did, but in a much shinier, glossier context where the ad space sold is as much an impetus as any to keep the hits coming.

Society isn't all candy canes and gummy bears. People have beef, social strife caused by you name it: class inequality, racial tension or just downright ignorance. People also need avenues to blow off that stress, social blow-off valves that prevent any serious violence on a broad scale. Putting your love, hate, angst or passion into a team with the name of a beast like the Lions or Bears or mythical creature like a Titan or Giant is far better than putting it into a name like the Crips or Bloods or any number of less malignant, but still corruptive groups that society gets involved with. That energy is well spent on intensely passionate, but politically pointless teams, an opiate for the masses. Soccer and Cricket serve much of the same function, worldwide.

When I lived in New Orleans for college the Saints weren't a particularly spectacular team. They actually earned the name the "Aint's" by the some of the cities more cynical, long-time residents. After Katrina, an enormous speed bump in everybody's life at the time, the team's future in NOLA was questionable as moving the franchise became a topic of discussion. When they won the Super Bowl a couple years later, people freaked. It was so symbolic to see the team that plays inside the Superdome, a veritable battle shelter during Katrina, win the big one. It symbolized a complete return to a city that care constantly forgets.

So yes, football is rough and it's great anytime the league changes a rule to prevent concussions and the like. But people are rough. People have the need to see aggression acted out one way or another, it's evolution and an impulse we've learned to put into healthy outlets, but as the sanctimonious John Elway has famously been quoted as saying recently... "Let 'em play!"

Burning Expectations

2011-12-11T02:26:00.001-07:00

India doesn't make sense. The light switches are upside down. The people are flawlessly clean with white teeth and pressed clothes, yet there are immense piles of trash, often burning amongst open latrines filled with sewage and piss. Asking directions is futile, no one seems to know where anything is and on the roadway ancient holy cows rub flanks with the newest Audi's and Benz's money can afford. Slums are next to skyscrapers and people look intently toward the future in cities like Varanasi where the written history is over 5,000 years old. Muslims set up loud public lectures through megaphones in the Hindu quarters and cab drivers with Shiva on the dashboard cross themselves whenever they pass a Christian church.

There is an elegant beauty in the lack of expectation. I learned this yesterday.

My plans in India were changed almost immediately upon arrival. The plan was to take a train to Bodhgaya, land of our Buddha first, then fly down to Goa to unwind of the beach before heading home. After being denied entry onto a train I had booked for months due to overbooking, I got fed up and took the next bus down the coast to Goa.

Goa is beautiful. When I first woke the next morning, I panicked because the bus was cresting a forested mountain ridge. But before long we descended to the dank sandy coast. Goa was first a hippy haven, then formed part of a global rave scene that encompassed Thailand and Ibiza, and now is a place for anyone who wants to TRULY get away from it all. An unregulated state in a largely unregulated country, the partying and hash smoking in Goa was formidable. I was in bed by 9 every night. All jokes aside, Goa is big business for shop keeps and autorickshaw drivers who make money for their families up north when all manner of Europeans, South Americans, Australians and South Africans descend upon the area to spend their foreign notes. I met all these geographic types of people and more, and zero Americans. I found myself altering my accent to sound more French, just so people could understand me. It sounds odd but no one, including the Indians, ever got my name right the first time. "Trouble" and "travel" were two popular interpretations. But the beauty in Goa transcended language and I concluded most afternoons by watching the sun set over the Arabian sea with a Kingfisher Beer and plate of tandoori chicken, a go to dish that at the very least wouldn't make me instantly ill upon consumption, something that can't be said of all curries in country.

And like all small towns, when you start to know everybody's name, it's time to leave. I took a very early flight out and wound up in Varanasi, the holiest city in the world for Hindus. It was then I met Rocky, a very small Indian man with what I'm pretty sure was a twinkle in his eye, a soul who made Varanasi my favorite city in India after only a few hours there.

Indians are full of questions for foreigners and inquisitions about your salary or even sex life aren't uncommon. It took Rocky half a second to realize I was in Varanasi to look for a sitar and with a beckoning hand, set off at a race clip. I had trouble keeping up even with my much longer stride, dodging dogs, goats, cows, piles of poo, rickshaws, busses, Chai carts, impossibly hoveled old ladies with canes and young children. We arrived at Bablu's music shop, the paradise music hall and sat on the floor drinking tea as Big Baba Bablu showed me his wares. A sitar is a large instrument played while siting down, the butt of the instrument resting on the side of the foot at the base of the left leg, crossed under your ass to the right. The first time I tried it I almost fell over from the pain when standing again. The sitar I wound up purchasing was made at that very shop, by a sitar player, and the materials include teak wood, camel bone and intricate ceramic inlays. The frets are big bronze affairs that you can slide along the neck for perfect intonation.

My sitar is more special than the rest and not for the price, materials or shop where it came from, but because it was bought on the night of a lunar eclipse on the bank of the holiest river in the world. This was my one night in Varanasi and due to no planning on my behalf there was a stunning lunar eclipse unfolding over the Ganga during my short stay, attracting thousands of Hindu pilgrims to the city so they might bathe in the river during the celestial event.

The scene was incredible, I felt as though I was witnessing a cosmic event at the center of it all and as we rowed down the river, a trip Rocky facilitated with ease, lights from the city and hundreds of floating Karma candles lit the surface to a twinkling, sparkling shimmer in the dark Indian night. Thousands of Hindus sat on the banks or in the water, still and waiting for the lunar event, for the right moment to plunge in for one hell of a communal holy bath. Short of jumping in, I forced myself to forget stats about 120 times the fecal content of what our own EPA would deem safe, and poured the sin-cleansing water onto my head and face. Continuing down the river, flames from the fires of burning bodies on the main ghat grew larger and larger, until I could strain to see anatomical details, wafting into ash and the soul into Moksha, eternal enlightenment for those lucky enough to die in this place. Pictures are strictly forbidden here and although I could have easily snapped a discreet one off from the dark river and the boat's cover, I wouldn't want to offend Rocky or our boat captain. I will only have the memory of those twelve burning bodies, upon pyres of wood which are constantly re-lit for 24 hours of enlightenment and flesh-smell.

Back to the music school, I took a short sitar lesson and finished the night in the bar having food and drink with Bablu and Rocky. We called each other brother and having run around with Rocky all day I felt as much. Bablu ate an enormous plate of chilies and I watched him sweat more and more with each gulp of rum. Rocky talked of his Italian ex girlfriend and coming to visit me in America and when we stumbled back out into the Varanasi night, much cooler than the Goan sweat box, I felt as though I had stumbled upon some benign alternate reality where all I had do was smile ad give a small Indian head-wiggle of affirmation to achieve cosmic results. In India a smile is currency and Varanasi is rich.

We are taught to plan, have expectations, think we can control our destiny. If my travel plans hadn't been turned around I would have never met Rocky, or seen the Earth's shadow black the moon out from a boat drifting on the Ganges. Learning to expect the unexpected is a huge part of travel and life. Don't worry about what makes sense because even though you might have it all worked out, the world is inevitably random. Just find somebody and smile.

First Day in India-Mumbai

2011-12-02T12:44:00.001-07:00

You will get run over here. A short honk is all you will hear before you die. And it smells like shit. Not a euphemism, the smell of shit particularly burning shit, permeates the air in between periods of smelling like trash and fish, alternately.
My room is clean and smells good, or at least neutral and is very cold and dark when I turn the lights off. This worked to my disadvantage today when after being awoke by loud Muslim calls to worship, I went back to sleep figuring I would wake after a couple more hours rest. As I emerged onto the hotel balcony at 6pm, the full extent of my jet lag became apparent. Forgoing a shower, knowing the sweat and shit-smell awaiting me, I stumbled into the restaurant below. If I hadn't seen the airport last night I might have well thought I was in Cairo because of the large Muslim population in this neighborhood and the Afghani Chicken Curry was amazing. Trying the food, trying anything for that matter here is a bit nerve racking, if only for the horror stories you hear. But Afghani Chicken and another chicken kebab on the street and I'm still able to write coherently and sit upright, more than the horror-story tellers would have you believe.
Next I walked, and walked and walked because this jet lag clearly wouldn't be letting me rest any time soon and there is no better way to get to know a city than by on foot. Mumbai is a dirty, dark city at night but very active until around midnight (also not helping the jet lag, no bars open!). After walking for no more than ten minutes I found street vendors who could help me pick up a few things I intentionally left at home. Paying 20 rupees (40 cents) for an electric converter to plug my phone in (the method with which I now scribe) I'm not sure how I payed 450 for some sunglasses. 10 bucks sounds perfectly reasonable for some shades, but not here! I think the sunglass merchant's unwillingness to barter was almost endearing, reminding me of our strict MSRP way of doing things back home, although in India they have a MRP or MAXIMUM retail price. I'll let you infer what both those acronyms say about our respective cultures.
Fed up with the cheap purses, wallets, shoes, clothes, printer cartridges and bamboo smoothie stands, I made for the nearest watering hole. Still overpaying, but not unreasonably so this time, I asked my auto-rickshaw to take me to where the Europeans drink, knowing my fellow backpackers from across the pond have a knack for finding cheap booze. There I met the coolest South African couple who had much great advice about food, prices, lodging in different cities and generally how to survive here. Thanks Paul and Ally, you guys made my first night of confusion a fantastic time!
Now back at the hotel, it's 1am and I might try and adjust out of this jet-lagged haze and get some sleep. Tomorrow I take a train to the place of Buddha's enlightenment after what is sure to be an enlightening 23 hour train ride.

India

2011-10-21T07:19:00.005-06:00

I've received lots of different reactions after telling people that I'm going to India by myself in December. Most of my friends are excited for me, if not confused about why I would chose India of all places to take a month off. Others warn of the dangers there and I've even perceived some resentment from those who would like to travel more (but choose not to) or think I'm somehow disrupting business for what is only a short time away in the grand scheme.

But in reality the trip is selfish. I've earned it. We've been on the road and playing shows, sometimes more than there are days in the week, for years now. Even in college I put a premium on my music career, staying in New Orleans and rejecting any opportunities to study abroad so I could network and play out, a strategy which has presented plenty of benefits. I'm not claiming I've reached some sort of complacent plateau and can take 'er easy now, but this is the first time, ever, I've felt a month off would do everybody right, even our fans who get bombarded by messages for shows and updates on a weekly, if not a daily basis. No one is going to forget about Frogs Gone Fishin', if anything they might check up on us and become active in a discussion about what we're going to do next, which is gonna be BIG, by the way.

I'm writing this in the RV as we cruise through the beautiful autumn foliage in upstate New York on our first tour to the northeast, by way of the midwest and to return through Texas. After some preparation in November it will be time to traverse another massive subcontinent. The trip I'm taking is not to relax, or find enlightenment or for any one specific purpose. A main tenet of my trip is that, to a large extent, I don't know what I'll find or be undertaking while I'm there. That's the beauty of traveling by yourself and while I travel a lot here in the US as a musician on the road, it's a constant logistic negotiation to make everyone in the band happy. Where to eat, where to get gas, where to sleep, what to do during the 22 hours a day we aren't playing music... all of these decisions are one big democracy which I won't deal with on the road in India. Me, myself and I will be responsible when things get shitty, and likewise can pat myself on the back when I'm having a great time.

And things can get shitty in India. Bugs (inside and outside of your body), petty theft, long wait times and lines and general culture shock will all be factors to watch out for. But something I learned becoming an Eagle Scout while slogging through waist deep moose-muck on backpacking trips in Canada is that it's the journey, not the destination, that counts.

So I picked a difficult place to travel for the challenge and the ultimate reward that only people who intrinsically choose to do something difficult receive. Call it getting out of your comfort zone. And as it turns out my comfort zone includes being able to sleep in an '87 RV with FOUR other full-size, methane-producing male adults for a month, so traveling stag will be all the more liberating.

And CHEAP. You can live, and I mean LIVE, in India for as much a day as it cost to feed the band for ONE meal in the USA. If you really stretched your comfort level you could exist on 450 rupees a day, or about 10 dollars.

But India is a land of extreme duality, poverty and development, tradition and growth, and my trip has some duality to it, as well.

After I land in Mumbai I'll head northeast by train to Bodhgaya, a holy place for Buddhists where the Buddha himself is said to have attained enlightenment, the supreme realization that we are all bound to suffering in this life, but can overcome it if we remove our most deep seeded of attachments. No matter how much of a minimalist, new age, vegan, psudo-hippy lifestyle you can pursue here at home, a Buddhist lifestyle is at best, misunderstood and at worst, unattainable in our society. No matter how you slice it, if you are unemployed and not financially empowered from some other means, you'll be homeless and hungry in no time. The idea of the wandering ascetic is both unattainable but also misunderstood. Buddha taught a concept known as "The Middle Way" which states that just as you shouldn't live as greedily as possible, you shouldn't necessarily wander and starve like some sort of monk, either. Buddhism is all about being happy in whatever station you find yourself in life.

After Bodhgaya I'll head north toward the Himalayas and Nepal, possibly crossing the border into Kathmandu. But it won't all be meditation and reflection for a month. For the latter half of my trip it'll be the beaches in Goa, the southwestern coast, where I'll soak up some sun and meet not only Indians, but the Europeans, Australians, Israeli's and people from all over the world that come there to warm up during the winter months. Meeting as many people as possible is a primary goal of my journey. I want to see how another society functions on a daily basis. From my experiences on the road in America and other places abroad, one of the best ways is to pop into a pub and have a beer with the locals, the working class, for lack of a better term. And class is somewhat of a highly sensitive topic in India, some are even considered untouchable by the rest of society. But you can't turn a blind eye to a system that contains 1.2 billion people, a sixth of the world's population, and so it's time to go see it for myself. India is vast and a looking glass into the effects of colonialism in our recent world history. It's a nuclear power that shares a border with Pakistan, increasingly the most mysterious and ambiguous ally, or maybe enemy, of the US in the region.

On a far less serious note, I'd like to pick up a sitar, or at least some of the most prominent melodies played on that most serene of instruments and translate what I learn to a travel guitar.

I'm excited not only to experience a new culture, but to take a break from smart phones and actually ask living, breathing people where I should go, not to mention a break from the McDonald's and WalMart-based economy I see EVERYWHERE on the roadside in America. It'll be just me, a backpack, and a brand new place to explore.

On the Road Again

2011-10-13T18:50:00.003-06:00

"cause I'll be gone 'till November"
-Wyclef Jean

Bertha, the Frogs Gone Fishin' RV is cruising east. It's 7:05 PM and there is a massive, crimson harvest moon firing up the horizon directly in front of us as we head out of town on I-76 toward I-80, Iowa, Chicago and the rest of tour. Call it East Bound and Down, call it National Tour. Call it what you want but this is our most ambitious undertaking, yet. We've hit Chicago and Cincinnati before, but the area east of Ohio is largely uncharted territory for FGF. That's all about to change. Some other things have changed recently and because we've intentionally been on the down-low about personnel changes in our organization, it's time to come clean with what's been happening, and what's going to happen inside and outside Frogs Gone Fishin'.

Steve and Mark don't play music in FGF anymore. It's something you don't foresee, but every band, it seems, goes through it. At some point life bumps up against everything you thought your band would be as a kid and you deal with what all of our twenty-something friends deal with, the idealism of youth fading into the harsher, but ultimately more satisfying world of getting business done. I will always love those two guys and wish them nothing but personal and musical happiness.

On bass and drums this tour are the Double D's, Dax and Dave, and at the helm of our eastbound ship is Double A (Aaron) our ever-trustworthy and efficient road manager. The man can cook, drive for HOURS, fix anything and helps keep us oriented toward our goal of playing as much music as possible, in as many places as possible, planned and unplanned.

Frogs have been as far east as North Carolina (we'll do Asheville on Halloween this year), and as far north as Cleveland, but never to New Jersey or New York as we'll do this month. The band is especially excited for a gig at Sullivan Hall in Greenwich Village, NYC, on Halloween weekend. Bringing Bertha and a band that's not exactly on a New York budget will be a challenge, but I wouldn't consider myself a touring musician if we didn't at least try and make this a viable route for ourselves so we can keep coming back in the future to build a fan base.

Frogs plan on taking a short break during the winter months, to solidify our lineup and add additional instruments to our sound. The only way to keep from calcifying is to grow and it doesn't ever hurt to build demand by restricting access. Again, you bump into the reality of paying your bills when you want to restrict the number of shows you play in a given market, but it's a big country! Then the reality of how much gas really costs us as a society manifests like some sort of giant pink elephant in the room which no one wants to address.

It was tough to hear when our business banker told me that it's harder to acquire small business credit under Obama than it was under Bush. I've given this administration the serious benefit of the doubt but, in the financial sector at least, they are failing. Not to mention the fact that the crooks who did serious damage to the world economy still have their jobs. Small business is what drives our nation forward, along with corporations. But I do know that in a nation plagued by debt and few job opportunities, new prosperity must come from a different place than corporations. Companies like that are too massive, too dense to move quickly in a world changing as rapidly as ours. We are one of those small businesses, and can attest first hand to the difficulties that entrepreneurs face these days.

But luckily for we musicians, our business is not a cyclical one, in terms of the entire economy. People, in general, want to go out, have a good time and listen to music, and I would suppose more-so in times of economic distress. But we are always striving, trying to book better gigs, farther in advance for more money. Being in Chicago and New York should refine our business sense, and what it means to be a musician in a highly, and in the case of New York, the most competitive scene in the world.

Bertha feels solid in the dense fall air, the engine aspirating that much better. There are so many variables on tour and all I can really hope for is Halloween not being that scary for the Frog's bank account as we journey to New York and beyond.

Nuts

2011-08-24T01:20:00.002-06:00

Things have been nuts lately. Last week I played with two groups, The Sessh and Frogs Gone Fishin', in Aspen for over 250 people... on a Monday! This was all after headlining gorgeous State Bridge Amphitheater for our good friends and fans near Vail on Sunday.

Frogs have acquired a wonderful booking agent, Ryan Williams, and are making headway in new Colorado markets like during night's show at the Belly Up and an upcoming bill on 9/11 at the venerable Mishiwaka Amphitheater in northern Colorado. We'll open up for Bill Kruetzman's (drums, Grateful Dead) new project at the Gothic Theater with a favorite bass player of mine, George Porter Jr. (Meters) outta New Orleans. After that we'll head toward Joplin, MO to play a benefit for the victims of the tornado disaster there. Having evacuated New Orleans for Katrina in 2005, I'm acutely aware of the struggle and sadness that natural disaster can bring. Music not only helped, but saved New Orleans after Katrina and I'm positive it will help Joplin. In October we'll head out on our most ambitious tour in almost half a decade, all the way to New York City to tour the region and rock out on Halloween in a city full of year-round characters. My electronic-funk group The Sessh will be releasing recorded music soon and will tour Europe in 2012.

All of this booking requires a commitment to risk and entrepreneurship that is comforting during a time when corporations seem to be reluctant to hire, the unemployment rate is relatively speaking, very high, and the financial markets are struggling. Factors outside of my control have a tougher time influencing the outcome of our business. There is no market or instrument attached to music, only a quotient of people's desire for entertainment (high during times of financial strain) and our desire to succeed (high when you're a [literally] starving artist).

Now now, I'm not really starving. I had salmon for dinner tonight. It was delicious. And we aren't in some doomsday scenario where people go to the bar and drink and dance because the financial excrement is hitting the global fan and all they want to do is forget their lives. We still control our destiny. I am my own boss, as are many people, and that feels great. But you have to watch any stagnation. Getting comfortable isn't an option. Calcification in any moving system is the beginning of the end. I'm planning on taking a break from music for a month in December and traveling to India to gain perspective about my life and station here in the US, study the beautiful, holy and ancient tonal relationships in the music of the sitar and walk the path that my personal spiritual leader, Buddha, did in during his lifetime in the northeastern part of the country.

I know what you're thinking. How unremarkable and cliche: 25 year old, bearded American rock musician goes to India seeking enlightenment and musical guru. But I'm going because I know it will have an impact on me whether I like it or not, whether I want to let India in or not, all I've heard and read is that it will assault your senses. Pretty nuts.

The Indian system and way of thinking is foreign, if not unnecessary for America, but I wouldn't stop short of saying we need an attitude adjustment. We need to stop pinning our newfound waning hegemony on our leaders and start businesses, make some money and create jobs ourselves instead of waiting around for the job market to get better. I think the media plays poorly into this, reporting ever increasing joblessness, as if we are to take a rise of .3 percentage points as cause to stop looking for jobs altogether. Income can come from different sources and the idea that our white-collar-with-benefits world would last forever, while giving illegal immigrants the jobs white America didn't want, was ludicrous. We are all taught that it's better to make a living with your skill set in Microsoft Office when there are roads to be built, bridges to be fixed and a new "green" infrastructure to create for a sustainable world. But green business isn't yet profitable and so the seemingly obvious pairing of joblessness with new green jobs is shattered by the very thing shattering our perceived hegemony: greed.

When we start looking at a sustainability index instead of a consumer confidence index, we'll be living in a better world. Life is a zero-sum game on Earth. Our quest for "growth" every year as an index of economic health is bringing about our demise quicker than we can ever predict. There is a beautiful alignment between saving our world financially and environmentally, if only we could get our leaders to do what us entrepreneurs do daily: take risks.

Late Summer Classic

2011-07-26T12:39:00.007-06:00

Starting to feel like I know this country pretty well. I certainly haven't been everywhere, but I've met a lot of people from every strata of life and the middle of the US is a great place to get to know the essence of America. The coasts: East, West and Dirty (my favorite and where I went to school) are full of bustling port towns. Even in a global society, it takes more time for outside influence to reach the interior of a country. For better or for worse, the middle of America is decidedly more "American" than even some of the populous coastal cities in our country. A touristy tour from Europe might bring someone from across the pond to New York and San Francisco which are very, very American cities, but places that share many traits with the European capital our bon tourist would have flown out of.

Let's bring 'em to Wichita, to Dayton or Sioux City or El Paso or Albuquerque. Places with Triple A baseball teams... that's the real America and if you don't believe me go talk to Billy at the truck stop in Wichita. He fixed the electric connection to our trailer for $20. He only charges us that cause "the boss man is here, otherwise I'd send ya on 'yer way!". Talk about good people...

We got pulled over for a burned out taillight last night, raising the tally to twice in 2011 that we've had to speak to the nice officers, and the eastern Colorado cop couldn't have been more cordial. I'm not saying we scream probable cause, but four hairy dudes in an RV are both intimidating for and a target of law enforcement. We don't keep any band related stickers on the outside of Bertha or the trailer and when police run our registration they typically get a chuckle when "Frogs Gone Fishin' LLC" comes up. Make any administrator laugh, and that's your ticket in life. Don't try to be logical, their job sucks as jobs are prone to suck, but make them smile during their routine day and you're free to continue down I-70 into the heat of the night and the smell of the Kansas air. If you can keep a positive attitude while inhaling some of the olfactory delight Kansas has to offer, my hat's off to you, sir.

This tour we are headed to Stillwater, OK and then on to four stops in Ohio. I've delicately dubbed this the "Big O" tour, hopefully inspiring some dirty jokes and maybe a tire sponsorship. Stillwater likes to party, that's for certain. So does Ohio but we'll see if Cincy and Cleveland can keep up with that Big 12 beer-bong spirit. I can't wait to find out.

If our route seems illogical, it is. The Oklahoma show was booked last minute because of aforementioned reasons, the kids like to party and seem to like us. If there is anything that's endeared me to small towns across America it is the fact that when a rock and roll band comes to town, it's on like Donkey Kong in 3D. In essence we are entertainers and go where people like to be entertained. Sometimes in a place like Chicago or New Orleans, there is so much entertainment it's hard to cut through. But pull Bertha into Stillwater on a Tuesday, and some people recognize her from last time, from the time we packed 16 people in after the show and drank High Life till dawn.

Ohio will be more of an experiment. We've hit Dayton and Cleveland before. Did you know if you're in a rock band, all you have to do is bring in a CD and they let you in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for free? My favorite are ZZ Top's fuzzy drums from the 80's. We'll be traveling alongside the hilarious and always energetic Revivalists from New Orleans. They rip it up so check them out online.

At any rate it's nice to get out of Colorado. July and January are always the craziest months for gigging musicians and this July was no exception. I spent a solid three or four nights out of the month at home in Denver and while I'm not complaining, I'm not a coal miner or a 13th-century rat catcher here, a change of scenery is always nice.

Colorado is heaven. The mountains never cease to amaze me and our fans and friends are nothing short of incredible, mobile, aggressively smart, fun-loving people. My idea of an amazing time is traveling in a car much lighter and quicker than the one I'm in, from Vail to Steamboat, friends on board on the way to State Bridge or some such divine slice of real estate unknown to much of the rest of the world.

But as the Revivalists so eloquently put in their blog after visiting us in CO:

"Colorado is sort of like the Ned Flanders to your state’s Homer Simpson. Its yard is cleaner, its family is nicer, and no matter what you do, it always seems so much happier than you. Everything is clean and healthy. Everyone is good-looking and nice.

It’s kind of annoying after a few days."

Now, I grew up in Colorado and went to school in Louisiana, the proverbial "Homer Simpson" in this scenario. The funny thing is, The Revivalist boys are right in their blog. Of course, they go on to mention that they are joking, but compared to CO, Louisiana is much more of a "real" place in terms of a mass of diverse humanity trying to get along together in one place. It's much more reflective of the rest of the world.

A global influence truly takes times to creep into the center of such a massive country. Traveling east to west it's easy to see, architecturally and culturally, how each city looks slightly less northern European. Cincinnati even has strong elements of Protestant immigrant culture and edifice. Make it to Iowa City and the buildings are akin to what you will see until you arrive in the west, where Spanish and much more modern architecture are present.

I love Denver but have always thought of it as a confused mix between Los Angeles and Lincoln, Nebraska. But in a way, the liberal free-thinking people you meet out there on the road in America are post-nationalist. They think of their community and jobs and families first and for better or worse, nation second. It might just be better that way. Norway is grappling with the manifestation of extreme right-wing nationalism in the wake of last week's deadly shooting. At least one European country has outlawed the construction of Islamic minarets completely. Can you imagine our government outlawing Catholic cathedrals for Mexican immigrants or Buddhist temples in San Francisco because of the overwhelming presence of one type of people in our country?

Here comes the cliche conclusion to my mid-western monologue. America is great because people focus on making themselves better. We are an individualistic society who despite the nationalistic lingo, jingoistic politicians and right wing Fox News nut bags, don't care as much for American hegemony in the world as even a few years ago.

I do feel like I'm getting to know the people in my own country better than ever. I see it all. We play in five star hotels and dive bars where no sane human should ever consider consuming food or beverage. I see people tripping so hard they can only lie in the grass for hours in hilarity and I see those so depressed by the weight of existing in this individualistic place they can barely breath or stand up on their own two feet to face the day.

I suppose that's why I like being an artist and my own boss. I am, by the very nature of my job, an observer. I enter the realm of luxury and poverty every single week. As I get to know the country better I realize we need two things, education and compassion. A smart populous will only care more about their brethren because we all learn that everyone is simply a victim of circumstance. The observers, the wanderers and nomads in this world are sometimes looked down upon by a society that values hard work, a wife, two kids and a mortgage. I want all of those things one day. But for now it's time to wander and observe and to figure out how we can help each other better.

FROGS GONE FISHIN' WILL BE ON TOUR UNTIL AUGUST. THE NEXT NATIONAL TOUR IS PLANNED FOR OCTOBER.

Festival!: Gish's Getaway 2011

2011-07-11T11:12:00.006-06:00

It's mid-summer and while the politicians are trying to save the budget, and more important to them, their jobs, we've decided to go where there is no news coverage, barely any cell phone service, and no budget negotiations to speak of. Enter the Getaway. Gish's Getaway.

Getting your band into festivals can be a daunting task, if only for the fact that most or all other bands in a given scene are trying to do the exact same thing. One way to circumvent this problem is to throw your own party. Some out there might be aware that we threw a Mardi Gras-style festival in 2009 at Red Rocks. In some ways it was a big success, some a failure, but it certainly taught me that I want to be an artist in life, not a promoter. Since then, the people I find to be the biggest hypocrites in this business are those who use their position of promotional power to give their own band preferential spots in the very events they are in charge of. I purposefully didn't give Frogs Gone Fishin' a spot at the first year of our fest, it would have been a conflict of interest. I can think of at least three individuals who do this regularly and it's bad for the music scene and ultimately the public's perception of their band.

Gish's Getaway will be an alignment of interests. The fest is by and for Frogs Gone Fishin' fans.

First, a little about Gish himself. He looks like a GI Joe. Talk about ripped. I'm not sure I could do enough sit-ups and drink enough raw egg smoothies in my life to ever look like the dude. But his jacked appearance belies his warm heart. The Gisher made sure we had a non-profit to donate proceeds toward before we ever laid a plank of the dock or a piece of the stage down. We picked a favorite of Frogs Gone Fishin's, No Greater Sacrifice, which educates the children of fallen soldiers. It's a great cause and one of many reasons to come to the Getaway this weekend.

Frogs Gone Fishin' will play both Friday and Saturday night. Filling multiple nights with different, interesting songs is a challenge I've always looked forward to and a good opportunity for Frogs to exercise a repertoire which is sometimes stunted in presentation by short, hour-long summer festival sets. We'll have myriad other groups and musicians performing, not to mention our good friends, "The Revivalists", from New Orleans on board.

Our theme for the year is "Boats and Lasers". American? Yes. Fun? Of course.

Positioning the musical festival on a lake has some serious advantages. The weather stays breezy and cool. The activities will as much fun as the music: wake boarding, cliff jumping, BBQ'ing, fishing and swimming are all part of the experience this weekend.

The best part about The Getaway, and what sets it apart from other gatherings this summer, is that there is no schedule. Want to skinny dip at 6am? Wake me up first. Want to jam late at night with banjos and kazoos? Let me get my kazoo.

Frogs will play long sets and take long set breaks. The lack of schedule makes sure everyone is ready to get on stage and the audience is feeling the vibe, in full, before the first note. Can't handle not knowing the exact minute an act is going to go on? I hear the senior living center up the road in Silverthorne starts Bingo more or less on time every night...

If you're not a Frog friend or fan, chances are you don't know about this fest through any popular means. It's not on Jambase or in the paper. Some unpaid wook will not hand you a flier on your way out of the next Disco Biscuits show. You have to know someone who knows, find directions yourself. The trip might not be as easy as for other, pre-fab, commercial festivals, but what worthwhile journey is easy? Once you make it you'll be far from rules and society, schedules and deadlines. It will be a lost weekend and a living lakeside community.

Grab some chicken, beer and sunscreen and we'll see you this weekend!

Fame...

2011-06-04T10:52:00.003-06:00

...doesn't exist. Not anymore. Not in music anyway. Sure you have your Bieber's and your GaGa's, but that's it. Popular music is crap. It's all about micro-markets now, small niches of people who support artists through rabid technology use and word of mouth.

Movies are different. We still have superstars of the screen. Bogarts and Grants gave way to Cloonies and Pitts who gave way to Ledgers and Blooms and all the while nobody has figured out how to effectively deliver free, high-quality movies to the public and destroy the business model with free content on the internet. Sure you can stream movies for free on the internet, just like music, but it's time consuming and the quality is questionable. Our ears can hear a quality difference between digital formats up until a certain point, higher than the 128k/s standard for MP3's to be sure, but not much higher. Movies look surreal at 1080hd and once you've experienced that, anything lesser looks grainy.

Netflix knew this. They also know that all the movies I REALLY want to watch, are on DVD only and come in the mail (an extra two whole bucks a month!). They took what they knew to be the future of distributing content and owned it, made it profitable.

In comparison, the music industry looked like a fat man drowning in a lake, weighed down by his physical inventory and cash requirements. If only he could have just let go of the money bags to rise to the surface where he would have gotten a breath of fresh air and fresh perspective. But he didn't, the fat lardy music industry refused to recognize the new internet horizon and fought pointless legal battles and still, to this day, takes sweet old grannies to jail for sharing a couple thousand songs with their bridge group.

I'm not saying file sharing is OK or even that granny shouldn't go to jail if she steals music, but what are you going to spend your time doing?

It's like the drug war. People are going to do what they're going to do. You can spend your time putting people in jail, or come up with a system that is more beneficial and less harmful for society as a whole.

So as the movie industry protected it's system, and improved on it, the actors and their perceived "fame" were protected. Not so in music. File-sharing became a reality and artists who were looking forward to retiring on their recorded catalogue saw album sales fall off completely.

When Phish or Sting Cheese Incident or Blink 182 or Sublime or Styx or any other group that has announced retirement (or should have) need money, know what they do? Pile into the bus and sell some concert tickets baby!

I don't know about you, but Blink 182 seemed a lot more "famous" when they dominated the radio waves in my teenage years, versus now when the same, exact, song, is still being played on the radio. Phish was a lot more magical when they didn't need to take a hiatus to cure a lead guitar player's drug problem, only to return touring as what many have dubbed Phish Lite.

I think a lot of the destruction of fame and mystique came with the rise of the internet in different ways, too. As soon as you know every detail about an artist, available at any time of day, unmitigated by Rolling Stone but exposed for all to see on Wikipedia, where is the mystique? A blogger named Bob Lefsetz put it eloquently when he wrote: "You used to have to go to the show".

It's probably for the better. Fame is destructive and ultimately annoying because we as humans weren't programmed to be exposed to millions, it's not in our nature. Being an artist today is about sustainability, finding a way to produce and sustain off something that is not easily marketable or even describable. Fame is not the reward. Making art a career is about finding a balance between entrepreneurship and worldly knowledge, capitalism and community-building. That is your reward.

Osama bin Later

2011-05-03T12:53:00.003-06:00

"As for me, all I know is that I know nothing."

-Plato

I'm already sick of it. The conspiracists, the news, the celebrations, the over-analysis... ENOUGH!

This is not to deny something so historic as an evil mastermind being taken out.

But we have to be the bigger country. When we danced in the streets after World War II it was not primarily because Hitler's body itself could no longer breathe, eat, fart and sleep, it was because OUR citizens got to come home. And Obama can only take so much credit for taking him out. What call would you have made? Hand the guy a smoothie?

Some will say Osama's death does nothing to curb terrorism and that nay, it may even galvanize the movement. But we'd neutralized Al-Qaeda's abilities several years ago already. It was the fact that this one man, a figurehead to both those who love and hate the US, was able to evade the most advanced nation in the world for 1o years that gave strength to a movement who's warriors relied on crude weapons and earthen caves for shelter.

But our media and society are wrapped up in the details. We want to know the gory details, see pictures (I wouldn't mind), know exactly how we got him. The media stands to gain from outing every single detail possible and the government stands to gain from restraining the galvanization of terrorists, world-wide, by not showing pictures of Osama's body.

This is where the conspiracists jump in. They will say that the absence of a body is questionable, which I can agree with. That's why creationists are so annoying. The burden of proof should be on the party claiming that there is something invisible out there, to have "faith" in.

I understand this notion. But what I do not understand is a belief, one that seemingly many adults my age subscribe to, that someone or something else, some New World Order, took the towers down and continue to create media events, such as Bin Laden's death. This is supposedly to control you and me, some sort of Brave New World where Big Brother is a Bank with Bombs.

Talk to a former Navy SEAL or wife of a marine and they might lose their mind on you, citing how the US has to protect it's sources, can't reveal info because people in the field will lose their lives.

And my favorite part about it, is everybody KNOWS. The plumber, the doctor, musicians and artists, kids that do nothing but take bong hits on the couch all day. Everybody KNOWS what happened and I'll tell you one thing, when New Orleans found out that Osama was dead after drinking all day in the hot sun at JazzFest, tensions ran high.

Here's a news flash from the desk of TJMUSIC that I hope you enjoy: YOU DON'T KNOW. Remember learning about primary and secondary sources in elementary school? You're a secondary source. So is the media. Take everything with a grain of salt, for sure. But some sort of overarching conspiracy theory, involving media and government, pulling the shades down over our eyes, is ludicrous.

I'll tell you why: because the media stands to gain far more from outing a conspiracy like that, than covering it up. And a conspiracy involving four planes, three locations (DC, NY and Penn), two ensuing wars and media coverage to support it all the whole time, takes a number of people and amount of money operating in total secrecy that would be impossible to cover up.

Politicians are outed for sending sexy text messages to a young page or not paying a couple thousand bucks in taxes. Bill Clinton got caught based on one snail-trail! Those scandals are a media frenzy, but somehow "they", whoever "they" is, planned an attack on our own soil and keep the media quiet to this day... have you people gone completely banana-rama bonkers?

I truly do not care what YouTube video you've watched, which paper you've read, how you interpret politician's comments. Far be it from me to tell anyone to trust a politician, but look at the whole picture and follow a scientific concept most call Occam's Razor. It says the simplest explanation is most often the correct one, and it holds true in most areas of the universe. Either the banks, corporations, media, military and by the way, thousands of civilians who work on government contracts are ALL out there in one cohesive conspiracy, or the truth resembles what the truth always resembles: a gumbo of events that are filtered through special interests (secondary sources), to get to you.

But don't sit around and tell me the world conspires in one big cohesive way to fuck you over. That's a pity party.

Tell me you can admit what you don't know for sure, or get on a plane to the Middle East and become a primary source.

New Orleans Express

2011-04-24T17:01:00.006-06:00

I actually met a guy who takes a train called 'the New Orleans', but it runs Carbondale-->Chicago. We're headed the opposite way. Ballin' down I-55 let's you know you're in the deep south with it's dense treeline on either side of the clear-cut highway and a smoky smell which isn't quite campfire, and not quite forest fire. I'm not sure, and definitely don't want to find out what really happens a couple clicks back in deep woods Mississippi.

I've done this drive many times, at least this direction. It's the only way to get to New Orleans, down. Down down down. 'Till you're at sea level, and below, and in the bowels of America's subconscious. You know those colonial re-creation farms? Come on you know, the blacksmith and the live animals, all meant to take you back to that period in history? New Orleans needs no re-creation. A walk through the French Quarter, and I mean several blocks off the succubus that is Bourbon Street, presents the same small shops and offices that would have existed many years ago. Not the same business, per se, but to the exterior observer, a preserved world, all the same.

It's all the same. The immense greenery and flora, an architectural pallet rivaling Europe, the smell of garlic (and occasional fish from either river or restaurant), the slowed bustle of normal city life, retarded to account for the heat and moisture in the air, a slowed inertia.

And why not? Haven't we progressed far too far from community-based living? We are trying so hard for our brains to catch up to modern, technological life, we can't walk down the street and smell a flower, reaping the benefits of such a simple action. New Orleans forces this slowed enjoyment of life. Getting a sandwich is slower, streets are closed because looking at colorful floats (used once a year) is more important than however fast someone may need to get somewhere on that particular day during Mardi Gras.

America IS MacDonald's, Stabucks, and Wal-Mart and you can't refute that because those chains are in EVERY town we tour through. New Orleans has those things but the amount of small eateries, hardware stores and pawn shops, and even outdoor cafes crushes any attempt at corporate takeover. Even Mardi Gras itself, a powerful economic bargaining chip, has never been sold out to a sponsor. The sponsor of Mardi Gras is Mardi Gras, the people of NOLA who dedicate their entire year to that almighty Cycle of Carnival, sewing beads meticulously or crafting grandiose floats with pointed visual themes for pure enjoyment and the resetting of the Great Cycle, for next year.

The musicians in New Orleans are classy individuals, for the most part. New York or LA has nowhere near the access or dependency on their (musical) artist assets. I learned what it meant to play on a stage by rocking out with a smile on my face alongside my favorite players, as well as being berated for making mistakes or letting my ego overstep my musical spirit.

Frogs @ The Maple Leaf - Mardi Gras 2011

Music is a spiritual experience, not an ego-based one. New Orleans allows for that because once your ego gets in the way, a drumstick flies at your head, or you're berated for not recognizing the amazingly accepting, but very tangible, musical hierarchy in the city. We'll arrive there today to accept our place in that hierarchy, and respectfully sweat and jam our asses off to move on up.

*PLEASE VOTE HERE FOR FROGS IN WESTWORD MAGAZINE'S BEST JAMBAND CATEGORY!

Judging Obama

2011-03-30T12:06:00.004-06:00

Not like that, silly. He has a birth certificate! We all know how great an orator, organizer and in some situations, leader he is. But as a voting citizen, and closet perfectionist, that's not good enough for me. I voted for Obama and want him to do what he said he was going to do, make significant, measurable changes in Washington.

Instead what we have seen so far is a mixed bag. He has passed historic healthcare legislation, a feat of leadership if nothing else. He's removed "combat" troops from Iraq, a positive sign, but whether he or events on the ground initiated their departure is tough to call. We have handed some peaceful regions of Afghanistan off to other parties, but their leadership is as corrupt as ever and we seem eager to entertain that, if it entertains our interests.

Before I talk about his most recent decisions and how they reflect on his leadership and advisors, I want to highlight that I don't think any president should operate with as much power as today's executive branch does. Bush expanded presidential wartime power to an unprecedented level. In that way, the Tea and Republican parties get things right. (Purportedly) aiming to leave things up to states, they reduce the amount of ways the Fed can screw things up. Government is only good at a couple, but necessary, functions. Some of the most important functions our government should play include protecting our country, regulating commerce and deciding (to an extent) what functions should be up to states. These are all constitutionally defined but in the vacuum, where corporate interests, instead of states, lobby Washington with ease, the puzzle gets complicated.
This Euro-centric fear of America becoming a socialist country because of Obamacare is unfounded. The idea of our healthcare system, with all its privatized incentives for just about everyone but the patient, becoming socialized is ludicrous, if not for our greed alone.

Another thing I should point out. I'm not in dire, full-agreement with free market economics, either. Call me a socialist (I love gettin' paid those Benjamin's son!) or hippy (I shower), I just think the pursuit of money for money's sake in a world with such limited resources and massive socio-economic problems is non-compassionate. In the parlance of modern American, you're an asshole. If you went in to finance for the money, you're an asshole. I have lots of friends who are assholes. They are killing it on Wall St., or maybe not, but some of them are interested in the system, some interested in the cash, and none on helping people who have no access to a market that greatly affects them.

Case in point: when the world's financial bubble burst because of the assholes at AIG, Goldman, Lehman etc who quite literally bet on the investments poor people would make in shitty loans, 20 million Chinese migrant workers lost manufacturing jobs. Now, a dire free marketeer will tell me that this is the nature of supply and demand, a necessary expansion and contraction in the market and to that I say NO! If you have the information to tell me that you fully understand a system, it is your duty as a human being to make that system the most compassionate it can be. 20 million people losing their livelihood because of the decisions of a mere hundred at a couple worldwide banking firms is not free market economics, it's criminal.

This is where Obama really fucked up. He was compassionate to those who needed affordable healthcare and those who were discriminated against by insurance. He signed a bill making sure women are afforded equal pay to their male counterparts and drew-down troops in Iraq. He has a hard line against sending ground troops to Libya, while supporting a popular uprising with resources we can commit. Although we are obviously interested in Libya's oil market, we feign interest in democracy to protect their people, a sentiment I'm sure the Arab world appreciates. But Obama could not remain compassionate in the face of that which would crumble most of us, money.

Well knowing the people and intertwined system of large firms, academia, lack of regulation and personal greed that cost the public billions, in not trillions, Obama put the same faces back in their same (non)-regulatory places. If we wanted to follow some lame, psuedo-academic, analogy, we could think of the economy like a ship. If the captain and his mates are responsible for running the rig aground, killing everyone and distorting the hull of the ship, do you hire said captain again? Or if this was sports, a GM and his staff lowers ticket prices until the team is bankrupt, all the while reporting profit, what would happen to said GM.

Yet, we still have Timothy Geithner as our Treasury Secretary. The only thing that sucks more than his haircut, are his policies. Geithner's advocacy to bail out Lehman has been widely criticized and decision to let AIG exec's have bonuses after the crisis is downright criminal. Look up a picture of this guy on google, his stare will give you the willies.

So Obama is doing alright with foreign policy. He's taking steps to allay hatred in the Arab world and fighting terror in a more subtle way. He's taken an open stance against torture and would like to close Guantanamo, something that has eluded him thus far.

Domestically he's far more conflicted. Republican/Tea Partiers will try and defund "Obamacare" and talks are in the works about how much of the budget to slash, not to mention a full-blown government shut down, possible this weekend!

I really wanted to go see Mt. Rushmore on tour this summer...

But I'd like to spread a message of persistence and non-complacence. We have the info and tools as American citizens to hold our politician's feet to the fire with this stuff. It's very easy to say "politicians will be politicians" with this stuff, but that's weak and inherently un-American. Informed criticism and voting is patriotic and if we want to keep this ship afloat, we all have to pay attention.

a note from the plane

2011-03-05T07:53:00.000-07:00

Wanted to post this morning, sitting on the tarmac at DIA. Frogs played the last two nights in Vail and scurried home to Denver for an hour, just long enough to shower and head to the airport. Life is crazy right now, to say the least. After playing the Maple Leaf tomorrow night, we'll cruise around New Orleans, enjoying a much needed psuedo-vacation. Returning from NOLA on Fat Tuesday will hardly be the end of what we are calling "Marchdi Gras". Our amazing, multi-purpose road homie, Double A, will pick us up where he dropped us off just days before, for the trip back to the valley for CarniVail, playing to a blocked off street of 500 people or so. The next day I turn 25 and we open for the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. Later in the month we team up with heavy-hittin' Ivan Neville and his Dumpstaphunk. I'm blessed to have so many friends and fans across the country and I cannot wait for this plane to take us to New Orleans, my home away from home. Thanks to everyone who supports me in this entrepreneurial, oftentimes stressful and hectic, job. Happy Mardi Gras!

*forgive all spelling and grammar errors as this was composed via blackberry on flight 1222, with a southwest stewardess breathing down my neck...

My Birthday

2011-03-04T11:38:00.000-07:00

That's right. I'm turning 25.

25 years of awesome.

If you're in Denver I hope you'll come celebrate with me as we open for one of our favorite bands, The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, only two days after we get back from New Orleans next week.

I couldn't really ask for a better present...

Trevor

Mousike Magazine Article

2011-02-14T13:22:00.003-07:00

the following appears in the current issue of MOUSIKE MAGAZINE:

by Trevor Jones

Here at Mousike, we recommend you consume as much music as possible, every day.

So how do you get your recommended daily dose of music? It’s a question most of us rarely ask ourselves, in large part because it has become so easy. When the internet arrived on the scene the web virtually destroyed the “normal” means by which we consumed our daily music. Radio and the record labels who provided individual songs to your locally owned radio stations collapsed and a new model, full of free music and online resources for listening has swallowed us, listeners and audience alike, so much so that it’s hard to decipher exactly what happened sometimes.

Thirty years ago all you had to do was call in to the local DJ, request that Blue Oyster Cult cut you’ve been craving and he was happy to help you out. Have you tried calling Clear Channel recently? The receptionist who answers probably can’t name the station in the city you’re inquiring about, because he is sitting in a corporate office building, far from any microphones or radio antennas.

So what happened? And more importantly, what do bands do these days to make sure people hear their music, in hopes that they themselves become that daily dose of music you crave?

This is where I should expose my bias. I’m a musician myself and just like everybody, I care about the welfare of the people in my industry, specifically other musicians. During the rest of this article it might feel like I’m trying to convince you to care, too and I am. For good reason. We live in a free market society and so if we want quality art, we want artists to get paid. Not just musicians either. Comedians, painters, poets, people who craft miniature portraits out of sand in tiny glass bottles, all of these people need to be paid if we want their art, whatever it is, to stick around. Take the Writer’s Strike of ‘07-’08. Sitcoms and late-night shows alike were scared to death because their writers would not return work until they had been paid for internet downloads and smart phone streaming.

So as I climb down from my soapbox, let’s figure out exactly how we get our music these days and how some local bands distribute their tunes to the masses.

First, the early days. Remember ‘em? You got your music just like you bought everything else: you up off your couch and walked down to the store. This was a very deliberate, physical process, just as there was a physical hole in your wallet where $15 used to be before you bought that new CD.

I also remember when Napster happened. I was 13 years old and in the prime CD-buying phase of my life. Even after most locally-owned record shops closed, I still had to get a ride from mom down to the aptly named “Warehouse Music” to spend $15-$20 on Hootie and the Blowfish, Lenny Kravitz or maybe even some ZZ Top or Led Zeppelin. As soon as I downloaded “Boyz in the Hood” on Napster, it changed everything. Nothing was unsearchable or unaccessible. I chuckled ten years later when my dad joined the revolution and showed me all the albums he had downloaded with BitTorrent, a modern version of Napster. This new way of obtaining music was decidedly non-physical and non-monetary, perfect during breaks at work or on a boring Sunday. I’m glad he got that King Crimson back after I lost his CD case in Europe all those years ago.

This new way of getting our music, requiring little more than a point and click of the mouse, was here to stay. Artists didn’t like this, or so it seemed. The spectacle of litigation brought about by Lars Ulrich made it seem as if every artist was, point blank, against file sharing. Unbeknownst to the media and maybe even Lars himself at the time, was the fact that file-sharing was the best thing that could have happened for artists and their creativity in an industry controlled by big record labels who had little interest in the music itself, only the bottom line. Later on, Lars would regret his attack on Napster.

“We didn't know enough about the kind of grassroots thing, and what had been going on the last couple of months in the country as this whole new phenomenon was going on.”

-Lars Ulrich

Napster brought about what would be ten years of tumultuous, confusing dealings in the music industry. People found new ways of file-sharing and the record industry would sue individuals here or there, ducking their heads from the media when a curious eleven-year-old or some sweet little granny would be sued for thousands because of copyright infringement. Apple’s iTunes and iPod first edged out music software programs, then buried all other devices period. How many Dell or Microsoft music players do you see anymore?

Meanwhile, the internet itself developed myriad sites and plans for music delivery. Pandora, Grooveshark and Spotify are all examples of streaming music services that are free but give different listening options, payment plans for premium service and even differ in the legalese they use as protection against litigation.

But perhaps the most perplexing, the most paradoxical method by which we receive our music, is on YouTube. What kind of world do we live in where people get their movies from iTunes and their music on YouTube? It’s bananas. But it’s true. And why shouldn’t it be? Music on YouTube is like watching an alien-MTV on steroids, impressive looking and filled with content for the future. For bands, however, this illogical but very popular medium provides a great way to promote the music in a visual way. I recently saw a video of a band shooting a flame-thrower and fire extinguisher at one another. I don’t care what you’re promoting... that’s awesome.

YouTube panders to our primary perception, vision. We all know how much better a concert can be with just a few lights, lasers and a smoke machine to occupy our visual field. Also, musicians tend to be pretty hairy/ugly, so a bright flashing distraction never hurts. But the need for visual stimulation in our modern age is a big one. A great music video can break a band instantly, much like a radio single could several decades ago.

I was at the grocery store in Avon and someone asked me recently if I thought Jimi Hendrix would become famous if he were playing today. I said no and my new friend shook his head and agreed with me. Back then it wouldn’t have had much to do with social networking or YouTube, only word of mouth about a new fiery guitar player. Jimi would come to rely on people like his manager and ultimately his record label to be heard. So what does a burgeoning Jimi or Bob or Janis or Jim, do today?

They adapt to the new system. Bands in Colorado have been doing it for several years now. The majority of any band’s revenue comes from playing live shows, so that aspect of the model hasn’t changed much. What has changed is musician’s attitudes about how, and how much, to sell music for. The cost of making an album has come down exponentially in recent years and so bands are no longer beholden to big record companies, oftentimes they only have themselves or one or two investors to pay back. With this financial freedom comes executive freedom as well and artists are increasingly intelligent about managing their creative assets and royalties. When most of the music out there is free, due to file-sharing and sites like Pandora, it becomes very hard to compete economically when a group’s music costs anything at all to download.

I went online to research some Colorado bands and found a varying array of distribution strategies. Yonder Mountain String Band offers free downloads, but only a smattering of their overall catalogue, in hopes of snaring fans into buying whole albums. The Motet offers their last album, completely free, while putting their more recent effort up for sale. Big Gigantic doesn’t beat around the bush, a quick Google search renders direct links to multiple pages of free music downloads. In a smart move, their last album can be downloaded for money, but fans get a bonus track.

Big Gigantic has faith in what they are doing and it shows. They know their music is so good, people will pay for the whole album just to get that last bonus track. Of course some people won’t, but for those people their is a “donate” button. When Radiohead released In Rainbows for free a couple years back, they made more money off donations than from actual sales of all their other albums, combined. When people get their daily dose of music, they are truly grateful.

As a consumer, we don’t really think about all of this. Music is so easy to obtain these days, and we no longer have to rely on a terrestrial radio system with no character and little quality music. Record labels, payola, and all the corruption that ruined creativity in those systems is gone. The landscape is more barren now, the musical fruit more accessible to the consumer. This new landscape is certainly more harsh and entrepreneurial for artists. Then again, isn’t that what makes a great artist? Although it’s cliche, great art comes from struggle. Not only do we expect that from our artists, we want to support them through their struggles. If only all of our endeavors had a “donate” button.

Anyone who is, or has been an entrepreneur knows how tough it is. The prospect of giving away your product for free seems not only illogical, but akin to business suicide. That gives you a sense of how upside down the world of media has become because of the internet. Newspapers, books, movies, TV shows and even this magazine you hold in your hand... none are immune. In a sense, we have come full circle.

During the Renaissance, music was very much a free market commodity. People hired musicians because they thought the tunes were off-the-hook, and to listen. The idea of every piece of music (pretend CD’s existed) being the same price would have been ludicrous. Some music sucks, some touches the voice of God. Is every painting a standard price? Now we have returned to employing the proverbial “donate” button. The real struggle for musicians is making their “donate” button more valuable than the next. From this struggle comes great artists and most importantly for us as listeners, great music.

Sex, Drugs and Hip-Hop

2011-02-04T11:37:00.003-07:00

Hip-Hop is the new Rock and Roll. My title is a little abrasive, the comparison goes way beyond the sexual expression and drug use present in the Rock scene in the 70's. I want to explore just how deep the comparison goes because let's face it, Rock is a spineless, soft, watered-down version of the creative nebula that encompassed the true "scene" in the 70's.

What is a music "scene" anyway? You have a core group of musicians and their catalogue, obviously. But it's the content in that catalogue and the interaction between artists in the group that make a "scene". Anything less is just a bunch of bands competing against each other.

So by that definition, let's focus not on the groupies or club owners or sex or drugs, just the music and the the relationships between the people who play it.

Something you hear a lot in hip-hop is reference, not only to the qualities of oneself, but differing qualities, positive and negative, of other peers in the scene. Commonly know as "shout outs" or "representing", an MC will call out the rhymes of a fellow rapper and choose to disrespect or qualify their effort. Rappers will sample beats from other rappers or musicians. Sometimes an MC will appear as a cameo on another rapper's record as a form of cross-promotion. The point is, the process is highly collaborative.

In contrast, we have today's rock bands who travel alone or with one other band, rarely collaborate unless the two artists in question are of somewhat equal fame and stature, and never publicaly acknowledge another's work. Imagine Audioslave singing about another rock band. It would be degrading to their image and thought of as awkward subject matter for a rock song.

You can pick out songs from the 70's that do exactly that. Take "Monterey", by Eric Burdon and The Animals:

Young gods smiled upon the crowd

Their music being born of love

Children danced night and day

Religion was being born Down in Monterey

The Byrds and the Airplane Did fly
Oh, Ravi Shankar's
Music made me cry

The Who exploded
Into violent light (yeah)
Hugh Masekelas music
Was black as night

The Grateful Dead

Blew everybody's mind

Jimi Hendrix, baby Believe me

Set the world on fire, yeah!

Burdon is singing about his peer group, albeit in a slightly more positive way than you might find in today's hip hop, but acknowledging them in detail still. The song is practically a history lesson about the music scene of the time. It might seem cheesy to us know, but that's how Eric and presumably his band felt about the vibrant, new thing happening around him.

This alludes to an even stronger reason why hip-hip is more rock than rock these days. The lyrical content of hip-hop more often references the state of affairs in everyday life. Whether it's Jay-Z or Atmosphere, you're more likely to hear about problems with money and relationships, problems we all go through, than in a rock song. For rock, these things aren't esoteric or spiritual enough to write about, although we experience them on the daily.

Flash back to the 70's. Some of the most relevant protest songs and music commenting on society in general came from the 70's. Do you see the Foo Fighter's standing up for Health Care Reform?

I'm not saying any of this is a good or bad thing, only that hip-hop has replaced the direct, relevant, and vibrant energy present when some of my musical heroes were around last century. And that's why I like it.

Listen to:

A Tribe Called Quest

Wu Tang

Atmosphere

Biggie

Mos Def

...and anything else that get's your butt shaking or mind thinkin'!!!!

Stay positive and have a great week everybody!

Free the Internet

2010-12-18T19:14:00.007-07:00

First of all, I think it's fun to stay home and write a blog on Saturday night. That's what playing live music does to you. Home becomes so valuable, so many options present that normally are unavailable, it's like this personal playground. Sweatpants. Netflix. Our couch which is admittedly more comfortable than my bed. It's all there.

BOOYAKASHA!*

*Popularized by Ali G (who's creator went on to Borat fame) Booyakasha is a word derived from the Irish word "buíochas" (pronounced bwee ah kuss) which means "glory to" "or praise be". Oliver Cromwell sent 1,000's of Irish to the plantations in Jamaica, and a lot of Irish words made it into Jamaican patois.

Second, the internet is freakin' awesome. Are you kidding me? I can write to our Welsh buddy, Richard the Lizard, far away in Wales, without waiting days for a letter to return his pragmatic and dignified response. I can find out how far I need to drive to the nearest late-night doughnut dispensary, compare doughnut prices, and maybe even email a buddies' BlackBerry to pick up a whole sack-full on the way over. I can bank, buy, blog, bide my time and generally buck around on websites full of information I don't need to know, but get off on learning about.

This is big news for humankind in general. From a psychological standpoint, I'm somewhat surprised people's heads don't spontaneously explode more often from the shock of information overload, or their withdrawal from such. We are nowhere near equipped to deal with the amount of information coming directly at us from screens, screens and more screens. Screens that are increasingly connected to the internet. Phones, game consoles, the back seat of taxi cabs are all wired. Sometimes I find myself checking my Blackberry as if it were another tab on my internet browser, while I'm working in front of my computer itself! Que Ridiculo, NO?

But beyond that anxious feeling (followed by overwhelming relief) I get when I'm temporarily disconnected from the information super-highway, the most important part of the internet revolution lies in the fact that the world-wide-web brings information onto a level playing field, for everyone with access to an internet connection. Beyond that, the content is largely free, baby! For now...

Take it from a musician... people find a way to make anything you put on the internet free to others. As I've discussed in previous posts, I'm nothing close to opposing the phenomena. I can think of no better way, no better third-party endorsement, than having a fan put our music on the internet for others to share in. I'm pretty sure Lars Ulrich is the only musician rich enough or greedy enough to ever truthfully get all bent about file-sharing.

The big picture is that people in Benin, Belarus, and Boise, Idaho can access the same information and we all know that information is power. Information is power to raise a healthy family, prevent disease, grow food more efficiently and eventually, create a world where hate and ignorance have no place to hide from knowledge and tolerance. If all those 2012 conspirators have one thing that might be close to reality, it's the unifying force of the internet that could lead to some harmonious new world order. I can foresee some technological breakthrough that gave EVERYONE internet access to be a global game-changer, a golden age of communication and cooperation amongst humans never seen before in history.

However, some governments, like China's, would rather their citizens not even read this blog. They might realize the prohibitive nature of their laws and rise up against a regime not praised for its human rights record to begin with, while their government tries to leave citizens in the informational dust.

It's something I didn't think about a lot growing up with the internet constantly at my fingertips. How does this massive, diverse system of information and entertainment perpetuate itself? How did it come to be and how does it continue to be search-able in a coherent and easy way? It's the like the universe has some sort of secret librarian that wants to set this knowledge out for your taking or leaving. It's beautiful. It's incredible. And it may not stay this way forever.

For the first time since its creation, the United Nations is debating the future of what most in the West regard as a rightfully unregulated sphere. The news was shocking to yours truly. There will be no more mysterious librarian-of-the-universe to send me info over the internet wavelength once the burly, ineffective, slow-moving body of the UN gets involved. What's more, there's talk of removing the one aspect of the internet so crucial to it's magic, the fact that it's free.

This was at issue as Google and Verizon held talks this fall about whether "tiers" of internet service are a good idea or not. This would mean some people would be able to pay for a faster "tier" of internet than other consumers. While such a service would inevitably be profitable for companies like Google, the online giant has maintained that anything but an "open" internet would be a bad idea. This sentiment carried over into criticism of meetings held last week at the UN, designed to propose the idea that the world's governments should have a greater role in regulating the internet.

The division of opinion with regard to whether political bodies should regulate things like commerce and communication on the internet is interesting. Developing nations, who are not so focused on free speech as we might be here in the US (China or Iran), want to have a big say in what is available to their average citizen online. Industrialized countries like Brazil and India also want to regulate the internet for the vast commercial benefit inherent in controlling the biggest social invention since the neighborhood block party.

I find it admirable that countries with much to gain in controlling internet service delivery, the US and its allies, called the UN talks "offensive" because they represent an attempt to gain control of something that derives its vitality from its freedom, not its regulation. In the words of a very famous movie featuring puppet mannequins: "America, fuck yeah!".

But this carte blanche opposition to paying for internet service isn't all gummy-worms and sprinkles on the ice cream called technology. There needs to be well regulated ways to collect money for services involving intellectual property (listening to the songs I write or the books you read) because like it or not, artists have to get paid too. There are some pretty pretentious peeved-off penmen over in Hollywood right now who are getting the royal shaft on royalties for shows they've written on, shows that later end up online, for free, for anyone to download, leaving Gary the Writer penniless on the corner of Sunset Ave. and Desperation Blvd...

And don't we want to pay comedic writers, or songwriters, or all the cameramen, gaffers, grips, gapers and goombas in Hollywood and elsewhere, wherever creative art is distributed to the masses? Won't it make sit-coms funnier (please God), songs better, movies deeper (again, Lord help us please...)???

The bottom line is that the regulation of intellectual property (ie; figuring out how creative people get paid for their work online) in a society who virtually expects (and fights on a political level for) free internet content will be an area to watch in the coming years. Hulu and Grooveshark are always there for you while you wait...

Fear

2010-11-26T08:09:00.008-07:00

You hear a lot of fear flying around, mostly in advertising and often in religious institutions. I almost wrote "fear flying around these days", but this tactic is nothing new. Since we started roasting those first chestnuts on an open fire in the forest, we as humans have used the potentiality of negative results to deter, or motivate, others to do the way we'd like. Try it with a toddler, it works. With most, anyway. In fact, you can tell a lot about the basic nature of that toddler through this interaction. Tell him or her the stove is hot and hurts, and watch if they obey the fear in their mind or not.

This kind of fear is good. I have all my limbs and basic facial features intact because my parents did a good job of instilling in me a healthy fear of hot stoves or busy intersections. Religion and modern media take what they would also label "healthy" fear to new heights.

Take Exodus 20:18 from the Bible for example:

"When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, 'Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die."

That's pretty heavy, man. But check out that nice convenient veil the Bible puts between God and men. The men are too busy shaking in their boots to question who they should be listening too.

Take the media. Not to mention any names here; Glenn Beck you stupid-fucking-idiot soul-succubus, but the media will use terms like "Nazi", "terror", or "blood-shed", over and over until poor Grandma who doesn't realize the 24-hour news cycle will rot your brain thinks the world is only full of danger and gosh darnit', she better get her nightly news to know where the bad guys are! For the record, my grandmas are way cooler than that.

Here's a headline from CNN.com this morning:

"One Business Growing in Haiti -- Coffins"

Are you kidding me? Instead of mentioning that cholera deaths in Haiti are rising, CNN conjures up an image of a bustling coffin and grave industry, bursting at the seams 'cause there just so many of them Haitians dying all the time, they're piling up down there!

Send me a comment about Fox News, Sarah Palin or Rush Limbaugh and you'll find out how a blog explodes. I don't know technically how, yet, but it can't be fun. But notice I loped those liberals at CNN in the group too, nobody is above it, because fear tactics simply work too well. So then it goes without mention that everybody out there has to wade through the B.S. and find their news and information from a scientific and an unbiased (as possible) media outlet.

But there's another kind of fear, conditioned by the constant barrage of the above factors, which plays out in our minds all day. Since we've just shown that we live in a culture of fear, it follows that our personal worlds might be filled with the same kind of thinking.

When I stumble up the stairs in the morning, looking for breakfast, and choose between an apple and a pair of Twinkies I make a couple hundred or thousand minute, sub-conscious choices. One that I let surface to my groggy morning ego (something very hard to control in the morning) is that apple's help prevent lung cancer. My grandfather died of lung cancer, boy am I afraid of and fear cancer, and therefore should eat an apple.

Again this is good fear playing out and ultimately helps me make a healthy choice. The trouble comes when we try and apply this direct logic to our big life choices, choices significantly larger than apples v. Twinkies. When thinking about leaving your job right before a promotion to start a business, does fear play in? You bet. Fear about losing financial security, your mortgage, a failing entrepreneurial business...

The truth is that there is no truthful, objective way to account for what will happen in the future, and in reality, only you can work hard to augment the potential outcome. In other words, if I'm thinking of leaving the Corporation Corp. to start a company that designs beer-bottle-cap-cabinets then fear might highly dissuade me from doing so. But this fear is unfounded. It shouldn't deter you and given that this is our ONE life, our one chance, a secure pension plan won't ease regrets about unfulfilled life dreams.

Fear plays into music in two ways. First, when playing live improvisational music... you must forget it exists! Fear has no place in life or music. The micro-second you begin to second guess yourself because of fear about whether what you're about to play will sound "good" or not, ruins the note before it even leaves your fingers or lips.

Second, when pursuing a career in music, you have to be fearless. It's the only way. Fearing an outcome is tantamount to failure. A close relative of mine, very close, who I love, recently told me I need to "rethink my situation" or something to the effect that playing music full time isn't a real job. It makes my mind want to explode. Makes me mental. Drives me bananas down bat-shit crazy-street backwards!

WHEN DID WE MOVE FROM A WORLD WHERE MUSIC WAS AN INTEGRAL PART OF SOCIETY TO PASSABLE DIGITAL NUMBERS, ITEMS AS USABLE AND DISPOSABLE AS HANDBAGS???

We are in love with artists one minute, unable to stay interested because they only release a limited amount of pre-fab music and then Justin Beiber's voice changes, Britney goes to jail for nose candy and teenagers are apt (or forced for lack of options) to fall in love with their parent's music. Why don't they have their own music, music they can grow old along WITH?

The answer is as complex as explaining away any post-recession industry, but fear played into it, big time. Major labels feared investment in new talent, feared new technologies like Napster and now we have a system where those without fear, the heavy hitters starting technology companies, control the money game. Take Twitter, Pandora, Spotify or Grooveshark. These are the new DJ's of the current century, controlling the game.

So until I plan my technology start-up (we did get in pretty balls-deep with Mountain Side Mardi Gras ) I have to maintain that mindset of an artist which has guided and shielded us since troubadours traveled around France in the 13th century. We do what we do not for the money, but for love, which is the opposite of fear. We don't fear the outcomes of existing in an industry long forsaken for it's profitability. Playing music in the name of love is not some hipster, hippy, or beatnik expression but a protection from the fear in the world. Silence is ignorance, leading to fear and even hate in the worst case. But music, those first few notes you hear at a concert, penetrate that emptiness with light and love and substance. Fear has no room.

Maybe I have with music the same relationship some people feel they have with God, a protectionist sense of love, like that with a father, which can obliterate fear.

I sat next to a very, very wise man on a flight to New York a couple weeks ago. He's a leading cancer researcher at CSU and a Hindu-born Christian. If a preacher tries to preach to me, I will not listen, just like no one wants to hear a car mechanic go on about transmissions in their spare time. But if a scientist wants to take a crack at explaining, logically, to me his way of seeing religion in the world, I'm all ears.

He had one phrase which he kept repeating throughout his vast descriptions of religion (Eastern and Western) and how it relates to everyday life: "Live a simple and sincere life, and you will be like a humble lion."

As someone who is surrounded by lots of public attention as part of what they do for a living, that advice is immeasurably valuable. A lion fears nothing in the jungle.

*A few days after I started this post, WikiLeaks.org caused fear to ripple through the world's powerful and elite, posting their personal comments about adversaries and allies alike as if they were Facebook comments about your best friend's boyfriend. You didn't want him to find out you think he's a sleaze-ball and now damage control is the name of the game. Although Julian Assange is most likely a meglo-maniac, harmful to US interest, the story is just so novel, so massive in scope, the media has embraced his image and mission.

Tour Time and Time Warner

2010-11-09T10:34:00.006-07:00

This week, the Frogs are headed to Texas. Things have stabilized in the FGF camp since moving into a new house and getting robbed several months back. The Denver police found one item (the largest and most expensive) and Steve and I were more than happy to sit at the cop-shop, haggard and anxious for hours, in order to tow our PA back to it's rightful pad. We have an awesome new roommate moving in, Calvin, who works in finance and can probably provide some perspective to us about what life in the corporate world might be like. The first time he came over we bonded over his "existential breakdown" in NYC, where I had just returned from a wild trip, running back and forth between Brooklyn and Manhattan, recording two full songs and playing two shows. Producer Will (Will E. Beats) and Engineer Klem should be sending me some tracks this week and I will post the new tunes as soon as they are in my eager paws, or Frog toes to be more specific.

On that note, the amount of Frog memorabilia we've obtained over time, a relatively short time, is astounding. From where I sit at my computer in our living room I can see:

- A giant stuffed Frog from one of our youngest fans, a kick-ass little girl name Willa

- Posters from over a dozen shows, We've only begun to put them up. our buddy Kevin in the mountains has stacks and stacks in the archive.

- A wall-sized, sewn blanket of our South Park-style caricatures, replete with our Frogs Gone Fishin' logo. If Trey and Matt came in the door we might have a lawsuit on our hands.*

Any number of amphibian-related books, holiday-cards, painted Mexican leaping Frogs and hygiene accouterments like candles or soap decorate our house, bathrooms, Suburban (Leslie) and RV (Bertha). I am a Frog. It's not a question if I want to present myself that way. People refer to the group as "The Frogs", individuals as "a Frog", and make checks out to us as simply "Frogs".

These are physical indications of the world that your band becomes. It is much more than a physical world, however. Your world as a musician is defined by concentric circles around which are your band and it's family. Family goes way beyond the conventional definition at this point. And just like you love your real family, as it's the only one you've got, you love your fan base and business associates, even the annoying step-brothers or creepy uncles in the bunch. From the moment you wake up to when you go to sleep, you take stock of this family, figure out how to make it work together for a greater experience than any fan or band could achieve by themselves. Most often this happens in the form of live concerts and your job as musician is to make fans feel like you are watching them, as much as they are watching you.

It's so cliche to discuss, but that reciprocality between band and fan is the ONLY thing keeping you as musician from disintegrating into some sort of repetitive, guitar-playing robot. And when fans come to multiple shows in a row, your art becomes more comprehensive because you have the arch of time to work with, days in between shows, as a new factor to manipulate. Active fans will guess rabidly about which songs will be played in what order, which songs will open and close the next show. Some bands have whole archives, dedicated to information about those very statistics.

That is the source from which your world as a band should emanate, the catalogue of songs you maintain to play at the moment that is just right for band energy and audience atmosphere. In fact, that is where you can draw the line between real musical artists, and corporately created pop-stars. Real artists operate on a catalogue built-up over time, pop-stars are ushered into the public domain on a cascade of dollars, not musical aptitude or hard work. It's also pretty cliche for artists like me to bitch about said pop-stars but none of it is relevant anymore, anyway. Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift sell a fraction of the CD's Britney or N'Sync did, the model has gone out the window.

What we are left with are hard working bands (we're now on hour seven of the 15-hours to Texas, in the middle of Kansas, as I finish this post) and independent-minded labels who might get their cash from the big boys, but certainly make their own decisions, sometimes for the worse. One of the more famous examples of this twisted carnival-industry came when alt-rock band Wilco was released by their label, only to be picked up by another owned by the same parent company, Time Warner. Not only had Time Warner financed Wilco's record, they had to essentially buy it back from themselves when the band was let go due to poor management.

Many years ago... OK maybe 6 or so, when I was (hopefully) less wise to the ways of this world, I thought being signed to a major label would be the best, the balls, the brass ring and not knowing what that would mean (large-scale debt to a corporation) I was probably disappointed when my amateurish emails to Sony or Disney Records or who knows where weren't returned promising studio time and world tour. Now, after seeing what happens to bands who are signed to contracts they can't fulfill, oftentimes because a major won't market them correctly, I realize that there's nothing better in the world than being able to call my producer Brad, or lawyer Eric with a problem and have an advocate on the other line, rather than some money hungry scum-bag whose utterly disinterested in music or art.

After returning from TX, Frogs will spend some quality family time for Thanksgiving at home and tour around Colorado during the winter. NYE will take place in Telluride for two nights straight of celebration with the FGF band. Everyone who attends will receive a live CD of the show. Also, check out a pair of new music videos, produced by L.A.-based filmmaker Travis Milloy:

"Never or Now" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYB1thJbVHA

"Herb" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8y0clvIako&feature=related

Enjoy!

*Trey Parker and Matt Stone must have some ballsy lawyers. The creators of South Park are also from Colorado... must be something in the water.

WTF Politics?!

2010-10-12T09:43:00.005-06:00

This is a music blog. Actually it's my blog, so it can be about unicorns and red wine and you'll like it! But one thing that grinds my gears, torques my chain and downright gets my goat is politics. The only real reason I care about national politics is the fact that the world is watching, too. Terrorists use our policy ideals to recruit more terrorists. Conversely, people around the world look to America's policy and politicians as examples. Why? I'm increasingly not sure but it's true and if you don't think so, ask yourself why Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize. He won largely on the fact that he stands for an America that has at least moved toward tolerance or the idea of such. George Bush talked about the war on terror as a "crusade". We saw how violent and irrational a perceived non-tolerant Pres could be and the Nobel Prize was the world's relief, expressed to a man who hadn't really done anything on the world stage, yet.

But this pendulum of relief is only temporary and always swings back toward anxiety and fear again. This is especially true within the United States. We live in somewhat of a culture of fear. We choose our diets because we fear high cholesterol, choose safe cars or safe neighborhoods because of fear, all we get from talking heads on TV is information about what is to be feared. We were so afraid in 2001 that George Bush pulled the biggest one on us yet. He managed to convince us, or our representatives at least, that we needed to waste billions of dollars and thousands of lives, invading a country that had nothing, NOTHING, to do with 9/11. All to finish daddy's business.

We caught up to wily W's plan around the time he was to leave office and the ills of the GOP galvanized Obama's massive movement of youth to the polls. Now, I believe, we are experiencing yet another shift, a pendulum swing back to the right. Look at the highly fragmented Tea Party movement. In the 90's they wouldn't have stood a chance. Newt and his Contract with America solidified the GOP's personality such that plat-formless, libertarian-minded groups could do little to penetrate the Grand Old Party. But the lines are creeping to the right. People are scared and reacting to the huge, but necessary, financial bailouts.

Now it's like a free for all. Democrats are anxious to support their president, while fearful of opponents who spew off ridiculous claims regarding taxes and the deficit. Listening to economists you realize this whole deficit situation is pretty simple. We have three major sources of spending: Medicare, Social Security and the Military and one major source of revenue, taxes.

SO...GUESS WHAT'S GOOD IN THE HOOD PEOPLE? If we clean up unnecessary spending for programs that don't make people healthier in Medicare and stop considering the notion that rich people shouldn't pay taxes, we could maybe get ourselves out of this hole. Oh yeah, that multi-billion dollar, needless war that Bush and Dick started didn't help either. Let's neutralize Osama bin Laden and the Al-Queda sects in both Afgani/Pakistan AND Yemen. Yemen is where that lowly sack came from who tried to blow up the Christmas party plane last year over Detroit.

Then we can return to making policy decisions that don't help terrorists recruit more terrorists. Right now, all they have to do is turn on the news.

NYC - Fall Update

2010-10-06T12:26:00.007-06:00

I'm cruising out to NYC on the 18th of this month record some new music with producer Will Boyle in Brooklyn and a good friend from college, Jason, who works way too hard and plays too well to be out of the industry itself. I also had lunch with DJ Logic and his girlfriend Diane, a friend from Vail, so maybe we can convince to come over from his joint in Brooklyn to do a track.. wink, wink, nudge, nudge...

Side projects are really important. While I'm in Brooklyn, holed up in a warehouse studio, Mark and Steve (drums/bass in Frogs) will be touring the West Coast with their side project Oak Creek, making it as far as LA. Beyond being a sort of blow-off valve for creative energy, side projects are expanding our horizons coast-to-coast, something that will inevitably benefit Frogs Gone Fishin' down the road.

The Indian summer in Colorado this year kept the leaves on the Aspen trees yellow for a longer period than normal. Driving around the state playing shows from Ft. Collins to Telluride has been memorable all summer long, and we've had some out-of-control shows involving lake houses, crazy club owners, hippies and their dogs and lots of dancing people.

Along with the heavy energy that autumn always brings, bands start planning some important shows in their yearly cycle. This time around we'll bring a Wizard of Oz theme to our three Halloween shows in Boulder, Denver, and the Vail Valley. I suppose I won't say exactly who I'm going to be, but I need a blue dress, soon...

It's been almost six month since Actual Natural was released on our dedicated independent label, Mountain Size Records. We have a great relationship with our larger family in MSR and we face lots of challenges together. Today's music market in a word, sucks. CD's used to sell hundreds of thousands of physical copies. Because of music piracy and also some pretty greedy lending practices on the behalf of labels, the industry fell apart in the 2000's. Combined with a larger economic collapse, not too many people are shelling out $10 for a whole album anymore. Labels are forced to rely on creative marketing methods and persistence, where they used to be rely on throwing lots of cash at the problem. I'm still of the opinion that a little cash can go a long way, not in terms of ad space, but creative ideas that engage the consumer. I've tried to get our label to see this and I hope they understand but given their busy lives and day jobs, I have a strong feeling the entrepreneurial burden will consistently fall with the band. In fact I don't think that will ever change and I don't think it's a bad thing.

In that respect, we gotta keep it movin'. We gotta raise the roof, kick the tires and light the fires. We have to be social net-workers, performers, salesmen and somehow maintain some sanity and a friend or two. And forget dating. Or a part-time job. If it doesn't have to do with music, chances are your boss will see the disconnect in a hot, quick minute and quietly ask you to resign. This means you better be booking your side project, duo and solo gigs months in advance and then spend all day on the computer and phone promoting them. A big budget would help, but virtually no one has that these days, save for the one or two major promotion players (Live Nation and AEG). It's time to buckle down and focus.

Dorothy and touring musicians both know there's no place like home. Back in August I enjoyed a sublet, courtesy of the gracious Tim Dixon and his two distinguished brothers. I was in my bed at home a total of three nights out of 31 days that month. Thanks guys, I hope I didn't overstay my welcome.

Now that Frog's have moved into our house north of Denver, life is settling down a bit. It's good to finally get to know the town I grew up in. My experience in live clubs and bars didn't really begin until I grew up musically in that wonderful, energetic town of New Orleans and so seeing Denver for what it is in terms of the live music scene is eye-opening. I'm going to start blogging about the scene here in Denver, my travels to NYC, and a topic I can't help but write about, politics. Things have gotten so weird in that last realm, I'll reserve future posts for the topic.

The dudes up at Mountain Size Records are running a promotion on Actual Natural right now. Check out the store and type in FGF1OFF to get a discount on the disc. Go getcha some!

Wyclef, Politik Artist

2010-08-11T11:28:00.004-06:00

I recently heard that Wyclef Jean is running for President of Haiti. While he won't have the powers of the PM, the move is interesting for a musician. You can follow him on Twitter here:

http://twitter.com/wyclef/

And if you haven't caught on to the whole Twitter thing, realize that this web page is an instant announcement to 1.5 million people whole follow Wyclef, a large percentage of which are presumably fans who know about the man for his rhymes more than his rhetoric. They might not be in Haiti, but it's hard not to imagine Haitians of all ages voting for the native-born, international superstar.

What Haiti needs now is a symbolic fundraiser as President, while their PM picks up the ministerial pieces after the January 12 earthquake rocked the developing, fragile nation.

That makes Wyclef seem perfect for the job, although his detractor on NPR the other day was quick to point out that he's had trouble here in the US with the IRS and his own non-profit, Yele Haiti. The following was taken from uprisingradio.org:

While some question whether Jean is qualified for Haiti’s highest office, others are critical of his politics. His familial ties to the coup government and his implicit support for it have caused concern. Wyclef Jean, who has remained a Haitian citizen, described his decision to run for Haiti’s highest office saying, “I always say that Wyclef Jean is not running for the Presidency of Haiti, I’m being drafted by the people of Haiti.”

While Wyclef's main problem is his severe inability to speak in the first person tense, I support what he's trying to do. Extreme times do call for extreme measures and while electing actors has proved fateful in American politics recently, I do think a distinction can be made there.

Actors are masters of empathy, but that's where the politicians get ya in the first place! Our voting decisions are oftentimes made on emotional criteria (think abortion or immigration), when in reality logic should rule the voting process. The immigration issue is a prime example. Conservatives have argued to repeal the very amendment in our constitution that makes it such that anyone born on US soil is a US citizen. It's easy for them to stir the emotions of a nation who, in reality, keep 90% of illegal immigrants here and for a reason. This reason is economic and we've all heard the "they do they jobs we don't want" spiel.

Artists, by comparison, and I mean real artists (not Pink or Brittany or Justin Beib... what's that kids' name???) are masters of individuality. An artist finds her place in the world by personal observation, not interpersonal empathy.

I'm not saying actors can't have strong opinions, or artists can't selflessly promote their work. What I am saying is that Wyclef was passionate about Haiti and it's politics before the earthquake. That makes me think he is less of an opportunistic snake-in-the-grass and really cares about the country as a whole, not just the part that will vote for him.

But ultimately he's got the best attribute of a politician his party could ask for. He can win.

vacation over... Frog Time Again!

2010-07-10T11:49:00.013-06:00

First, a nod to two very well run events of much different scales, events which make me appreciate the way humanity comes together and organizes itself for our own enjoyment... What makes us slightly more fun to hang out with than monkeys!

I had the opportunity to bring my own band, creatively titled "The Trevor Jones Band" for lack of more time to think of a cool band name, to The Realm Festival: Campout for the Cause II located in Rancho del Rio Colorado. As you might be able to discern from the name of the venue, a perfectly paced river flows through a picturesque valley where a stage is trucked in for festivals every summer. Now, I play lots of gigs and have to make up fun for myself to keep from getting burned out. For this particular set, I shaved my head with a razor and painted myself and the rest of the band with tribal markings. Fun times for one in the afternoon and the band killed it, consisting of Mark Levy (Frogs Gone Fishin') on drums, the uber-funky Cristian Basso (Little Hercules) on bass, KT Homes (Boxcar Daisies) on acoustic guitar, the world-class Tony G on keys and DJ Also Starring. I think we achieved my goal of deviating from the norm when post-fest, an acquaintance mentioned we "really freaked him out" in his altered state.

On a much larger scale, the World Cup provided endless distraction and procrastination justification for the last month. When I should be songwriting or update myspace or something, I find myself engrossed, rooting for teams I should never care about like Cote D'Ivoire or Spain, and getting truly upset when the USA lost to Ghana. I think Americans of my age were taught that our hegemony in the world was gonna last and not that the Netherlands are going to be a world superpower any time soon (again), but not getting first is just about as cool as getting last as far as sports fans in the Red, White and Blue section are concerned. Still, the political implications which spread far beyond the tournament, especially in a country like South Africa, make the World Cup arguably more important than the Olympics, given that people need and crave football like a Catholic priest at Boy Scout Camp.

Now that my blog just showed up on the Vatican's Google Alerts, I'm gonna change IP addresses. I don't stay in one spot very long these days. A typical week for a Frog involves rehearsals, solo gigs, duo gigs, teaching lessons and lots of commuting. I play music every night during the week and weekend, AKA never a night off. Not including solo, duo and side project shows, Frogs have played 350 shows in 25 cities around the country. Add those other shows in, and you realize we play music for an audience just about every day. Can anyone say booking agent?

Our responsibilities in Frogs, endlessly nebulous but direly important, were discussed at a record label meeting up at Mountain Size Records last week. Our label, consisting of lawyer, producer and now a full-time intern, have a great manner of making work fun and are not afraid to let us take the lead, or push us when necessary. They are heavily interested, and invested, in making Frogs Gone Fishin' all we can be as a Frog Army. Fish have schools, birds have flocks, we have an army. Simple.

Frogs have been entered into a voting contest for the yearly Yarmony Grass Fest and would love your vote. VOTE HERE If we win, we float down the river on a giant raft, playing music!

Actual Natural continues to sell around the country on iTunes, Amazon, and soon Rhapsody, although we are starting a promotion soon at Mountain Size which will put a t-shirt and other schwag in your hands for free when you buy the album.

Things are busy and the temperature down in Denver reached 101 degrees yesterday as I played the afternoon set at the Farmer's Market. It could be the one moment in which I don't intensely miss New Orleans, although after going out in Denver last night, cherishing a Saturday off, I realized we have to move here next for a number of reasons, musical and social alike.

The rest of the summer will be spent playing all over the state, including the THC fest in Alma (VERY HIGH at 10,000 ft) and a fest of our own, FROG FEST at Finnigan's Wake in Avon. September will see a tour to the West Coast and I'll head out to NYC again in October to record and play some shows.

This nationwide traveling in just a few months time is comforting in a way, like our influence is expanding in the right direction, the global direction.

East Coast

2010-06-29T10:57:00.005-06:00

The East Coast is just a little bit different than Colorado and New Orleans. For one, the concept and logistics of transportation are on people's minds constantly. "Where are you going" and "how do you get there" are questions heard hourly if not more frequent. The geography of the city makes it such, millions of people packed, overflowing onto an island like it's the last place drinking water is available on Earth or something.

There are some serious common misconceptions about NYC which I noticed are blatantly false and should be disproved.

1. New York is hard to get around... Do you have two feet? Can you put two dollars (twice that of a soda machine!) in a little turnstile device that let's you onto a train which goes anywhere and everywhere for a paltry sum? If so, this myth is clearly just that. The web of trains, shuttles, cabs and your own bi-pedal movement makes getting around a breeze, with just a little forethought.

2. New Yorkers are assholes... Couldn't be farther from the truth. From the guy who sold me falafel in his late-night cart, to the jolly 16-year old with her belly hanging out of her undersized pink t-shirt, jamming on her iPod as she skips down Park Ave... everybody is busy, busy, busy, but certainly not an asshole. "Excuse me" would get pretty old if you bumped elbows with 21 million people daily, too.

3. New York is expensive. Two blocks from the apartment where I spent several nights in NY you could get a slice of pizza for 99 cents. I can't even find the hot key for the "cents" sign on my computer, that's how cheap the za was... And OK, maybe this pizza wasn't the health quality standard for the 21st century, but in an economy of scale, that's some cheap food people. Stay out of SoHo shops and trendy restaurants (which you should be doing anyway, you blue-blooded American penny pincher of our newly inherited economy! Let's go get a dog at Coney Island anyway, which we did... more on that later.

Point is, go to New York! It's only the commercial and cultural center of the conceivable universe for crying in the milk...

Visit the rest of the dense area, too. So much to see.

That's what I did by traveling to Boston first with my fuzzy-headed, musical companion, Portwood. After staying up all night post- side project show, sliding down the mountain to DIA, we were off to Boston town last Monday.

You have to understand how hilarious our friends' the Healey's are. Proud parents of two gorgeous children who have an insatiable appetite for play with their "uncles" (us), we party and pontificate with our friends and mentors about everything in life. I lived on their couch for a number of months last fall, and let's put it this way: my tweezed uni-brow hairs on your bathroom counter is the fast track to getting to know me, intimately. We are the best of friends and they are they perfect companions and catalyst for attending an amazing live show.

Phish did not disappoint in Boston. Rejecting their label by popular media, the band plowed through song after song of strong structure and the jams sounded like true, conversational improvisation, not noodle-like time wasting. Trey ripped and Gordo/Fish provided the backbone of a brontosaurus. Somehow we made it back to our Red Roof Inn and even after closing my eyes, I could hear the party continue in the hall, pool, foot of my bed and of course, behind my own eye lids.

Our time in Boston was all too short. Beyond enjoying a much needed day at the beach and a pleasantly shocking, shrinkage-inducing romp in the Atlantic Ocean the next day, it was time to head down to NYC the next day on the bus.

Greyhound is a great option if you don't mind seeing the country like most of us do, on the open road with all the other gas-guzzlers. My apologies and regards to Carrie-Anne, sitting behind me, who in my excited nervousness I had asked to stay the whole time in New York with us, pestering her by the minute. I liked her smile and radiance (I have this issue with brunettes...) but was so excited for the city I could have asked the whole bus to party with the crew all week....

Party we did. After taking a few nights off, this is my vacation after all, we hit the town. First night out, I stumbled into a jam session where a guitar was promptly rented for me and the jam was on. It's always interesting improvising with musicians from around the country and this was no different. Rock and roll is alive indeed in New York and it came through the vibe that night. Soulful city rock with street noise and steely blues....

Another night I found myself in a bumper-car like charade through west Greenwich Village, THE village, with my always adventurous friend, Laura. We met up with her hilariously sarcastic brother and his fiance, had expresso's with cognac and dove down into THE dive, a dark bar straight from the time of dark colonial taverns, with a beer list to match.

In a randomly amazing sign that this was my personal East Coast music tour where I finally got to just listen, rather than produce and play, a very smart (Masters in Math something incredible....) Emily hooked us up with Furthur tickets on Coney Island. After rollicking hard, I mean hard, in the oldest, most famous roller coaster in the world, The Cyclone, we watched the surviving members of the Grateful Dead do what they've been doing best for thirty years under a warm Coney Island sky. Fireworks followed, bookending my trip perfectly.

I had enough hot dogs, the classic at Coney, to burst on the long train home.

Sitting in LaGuardia, I'm sad to leave this place. The energy and human creativity and drive is tangible everywhere. I plan on returning in the fall to produce some tracks with up-and-coming Brooklyn producers and play some showcase shows for those in the know. Until then, back to Colorado for a show tonight and the continued push to deliver "Actual Natural" to the masses.

Keep on pushing on , people, pushin' on.

Home

2010-06-08T15:30:00.002-06:00

I just moved into my apartment. During the winter I lived with a family (my best friends and mentors) and since then commuted around the state, toured around the nation in an RV, and lived in New Orleans where little sleeping goes down anyhow.

But this place.... My own loft apartment in one of my favorite towns, down-valley from Vail. This spot let's me stay relatively stationary while playing weekly gigs in the valley, where our fans have dictated that we play early and often this summer season. But more importantly (I really never minded the mountainous commute, although my body might tell otherwise) I have my own space to create. To be loud, quiet, exacting in my practicing, sloppy in my writing, whatever I choose at any time or never at all. I can see the Eagle River out my window and already have a modest studio set-up in the corner of my room for new demos.

I've entered into a nice, steady period of songwriting recently. Like anything, songwriting takes practice and only a few gems can be mined from years of consistency. Except consistency is creativities' sworn enemy. You would think (and if you read this blog, you're right most of the time) that special occasions, situations or circumstances spark the creative process. Well how then can you expect to wake up and feel so special every day? Tasting the same coffee, toothpaste, reading the same paper, engaging in the same awkward morning ritual with your co-workers every morning makes one feel pretty regular. Sure I'm happy to be alive and recognize the immense beauty around me (especially in this here valley), but waking up at high altitude after long nights filled with overly-appreciative, whiskey-bearing fans makes me less inclined to write that hit tune, filled with the exuberance of life itself...

The key is to realize you're not special. That's right. Mom was wrong. She might have said you were the cutest boy at school but then you graduated and this is the real world, son. So when songwriting, don't stretch for the special, unless the feeling really hits you that you've stumbled upon divine lyrical wisdom, something everyone MUST hear. Instead, shoot for the common denominator, there are only a few human stories to be told: love, death, money... what am I forgetting here?? But those concepts are all so grandiose. Everybody wakes up groggy, goes to work stressed, comes home and hopefully has enough energy to maybe ponder those other grandiose concepts. So write for those people.

Either write about how you understand what their life is like, empathy some call it. Or write about love and death and life in a way that in that spare second between chewing his meatloaf and the start of the season finale of Lost, someone might understand what in god's name you're babbling on about, and see the world like you do, through your eyes.