December thoughts...

As the year sweeps on to its end, I am happy to be alive. The photo is one I shot out my living room window a few minutes ago – clear as a bell and chilly – one of my very favorite kind of days anywhere. Of course, I live in California, where, henceforth, state legislation will be decided by senior power-lifting and square-jaw mugging-for-the-camera competitions (and some people wonder why we elected Arnold gov... sheesh) – but I digress.

This is the time of year when I, and possibly you, contemplate the past year and assess our experience... some friends are no longer with us, lots of laughter, a scar or two – I can recall so many great images from fun times all over the country. I was a student, a teacher, played a lot of music both formally and informally and spent some exceptionally fine time with family and friends...
I hope your year has been as much fun as mine.
If not ... there's always next year!

What's Next?!

Thanksgiving is coming right up so I guess it will be Christmas which will seem like a couple days later - and ta-da ... 2007!

Before I forget – Thanks to all of you who have come out to our shows around the US and in Ireland, who have bought our CDs in stores, from Sage Arts, Amazon.com and on iTunes (search for Marley's Ghost from within the iTunes Store). We very much appreciate your support, as we hope to continue to sing, play and write until we fall over.

...So what IS next?
Well, we are holding meetings in a couple weeks with Producer/Wizard Van Dyke Parks to select material for our 9th CD (!) which we hope to start recording in January.
Moving schedules around is complicated but we will get it done and I, for one, Can't Wait!
When I know a bit more ... or just get chatty(!), I'll post again.

Florida ...

Florida gets a bad rap these days.
That may be because more folks don't know Mitch Lind and his Riverhawk Festival down in Brooksville, FL
What a great bunch of music, wonderful folks and an all-around good time.
The weather was easy and we heard a bunch of very different styles of excellent music as we played through the last couple days of our 2006 touring. One of the highlights for me was Claire Lynch with a killer band.
Hanging with Mitch is a treat I would recommend to everyone, any chance you get. Putting on a fest is pretty demanding and Mitch pulls it off with grace and style. It is good to know there are folks like him out there presenting every kind of music ... just because.
... good reason IMHO.

...whew... October

October is my favorite time of year. The most beautiful month IMHO and the hint of winter makes me glad to be alive - I dunno why ... it just does. We have had a fun run of Summer / Fall touring and it has been a blast out there.
Before we head into the Christmas holiday season we have one more adventure in Florida in a couple weeks at the Riverhawk Festival and that makes me think about Strawberry Music Festival, playing with some great bands in Kentucky, wonderful folks like Mike Shirkey in Arkansas, The Great State of Tennessee, Ben Harper's folks in Claremont, CA, beautiful San Diego and the lollapallooza of acoustic fun in Winfield, Kansas.

This traveling around playing music thing can be loads of fun if you do it right -- and it is good for your chops.
Lucky, that - as we are meeting this week with the Legendary Van Dyke Parks to craft a followup CD to SPOOKED, which, thanks to you, has done very well.
I don't yet know the scope of the project but I do know we are also discussing a PBS documentary as well. It is all in the planning stages and theese babies take a while to birth, but we are involved with fine folks and everyone is pretty excited about the ideas -- now to make schedules...

more later!
Mike

eTown & Boulder CO

Just back from Boulder and a taping in eTown, the town where everything is 'green', the people are friendly and the world tries harder and gets better every day. ETown is presided over by the incomparable Nick Forster, our pal and superb host, spokesperson and amazingly accomplished player of anything with strings.

The guy never ceases to amaze me.

Boulder was 96 degrees -- pretty durned hot for 6,000 ft elevation. We stayed in the very comfortable Boulderado Hotel, honored guests of eTown and glad of it! That is one pretty town and playing the live show taping at the Boulder Theater was a joy as usual.

We shared the bill with legend Ian Tyson , who has turned his talents to Western music these last few years and it was great to hear him do his thing. His bass player Gordon Maxwell is quite a singer, writer and pianist and very good guy and his guitar player was Gordy Matthews, who amazed me back in the k.d. lang band, particularly on the 'Absolute Torch & Twang' tour - where the band played just plain scary. Gordy said 'Yeah, we rehearsed".
...Canadians, I tell you.

We played songs from SPOOKED for a very appreciative audience (thank you very much Colorado and Jen Lesea!) and came back for a finale - Keep On the Sunny Side - with Ian's trio, as well as Nick & Helen.
Sunny side indeed.
Big fun in Colorado.
The show will air in 4 or 5 weeks - stay tuned.
We are back home for a couple weeks -- whew.
I'm loving my life and doing my laundry.
later, dudes and dudettes...

Cowboy Jack

Before our gig in Nashville the other day our picking pal and former Opry regular Walter Forbes took us over to a nice old neighborhood and into a re-purposed big 'ol house that turned out to be Cowboy Jack Clement's Bunkhouse Resort and Recording Spa. Our Mission? To hang and say howdy to his longtime friend, cohort and sometime business partner, Cowboy Jack Clement. Who the heck is Cowboy Jack?
Check out: http://www.cowboyjackclement.com/
Jack was the first recording engineer at Sun Records (Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, a kid named Presley and many, many more) and is still working at his own justly famous aforementioned studio, cutting sessions with the legends and would-be legends of country music.

A session was in progress upstairs so we wandered on up, said hello all around and took seats, shooting the breeze companionably, waiting for a break in the action. The singer coming through the control room monitors sounded familiar and when one of the players waiting to cut a part said "Charlie's singing really well" - I realized it was Charlie Pride.
Charlie was working an old Hank gospel number called "Thank God" with a rock-solid band and as the groove bore them triumphantly verse to chorus a sudden flood of happiness ran through us right there on the couch.
When music is going well - there is very little better on my earth...

They finished the take and another and the door opened, emitting legends Joe Allen and Kenny Malone. We stuck our heads in the door and there sat our friend 'Hoot' Hester, putting mandolin away and getting his fiddle ready for the track. - "Everybody out!" cried engineer Johnny and we went back into the control room with a grinning Charlie to listen to Hoot fiddle.
"I got off the melody" Charlie said, faintly amazed and began singing what he had wanted to track all along.

We said hello to our friends, traded new contact information, promised to be in touch, laughed at a couple terrible jokes - It was all just folks, except some of the folks filled out their union cards for the session, noting songs and times and hurried off to the Opry, we drove back to our rooms to prepare for our gig.

There are things about this business that I do love...

Big fun in the Southland

"...that you-all and shut-my-mouthland" - according to the immortal Tom Lehrer.
What a gas.
Great to see our pal Ed Snodderly at the Down Home in Johnson City, nestled comfortably in East Tennessee.
Ed's place is the sort of venue we all want in our home town. Great music, great variety, good vibes, nice people, plenty of pickers in the audience and a steady stream of talent.
...not to mention noble beers on tap.
I love that place - can you tell?

Ed is in a play over in Abington TN about the Stanley Brothers. Our flight got in too late to go catch the matinée which was the only real dissapointment of this trip.
Dang it.

Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee

...sounds like a Woody Guthrie song...
But that is where we are headed Thursday, April 20.
We play Oklahoma City on Friday, Austin Texas (Old Settler's Fest) Saturday & Sunday, travel Monday, Knoxville (live on the Blue Plate Special), Nashville (Douglas Corner), and Johnson City, Tennessee (Little Chicago Fest) the next three days and come home the 28th.
I can't wait.
The band is sounding great and we can't wait to take the stage these days – fun to be in a band when that energy is going around.
The Internet tells me it feels like Summer in the South – I guess we'll see.
I hope we see you, too.
... all y'all that is.

The Road

whew.
Fun, though.
The recent Southern California trip...
At McCabe's Van Dyke Parks played accordion with us the first set (then rushed off to finish up a movie score to be turned in early Monday) and Dillon O'Brian played piano in the second set. The joint was packed and I do love playing that room...

This trip came near the end (I hope) of the rainiest season California has had in many years – which made it the greenest, most visually beautiful California I have ever seen. The place looked like Ireland. The desert is all purples and yellows, the usually golden hills are every shade of green, every puny little waterfall and dry creekbed thinks it belongs in Yosemite and are they ever booming.
Come have a look.
Just to be on the safe side – Bring rain gear.

The Road To Happiness

Why buy SPOOKED?

... An appeal to reason...

Friday March 31 at McCabe's

McCabes in Santa Monica... We have played there several times over the years. This time, as last time, we will be joined by our friends Van Dyke Parks on piano and accordion and "Hutch" Hutchinson on bass for some tunes. These guys think it is fun to play with us so ... what are you gonna do when great guys who are outstanding players want to share a bit of fun?
It turns out that is a rhetorical question.
There is a vibe to that place like many great venues -- the sound is first-rate and they know how to put on a show, but the best part is the expectation the crowd bring of seeing a great show. I LOVE to be in the audience or on the stage when that energy is filling the room.
Good ju-ju.
I went to The Fillmore to hear Los Lobos re-create the 'KIKO' CD a few months ago and from the first note the crowd was high as a kite on the energy.
good show.
I hope we'll see you in Santa Monica–it will sell out so hurry and get tix...

The Birth Of A CD

The Birth of a CD ... OR How we drug some innocent characters into this mess

clustrmap

Here's a tool that supposedly shows the geographical area vistors are from...
How? beats me.


Perhaps it is cool...
Let's find out.

Jerry ... the new Ghost

Adding Jerry Fletcher to the band was the best idea we have had in quite some time.
Jon and I had played with Jerry since the Seventies, Dan grew up with him, playing with him in 'Liberty' and Jerry played drums on ...hmmm... three of our previous CDs over the years?
He is an amazing talent. A great drummer / percussionist and that is just the demo. He has a degree in piano and vocal arranging and made his bones on a jillion or so club gigs playing everything imaginable. I used to love going to see him and now I look over my shoulder to watch him play drums and piano at the same time while singing complicated vocal parts.
Wow.
The guy has two brains.
Jerry is also perhaps the most positive person I know, a wonderful attribute for a fellow bandmember.
Come up and say "Hi" to him next time -- he is fun to know.

25 Years

Let me introduce myself. I'm a long time friend of the band - and a guy who is just catching the blogging bug (trust me, no one is more surprised than I). I'm not sure if it feels too nerdy or just too young - regardless, I'm liking it.

I've been enjoying the band for many years, not 25, but something close. What the Ghost means to me, my family and friends can't be measured in years, however. We were introduced to Strawberry by Dan and the boys - maybe 15 years ago? -and have been going almost non-stop ever since. When we first started going, I was perhaps married, but childless for sure. I tell you that, to tell you this. Yesterday my son (now 11) summed up our feelings for what the band has brought us. He walked into the family room, sat quietly for a minute then uncharacteristically said " Dad, you know what the best morning in the world is?" "no" I said. He said " The best morning ever is Sunday morning at Strawberry, I'm in camp, Marleys Ghost is singing gospel and Jeff (Dans brother-in-law) is cooking everything left in the ice chests saying "eat up, everythings gotta go", the sun is shining and everybody is just so happy."

I sat there and thought about it and said - "well the reason that feels so good is because there isn't any place I know that feels closer to god and heaven on Earth than the Ghost singing gospel at the lake at Strawberry - there's nothing in that place but buckets of love". And it all wraps back to the band, arguably, the best, most honorable and creative group of guys I know. They somehow anchor the whole thing, even in years when they aren't there, it all somehow comes back to them - oh yea and their music is pretty good too. (ha)

Karass ... or Granfalloon?

Do any of these resonate with you?
Sweet's Mill
Puget Sound Guitar Workshop
Strawberry Music Festival
Walnut Valley Festival, Winfield KS
Fiddle Tunes - Ft. Worden
St. Charles Saloon
Tucker's Grove
San Diego Folk Festival
Grass Valley

...if so, perhaps that's where we shared some music together. If not -- check them out, and be sure to take your axe!

Happy Anniversary

Today, or at least this week, marks the twentieth anniversary of Marley's Ghost. Sitting around Jon's kitchen table in 1986 Lake Sherwood,CA, putting together songs to go out and perform our St. Patrick's Day gigs, or playing the first Strawberry Spring Music Fest(1986 Memorial Day Weekend) as a trio – who knew we'd still be having this much fun?
Not me.

To all of you who have supported us, bought our eight CDs and six solo CDs, our T-shirts, DVDs, cassettes and posters, come to our live shows and laughed, cried, clapped, wore matching thematic outfits, hired us for festivals, shows, corporate events, parties, weddings or to play outside your villa, ran sound for us, put us up or just put up with us, shared a meal with us, or maybe hung out with us swapping songs and tunes until we fell over– THANKS!
It is still fun, which is why we're still doing it.
My advice? Go start a band.
Sure – it is insane, but it surely does make you feel good sometimes.

Creative Process...

GhostBlog_Start!

Well ... here goes.
Marley's Ghost has been around for quite a while but things really began to get interesting about a year ago, when we hired a new manager– a very savvy guy and realized that our friend Van Dyke Parks was the perfect guy to produce our new CD project "SPOOKED" - our eighth - and were able to interest Van Dyke in producing it.
Things heated up when we were able to get underground comics legend R. Crumb to do our CD artwork and we got really excited about the project -- even more so when Van Dyke, having looked over the song list we gave him, began to tweak the songs.
VDP is a freakin' genius and we started having serious fun when recording began at Entourage Studios in Studio City (where else?). Hutch Hutchinson, Bonnie Raitt's longtime bassist volunteered to play on some tracks, ending up on 'Love, Not Reason" on his fretless which was stored around the corner -- he works enough down there that he has basses stashed around various studios. Larry Taylor (remember Canned Heat?) also played standup bass on a fiddle tune as did our dear friend, bassist and accordionist David Jackson and we were off and running.