SNAPSHOT

Tough Town?

2011-12-15T18:22:00.000-08:00

It's not that people don't care aboutmusic in this town. You'd have a hard time finding any place in theworld more welcoming to budding musicians and songwriters. This ismusic-city. Everyone here is in love with music and musicians. Mostmusicians are regarded as something of an oddity in their places oforigin. They are seen either as no-accounts who can't pay the rent orthey are placed on a pedestal, lauded and applauded. In Nashville amusician is a dime a dozen. We are the 99 here. There may besomething different or special about you but, in Nashville, it's notgoing to be the fact that you make music. That is almost a givenhere.

I don't know if it's true of othersongwriters but when I discovered that I could write a song it was amajor turning point in my life. Here was something that I was kind ofgood at, which in itself wasn't all that amazing. The really amazingpart was that I really liked doing it. It was comfortable and madeimmediate sense to me. There was some sort of instinct that I had forwriting that wasn't something I had to study or learn. It was justthere. So I let it have it's way with me. I wrote and wrote andwrote. I wrote some more. I sang and sang and sang. I sang some more.I compared my work with what was on the radio and then went back towork. I was so comfortable in my songwriting skin that I began toallow that to define me. Music was my “thing” and I reallyenjoyed that fact.

Then I moved to Nashville and my“thing” was no longer “thing”-worthy. It was just somethingthat almost everyone you meet does and quite often does just as wellif not better than you. It's not so much that Nashville strips yourgrand ideas and dreams...it's that it strips your very identity fromyou. It takes that thing you've grasped onto as your beacon of hopeand turns it into something dreadfullycommon....prosaic............dull..............just stop with thatalready.

So I wrote this song about Nashvilleand called it, “The Killing Kind”.

The Killing Kind (feat Anna Johnson) by timpepper

But I got to thinking about it andperhaps I was being a little unkind towards this town that embracesartists so heartily. Maybe Nashville is more like a loving but toughmentor who says, “ok...what else have you got? Who are you really?Can you do that but do it better?”. It kicks the rock star out ofyou and forces you to become a human again. It reminds you that therules still apply to you despite your precious talent (that youdidn't do anything to get anyway).

I submitted this song for critiquethrough an online service. The reviewer was very thorough and I feltlike he did a good job. It was money well spent. I've copied anexcerpt of one of his points below:

“Lyrically there is room for you to take your content a stepfurther. You could try adding a twist to really get the most out ofthose last 8 lines. For instance, you could show the other side, fromthe perspective of someone who didn't make it, or of someone who did,letting the listener in on what it took to make it. Alternatively,you could compare it to another force that people must grapple with,like time, or chance, showing how one force is colder, or moreunpredictable, or more forgiving. Redemption is the counterpoint tocondemnation, so touching on that element is a great way to offer aglimpse of the whole picture.”

I completely agree with his assessment and will bear it mind as Iwrite future songs. But for this particular song I wanted to writefrom the perspective of someone stuck in a situation. If I'd followedthat advice I might have made the song more “universal” but Ithink I also might have lost something in so doing. When you're in asituation and you feel stuck you're not thinking about the wholepicture or the counterpoint. You're just feeling shitty and that'sall you can see. I wanted this song to capture that moment of despairand disgust.

I think the redemption or counterpoint to this song is that throughwriting and playing it I've had to express publicly that sometimesthis town feels incredibly difficult but I've also had to face thefact that it's taught me an awful lot and most of the time it's apretty awesome place to be. Nashville won't flatter you...It willmake you a better artist and maybe a better person.

On that note, here's a few things I'velearned from living and playing music in this town:

I still have a lot to learn.
Talent alone is not enough. There's a hell of a lot of talent in this world. Embrace your talent. Love your talent. Enjoy your talent to the fullest possible extent. But above all DEVELOP it and DO something with it.
Always be listening and and always be learning because you will never be as awesome as you think you are. Maybe you are that awesome but don't let it go to your head. Nobody's gonna want to drink a beer with you if you're that guy.
I'd rather hang out with a good dude than a talented asshole. So be a good dude to everyone you meet.
Focus on how you can help other people instead of wondering if your semi-famous 'contact' can help you get a show.
Be genuine. Make friends rather than contacts.
Don't play music for money. Play music because you love to play music or don't play music at all.
Don't write songs for money. Write songs because you love to write songs or don't write songs at all.
Be open to criticism and be open to change but don't be a pushover. You are an artist and it's possible people like your art BECAUSE it's different and wrong and imperfect and non-commercial.
Strive to be true to yourself but also strive to be the best possible version of yourself.
Strive for excellence rather than perfection.
You may never make a dime from your music. It would be a shame to let that fact stop you from making it.
You're in good company here in Nashville. Consider it a privilege to play and be played to here.

______________________________
The recording above features Anna Johnson singing background vocals and was mixed by Chris Wright.
_______________________________

Jesus, Can You Help Me?

2011-12-05T08:13:00.001-08:00

Lord knows, I need something. We alldo. Sex, drugs, rock and roll, cigarettes, alcohol, movies, music,working too hard, coffee, shopping, eating, FaceBook. It's all just abunch of crap that we do to fill the gigantic emptiness that we walkaround with.

My daughter spends weekends at myhouse. She likes to make messes: If it's in a box she wants to takeit out. If it's on a shelf she wants to take it off the shelf. Ifit's folded, she unfolds it. If it's in a drawer she likes to scatterit on the floor. Toys are not so much played with as they are spreadthoroughly around the house. She likes to smash squishy things andcolor in things that shouldn't be colored in. I find blueberries andGoldfish in strangest places. I'll be honest...it's pretty freakingannoying. I spend the weekend picking up, cleaning up, changingdiapers, changing clothes and cutting up food into small pieces.There's always some damn thing that needs to be done.

When the weekend is over I drop her offwith her mom and come home to an empty house. For a few minutes Ienjoy the quiet, clean house but soon I'm overtaken with that empty,lonely feeling that inevitably comes. Everything is where I left itand there are no little hands moving things around or ripping thingsup or getting themselves into harm's way. I'm surrounded byinanimate, pointless objects that don't need tending and don't gethurt and don't start crying or demanding that I hold them when theyget hungry. It's just me and a couple of rooms full of nothing. So Iget on FaceBook and annoy my friends and also my “friends”.

That's when I realize the best part ofmy week was wiping my toddler's ass and telling her what a goodpooper she is. Well maybe not really that particular part but youknow what I mean. Her messes and her moaning and her attraction toall the potentially dangerous objects in the house (scissors, hotstoves, electrical outlets and trash cans come to mind) are justabout big enough to fill my sparsely furnished home (hey, I'm stillkind of a bachelor so back off). Her little laughs and giggles andmumblings are just about loud enough to start to erase the hauntingquiet in me.

If not for her I'd probably be chasingall sorts of no good; searching madly for something to fill the gap.We humans are smart enough to know we are not quite right but notalways able to figure out what it is that we are missing. My daughterhelps a lot but I reckon I'm still a little short in some departmentor other. I, like you, need something. I wonder what it is?

Here's a downloadable version of "Jesus Can You Help Me". Click on the little grey arrow on the right hand side to download. It's free y'all.

Jesus Can You Help Me by timpepper

MORE TIMPEPPER MUSIC HERE: www.onesheet.com/timpepper

A DREAM IS A HEARTBEAT

2011-09-28T19:57:00.000-07:00

Calling All Artists: Your creations are needed.

I am a dreamer. What's more, I believe that dreams quicken a person; They make us FEEL alive. Every important thing that ever got done started with a dream. The pursuit of a dream will break you down and then build you into something better than you were before. Dreams will inspire you to achieve great things. When you have a dream you start to live for that dream and it becomes the thing that gets you out of bed and motivates you to try a little harder and move a little farther down the road. It becomes as necessary for your continued existence as your most vital organs. Your dream becomes your heart beating in your chest.

So here's the deal. I have a show coming up on November 18^th at Cafe Coco in Nashville, TN. I want to bring together all sorts of artists at this show and I want to show the world your dreams. So I need you to show me your dreams. Paint them. Draw them. Write them. Speak them. Sing them. Whatever form of art you do is acceptable. The concept here is fairly open to interpretation. If you want to convey your personal dream that's awesome. If you want to convey the idea of “a dream is a heartbeat” that's awesome too. The idea here is to celebrate the passions that drive people to do great things.

If you want to display your work at the show do the following:

Send an e-mail to peppertim4@gmail.com. The message should be titled “A Dream Is a Heartbeat” and should include your name and what you are planning to display. The 5$ cover charge will be waived for submitting artists but only if you e-mail me.
On Friday, 18^th November please arrive at Cafe Coco at 6:30 pm so you have time to set up your exhibit.
Promote the showing...bring some peeps. (Cafe Coco is an all ages venue so your little sisters and brothers are welcome.)
Do us all a favor and buy something to eat while you're there. Support the venues that support the arts.

Help me inspire the world to live their dreams.

2011-09-20T08:43:00.001-07:00

I just uploaded some new songs. They are free for everyone at www.soundcloud.com/timpepper
To download just click on the downward facing arrow at the top of each song

2011-09-05T06:00:00.001-07:00

I'll be playing a round tonight at Hotel Indigo on West End with Nick Zini and Shannon LaBrie at 9pm. Mayhaps I'll see you there.

2011-08-22T16:03:00.001-07:00

the toms are booming in the monitors

Are You Coming Home?

2011-05-23T22:22:00.000-07:00

Are You Coming Home by timpepper

Are You Coming Home? There's a story here and it goes like this:

I've lived a life of great expectations. I don't know if it's because I'm part of generation X, or is it Y? Either way it's been said that we all expect too much. We feel entitled. I don't recall a time when I ever consciously felt entitled but perhaps there is some truth to it. I've always expected that I was capable of great things and what's more I've expected that great things would happen to, around, in the general vicinity and basically all over me. What sense of entitlement?

Seriously though...Somehow I, and perhaps my whole generation, have been raised up with this idea that greatness is not something to be strived for but rather something that we deserve and expect. I've lived enough life to realise that greatness is not a bad thing to desire but that to expect it just because I live and breath and walk around is maybe a bit naive.

The picture I was painting in the song, "Are You Coming Home" is that of a person sitting alone in the universe waiting for God to throw a big lump of greatness, or maybe purpose, or achievement, or some such thing into their laps. After striving for a dream for a few minutes I got pissed off that what I expected to happen didn't happen.

Maybe one of the best lessons I've learned in the past few years is that expecations are often not met. It might be one of the best things that ever happened to me that I learned that goals don't reach out and touch you...you have to reach out for them and probably keep reaching and growing and reaching some more. It's probably a great thing that I learned this lesson early. Once your expectations are shattered you can move on and start to get things done.

Of all the songs I've ever written, this one of the ones I am most proud of. It's had a couple of incarnations and versions and what not. The one above is a little more rocked up and "Nashvilled" than the original but the message is the same: If you're searching for purpose...keep searching. If you're striving for greatness...keep striving. Get mad and angry and then get over it and get on with it.

The first time I played this song in public I cried. Yeah....I cried. And I'm not ashamed to say it.

The Killing Kind

2011-05-15T09:38:00.000-07:00

I was on a Skype call with my parents yesterday. I had just sent them an mp3 of a new song and my mom asked me what it was about. I avoided answering the question because it’s not always easy to say what a song is about. I mean..I know what I’m trying to say but if it were that easy to just say it I wouldn’t probably write a song about it. I’d just say it. But then a lot of things I write songs about aren’t that tricky to say or explain. So what’s the deal?

There are times, I think when I write about a thing that is complex in the sense that it’s not just an idea that words can express but it’s got a lot of personal history and some sort of emotional baggage attached to it. It’s the sort of stuff I might share with one or two people but I might not want to tell everyone. So the idea and the personal history and the emotional baggage get distilled into this 3 minute song and hopefully there’s enough there to make the listener think something and feel something…and hopefully not turn it off half-way through.

A few weeks back I wrote one of those kinds of songs and I’m really proud of it. I’ve been playing it around town a bit and usually I get a few positive comments and I’ll notice a couple of people nod and smile as if to say… “yeah, that’s pretty much the way it is.” It’s a song about my journey here in Nashville and I guess there’s a little more to it than that. If you’ve been through everything I’ve been through or at least something really close to it you might know exactly what I’m saying. If not then you may get something completely different from it. I’d like to say that I write songs to be a little bit universal so that everyone can get something from it. The truth is that I just write songs. I don’t think much about who it’s for or why I write them when I write them. I just love the process of it all so I keep doing it. Mostly I write songs for myself I think and luckily a few people seem to like them.

So here’s “The Killing Kind”. I hope that there’s something in it for you. It's free to download and share....

The Killing Kind by timpepper

________________________________________________________

T-Shirts and The Hissy Hum of Happiness

2011-03-30T22:13:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I was sitting at the dining room table at Carissa's house, listening to the hum of the baby monitor, checking my stats on Reverbnation. I noticed for the several hundredth time that my profile was 95% complete. All I needed to do was add some merchandise and I'd be magically bumped to 100%. So I designed a couple of t-shirts and now I am 100% complete and I feel quite, exactly the same as I did before....

One day I'm going to be walking on a beach in some obscure place and some dude will walk by with a faded Tim Pepper t-shirt and I will smile inside and remember that the thing I was most concerned with on the evening when that t-shirt was designed was that my baby girl was still sleeping quietly. No noise other than a soft, hissy hummmmmmm was emanating from the monitor and that made me happy.

Of course I'm not sure why anyone would buy one of those t-shirts but it's theoretically possible and besides..a man can dream can't he?

Tall Tale Tuesdays

2011-01-26T17:38:00.000-08:00

In the previous post I wrote about Cafe Coco. The above video is one of my Cafe Coco, "open mic" performances and was captured using a Sony Webbie.

There's a lot of stories I want to tell about my time in Nashville. I've told a few of them already...like the one about when I gave my CDs to Kevin Costner. There's the time I served K.T. Tunstal and she asked me where the bathroom was and whether I'd recomend taking a cab or walking back to her hotel. My best interaction with a famous person happened recently...I got to hang out with Eddie Montgomery and play him and his guitar player a few of my songs. The amazing thing about these guys is that they are still so excited about music and songwriting. There wasn't a shred of "coolness" surrounding these Kentucky boys. They just play music for a living because they love it and they'd be doing it even if they weren't making a living at it. There was also the time I sat a couple of seats down from Miranda Lambert, whose gravelly, Southern voice makes me a little bit quivery, and I swear she gave me the "up and down" look. Now she was with her fiance, Blake Shelton, so maybe I just had a boog hanging or something. Or maybe I'm just that handsome... I prefer to think the latter and I'll appreciate it if you don't correct me.

There's a lot of celebrities in Nashville and I have to admit that I still get a little excited when I see them. I may not even be a fan of whatever a particular person does but it's kind of cool to see these people in the flesh. Most of the time though it's the non-celebrities that make Nashville an interesting place to live. People have moved here from everywhere and a lot of them are trying to be musicians. Some of them ought to go home and some of them should have come here years ago. I think it takes a certain kind of person to pack things up and move to an unknown place in pursuit of an intangible, hoped for dream of a possibility. There's an above average number of these kinds of people in Nashville because they've all left wherever they hail from and are now scattered throughout Nashville, Murfreesboro and Franklin. They work in coffee shops and bars and restaurants and book stores and most of them live with a bunch of room mates and except for the ones who work at Starbucks, they all stay up 'til 5am every night. The Starbucks crowd have to get to bed early because their days start at 4am. Nashville may not be New York City but with all the hopeful artists here it's certainly a city where there's something going on 24/7.

In Nashville, I've played music to people from all over the world. I've played for the average joe and I've played for celebrities. I've worked the night shift and had my share of those 5am days. I've worked the day shift and had my share of days that start at 6 am and end at 4am the following day. So I've been tired a lot in Nashville. I've gone to watch bands that I've been listening to since I was a kid and I've been blown away by artists I'd never heard of before and just happened to be in the right venue on the right night. So after living here for a little over two years I'm starting to realise what a rich time of life this has been for me.

The night that the above video was taken was a Tuesday and I met Joel Crouse and Nick Zini that night. We talked about music and preachers and girls and snow and after I heard them play I invited them to play a gig with me next month. The open mic nights at Cafe Coco aren't particularly prestigious but there's something about them that makes them kind of cool to me. It reminds me a little of some of the places I used to play back home. Even though I want to tell the stories about famous people I want to capture the Tuesday nights too. Because those are the nights I met the Joels and Nicks. Those are the nights I remembered why I came to this town in the first place. Those are the nights that make me feel alive inside.

______________

I borrowed the title of this post from a song written by Adam Burrows, a fellow I've had the pleasure of playing a couple of shows with. I think he's one of the most talented artists I've met in Nashville and hopefully we both will play high profile shows in time. But until then we have our Tall Tale Tuesdays. I'll be playing a show with Adam and another Nashville artist, Joe Dunn at Drifters in East Nashville on March 4th. Please do come and show your support if you happen to live in Nashville.

I'll also be playing at Casablanca Coffee on Saturday, February 12th with Joel Crouse, Nick Zini and Anna Johnson. Mark your calenders and please come support.

_______________

IF YOU LIKE THIS BLOG TELL SOMEONE ABOUT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

FREE SONGS HERE: WWW.REVERBNATION.COM/TIMPEPPER

FACEBOOK: WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/TIM.PEPPER

WWW.TIMPEPPERMUSIC.COM

IT'S NASHVILLE...AND I LIKE IT.

2011-01-19T17:21:00.000-08:00

The widget above is there so that you can download some free songs. So...download them and share them everyone you know.....

_______________

It's Tuesday night and I'm driving to Cafe Coco in Nashville, Tennessee. It's a little cold and rainy tonight and somebody's car has broken down in the center lane of the highway. In the slow moving traffic I have time to take in the scenery. In the distance I can see Nashville's skyline and lights. I've driven this route hundreds of times and I always get a little bit excited when I see it. There's something about living in a city where my heros live that gets me excited.

I'm on my way to play music. Every Tuesday night Cafe Coco hosts an open mic night. That means I can go play music for a live audience and I don't need a booking. I just have to show up early enough to put my name on the list. This isn't a high-profile gig. I won't be written up in any publications and I won't be playing to very many people tonight. I'll mostly be playing for other songwriters who've come out tonight for the same reason I have. We just want to play. I'd stay up on stage all night if I could but I only get two songs. I'll take it because I just want to play.

I came to Nashville a couple of years ago with my guitar in one hand and a sense of entitlement in the other. I thought I was on the cusp of being "discovered". I was going to play a few shows and get "noticed" by the "right people". I don't know who I thought those people were but I figured they would seek me out when they heard I was in town. You know...because I'm sooo talented.

Well none of that happened and in a strange way I'm happier that it didn't. I'd have been full of shit if any of that had happened because I was expecting it. I thought I deserved it. I would have been walking around thinking, "Yeah! See, I was right!" Instead I am humbled to be in a city where so many people are as good and better than me. I'm happy to be able to play shows and get out there and experience live music at it's best and worst in a city whose heartbeat is literally a kick drum. I've rediscovered the joy of getting on stage and making converts of the people sharing the room with me...even when it's only me and a couple of assholes that keep talking while I'm playing. I actually LIKE playing live again. I want to do it every day. I actually LIKE playing my guitar again. I am inspired again.

Make no mistake...there's only one thing I want to do with my life and it involves playing my guitar and writing songs every single day. Make no mistake...I believe in what I came here to do. Make no mistake....I'm going to be discovered, one person at a time. And I'm actually going to LIKE it. I've been at work all day and now, for at least a few minutes, the stage at Cafe Coco...and therefore the world obviously...is mine. And I LIKE it.

________________________

IF YOU LIKE THIS BLOG TELL SOMEONE ABOUT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WWW.TIMPEPPERMUSIC.COM

WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/TIM.PEPPER

WWW.REVERBNATION.COM/TIMPEPPER

TWITTER: @OHtimpepper

ISAAC RUSSELL - HE'S REAL Y'ALL

2011-01-16T06:35:00.000-08:00

The above video is a performance by Isaac Russell. I have written about him below and was originally going to provide a link to his site. But then I found this video and thought that I had to share it with you. WAAAY down at the bottom of this post is one of my own songs and I hope you will take to the time to listen to both Isaac and myself. It's kind of like a little concert...so go make some popcorn and get comfy...who needs t.v.?

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of watching Isaac Russell play a set at 12th and Porter in Nashville. He was playing solo and opening for a few other bands. Isaac is a slightly awkward 18 year old with a big, bluesy, man’s voice. He’s got all these inward-facing features when he plays..his body hunched over the guitar, his head bowed in reverence and his feet slightly pigeon-toed, pointing toward one another. All of that suggests a contemplative, soulful, introverted singer-songwriter that you could hear just about anywhere in the world. But you couldn’t because when he starts to sing he booms out with this incredibly lovely, old voice. This is someone singing with authority. This guy has something to say and he’s very good at saying it. Pardon the lingo but this is a kid who’s been through some shit and he knows how to transport you through it with him while he remembers the stench of it. Some other acts played that night with full bands but Isaac Russell is what I remember from the show. For me, and I don’t know if it’s simply because I am drawn to this kind of music or if he really was that good, he stole the show.

He sat on a chair and played songs for a room full of people and it was awesome. These were real songs. Not the kind of song that so many people in Nashville are trying to write. I don’t believe Isaac has ever given a thought to writing a ‘hook’ or really considered the structure of a song much. He learned how to write songs by listening to the music he loves, which evidently includes Ray Charles because he awesomely covered one of his songs. Isaac Russell reminds me of what I love about music and that is this: If you have a great voice and a great song, all you really need to sell it is an audience.

Among the crowd of people that consider themselves musicians there seems to be an understood theory that all music falls into two categories. The first category is Pop Music which includes some very awesome Real Music (which is the second category) and also some very, very Crap Music which is a sub-category of the first category. Most of the Crap Music involves slightly to quite talented people who are above average looking or at least unique looking in a not bad way. The thing about Crap Music is that it’s not really that crap to listen to. A lot of Crap Music is well written and pretty enjoyable which is why so many people buy it. However it’s still Crap Music because it’s a formulaic copy of something that someone interesting created and the only thing awesome about it is the amount of money that has been spent on getting it onto the radio all over the world.

Now I know that different people like different kinds of music for different reasons. I also know that certain kinds of music fits certain kinds of events and I’ll admit that if you want to get up and dance Isaac Russell isn’t going to be your first choice…or really any of your choices. If you want to dance you have no problem because there is all kinds of Crap Music out there that will do just fine. But Isaac makes Real Music and damn good Real Music at that. It’s as unique as Isaac himself and he has the chops and vox to perform it convincingly. I caught myself wrapped up in the story of his songs and quite frankly feeling a bit sorry for the life this guy has had. I caught myself feeling real emotions because of what this kid was doing on stage. And that’s what I love about music and if it doesn’t do that for me then I think it’s Crap.

Podcast Powered By Podbean

The song posted in the player above is, "Cry Cry Cry". I've spent a lot of hours in my home studio recording this. It doesn't sound like a radio song because it's not supposed to. It is as unique as the person who created it. I like it and I hope you will too. But if you don't I'm not going to change it...and that's what I love about my music...I can play it the way I like it.

Find me at: www.facebook.com/tim.pepper and on Twitter: @OHtimpepper

Download FREE songs at: www.reverbnation.com/timpepper

IF YOU LIKE THIS BLOG TELL SOMEONE ABOUT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What You Do Becomes You

2011-01-11T15:40:00.000-08:00

Download those free songs here!!

What you do becomes you….

I can’t get this idea out of my head. I’ve been attaching it to email messages and telling people about it for the past couple of weeks. You can’t call yourself a meat cleaver if you don’t in fact cleave meat. However, no matter what you call yourself, if you cleave meat on a daily basis, you will inevitably be a meat cleaver and you will inevitably be recognized as a meat cleaver. What you do becomes you.

There’s a lyric in a song by The Avett Brothers, “decide what to be and go be it.” That sentence encapsulates what is required of anyone who wants to be anything. You have to make a decision and you have to go do it. It can seem fairly overwhelming along the road to becoming something but that statement really does hold true. Just go and be the thing you want to be and don’t let anything stop you. Especially don’t let yourself stop you.

I have spent a lot of time trying to do what I want to do in life. I’ve talked about it and thought about it and prayed about it and analyzed it. I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with that but sometimes I let all that get in the way of actually going out and doing it. In the words of the great and wise Jedi Master, Yoda, “There is no try. Only do or do not.”

This year I stopped talking about quitting smoking and I quit smoking. I want to carry that over into other parts of my life. Less talk and more do. Just go and be whatever the hell it is you’re trying to be. Think about it and talk about and analyze it as you must but at the end of the day go out and do it. Do it every day consistently and eventually you cannot help but be the thing you already are.

Beulah Land

2010-11-16T11:42:00.000-08:00

By the time I reach Beulah Land perhaps I'll really have a mop of white hair and a scraggly white beard. I've got the scraggly part already.

PUSH PLAY

Powered by Podbean.com

I’m talking to a friend on the phone. She’s driving around a mall parking lot complaining about traffic and the fact that all her friends are out of town and always busy. She called because she can’t stand texting. She wants more face-time with people. I say it’s just the time and culture we live in… Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, texts and e-mail…these things have become skills almost as essential to modern life as reading and writing. I’m having this conversation from a table inside a Chili’s in North Carolina. I’m eating chicken again wishing I could eat some home cooked vegetables. There’s an idea in my head that goes something like this, “There’s a lot about modern life that I like to think I don’t like…but really I pretty much like things the way they are.”

I love e-mail. E-mail is easy. I get to be the king of the conversation and there’s no-one to interrupt my train of thought. I interrupt myself quite a little bit though. I’m pretty much addicted to Facebook too. I get a little excited when I have comments on my wall or messages in my inbox. I like being able to share everything that’s happening in “my world” with the world with immediate effect. I don’t own a t.v. and I take pride in the fact that I don’t really miss it. But the reason I don’t miss it is probably because I’m connected to my computer 24 hours a day. I’m ok with that and that’s the scary thing.

Modern life consists of working hard to pay for things that make our lives easier. Living in America it’s especially obvious that people trap themselves in this cycle of working to pay for things that end up forcing them to work more.

I like modern life. I like the conveniences we have. I like watching movies and playing on my computer. I like being able to record songs from my living room. I like the things that I can buy with the money I’ve earned. But I believe with all my heart that modern life is not the way we were intended to live.

Beulah Land is a better place than here. It’s the hereafter. It’s heaven. You may not believe in heaven and if not then you can think of it as a better place in the here and now. This song is one that always resonated with me so I decided to record my own version of it.

The original author of “Beulah Land” is Squire Parsons. He was recently diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia.

___________________________

TIM PEPPER MUSIC IS HERE

DOWNLOAD FREE SONGS HERE

No Matter What.....

2010-08-21T09:08:00.000-07:00

You can’t just follow your dreams. I used to think that was enough. It seems noble when you say it to people… “Hey man. You’ve got to follow your heart no matter what.” The thing is most people forget about the “no matter what” and concentrate on the “follow your heart” bit. When you say “follow your heart” people relate to that immediately because everyone has a heart and there’s something in it that they want to do or be. It’s easy to grasp that part. But when you get down to the “no matter what” part things get a bit tricky. What is “no matter what”? What if “no matter what” sucks ass? What if “no matter what” becomes more than you can bear and you just can’t follow any more?

Following is passive. Being passive never got much done. Passive is nice to be with and cool in certain situations but mostly it just stays too long and doesn’t get the hints that it’s time to go home.

You’ve got to fight for your dreams. You’ve got to fight just to keep them alive let alone actually realize them. When you’re doing “no matter what” you’re fighting for your dream. So keep fighting. But if you find that you can’t be ok with that then maybe you should be doing something else.

When you build something up and focus your mind on only that one thing for an extended time frame, you start to forget everything else. When you put so much emphasis on one thing, that one thing begins to define you. That one thing becomes so big that it is bound to disappoint you. All the little things you lost focus on are now out of your life or forgotten or hazy and they cannot comfort you when that one thing lets you down. I’m not saying that having a very important “one thing” is bad. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t try hard to reach your dreams. But enjoy life along the way. Don’t stop doing all of the things you enjoy. We humans are fragile…we get broken and hurt. We need inspiration. In addition to great films and poetry and songs it is all of life’s little pleasures that inspire us. It’s the coffee in the morning and the painting and small tasks and social gatherings where that one thing isn’t mentioned. It’s the food and drink and fishing and yard work that inspire us to be better than ever at that one thing.

I built up a dream. I put it on a pedestal. I forgot about a lot of other smaller things that I enjoy in life. I placed my life’s value and enjoyment in the hands of an idea that was somewhat idealistic. After a few months I started to feel like a failure because my idealistic picture of myself living out my dream had not become a reality. So I put my head down and worked harder and after a few months felt even more like a failure because of the same reasons. I never thought to reconsider the details and parameters of my dream. I never thought to acknowledge the small victories along the way. I never thought to mark the milestones. I just kept looking for this utopia-life in which everything I thought I wanted was happening around me.

There is more to life than that one thing. There always has been and there always will be. Try hard. Do your best. Get better. When you fall down get back up. Don’t let disappointment stop you from trying some more. Don’t let failure make you fall to pieces. But don’t let ‘success’ define you either. That one thing is important and you should keep it important. But it isn’t who you are. It is not the entirety of you. Your personhood, your happiness, your fulfillment, your love, your hope, and the sum of your life does not rise and fall on the outcome of that one thing. You are more than that one thing. You are the masterful artist and that one thing is your product. You hold the reigns and that one thing cannot guide you…so don’t let it.

There’s a scene in the movie “Greenberg” where the main character is talking to his best friend. The two have lived in different cities for ten years and they are having some difficulty reuniting because of things that happened fifteen years ago. The two had been in a band during those years and Greenberg ruined their only chance at a record deal by turning down their only offer. His best friend tells him that he’s finally embracing the life he never expected.

I understand this statement perfectly. You have a dream that doesn’t pan out. You always feel ‘stuck’ no matter what else you do because you can’t let go of this idea that you could have been different or that your life could have been better. Sometimes you meet people who once had the very dream that you have and they are bitter, unhappy people. Sometimes you meet people who moved on from their dream and did what Greenberg’s friend did. The latter is usually the happier, more fulfilled person. There is value in embracing the life you live in the present. Bitterness eats you up inside and can taint every aspect of your life. You stop enjoying the thing you love because it never delivers.

I think that Greenberg’s friend was in a good place but it took him fifteen years to reach that place. I think he gave up on his dream when maybe he didn’t have to. I think he spent a lot of time wishing and hoping that things had been different but without knowing how to change things he was forced to live a life that he ultimately didn’t want because it wasn’t what he expected. It’s not that it was a bad life…just not the one he expected. This, in my opinion is the worst possible thing he could have done. He could have simply moved on or he could have kept fighting for his expected life. He sat somewhere in the middle though wanting a different life but also not really wanting to go after it and also not wanting to acknowledge that he was the one steering his life the whole time.

I’ve always thought of giving up in negative terms. This is something I learned by default. No one ever sat me down and told me that giving up was wrong or bad. Instead it was instilled in me that “finishing what you start” is a noble and good thing that builds character. Now I whole-heartedly agree that finishing what you start is a good thing if what you’ve started is a good thing. Everything you do builds character but what happens if you start something that you never should have started?

I have a bad character trait called smoking. I call this a character trait because it’s more than a habit now; it’s part of my personality. When you start smoking you never think of yourself as a smoker. Smokers who have smoked for a long time still don’t think of themselves as smokers. They say that they just smoke socially or that they are trying to quit. This is because we’ve all seen real smokers; the woman at the Laundromat who has a voice like chalk, and wheezes as she walks and coughs every five minutes. We don’t want to think of ourselves this way. So we refuse to acknowledge that we are smokers. But when you smoke every day; when you get uncomfortable when you haven’t smoked for a few hours then you are a smoker. It’s part of who you are. It’s a character trait.

I should have never started smoking and the best thing for it would be to quit. In this instance quitting would be a good thing that would build good character. I did start smoking though and I built myself a character that I do not like and do not want to be. Yet I do want to be that or I would stop.

Smoking is an easy example but the point holds true. What if my dream is bad for me? What if the thing I started is a bad thing that will build bad character? Quitting is not always negative and finishing what you start is not always positive. Giving something up so that you can live a better life seems like a reasonable and even good response. But it still feels bad.
Greenberg’s friend couldn’t decide what to do. He couldn’t give up and he couldn’t have what he wanted. He was the bitter, unhappy person who felt trapped not only by the life he was living but also by the life he wanted to be living. He didn’t want the one and couldn’t have the other and it was all really in his own mind.

What if you are doing something you ought to give up? In that circumstance then giving up should be applauded and in certain cases, like smoking, it usually is. But when people give up a dream they are thought poorly of. People assume they weren’t good enough or that they didn’t work hard enough. Maybe they weren’t good enough and that being the case we ought to pat them on the back for quitting. Surely it’s a noble thing to admit to oneself and the world that although you made a valiant effort you ultimately were not up to scratch and have decided to move on in order to find something more suitable?

I’m not really talking about giving up here though. I’m talking about the fact that life will kick your ass time and again and that’s not something you can get away from. A dream is not going to look in reality like it does in your head. It’s not always going to feel good. Life is difficult. Life is hard. Life doesn’t really give a crap if you succeed or fail. If life cared at all about you we would have no rich and no poor. People would all look exactly alike if life was trying to make us all comfortable. There would be no ugliness and no prettiness. But life is just life and we live it until we are dead. So why do we waste time being depressed and unhappy and wishing for things we don’t have?

Greenberg’s friend was doing something that I want to do. He was accepting his present tense and being ok with it. We are all smart people and we can all realize that whether you are born privileged or disadvantaged you can’t expect to be fabulous all of the time. So maybe it’s better to be ok with the present tense wherever you happen to be…good times and bad…thick and thin…sickness and health. It doesn’t matter if you give up your dream or if you fight for it. Just be ok with your decision whatever you do.

As for me? I fight on.

I Think, Therefore I Think. I Am Alive, Therefore I Am Alive.

2010-06-26T13:10:00.000-07:00

Powered by Podbean.com

Steve Murray is a friend of mine. We used to play open mics together at Zack’s in Durban, South Africa. I met Steve through another friend of mine, Esjay who now lives in San Diego and who is the soul’s core of the band Stealing Love Jones. Before I moved to Nashville I got together with Steve to practice one afternoon and on a whim decided to record the proceedings. In the song you’ll hear Steve and I communicating and since this was a practice there’s a couple of rough bits. I always liked Steve’s style of playing and I miss having chats with him about Seinfeld and beers and music.

picture courtesy of: http://www.motorcycleridesnow.com/roadtrip

_____________________________

There’s a million and three thoughts going through my brain about life, music, God, girls, babies. I need it to slow down so I can pick a few things out and take a bit of time looking over them. I’d like to reach in and find the ‘off’ switch sometimes but I know there’s not one there so all I can hope for is that things will slow down in there a bit.

You keep moving and doing what you have to do. You don’t focus on the stuff that seems impossible to understand. As soon as you focus on that you lose your mind completely because it all seems ridiculously complicated. But if you keep on keeping on; if you just keep doing your daily things your brain keeps working and these thoughts pop into your head in the middle of doing something else:

I spoke to a woman outside RuSan’s the other night. I was on a smoke break and so was she. She was digging through her purse with a cigarette dangling from her mouth and I offered her a light just as she found hers. So we started talking about the weather and which Hooter's was the best and she ended up telling me about a trip she’d taken on a motorcycle. “We kept to the back roads and only stopped to eat where the locals eat. We figured that the place with the most pick-up trucks outside was the local hang out and we usually got the best food and lowest prices at those places.” After a few minutes I realized that this woman was really cool.

I talked to my co-worker and buddy, Ron about it a little later and said to him that I was really glad I’d talked to her because she was with a party of people whom I’d served and my impression of them was terrible. If I hadn’t offered the lighter and hadn’t had the conversation I would have left that night with a totally wrong impression of her by association with her party.

People get crazy when they eat in restaurants. I know this because I work in one. Even though I know this I still fall into the trap of misjudging people. When it comes to food and restaurants all social normality and politeness falls away. People who keep their own kitchens as tidy as a surgery room will leave trash and bits of food and gum and toothpicks strewn about for their waiters to clean up (seriously people...I don't want your toothpicks..throw them away your own self). So you can’t always judge a person by the way they eat in restaurants (maybe first dates should remember that). But I still do judge people and it’s a shame that I do. I might be missing a lot of opportunities to hear great stories about motorcycle trips.

That’s what I mean though about things coming to you in the middle of doing something else. You get these flashes of comprehension all because you bothered to talk to a middle aged woman for two minutes about essentially nothing at all. I don’t think I could have mined that little life lesson from all the millions of thoughts in my head if I’d been sitting and thinking about it. Maybe you have to be doing life to understand life. Maybe you can’t sit and think everything to its logical conclusion. Instead the conclusions jump out at you when you’re out walking your dog, or ringing up a customer at the till (cash register) or plonking a plate of sushi in front of their nose. Maybe….

Success Is Nothing.....Rejection Is Everything

2010-05-02T09:31:00.000-07:00

Everyone likes stories about sticking it to the man. Maybe that’s why this particular piece caught my eye amidst all the stuff floating around the facebook universe: http://www.theboot.com/2010/04/19/lady-antebellum-american-idol/#comments. Hillary Scott, the now famous member of country music sensations “Lady Antebellum” was rejected, in her former life, by American Idol. Twice.

She’s not the only success story with rejections in her past. There was a time when Google was unsellable. The Beatles were rejected by Decca Records before being signed. They were told they had no future in the music business. Steve Jobs got fired by the man whom he himself had hired to help him run his company. Later he returned to the company and revitalized it. Seven different publishers passed on the Harry Potter series. Apparently they couldn’t see the market for it.

It seems rejection and failure are as much a part of success as is the moment when you realize the glory of achievement. Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem, “If” contains the following lines, “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster; And treat those two impostors just the same…Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!” It’s a sign of maturity, and a wise strategy for life, then to assume that failure and achievement are equally meaningless, or equally meaningful as the case may be. Failure doesn’t mean that success will never happen. Success doesn’t preclude a failure around the next bend.

Most people have hopes and dreams and they are often wrapped around the idea of one particular kind of success or achievement. We talk of “making it” or “reaching our goal” or “winning the prize”. Yes, I want victories. Yes, I want to achieve very specific goals. But what do I do after that? If my life’s enjoyment is dependent on one particular success or failure then I am already failing in some way. It might be better to see the destination as the journey itself.

I hadn’t come to the above realization when I wrote the song, “close my eyes”. The song though still has elements of this idea in it: “Seems like I always get the smoothest ride when I'm not even trying; I close my eyes.” What that means, in case you want to know, is that the journey is mo-better when you’re not worried about where you’re going or how you’re getting there and you just go. If you take the time to figure out all the stops along the way, all the songs that are going to be on the radio, all the pee-breaks, all the delays, all the sights and sounds, before you ever leave then why do you need to go on that journey anyway? What makes it a journey is the fact that you don’t know the outcome.

Life is a journey and I do have some ideas about where I’d like it to go. Despite what my very own song says, I want to make it with my eyes wide open and breathe in every moment of it. But at certain times, when I catch myself fretting about the final outcome, I might just close my eyes and let myself feel the wind in my face and remember again that bouncing down the road, taking in the magic of the moment (whatever that moment might be) is probably just as awesome as the part where the car stops and I get out to take a snapshot of the world’s largest ball of yarn….. And it may just be even better.

It is said that many of the great composers conceived entire symphonies in their minds before putting pen to paper. That may be true but they still had to write each note of it out so that it could be played by musicians. The Mona Lisa would not be hanging on a wall in Paris today if Leonardo had not painted the first brush stroke. The symphonies and the painting are just trophies that commemorate the journey that created them. So go take a trip.

________

Download Tim's album, "Beautiful Frustration" for $2.50...

Life.......Oh Life.........Oh Li..i..i...fe.......Oh Life.....do do do do.

2010-04-22T07:54:00.000-07:00

Last year about this time I started noticing the magnificent outfits that the ladies of Nashville were sporting. The emphasis was less on the outfits and more on the ladies themselves I suppose. I wrote a blog about it and my brother said I sounded horny. Well I’m not saying he was right but 2 months ago my first child was born. Her name is August. Probably more than anything else in my life right now she has brought the idea of life and all its mysteries to the fore in my head again.

There’s a porch adjoining the back door of my apartment in Nashville. It’s a small porch but I like it. I go there to drink coffee and survey the neighborhood and smoke cigarettes and think. There is a nearby tree whose branches hang down just beyond the edge of the porch. Throughout the year these branches go from being bare and brown to having thousands of small green buds then suddenly leafy and green and then finally through a death scene during which the leaves turn yellow and then red and then brown and then end up scattered all over the ground.

I grew up in a town with a very constant climate. It’s pretty much always warm in Durban. So I imagined that in places experiencing the full range of seasons it must be a gradual undulation from one season to the next. But it seems that seasons in Nashville arrive suddenly as if they were relatives from out of town. There’s no mistaking their arrival…. You get a cell phone message saying they are on the way and should be there around supper time, but things seem pretty much the same until the moment they arrive and then everything changes suddenly.

I didn’t notice the leaves beginning to grow on my porch-tree this year. I just looked up one day and realized that the branches didn’t look dead anymore and were covered in green leaves. As if they sprouted overnight…There must have been a lot of activity going on under the surface.

In a strange way, that tree porch and my daughter give me a kind of hopefulness about life. Not that I have any reason to not be hopeful but for some reason I have an extra helping of hopefulness lately. When my daughter arrived she was this little, squirmy, beautiful person. Every time I see her now she’s grown just a little. She’s changing daily. As adults we reach a point where we think we are in kind of stasis where we are about the same as we were the day before but it’s not true. We never really stop changing and growing. That tree and my daughter have reminded me that change is inevitable and constant. I can’t control everything about the way I change. Eventually we all end up old and dead. But I can direct myself towards positive changes.

Hopefully if I keep toiling and building and moving and direct things in a positive direction I’ll look around one day and realize that, just like August and the relatives from out of town I have suddenly arrived at some place I’ve been traveling towards. And like that tree, I’ve bloomed into something perhaps a little better than I am right now.

NOTE: The above painting is titled: "Tree of Life" and was painted by Tim Parish in 2008

___________________

Buy this album now for $2.50!!! Click the link below

Of Life and Storms and Cloaked Men

2010-03-28T08:49:00.000-07:00

Eagle’s Wings is a song about being bigger than your troubles. It is often said that life is hard. I used to get a little annoyed at that statement because often when people say it, they do so from a high horse, admonishing someone for having the indecency to share their troubles.

Nevertheless it’s true. Somehow I figured that much out when I wrote this song. I also figured out that you can’t let that get you down. You have to be better than your circumstances.

Looking back though I think I stopped short of another fact. A lot of times, the things that seem so hard and painful are really the things that make us who we are, get us where we want to be, give us character and generally make life less boring. So I wrote this poem-thing and posted it here for you to read while you listen to my song.

Of Life and Storms and Cloaked Men

I met you on a dance floor on a Monday night.
Early Tuesday morning, I guess, is when we gave her life.

She must be impatient; A little bit like dad.
Thirty five weeks later, she came early, just a tad.

It’s true we made a people. That still surprises me.
After all it was the first of firsts and I’m the son of a missionary.

I know there’s folks a sayin’, “Pshaw!” with mouths agape.
The news was too unbelievable. The irony had no escape.

I traded in my silver ring for a night of lust.
Now I’ve got a daughter. It’s true. Her name is “Gus”.

I said I wasn’t ready and I may have complained.
But she locked eyes with me and I knew it was a good thing.

You see life is all a mystery; A stranger in a hooded cloak.
He’s waiting in the alley. By all accounts; he’s a charming bloke.

He waits ‘til we’re not looking. He sits and smokes and bides his time.
Then he does some silly party trick and we give him each a dime.

Then later, buying cigarettes at the local grocery store,
We all get mad and cuss a bit because we came up ten cents short.

Later as we think it through amidst thoughts of regret,
We realize the treasure of smoking one less cigarette.

Now if you think I’m saying that I’ve got it all worked out,
Then you’d be wrong. That’s for dog gone. ‘Cause I still have some doubt.

But I liken myself to a skipper at the helm in a stormy sea:
The wind in gale and waters crash and on his breath, fresh Hennessy.

And he knows the storm is a lady who needs a steady hand.
But she’s mad and bad and raging and he is but a man.

He’ll use his skill and wisdom gathered up through stormy years.
He’s seen ones like her before. She laughs at tears and fears.

He knows that she will storm and crash and boom and wail.
But soon she will grow weary and calm seas will prevail.

There will be days of sunshine and easy sailing more.
But firm resolve is needed to get his ship to shore.

With the storm subsiding he breathes a sailor’s sigh.
“One more for the books.” He says, sparkle in his eye.

For he is yet alive, and more fully quick, at that,
For having sailed one more angry sea and placed one more mark inside his cap.

The storm, she is a lady. Make no mistake, she’ll make you quake.
The stranger in the hooded cloak; He’ll make your fists to shake.

But as you sit and drink a drink upon your old age porch,
You’ll know that storms and cloaked men were no more than a torch.

They lit a fire inside you and sparked with flame to make things bright.
They stirred up dregs of dullness and made you curse and fight.

In fact they put some beauty in your ordinary life.
They were the balm of vigor and not the bonds of strife.

They gave you life and memories and people to love and trust.
They gave you battle-scars of beauty…
And a daughter, named “Gus”.

Take My Hand

2010-03-13T13:48:00.000-08:00

Love songs are strange. They are a testament to a deep emotion that once was and may or may not still be. Emotions are not static. They change. I imagine that’s the reason that a lot of love songs get classified as ‘cheesy’ after a while. When you are high on love you say cheesy things. You say all the clichés from a thousand songs and poems and you think that they mean something when you say them because you actually mean it. They don’t feel like a cliché when you are the one saying them. The song though, remains the same as it was the day it was recorded. Whatever happened to the girl (or guy) and whatever happened to the feelings, the song stays the same.

There’s a song on Dave Mathews’ latest album in which he says, “Someone’s broken heart becomes your favorite song.” It’s true that we don’t always get the whole story when we listen to a song and we don’t always care. We just like the way it sounds. Maybe we like the story that the song evokes in us and that story may be far from the actual one.

They say that true love isn’t so much about feelings as it is about doing. Love is a verb. The kind of love that makes people stay married or makes people give money to poor people is probably a more important kind of love than most of what gets sung about. That’s because that kind of love seems more boring. It’s not as exciting as the emotions of new love.

As a songwriter I’m continuously desperate for something to write about. There’s plenty of stuff out there to write songs about but it’s always obvious when I’m trying too hard to write about something that’s not real to me. So when love comes along it makes for a great muse. Suddenly clichés come rolling out of the abyss and present themselves in ways that seem normal, and even good, even though they are mostly the same things everyone has been saying and writing and singing for hundreds of years.

“Take My Hand” is a love song. I suppose it’s a little cheesy, and more so to me because I know the full story. I’m not going to tell you the whole story because I’m tired of that particular story and the telling of it. I hope that it tells a good story for you.

As a songwriter I hope to write lots of cheesy love songs that are so catchy that people can’t help but buy them. As a person I hope I get to write a love song one day that I won’t look back on and wish that the love was as enduring as the song.

Response...Something Inside Me

2010-03-05T12:48:00.000-08:00

This is a response to the previous blogs comments. I had originally intended to write something about this in the previous blog but it didn’t seem to pan out. After the comments I realized that I didn’t quite express myself accurately so here goes….

I picked up a guitar one day and began learning to play. Another day I wrote a song. Another day I stopped watching t.v. and wrote another song instead. After that I played my guitar most days and became better at it. Some days I wrote songs and in the past 14 years I’ve gotten better at that. Another day I played my first song for an audience…I kept doing that and got better at that too.

When I was in college studying Biology and later while getting my masters in Biotechnology I was completely distracted by music on a daily basis. Whenever I had a minute free I’d be writing or playing or trying to figure out how to get enough money together to record an album. One day I started recording my own songs. I kept doing that and I’m still getting better at that too.

One day I made a decision to make music my career. I stopped teaching so that I could do that. I turned down a job with a missions organization so that I could do that. I started playing lots of shows in my hometown. I got better at playing shows and got better at promoting myself. Later I turned down a job with the company I’d been stationed at during my masters degree so that I could move to America and continue pursuing music.

The examples above are the highlights but the point is this… For the past 14 years I’ve been working steadily in this direction. It has been said that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become truly successful at something. I don’t know if I’ve reached that mark yet but I’ve certainly put in a few. Over the span of 14 years a person makes a lot of decisions… In my own life my decisions keep drawing me further down the path of a career in music. It doesn’t happen all at once but when you look back you realize that returning to where you once were would take almost as much work as it took to get to where you are now. When you stop using a path it stops looking so much like a path and becomes a faded remnant of a trail that once was. Bridges get burned and bottles get broken on your back trail. To go back might sometimes be necessary but it’s not going to be any easier than putting your head down and slogging it out with whatever is ahead that keeps making yesterday look so attractive.

What I’m saying is this… I am where I am on purpose. It’s no accident that I do the job I do or that I live where I live or that I’ve made the decisions I’ve made. Little by little, one decision at a time, I have burned bridges and broken bottles for 14 years to get here. I’m not sure just anyone would want to live in my shoes but I do want to live in them. I don’t expect everyone to understand what I’m doing but I do understand it. In general I’m excessively happy that I’ve made it this far and that I’m on the path that I’m on. There are specific things about the current moment in the path that I don’t like and I’ll admit that I probably spend way too much time dwelling on those things and preaching my woes for the world to read. I’m a complainer…so sue me.

In writing about the songs on the album I’m trying to capture the emotions of the songs and of the album in general. Sometimes that means putting myself back in the moment of whatever I was feeling at the time. The song “Something Inside Me” was written when I was absolutely confounded and frustrated and ready to throw in the towel. I wanted to give up. I wanted to stop trying. I even tried to give up music. But I found out that my passion for music and writing is something that is deep within me that I can’t control and which will never die. It’s too deeply ingrained. Perhaps it’s by design that I am this way. So I wrote the words “I’ll never give up because I don’t know what those words mean.” At the time in my life when I was utterly frustrated, completely depressed and most wanted to give up I wrote a song about not giving up. When I say I can’t give up… I really mean I can’t give up.

The album was titled “Beautiful Frustration” not because I thought it sounded like a cool name but because it captured the sentiment of everything I’d been through to get the thing done. It was the overall emotion that I was feeling during the writing of that album. I was frustrated but it was the kind of frustration you get when you are continuously working on a project that seems to progress too slowly. But there is progress and that’s why it’s beautiful. It’s the knocking of yourself against a problem over and over again that makes you stronger and eventually leads to a solution. I imagine that the guys who built the space shuttle, or Einstein (no I’m not comparing myself to them) would understand ‘beautiful frustration’ completely.

I am beautifully frustrated. My apologies if I let off steam about that too often. But I am determined and I am stubborn and I am committed to this thing I’ve set out to do. I’m investing in a future that I can live with instead of fixing my present to be satisfied now.

I will reach 10,000 hours. I will reach my goals. Say what you will or think what you will, I am realizing that I don’t much care anymore what people think because it doesn’t matter and it doesn’t change what I’m going to do. When I find myself in those moments of complete disgust and frustration with my reality I remember this song and I tell myself that “I’m trying…come try with me. I’m fighting…come fight with me. I’m flying…come fly with me.” I sing those words to the heavens as a kind of challenge. I sing those words to the walls that seem daunting as if I were a boxer squaring my shoulders to my opponent, bouncing lightly on the balls of my feet, glint in my eye, jaw set and saying, “Alright. Let’s do this.”

Something Inside Me....To Thine Own Self Be True

2010-03-05T09:08:00.000-08:00

I’m worried about where this is heading. Is it heading anywhere? Am I deluded? Should I just ‘get a job’ and do what everyone does? Maybe I should. But I’ve been down that road. I know what happens to me when I’m stuck in a job that I don’t want to be doing. I start to become someone I don’t want to be. I start to come unglued and disheveled. I start to become a bitter old man and I’m not even an old man. I become unhappy about pretty much everything. I start to die….just a little bit….every day. I lose that part of me that loves the sunshine. I forget how much I like to be outside. I forget the joy of feeling wind in my face.

I studied Biology in University. During our third year we went on a “field trip”. It was one of the most gratifying experiences of my college career. I remember coming home after ten days in Itala Game Reserve with scratches all lover my arms and legs from walking through thick African bush. Each day after we’d finished in the field we’d walk down to the river and sit in a small pool of water and check ourselves for ticks. We’d let the tiny fish nibble our skin. Each day we ate lunch off the back of a truck. It was horribly wonderful. At night we’d type our data into computers and then sit by a fire and talk.

The scratches hurt but I was kind of proud of them. I said to someone that walking through the bush, riding on the back of a truck, sleeping in a tent by a river, cooking in a makeshift kitchen for ten days, getting scratched and tick-bitten made me feel alive. I don’t remember most of what I studied… I remember that trip. I remember conversations and truck rides and scenery and moments. I remember it because for those ten days I was more alive than I had been during my entire time at University to that point.

We had to stop working one day because a rhinoceros was too close and the game guard thought he looked agitated. Walking with rhinos makes you feel alive. In 1996 I learned how to play the guitar and I wrote my first song. I still don’t know why or how but something about writing a song; something about performing it for people makes me feel alive the way working too close to a rhinoceros does.
I’ve had people tell me that I should be using my degree instead of working as a waiter. I’ve had people tell me that I shouldn’t be doing what I’m doing. To those people my response is this song.

I don’t like serving sushi one bit. I’m not even sure I like Nashville one bit. I don’t like worrying about money and whether I’m going to earn enough this month. I don’t like the demeaning nature of the job. I don’t like picking up after people and dealing with their “I deserve everything NOW!” attitudes.

I spent seven years in college studying something that I didn’t really want to do because…well..I had to study something. But the moment I wrote that first song I knew what I really wanted to do. There is a deep motivation in me to make this happen. It simmers in my soul. It’s a glowing coal that never dies.

I could give up and go make money designing pharmaceutical drugs, or working with genetically modified somethings. But I don’t want to do those things. I want to write songs. I want to play them for people. I won’t stop trying because…honestly…I can’t. Something inside of me won’t let me.

Holding On

2010-02-25T22:21:00.000-08:00

Like This Song? Click THIS

I’m grabbing some straws from the server’s station, hurrying with a tray of iced-waters to my next table. The restaurant is full and the computers have been crashing all night. Customers are waiting for their checks and other customers are waiting for food. Still other customers don’t realize that their order hasn’t yet been put into the computer and they are going to have to be told that they might miss their movie if they wait because computers suck. It’s not a good night and it’s that very moment, as I’m pulling five straws from the straw box that I’m struck with this thought, “I went to college for 7 years for this.” In fact I say the thought out loud much to the amusement of Toto, my fellow server, who happened to be standing close enough to hear.
Later as I munch a mouthful of noodles with the enthusiasm of a very hungry man Toto laughs again and says, “Angry makes you hungry!”. Anger does indeed make one hungry. On certain days I do get angry and that anger feeds my ambition. It makes me hungry for success.
They say that Rome was not built in a day. Most things that are worth anything were not built in a day. It’s easy to look back and say, “Well, it took time and hard work but just look at it now. Amazing!” It’s a little more difficult to do that when the first bricks are being laid. Sometimes you have to just hold on and be patient. I hate that that is true. I don’t like waiting. But it is true… so what can you do but hold on?
There are days when I have to repeat this sentiment to myself as a kind of mantra. “Hold on, Tim.” “Be patient, Tim.” I feel like that fish in Finding Nemo that likes to say, “Just keep swimming.” over and over again.
This is a song about a guy asking his girl to be patient. He wants her to know that she is awesome and that he wants to take things to the next level but he doesn’t want her to suffer for his dream. He’s asking her to hold on.

_________________

In 2007 I played a gig at a small club called Tanz Café which is Bryanston in Johannesburg, South Africa. After the show I started talking to a guy who introduced himself as Tibi. To this day I still don’t know his full name. He liked my stuff and wanted to record some songs with me so a couple of months later I went back to Johannesburg and spent a couple of days in Tibi’s flat recording. While I was there he played a guitar riff for me and asked if I could write some verses for it. And so the song, “Holding On” was born.
When I was planning the album in 2008 the track “Holding On” was pretty high up on my list of songs that had to be on the album. I was going to include Tibi as a writer in the album credits but it seemed like it wouldn’t do any good since “Tibi” isn’t a definitive name. After trying to contact him several times by phone and e-mail I gave up. I figured that if the song ever went anywhere Tibi would hear it and contact me.

If you like this song click the button below: Listen to more songs by Tim Pepper. Buy the album or just the songs you like.

Yellow Dress Girl

2010-02-15T10:25:00.000-08:00

Push Play

Like this song? Go here

There’s a photograph of me and her. I’m standing in the back yard of my brother’s home in Johannesburg, South Africa. I’m dressed in blue jeans, a black, button-up shirt with blue pin-stripes and a black suit-jacket. My arm is around her. She is wearing a yellow summer dress with a floral pattern. We are smiling.

I met her at the airport. I was waiting for my mom who was coming back from visiting my brother when she walked through the gate. I knew her from university. We’d both attended the same classes for four years and had hardly spoken to one another the entire time. Roughly 9 years later we met again at the airport.

I liked her. That’s probably the main reason I never talked to her. So when I saw her at the airport I called out after her. She was focused on getting home and didn’t see me. I had to chase her down a bit. I managed to secure her attention and I think for a moment she didn’t recognize me. I had my musician hair and my 3 day beard going (which is equivalent to about 1 ½ days growth on most guys). At university I had always had short hair. I was clean cut. I even went through a phase of tucking my t-shirts into my shorts. I was being the unconventional American at a foreign University but I think I just looked like a doofus.

Anyway..she did recognize me after a moment and we talked the way people do when they don’t really know each other and have never really been friends but who know each other enough to stop the other at an airport and say, “Hey! Gee whizz, it’s been a long time! How are you? What are you doing with yourself these days?”. We exchanged numbers and she had to go. I sent her a text later to ask if she was still single and if she would have coffee with me. I liked her.

When we started dating I was full of myself. I mean that in the best way possible; I had recently begun my journey of being a full time musician. The year before I’d been working with a volunteer organization and I’d toured South Africa as the leader of a team of teens-through-twenty-something-year-olds whose mission it was to save the world from STDs. So I was full of free-spiritedness and the excitement of a new adventure. I’d also discovered that I liked the artistic me more than I liked the versions of me I’d tried on in my previous occupations. I was comfortable with who I was.

Maybe it was my confidence that made the first few months with her so good. I really liked her. I knew then that I was falling for her in a way that I’d never fallen for a girl before. I wanted her in every sense of the word. I wanted to be with her. I wanted to touch her. I just wanted her. I wanted to make her fall in love with me.

That photograph was taken during that phase in our relationship when everything was perfect. I was perfect. She was perfect. We were perfect. So I wrote a song about making that yellow dress girl fall in love with me.

_______________

Are You Coming?

2010-02-10T10:59:00.000-08:00

I’m an impatient person I think. I want all the things I want in life right now. My album is called “beautiful frustration” because I spend a lot of time being frustrated with where I’m at and trying to figure out how to change it for the better. I like to spend time thinking. There’s probably nothing worse for an impatient person to do than sit and think, but this is who I am. I’m learning to be a more patient version of me.

In November of 2006 I turned down a job with the volunteer organization I’d been working for earlier that year because I wanted to pursue music. Although I’d been writing songs since 1996 I had never tried to make it a career. A lot had to happen before I felt like I could legitimately hope to be a songwriting artist for a living. So I moved back to Durban to live in the spare room at my parent’s house so that I could keep my overheads low enough to survive as a musician. I went to all the open mics and I found a couple of regular gigs by handing out demos to restaurant managers everywhere in town. I produced and recorded my first EP, “Believe” that year. I got paid to play music and even though I didn’t realize it I was making progress. I should have been happy with what I’d accomplished.

A little over a year later and I remember writing this song out of complete disgust. I’d been pouring my heart and energy into music for all of a year or so and I felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere and I really wanted my reality to be something different than it was. I like this song a lot. If I hadn’t been impatient or if I wasn’t the person that I am I wouldn’t have written it. So I’m happy for the experience. But I also like the fact that I can look back at this song and realize that I was a bit of an idiot. It’s an angry song. To be honest I was talking to God in this song. I was asking Him if He was damn well doing anything about my situation. How dare He make me wait for everything I always wanted. Right?

In retrospect it was ridiculous to have expected huge changes after only a year. Stranger things have happened but usually they don’t. A year used to seem like a very long time. These days a year is just long enough to do a couple of really good things. I’m building a career and my goals for this year read a little different than they did in 2006. Back then it would have read something like, “Monday – prepare to take the world by storm. Tuesday – Get ready world. Here I come”. Let’s just say I’ve downsized my goals a little. I believe in aiming high but if I’m going to achieve high I’ve got to do all the little things that high requires. So I’ve got to do the nitty gritty. I’ve got to plan to do the nitty gritty. I’ve got to shift my focus from the big dreamy goal and concentrate on the tiny little steps that make dreaminess happen.

When I was studying my masters degree I had several conversations with my supervisor, Barbara Huckett. She turned out to be as much a life mentor as she was a supervisor. I’ve always had a great deal of respect and fondness for her. She told me once that I was a dreamer. Oh but she was right. Like everyone else we dreamers have our strengths and weaknesses and it’s taken me a while to start to understand what the weaknesses of that really mean. I love being a dreamer. I love being an artist. I love to create songs. I love to imagine what all this seemingly thankless work will amount to in ten years time. But thanks to people like Barbara and thanks to the wisdom that comes with experience (and I know I need a lot more of that) I’m learning to be aware of the pitfalls too. Do dream big. Do everything your heart desires. Do enjoy the things that you enjoy. Do work hard. Do work smart. Do everything you need to do to get to where you want to go. Don’t worry about how long it’s taking because that sucks the very life out of you and destroys the thing you love.

_____________

In the coming weeks I'll be updating this site with more songs and stories from the album "Beautiful Frustration". Check back regularly or 'follow me' to get the latest updates.

If you like this song go here

Kevin Costner Eats Sushi

2010-02-09T12:25:00.000-08:00

It’s Thursday night at RuSan’s and Denny is all excited about something… “It’s him! I can’t believe it’s really him! Kevin Costner is here!” I’m thinking, “Sure Denny. Sure.”.

Today is the official first day of the weekend in Restaurant-Land and that means I have to work an hour later and there’s too many servers on schedule…. Because it’s still Thursday…people have to work tomorrow….mostly they don’t want to be eating sushi at midnight. An hour ago I was wondering who I could call to get out of work tonight. But here I am so hopefully we WILL be busy and I’ll make some money tonight.

Well, shoot me! It is Kevin Costner. Unmistakably, the man sitting in the corner of RuSan’s really is Kevin Costner. I’m trying to remember the movie’s he’s been in. All I can think of is “Dances With Wolves”. My brain starts spitting out Indian names for RuSan’s patrons… Grabs With Chopsticks, Sits With Sake, Makes Noise With Chewing. Robin Hood, Water World, The Post Man, Tin Cup; all these movies don’t pop into my head for some reason.

We are pretty busy tonight and it’s a little bit awesome that no-one seems to notice that Kevin Costner is here. They say that music celebrities appreciate Nashville because they don’t get hassled here. Well I guess it’s true.

Santo is asking me if I will ask Kevin if he will take a picture with him before he leaves. Santo is a sushi chef and he’s awesome but I don’t want to be the guy who approaches the famous movie star and attracts attention to him. Pretty soon we’ll have a restaurant full of people clamoring to get a picture with Kevin Costner and all he wanted to do was eat some sushi and go play some music with his band. Yes….if you weren’t aware Kevin Costner is the front man in a band called Kevin Costner and Modern West. Listen to him sing here (http://www.myspace.com/kevincostnerandmodernwest).

Kevin is getting up from his table and getting ready to go. So I approach as nonchalantly as possible. I realize as I approach that Kevin Costner is taller than he appears in movies. He’s wearing boots which add a bit but I think he must be at least 6’3’’. So I look up and say, “Excuse me, our sushi chef wanted me to ask if he can have a picture with you before you go?”. “Where is he?” Kevin replies. I say “He’s the short Asian at the front… Also I wanted to give you these” I hand him my EP, “believe” (with card cleverly slipped into the sleeve) and my album, “Beautiful Frustration”. I follow that up with this amazing statement, “You can listen to it in your car…I hope you like it.” He stares at the CDs for a few seconds and says, “That’s cool. Thanks Tim.”

I’m not making money from music yet. I’m pretty sure that Kevin Costner is. Even if he isn’t, it probably doesn’t matter for him. I hope to one day make a living at this but for now I can say what probably few independent musicians can say; I gave my music to Kevin Costner. Judging from the tour schedule on their myspace page Kevin is a busy man but I hope he finds time to listen to it.

Review 2

2010-01-24T22:44:00.000-08:00

I copied the review mentioned in the previous post below: Several people in South Africa told me they couldn't view it from the link.

My apologies also.. I was informed of the review by Keith but it seems Abbey did the review. Thanks Abbey. I may have made it sound as though Keith did the review in my previous post.

Anyway, here it is:

Artist:Tim Pepper
Album: Beautiful Frustration

Tim Pepper knows how to write. His intelligence and way with words shows not only on his latest album, Beautiful Frustration, but on his website and his personal blog. He calls himself quiet, saying he does more listening than talking. Maybe he should speak up more often; he clearly has a lot to say, and a smart, quirky way of doing so.

Beautiful Frustration is a poppy, happy album that sounds like Jason Mraz, without being so cutesy it hurts. Pepper is smart, and his lyrics show it. Though he's sometimes cheesy, he has a way of capturing a melody that makes it okay. “Life is a journey/life is a road/every man carries/every man's load” he says on “Life”, a song that could be painfully cute if anyone but Pepper was singing it – instead, it comes across wise. “Yellow Dress Girl” is a warming song about a beautiful girl Pepper ran into, as though he's a much happier James Blunt, looking at the bright side of wanting someone you can't have instead of lamenting it. “I wanna learn to fly on eagles wings/I wanna fly into the sky/above the troubles in my life” he sings on “Eagles Wings”, an upbeat song about looking to God for help. Pepper is a Christian musician, but even those who don't share his religious views can appreciate his wit and charm.

The music on the album isn't phenomenal, but it does it's job. Pepper writes his own songs, but has a backup band that do their part in wrapping up the songs without adding enough to make it a band instead of an artist. Pepper isn't an extraordinary guitar player, but he's not trying to be. He's playing songs with genuine lyrics that you can tell he honestly means, and the music isn't as important. In another genre of music, this could be disastrous, but in the Mraz/Jack Johnson genre (most male singer-songwriters), it's not that big of a problem.

Beautiful Frustration is, seemingly, exactly what Pepper wanted it to be: a friendly introduction to his honest way of speaking and his simple but pleasing guitar parts and melodies. It's an album with a perfect name – the tracks are about frustrating subjects (life, love, living for God, etc), but they're written and sung in a happy, upbeat way as though to prove that while life can be frustrating, you should still be happy about it. Pepper might not be groundbreaking, but his music is sunny and fun, and since that's what he's aiming for, he's done his job.

Abbey K. Davis – MuzikReviews.com Staff
January 23, 2010
©MuzikReviews.com
For Questions Or Comments About This Review Send An Email To info@muzikreviews.com

My Music Reviewed

2010-01-24T13:00:00.000-08:00

MySpace: http://www.muzikreviews.com/reviews.php?ID=944

Yesterday and the day before were spent fighting with a new software plugin called EZ Drummer. Great program that doesn't seem to work with my recording interface. In the heat of my battle I got a message from Keith who does reviews for this website. This made my day so I made myself a celebratory cup of coffee.

Check it out and let me know what you think. If the link doesn't work, copy and paste it into your browser...apparently some of my friends across the ocean couldn't get the link to open.

Words of Weight

2010-01-14T10:04:00.000-08:00

I haven’t always been much of a talker. My brother is a talker. He talks to everyone. My brother and I were pretty close growing up so I’d often find myself listening to conversations he was having with whoever we were hanging out with at the time. If you’ve been sitting on the sideline, listening to a conversation for while, it becomes increasingly difficult to jump into it with every passing minute. After a while you start to think that “jumping in now is just going to be weird. People will look at me funny”. Well…that’s what I thought a lot of the time anyway and to go along with it I’d get nervous. I don’t know if this is something that people experience in general but I have had my fair share of speech related nervousness. It’s not a fun way to be…getting all jittery just thinking about saying something to someone.

In school we had to give speeches in front of the class. I used to get up and just stand there for a minute before telling the teacher sheepishly that I hadn’t prepared anything. In retrospect I got it very wrong since the embarrassment of preparing a speech and giving it ranks about 0.5 on a scale of one to ten, whereas that of standing in front of the class for a minute or two saying nothing ranks about 7.75. Eventually, at the suggestion of my mom I prepared a speech on the origins of Socks And/Or Stockings. It was daring…no-one else was giving speeches on socks. It was unique and even a little funny…socks are funny I guess. It pretty much cured me of the fear of speaking in public. I could go on a tangent here about the fear of failure and how it relates to this but I shan’t.

But real, live, one on one conversation still gives me a little bit of anxiety. On t.v. you get moms and daughters like the ones in The Gilmore Girls. Those two ladies are a couple of dictionaries trapped in women’s bodies. No-one in real life talks like these girls. At least no-one I know. We are mostly full of “umms” and “you knows?” and “likes”. Our conversations are a little less fluid than lava. Somehow by extracting the meaty bits, discarding the “umms” and “you knows” and reading the nuances of the body language of our co-talkers we manage to communicate.

Anyway… words are pretty important things. We say them all the time and rarely think much about their impact or what they really mean. We’ve all said things we wish we could take back. We’ve said things too soon. Sometimes we never say the things we should. This is a song about saying too much, too soon and receiving too little in return. It’s a relationship song. It’s about how some words, or maybe what those words represent, mean way too much to be encased in such small packages. At least one person has told me that they think the song is crap. I disagree strongly with that and I’m sure that there’s at least a few of you out there that think as I do.

Steaming Pee and The Evolution Of Man

2010-01-13T10:34:00.000-08:00

PUSH PLAY

Above is a representation of the apartment where I live in Nashville, TN. The red and blue spots represent the ambient temperature; red being warm and blue being cold. Room 2 is where I spend most of my time. You will note the little table in the corner with the computer and chair and microphone stand (yes, that’s and microphone stand with microphone drawn there). Room 2 is toasty warm. Room 1 is more or less closet space and a passage way from Room 2 to the kitchen and/or Bathroom/Loo. You will note that the Bathroom is the coldest room in the house.

I wrote the following piece a few days ago but I felt I needed to preface it with the floor-plan of my house:

There is steam rising from my pee-stream, which is breaking the icy surface of the water in my toilet. Behind me the floor dips ever so slightly towards the wall. My faucets have all been left dripping since the weather dropped into the ‘teens (Farenheit) a couple of weeks ago. The constant dripping has led to a drip from the bottom of my shower. I can’t figure out where the water is coming from exactly but the end result is that there’s now a sheet of ice on the floor that I have to step over to go to the bathroom. At least it’s frozen and therefore more or less contained. My plan for my day off tomorrow is to chip the ice off the floor and try to stop the drip.

According to scientists mankind is evolving. We, collectively, are getting better at surviving. We are the pinnacle of the evolutionary chain. Living as I do right now I don’t feel very evolved at all. I feel like I’ve taken a step backwards. But I suppose any change is evolution so maybe I am evolving.

I wrote a song a few years ago when I was trying to write punk songs and it currently has had three incarnations. I’ve never been happy with the recordings. The first two are a little more rock n’ roll but I used a terrible drum loop when I recorded them out of necessity. The most recent recording is an acoustic version and in a way I like this one the best because the song is fairly introspective despite its punk-song origins.

I thought it would be interesting to put all three of these up to demonstrate the only kind of evolution I believe in. My voice has changed, the guitar parts have changed, some of the melodic elements of the song have changed and the structure even changed a little but in the end it’s still the same song. An amoeba is an amoeba. A monkey is a monkey. A man is a man.

p.s. after listening to the original again I decided it would be best if you didn’t have to hear it. So there’s only two versions here.

Acknowledging The Journey

2010-01-05T13:50:00.000-08:00

image courtesy of this guy

Push Play

Powered by Podbean.com

Tonight I sat in a little music bar called The 5 Spot and listened to Jacob Zachary from Baton Rouge. I had to board a plane a little over a year ago to get from South Africa to Nashville, Tennessee. I had to stick it out through good days and bad until this very moment. I had to spend Sunday afternoon being a little bored to get motivated to go out and find music tonight. I had to get through a rock band at 12th and Porter (FlashMob…. They were good and loud and all things rock but ultimately not what I was looking for on this Sunday night) before moving on to The 5 Spot. I didn’t know who Jacob Zachary was before tonight. I didn’t know he was playing but as soon as I walked in the door, ears still ringing from FlashMob, and started listening I was glad my night ended there. Sometimes the destination matters and sometimes it doesn’t. Tonight it did but I didn’t know where I was going until I got there. I’m just glad I decided to take the journey.

I can see some parallels in searching for good music and searching for treasures in day to day life. With music though I at least have some idea of what I’m looking for. I know what I like as soon as I hear it and I could probably give you a general description of the kind of music I think is “good” if I was pressed. Day to day life is another thing entirely. There are small treasures everywhere if you bother to find them. It might be an interesting conversation with a stranger or discovering a new thing. It could be a moment when the sun is setting just right. It could be walking into a music bar and being pleasantly surprised by what you find.

I’ve been trying hard lately to change my natural settings. If there’s a little sliding switch inside each of us that controls our attitude mine has certainly spent more time near the “not so fabulous” side in the past few years. I don’t know if it got permanently set to “Negative-Nancy” by genetics or if it just spent so much time there that, eventually, it stuck. Nevertheless I’m trying to get it stuck somewhere on the positive side of neutral. It feels like I’m making progress and that makes me feel better about myself and the world in general.

But I think it’s not only the positives that make us who we are. A one sided coin isn’t a coin at all. Instead it’s a party trick. I’m not advocating that we all become a bunch of grinning idiots. Whether you’re searching for “good” music or searching for treasures in life you’ve got to be willing to go on the hunt. If you can set out each day with a hopeful and positive attitude then the bad times don’t seem so bad and they’re less likely to knock you off course. If you can accept the knocks as part of life and refuse to let them get you down then you’re more likely to get where you want to go. If you reach the point where you get almost as excited about the bumps in the road as you do about the road itself then you are becoming a true adventurer; dedicated to the journey and the treasures you may find along the way.

I Dad It!

2010-01-02T06:09:00.000-08:00

Push Play:

Powered by Podbean.com

So I’m going to be a dad…. On March 26th or some date close to that I will be a brand new father and that is something I have very mixed feelings about. One minute it’s, “Yeah! My boys are good to go…I’m gonna be a dad!” and the next it’s, “Oh man! How am I going to pay for this? I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.”

Carissa and I have somehow managed to keep our friendship throughout the ups and downs of this thing. There have been days when remaining friendly has been more difficult than others. There have been lots of 2 hour phone conversations…the awkward, frustrating, difficult kind. There has been exasperation. There has been sadness. There have been moments of laughter and tenderness too. There have been doctor’s visits that were educational to say the least. I wouldn’t recommend this approach but if you ever go through a pregnancy with someone you will certainly get to know them.

Carissa and I are not “an item”. I can’t say we are not together because having a child with someone thrusts you into a kind of togetherness with them whether there is any romantic interest between you or not. I think it’s fair to say that the situation has taken us both by storm. What neither of us could have known was just how difficult it is to be expecting when the mother and father are not together. They don’t write books called, “What to Expect When You’re Separated, Single and Expecting.” (I think that might be a fairly entertaining book though). There is an awareness that this situation is a little outside the natural order. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be done.

I hate to think of my little baby girl as a mistake; Somehow all of this works out for the best in the days and months that are queuing up behind today. Somehow God is working His magic and it’s a blessing, not so much in disguise, but perhaps being pieced together as if it were a puzzle. But there is no denying that I wasn’t planning on procreating just yet. I was perhaps a little irresponsible (that’s a really nice way of saying…I lost my head and wasn’t thinking at all). So maybe she’s in the grand scheme of things. She’s just showing up a lot sooner than I expected.

Most days I wonder about all the same questions and never really get any answers. I wonder about how I’m going to date in the future…there’s always going to be that moment of telling Potential Love Interest that I have a child. I wonder how it’s all going to work being a single dad sharing parenting responsibilities with a single mom. I wonder if it wouldn’t be best for myself and Carissa and Baby Girl if we found adoptive parents for her. At the same time I try to imagine the best possible outcome for all of the above (and several other) scenarios. There’s no point in trying to change reality because it doesn’t change…so I want to make the best of the situation.

I don’t know how all this will work out but in that part of a person’s mind where small wisdoms take hold and quietly make their presence known, I feel a couple of burgeoning wisdoms nudging me. The first is that whatever happens, Baby Girl is going to be an amazing person who deserves to be loved and cherished and recognized for the gift that she is. The second is that the two of us (Carissa and me) need to give this situation our full and undivided attention. In five years time I don’t want to look back at what’s happening now and wish that I’d done more to be a positive factor in all of this. So in the decisions I make today I’m trying to keep that in mind.

Ahhh Stew

2009-12-28T11:38:00.000-08:00

Timothy Pepper’s Ahhh Stew Recipe

Into a large Crock Pot (or other slow stewing device) place the following items:

1. One package of Hillshire Farms Lit’l Smokies Sausages. (Other forms of sausage may be substituted but they should be a rather hardy sausage)

2. 3 normal sized carrots pre-chopped into bite sized pieces (I dare say a 4th or even 5th carrot would not have gone astray)

3. 4 pre-chopped organic celery stalks (I’m certain that non-organic celery will result in an inferior stew)

4. 2 diced tomatoes (I’m aware that there is a vast array of tomato varieties in your local supermarket. You’re on your own here but I imagine any tomato that is good for making sauces would do the job nicely)

5. 5 to 7 small-medium white potatoes and 5 to 7 small-medium red potatoes. (If you are using large potatoes cut them into large pieces or you will end up with a pulpy mess on your hands. If using small potatoes stab them to allow for increased flavor absorption through the skin.)

6. ¾ large diced onion. If you are an onion freak (I’m not) you may wish to use the entire onion.
7. 1 halved jalapeno pepper with the seeds. (You may wish to alter the chili pepper variety and/or number to suit your taste.)

8. 1 pinch of cinnamon or if you have it a cinnamon stick (but then you have to fish out the barky bits when you eat the stew.

9. 3 chopped cloves of garlic.

10. 1 pinch of cayenne pepper. (You may prefer to add a dash but certainly a dollop would be right out of the question)

11. 1 sniff of All Spice (actually I may have used a pinch here as well)

12. 1 can of vegetable soup (mine had alphabet noodles in it which I could have done without…stewing makes them mushy)

13. Top with water until the potatoes are partially submerged.

Turn the stewing device on then leave the house until the stewing process is well under way. Doing so means you get to be pleasantly blasted by the aroma of Tim Pepper’s Ahhh Stew upon your return. When stewing is done stir the contents of the stewing device, spoon some into a bowl and eat with glee. What better way to enjoy your stew than hunkering down in your favorite chair and listening to Tim Pepper’s album Beautiful Frustration (available on iTunes and CD Baby…preview the cd at www.myspace.com/pepperhouse).

Addendum: I forgot to mention there's a can of beans in there somewhere...

Eagles Wings

2009-12-27T12:47:00.000-08:00

I must be a little slow or stubborn or both. I’ve been spewing forth ‘wisdoms’ concerning happiness and positivity lately as if I’ve only recently made this discovery. But seriously, this is kindergarten philosophy. This is stuff everyone knows because it’s something our moms and dads teach us.

I spent some time going over my accounts on CD Baby this morning. This year I’ve earned a whopping $34 and change from online sales of my music. I have to admit that although the number is small it still feels good. I noticed though that a lot of people were streaming and/or purchasing the song Eagle’s Wings. That struck me as a little odd because although I like that song a lot, it isn’t the one that I thought would be a standout ‘single’, mainly because it’s under-produced compared to some of the other songs on the album.

It got me thinking about the song though. I wrote it before most of the other songs on the album during my first year of teaching high school Biology. Teaching was the job I fell into after failing to find a job in my chosen field of study. I was hoping to get an awesome, well paid, research job at Merck, Monsanto, Johnson and Johnson or Unilever. I don’t mind telling you I was a little pissed off that after 3 degrees and 7 years in University I got stuck teaching.

If you’ve never been a teacher of any kind I’d like to recommend that you volunteer as a substitute for a week at your local high school. If every adult person did this, salaries for teachers would skyrocket. It’s not fun. There are a few blessed people on this planet who love to teach but I’m not one of them and so my job was a bit like a punishment of some kind. I hope you’re getting the picture I’m painting for you…It’s a self portrait of a miserable man. That was me.

I couldn’t help but notice though, from the bottom of the pit I’d dug for myself, that the young people who I was teaching were vibrant, excited, full of smiles and laughter and joy. I also knew that a lot of them were less fortunate than I, to say the least. Looking back, I realize that writing Eagle’s Wings may have been the point at which I started building myself a ladder to climb out of my hole of despair. Let me tell you it’s been a journey.

The song is about rising above the troubles and woes of life. I figured if my students could do it then I could too. Some five years later I finally start to really get what I was writing about back then. So yes…I think I’m a little slow and a lot stubborn.

Life Is Beautiful

2009-12-26T16:31:00.000-08:00

People talk about the sound of raindrops on the roof as a soothing, wonderful sound. Standing on my back porch, drinking a cup of coffee I discovered something better…

Winter’s cold blue fingers have laid hold on my part of the world recently. They haven’t yet gotten a good grip but Winter is certainly winning her arm-wrestle with Autumn. I’m not a fan of Winter. The cold creeps into my bones and makes me a little bit miserable. But here on my porch I’m noticing that when the wintery wind blows and a gentle rain falls it makes a wonderful noise. The dry, dead, brown leaves, recently fallen from their trees rustle against each other and the rain taps them a thousand times every second. It’s one of those noises that you can only hear if it happens to be early winter and a gentle rain is falling near your back porch. It’s a beautiful thing that could be easily overlooked if you weren’t paying attention or if perhaps you were more focused on the coldness of the cold.

In the past few weeks I’ve been somehow gifted with the awareness that life is ok. A while ago I started reading the book, “The Secret” just to see what all of the stink was about. I’ll be honest and say that I don’t buy into everything the book says. My reading of it though coincided with my realization that I had been rather “down in the dumps” for a long time. I wasn’t happy and I was tired of not being happy.

After a lot of reading and reflection this idea planted itself in my head and it’s been growing ever since. It’s not original at all. In fact it’s something I’ve been told my whole life. It’s simply the idea that it’s better to be positive than negative. It’s better to search for the treasure in every situation. Opportunity knocks when you’re looking for it.

If you work hard and keep your head up and are looking for good things then you’re more likely to find them than if you allow your default setting to be negative.
So I bought a new guitar for Christmas and promptly put it to work on writing some new songs. This one is called “Life Is Beautiful”. It’s a demo. It’s rough around the edges. But I like it and I hope you do too. Go here to listen www.myspace.com/timpeppersideb

Getting Happy

2009-12-13T12:37:00.000-08:00

You find life in the paper-cuts that happen while you’re filing all your ‘important’ information. You find it happening to you when your eyes are on the horizon. Life is right now. It’s whatever situation you find yourself in. It’s current. It’s relevant. It’s contemporary. Life is not what you will do or become. It’s not your job or your money or your relationships. It’s what you decide to do with everything you have or don’t have right this very second.

As for me…I’m getting happy. I’ve been depressed. I’ve been let down. I’ve been disappointed. I’ve looked for life in the days and years ahead of me. I don’t know how it happened but somehow I realized that all I have is right now. The past is six feet under. The future is anyone’s guess. If this moment were my last I would want people to remember me as a happy person who was a joy to know. So I’m getting happy.

My mother, who is a wonderful person, used to tell me that I could “get glad in the same pants I got mad in”. I used to get madder in my same pants every time she said it. But she was and is right. Sure, life isn’t perfect. I’m not everything I want to be. I don’t have everything I want. There are circumstances I can’t control. But, no matter what is going on in and around my life, I can choose to see the joy and the beauty that is happening everywhere.

If you see me on the street some day and notice that I’m a little down. Remind me of these words that I’m writing by telling me to get glad in the same pants I got mad in.

Attitude is Everything

2009-11-14T11:28:00.000-08:00

It still seems a little ridiculous to me but I’m beginning to think it’s absolutely, one hundred percent true. What I’m referring to is the idea that a person can change their own circumstances simply by changing their attitude. I feel like some sort of little league coach telling my bright eyed boys and girls that, “Attitude is Everything!”.

If you’re like me you are thinking something like this, “Attitude schmattitude. You can’t change things with your mind.” Well I’m beginning to think that you can and that you have to if you want to survive and be happy in this life.

Life is pretty random I think. It doesn’t care more for one person than another but it also doesn’t care whether one person is successful and another isn’t. Life just happens. It happens to all of us. You can’t escape it…ok, you can but it’s not recommended. So that means maybe there isn’t some driving force that’s going to lift you up and carry you on golden wings to your ultimate success. But it also means that there’s nothing stopping me or you or anyone else from doing exactly what we want to do.

You generally see what you’re looking for. If you look for hindrances you will find them. I’ve done that a lot in my life and I pre-empted a lot of failures by having a negative attitude at the outset. So why shouldn’t the opposite be true? If I look for opportunities I’ll find them. If I look for pathways or stepping stones to success I’ll find them. If my attitude at the outset is positive and hopeful I’m more likely to get that result.

A continuous positive attitude means a better chance of attaining success in the things I set out to achieve and that in turn will transform my life and my circumstances.

Below is a video and my wish for Christmas is that it will get 1 million views on YouTube. There was a time when such an audacious scheme would have entered my brain and been beaten down by 1 million negative thoughts about why that's not going to happen. You wouldn't be reading this because I never would have gotten this far. Instead I've decided to believe in the possibility and give it a try. So it's working already.

Watch this video and copy the URL to your facebook page. E-mail it to your friends and tell them to do the same.

1 Million Views For Christmas

2009-11-13T13:59:00.000-08:00

Here are some fun facts for you:
1. There are over 60 million FaceBook users worldwide.
2. In the US alone there are over 100 million YouTube users.
3. Videos go ‘viral’ every day (ok that last one might not be true..I made it up. But I’m sure it happens a lot.)

Given these fun facts I decided to set myself a goal:
I decided to attempt to generate 1 million views on my YouTube video “Close My Eyes” by Christmas. If I succeed I think I will have given myself a wonderful present this year.
So if you’re reading this and you’d like to help then do the following:
1. Watch the video
2. Copy the URL (located on the right hand side of the video if you go to YouTube. I’ve also included it below) and paste it into your status bar on your FaceBook profile. You can also copy the embed code and paste it into your myspace pages and blogs if you have them.
3. Send this message to friends.

Here’s the code: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jfZ5vXjXYs

Hopeful Thinking

2009-10-22T10:03:00.000-07:00

Everything that I didn’t do all the days I thought about doing them but didn’t…I can still do.

I know there are a lot of problems with that sentence. I know that some of the problems with that sentence have to do with the incorrect application of the English language. But the real problem with that sentence is that it’s just what every procrastinator on the planet wants to hear. Whether or not it gives people with a tendency to put things off one more excuse to do just that though is not why I wrote that sentence.

Here’s why I wrote that sentence:

I still want to sell songs. I still want to write songs. I still want to record them and play them for people and I want to get signed to some label that will help me make some money from this thing I’ve dedicated the latter portion of my life to. That hasn’t changed.

I think there are good reasons why I haven’t done a lot of what I want to do in music. But the reasons why are not the point here. The point here is that sentence at the top of this page: I’m still going to do all of that because it’s not too late.

I saw a t.v. show featuring Sylvester Stalone a few weeks ago. He’s in the gym, grimacing through a set of some monster-lift. He’s looking huge and ripped and awful. But he’s looking awful because that’s what he wants to look like. He’s 63. He’s not a young man anymore. And that’s the point: It’s never too late to do everything you ever wanted to do.

Lately I’ve been waking up with this weird sense of hopefulness. I don’t know where it came from but its here and I’m hanging on to it.

All of this has nothing to do with the video at the top of this post. I just like the song and I hope you will too.

A Seven Hour Pursuit

2009-09-09T11:05:00.000-07:00

Last year I moved from my sunny, warm home in South Africa to Nashville, Tennessee in pursuit of something. I thought I was pursuing a dream, and I suppose I am but it turns out that I’m in pursuit of something much larger too.

People talk of dreams as if they are specific things. The little kid who dreams of becoming an NFL football player knows exactly what position he (or she?) will play and for which team and which plays are going to make him (or her) the most awesome player that ever existed past, present or future. But grown-ups dreams are not so much about a specific job or thing as they are about quality of life.

My own dream has always been a little hazy. Industry people like to ask the question, “Tim, what exactly are you trying to do with your music?”. I understand the reason they ask that but what they don’t realize is that I don’t give a crap. How about this for an answer: “I want to wake up every day and look forward to playing some music. Maybe I’ll play for some people. Maybe I’ll just sit in my studio and write some new songs and fiddle with some new gear. Maybe I’ll play some music with my good friends who are also in my band and we’ll get a ‘new direction’ for our music. All of this will be happening in a comfortable house somewhere where it’s warm outside most of the time. Of course if I get tired of that day to day routine there will be some touring and when that’s not happening I still want to visit Europe (I’ve seen so little of it you know). My wife, who is awesome, will accompany me a lot of the time because although she is highly motivated and intelligent she doesn’t have to work and she kind of digs spending time with me. This comfy arrangement is made possible because my music pays for it. I don’t care how it pays for it. That’s not the important bit, Industry Person. The important bit is that people all over the world are listening to it and I don’t have to serve sushi anymore.”

Sometimes I think music sucks. I think this because I wish more people were listening to mine and because I know I’m better than some people who are living my dream. But I’ve done a few things in my life and here’s what I know…There’s absolutely nothing else I want to do with my life. It’s been the constant through all the ups and downs. Even when I hate it, I hate it with a passion and that’s more than I can say for most of the things I’ve done in my life.

The song “7 Hours” was written when I was newly rolled out onto the tarmac in Nashville. I was cold and missing home and my surrounds were dull and grey.

Hard to Keep Believing

2009-08-29T23:22:00.000-07:00

Some nights it’s really, really depressing to b e where I’m at doing what I’m doing. It’s hard to keep on doing things that seem to lead nowhere. On nights like those I write songs like this and I write essays something like what’s written below. It’s kind of funny if you think about the state of mind I must have been in to write this...

“The music is too loud and the lights are too dim. I’m dealing with another difficult customer. The atmosphere in this place is hard to get around in sometimes. It ‘feels’ if you know what I mean. Atmosphere shouldn’t ‘feel’. You shouldn’t really notice it but in this place on some nights I can’t get away from it.
The computer lights glare into my eyes, contrasting with the dimness of the rest of the room. The carpet, despite being swept and vacuumed every night, is full of embedded soy sauce, wasabi, soy beans and fish. In my mind these pieces of food are intermingling and festering and becoming something like that large amorphous glob of goop from that movie, “The Blob” that eats everything in its path. If they took a sample of the carpet from here and analyzed it, like they do in CSI, they would find large amounts of organic foodstuff residue along with all sorts of air fresheners like Febreeze.
I’m leaning in again trying to hear what ‘sushi eater’ is saying. I apologize, blaming the music for my inability to hear, so as to put ‘sushi eater’ at ease.”

I stopped writing there because I figured it was an exercise that wasn’t positive or helpful to my soul.
This is my life and my dream. I do this for a reason. I do this so I can pursue a career in music. And telling myself that over and over again is what keeps me going. Sometimes it helps to write it out too…which is why I decided to let you read it.

2009-08-25T13:04:00.000-07:00

I don't think Darius Rucker would mind me saying that I shook his hand and said, "Hi. Nice to meet you." last night. I also met John Daly and I'm pretty sure my dad will be a little bit jealous about that. I think he might also roll his eyes at the fact that I didn't know who he was until someone told me later. I kept thinking, "Why does this guy look so familiar?".

So in the past 5 days I've met three famous people and went to the Grand Ole Opry for the first time. My friend Drew Davis got me a backstage pass which was pretty cool of him.

I was a pretty big fan of Hootie and the Blowfish back in the day so it was a cool experience to meet Darius.

All of that has nothing to do with the video that I've posted here. The video is a couple of my songs. That couch I'm sitting on was given to me by my aunt TJ. Please feel free to comment on both the video and the couch.

Famous

2009-08-21T13:52:00.000-07:00

So I bumped into “famous person” (FP) last night at the restaurant. Actually I didn’t so much bump into FP as serve them sushi and green tea and call them a cab. They asked where the bathroom was and I feel like I did a pretty decent job of directing them.

Here’s the thing about meeting famous people; They are really just the same as you and me but it’s hard not to get excited about it at the time. It really was the highlight of my working night. I like to think I handled myself with a certain amount of grace and poise but I probably didn’t. I gave FP my card and they very graciously acted like that was a cool thing to do.

I’m having visions of FP sitting in a hotel room, bored and clicking on over to my website and listening to my music. It would be pretty cool if FP bought my album from iTunes and listened to it while they were jogging on the treadmill at gym.

The weird thing about meeting famous people is that you feel like you know something about this person even though you really don’t. You’ve seen them on t.v. and heard their songs on the radio and so this person feels somewhat familiar even though they’re a complete stranger. In their minds they must unconsciously have a scale on which they measure their fans. The scale goes from “mouth-frothing idiot” at the bottom to “pretty cool and potentially memorable” at the top. I think most people would rate somewhere in the middle which is “non-descript, harmless person”.

I used to think about raindrops hitting a car speeding along a highway. If you traced the journeys of the car and the raindrop backwards to their respective points of origin would you ever guess that a particular drop of rain would fall on a particular car at a particular point on the highway? If the car sat in the driveway for a second longer, or if a light had been red instead of green things may have turned out differently. I think that’s why it’s so cool to meet famous people; at least one of you leaves the encounter thinking, “What are the chances? Sweet!” Hopefully the other one leaves thinking, “Pretty cool and potentially memorable.”

Strong Week

2009-08-09T10:27:00.000-07:00

Monday: $400 to ‘fix’ my car. I got pulled over last week with expired registration. So I had to get my car tuned up so that I could get the emissions test done so that I could get my registration done. Waiting in line at the emissions testing grounds smoke starts pouring out of my exhaust pipe. One of the guys operating the grounds points a finger at me and tells me to get my car out of there. So I go back to the ‘mechanic’ and he says maybe I need to drive the car on the highway to get rid of the smoke before I go back.

Tuesday: Today I leave for Louisville, KY. I need to rent a car now because I’m not convinced my car is fixed at all and it’s not registered and I don’t have time to go back to the mechanic so I can get the test done. $413 to rent the only car available at Access. The other places had no cars available and I need to leave in the next 30 minutes to get to Louisville on time.
I love this car. I’m being spoiled by driving this Chevy Trailblazer with a Bose sound system. I’m fantasizing about actually owning one of these and driving it all the time. The open road makes me feel good about life. I’m relaxed and enjoying my drive to Louisville.
I arrive in Louisville and meet Heather Davis (who I still think of as Heather Askelson) who I haven’t seen in about 15+ years. We drive over to her friend, Natalie’s house and then drive to the country club to get some supper. They want to know about my music and about my ex-fiancé and why that didn’t work out. Natalie pays and I thank her and I feel a little awkward because I’m not sure she intended to pay for my food.
We head back to Natalie’s house and get ready for the party at which I’m playing. People start arriving and I eventually start playing music for a bunch of minglers. People buy my CD and I play some more music and end the night playing pool with Bob who beats me very soundly.
Back at Heather’s we talk until 3am about people we both know. I feel like Heather and I might have been good friends if we hadn’t lived across the ocean from each other.

Wednesday: My eyes pop open at 8:00 am. I have to be in Beaver, WV at 5pm so after a shower and a quick breakfast during which I get to know Heather’s little ones and in-laws a bit I hit the road.
I’m enjoying the road again and looking forward to playing again tonight. Get to town with an hour to spare and Sam drives us to the venue, Cultural Delight, a little international café. It’s Wednesday night so there aren’t any customers in the place but I play a set for Sam and Josiah and the owners of the café.
The owners invite me back to play for lunch tomorrow. They hope they’ll have a crowd for me.

Thursday: Lunchtime crowd is 5 strong and there’s a couple of stragglers getting take-out orders towards the end. I’m having fun playing and not really concerned about the numbers right now.
6pm finds us making our way towards the As You Like It Café, which turns out to be a great place to play an unplugged gig. Fifteen or so people show up and I enjoy the set because everyone is listening intently. I take a break and mingle and then do another set. CDs are sold and signed and more mingling happens.
Back at Sam’s we start discussing ‘life and stuff’ until about 12pm. My alarm is set for 3:30 am.

Friday: 3:30 am came and went with barely a nod from me. I open my eyes at 4:20 am and run around getting ready to go. My rental car has to be back in Nashville by 12:15 am and I have 444 miles to drive to get there.
I stop twice along the way and make it back to Nashville at 12:25 am. Dance for joy at not being charged for an extra day.
I go home and take a nap and head to work at 5 pm. Not dancing for joy at the prospect of working tonight but I need the money so…

This is the dream apparently and I love it. I decide I need a lot more weeks like this one.

West Virginia is Delightful

2009-08-06T11:00:00.000-07:00

West Virginia is mountains and trees and lots of trucks on the highway. Of course I haven’t experienced much of it. I’ve been here for about 20 hours and I spent some of those asleep.

I’m sitting in the Cultural Delight Café, located in Beckley, WV. The owners seem to like my music. I played here last night for a crowd of about 9 people which included the owners and Sam D. Smith (www.sdsmith.net). They said I should play again here today and hit the lunch crowd. So here I am. My set is over and there were a few people here. Now I’m waiting for a burger (how very culturally extravagant of me) and attempting to catch up on blogging.

Sam filmed a little bit of my performance last night, which you can watch here.

Over and out for now but stay tuned.

2009-06-14T11:17:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wonder if the things I wonder about are normal things. I mean it doesn’t seem strange to me to but I wonder if everyone thinks about the same kinds of things:

I have a friend named Kevin. He was my best friend when I was around 9 years old. When you’re 9 years old your best friend might as well be your brother. There’s an acceptance and innocence in friendships when you’re young that doesn’t exist when you get older. My brother will always be my brother and I’m fortunate to have a great one. But even if he was a crap brother he’d still be my brother. That’s the kind of friendship I had with Kevin. I haven’t seen Kevin much in the past 23 years but I still think of him as a friend.

My family moved overseas when I was young and I used to wonder how different Kevin and I would be if our families had reversed roles. What if I’d stayed in America and he had gone to South Africa? How significant was that one big move in my life? How has it shaped my reality? I wonder.

I wonder sometimes about how people’s lives turn out so differently than they imagined. Mine has anyway. There’s a homeless person who cycles by the restaurant sometimes and I’ve talked to him a few times. His name is Harley. The last time I saw Harley, he had a huge gash in his head that was all stitched up. He’d fallen off his bike apparently. I gave him some money so he could get his prescriptions filled. I don’t know if he used it for that but I felt like maybe he would and if I didn’t give it to him maybe he wouldn’t get it.

I wonder what Harley dreamed about when he was a younger man and I wonder why he was never able to follow that dream. For me to follow mine took more than just my own will. I had a lot of encouragement and help and sometimes a bit of pushing and shoving. I had guidance and wisdom from other sources. I am like one of those little trees; tied to a piece of wood so that it will grow straight until it becomes thick enough to stand on its own. I guess Harley never had a good straight stick to grow against. But the thing I wonder about is whether Harley thinks about that at all.

There are bombs of a nuclear nature being made and tested in North Korea. I can’t begin to know how to think about that. Isn’t there enough shit in the world that countries should stop spending so much money on guns and bombs and implements of war? But then shouldn’t we prepare to defend ourselves in case some stupid thing leads to another and we find ourselves in need of defense? I wonder if I was a North Korean if I would feel the same way. I’d probably be scared that America might decide to bomb my country even though as an American I feel like that’s a bit ridiculous. But then again we are one of the most war-involved countries of all time. I wonder how it’s possible that any government anywhere doesn’t get that a modern nuclear war anywhere in the world would be devastating to the entire planet. Even if you’re the aggressor and you get yours off first you’re still just shooting yourself in the foot.

I wonder if it’s normal to wonder about normality.

Rain Drops, Hot Dogs, Wisdom

2009-06-12T11:03:00.000-07:00

It’s raining…very, very hard. Lightning. The sky lights up in blue flashes. It’s seems close but I can’t hear any thunder. The rain on the roof is very loud. I’m trying to decide if I should wait a few minutes inside or just make a run for it. More lightning. This rain isn’t letting up anytime soon and I’m locked out of the restaurant. More blue flashes. So if I wait I have to wait in the back foyer which is covered but not really pleasant. Lightning.

I’m running across the parking lot towards my car. I’m soaked in no more than ten seconds and I have a good way to go to get my car. I’m nervous about the lightning and it all strikes me as incredibly funny. I have a huge smile on my face and I’m laughing out loud running through a soaking rain. It feels good to run. I’m really stretching my legs out fully and jumping puddles and running hard. I haven’t run like this in a long time. The rain is cold and feels good after such a hot day.

The weather in Nashville is whimsical and extreme. I’ve never experienced so much weather in all my life as I have in 6 months in Nashville. I’m in the Red Door Saloon in East Nashville. I love this place. It’s loud with people talking, the sandwiches are good (read: cheap) and it’s a good place to watch. There is a tornado watch in effect until midnight. I decided while driving home that if a tornado comes through I want to be around people and not in my apartment (I’m afraid it might fall down around me).

There’s a barmaid with an interesting hairstyle. She looks a little like Reece Witherspoon in the face and of course she sounds a little like her since this is Nashville. I think she’s older than me but she’s kind of pretty. I have my Chicago Dog in front of me. I have my PBR. My hair and clothes are soaked. The rain has driven a lot of people here tonight and they are mostly around my age (give or take 10 years). Age doesn’t matter in Nashville. Tattoos matter. Piercings matter. Hairstyles matter. Isn’t that what matters everywhere? When they named this place “music city” did they ever imagine it would become such a wonderfully vibrant mix of people? I imagine some guy in a cowboy hat came up with the name. He had no idea.

The rain has subsided. My dog and my PBR are finished. There’s a sign on top of the t.v. in the corner that says “I’m not bashful. I’m from Nashville.” It says a lot about the atmosphere in this place. I’m reserved by nature. That sign is kind of like an instruction to me. I look at it every time I come in here. If a wise old woman were going to give me advice about how to get by in Nashville, in America, in life; they could do far worse than to say; “Don’t be shy!”

Right Here. Right Now.

2009-06-10T15:20:00.000-07:00

I’m in my car driving north on I-65 listening to this, “I found God, on the corner of First and Amistad, where the West was all but won, all alone, smoking His last cigarette. I said, “Where you been?” He said, “Ask anything?” I’m thinking that whatever I’m experiencing I should experience to the full and whatever emotions go along with that I should feel completely.

I’ve been writing a lot about loneliness lately. In fact, I’ve been writing about it so much that I think I need to stop. No-one likes a party pooper and that’s kind of what I feel like. But in the same moment I also think that I absolutely must write about it because it’s where I am. Suddenly Miley Cirus is singing about moving mountains and trying to enjoy the climb and I totally know what she, or whoever wrote the song, means. Suddenly I realize that most people probably get that but I never knew it before.

In the lane next to me is a woman driving an SUV and I think she gets it. She knows what this feels like and maybe even more than I do. I am an island but only because I forget that everyone essentially goes through a lot of the same stuff in life. We wouldn’t have words like “lonely” or “happy” or “love” or “awesome” if we all didn’t get what those words were about. We’ve all got associative pictures in our minds that flash like bulbs, brilliantly when words like that are spoken.

A few years ago I spent a few days in one of the most beautiful places in South Africa. I walked along a beach that wasn’t like most beaches. Where the land meets the water is a mass of rocks and boulders. In places the boulders are small enough to be moved by every wave that comes and goes and as the water moves over them a thousand rocks knock against each other and make a wonderful sound that I’ve never heard before or since. There are pathways through the forest and rope bridges connecting one side of a gorge to another. One evening the sun set and the sky turned purple and orange and red. Whenever I think of beauty I get that picture flashing in my head.

Two nights ago I held a girl in my sleep. She wasn’t there and if she had been I wouldn’t have held her. But I want to hold someone and everyone knows what that feels like. The funny thing is that it’s not comforting in any way to know that everyone knows what that feels like. Because I still have to feel it now. And I should because it’s where I am.

Difficult

2009-06-07T21:36:00.000-07:00

Apparently America is “fireflies in June” amongst other things. Those other things include, “kids selling lemonade in a front yard, farms and cities, high school proms.” The list goes on if you are Rodney Adkins.

I’m drinking red wine at Rumors on 12th Ave in Nashville. The wine is good and free and there’s pizza and scallops and asparagus involved. Somehow I got myself invited to join a private party. This is America; sitting on a patio with people I hardly know drinking good red wine.

They tell me that being married is difficult. I wonder if it’s more difficult than being single in a new town. They tell me that relationships are difficult. I can’t disagree with that because I’ve been in a couple and sometimes they were exactly difficult. But I’m telling them that being single is difficult too. Perhaps it’s being single as well as not knowing too many people as well as being in a new environment concurrently that is difficult.

Earlier tonight I sat in church and the preacher was trying to answer the question of why there is so much pain and suffering and difficulty and tragedy in this world. His answer was that he didn’t have an answer. I don’t hold that against him because I can’t answer that either.

Lately everything seems difficult. I meet a lot of people and the one thing I have in common with all of them is that none of us are where we want to be. We’re all striving and straining and digging and reaching for something else. If happiness could be bottled, one of the ingredients would surely be ‘presence’. What I mean is that every now and again I feel happy and it’s usually when I forget about my dreams for a minute or two and enjoy the moment. There’s a lot of good things happening to me and around me and it’s possible sometimes to be present, in the moment, totally ‘there’, instead of wondering how it could be better.

I’m a single guy in a new place and that’s hard. I’m in America; a place I don’t understand yet, and that’s hard. I’m reaching for a dream and that’s hard. But tonight I’m sitting on this porch, laughing at jokes and enjoying this moment.

Maybe this happens in other places. I don't know. But it seems that for me this happens only in America. So if I was a country singer I wouldn't write about lemonade and fireflies. I'd have to write about strangers and scallops and red wine on porches. For me, that's America.

The Look

2009-06-01T12:52:00.000-07:00

Human experience is vast. I cannot relate to anyone. I can relate to everyone. I am a stranger. I enter interstate I-65 every day and head south to get to work. I live in a ‘not so great’ part of town. There are shifty ladies looking through my car window as I drive by them on my way home at night. There’s always someone who needs some change at the gas station. Having no teeth seems to be normal. There are large 18-wheel trucks passing by on the highway every minute of every day. I feel homeless.

With such thoughts on my mind I get up from my table at Bongo Java and I’m walking towards the stairs that lead off the porch and towards my car when I get the look. I can’t interpret this look. I’ve never been able to as long as been alive despite the fact that I’ve gotten this look a lot. It’s neither a look of obvious interest nor is it one of distaste. It’s quite possible that a woman could give me this look and in the next moment a man could. It’s asexual in nature. It’s mildly inquisitive but not necessarily inviting. It’s obvious that ‘something’ is going through the mind of the looker. That’s the look.

I’m sort of minding my own business, as I tend to do, walking off the porch and if I hadn’t turned my head in that moment I wouldn’t have seen it. This 20-something couple is chatting away over coffees and the girl is clearly staring at me; giving me the look.

Of course my immediate response to this is, “oh yeah..she digs me.”. This response doesn’t mean that I am an ego-centric male person. This is the normal male response. Men are generally resilient creatures and mostly we like ourselves quite a bit so when we catch someone giving us attention we assume they are admiring us. Actually I am merely attempting to be humorous. I was an awkward teenager so most of my high school years were spent interpreting the look negatively. Everyone was an awkward teenager.

Nevertheless I am prone to further analyze these types of situations so later in my car I start to wonder what it all means; Do people in general get this look? Does this happen with great frequency? If I were someone else would I be more or less likely to act upon these situations? Should I talk to these “lookers”? Am I inept at reading social cues? Am I picking up on social cues that everyone else misses?

2009-05-31T15:01:00.000-07:00

Like this song? Grab it and post it to your blogs or your social neworking sites. Shot.

2009-05-30T10:02:00.000-07:00

Luke was the second artist I "interviewed" for a story. I didn't really know what kind of questions to ask so we ended up talking about stuff more than doing an interview which is kind of what I was going for anyway. I think this picture says says a lot about Luke's character.

Listen to Luke here: www.myspace.com/lukesiedle

____________

As I take the first foamy sip of my cappuccino I’m thinking about Luke Siedle’s surname which is pronounced Seed-Lee. The name got me thinking about a certain John ‘Johnny Appleseed’ Chapmon renowned for wandering around North America in the seventeen hundreds planting apple tree nurseries as he went. He’d return occasionally to collect any money, old clothes or corn as payment for trees purchased. The story is something of a legend that I remember hearing about as a kid. This shoeless, humble man wandering around being kind to people and collecting very little in return somehow built something worth remembering. That’s his story and I’m seeing some parallels with him and the world of musicians out there on the road spewing forth their art into a world that sometimes gives very little back. The thing that keeps them going might be the idea that they are building for themselves some kind of legend; that maybe one day they’ll be remembered and thought of with the same fondness and affection we reserve for the likes of the Johnny Appleseeds of the world.

Luke’s strolling across the street in my direction now and he’s got his own story to tell. Indeed, if his new album titled, “Our Stories” is anything to go by Luke has more than one story to tell. If comparisons must be made then Luke’s album is something like a South African Fionn Regan or Bob Dylan. The difference being that Luke has a better voice and is already a far more accomplished guitarist that Bob ever was. This is an intellectual, songwriter’s album full of great guitar driven, melodic, soulful stuff.

Sitting down at the table we exchange greetings and order another cappuccino. I’m trying to play the part of the interviewer and asking Luke a lot of questions. It seems we’re both new to this situation but we nevertheless manage to get bite out of an interview-type-thing. On his beginnings Luke shares that he’s been playing the guitar since age 14 and had the good fortune to be taught a few things by Durban legend, Guy Buttery. “It was a bit intimidating playing with someone like him but he was always very chilled about it. We’d mostly just share our ideas.” On his goals for the future I find we share the dream of doing this ‘music thing’ for a living. Luke’s ambition is to keep challenging himself and not become like so many prolific young songwriters who seem to lose it as they age. When it comes to songwriting we also seem to share the habit of writing words and music at the same time, “It needs to happen all at once. If I force one on the other I usually end up getting rid of it.”

If you can picture a couple of songwriters sitting and chatting over a cappuccino; If you can picture them parting ways and going home to pick up their guitars; If you can picture them feeling a little awkward about their place in an industry that seems to swallow up so many people like them; If you can picture a man walking barefoot across a country planting seeds hoping the sun will shine and the rains will fall; If you can hear a guitar and a warm voice somewhere behind those pictures then you’re starting to see this story more clearly. It’s not much perhaps but it’s a story and it ours so far. As Luke says, “We’ve got the rest of our lives” to finish this one.

Folk On!!!

2009-05-23T12:11:00.000-07:00

“It’s sort of acoustic-indie-folky-rock.” I say. California-guy looks at me and says, “Well folk on then.” I think this is kind of funny. We are standing on the balcony (which is really just a very tall porch) of an establishment on Belmont Rd in Nashville, TN called PM. This restaurant stays open until 3 am and I initially assumed that the name PM was a reference to that fact. I now know that that’s not the case but I can’t remember what the name actually does mean. That and the fact that this place has excellent burgers that you can buy late at night are a little off the point though.

California-guy is a songwriter and I’m talking to him and his wife, a female friend of theirs (whose name escapes me) and one of the waiters at PM. This is Nashville so we are talking about music and bands and songwriting. Actually it’s mostly California-guy and the waiter and me doing the talking. I get the impression that California-wife is a little bored by yet another conversation about songwriting. But that’s also a little off the point.

The thing that California-guy said; “folk on” is the point here. People have referred to me as “rock star” and on occasion people have said to me, “you rock man”. I’m always mildly flattered by these sentiments because I get that this is a show of support and encouragement (mostly from friends who would say “you rock, man” even if I really didn’t at all, in any sense of the word, at any time because they like me and care about how I feel). However I’ve often wondered if I really do “rock”. I wonder if I am perhaps more of a “folker” than a “rocker”.

Sometime during 2008 I did a gig at a place in Durban, South Africa called Boogie’s Rock n’ Roll Diner. The place is sort of a white elephant; the manifestation of one man’s rock n’ roll dreams. Every inch of the walls are covered with guitars in glass cases signed by various famous rock bands. Gibson Les Pauls and Fender Stratocasters abound. There’s even a few really nice Telecasters and I think a Gretsch. The collection must be worth as much as the restaurant itself. Again this is a little off the point.

I finished my set on the night in question and this guy and his wife came up to me and asked me if they could buy my shirt. I don’t sell t-shirts as part of my merchandise. They wanted to by the shirt off my back. This was my favorite t-shirt. I bought it for $5.00 in Knoxville, TN in 2005. It was green and said “IRELAND” in orange letters across the chest. It had deodorant caked in the armpits and on the night in question was soaked in my sweat.

Of course I thought they were kidding. They weren’t kidding. They said they would give me money and the husband’s t-shirt and they wanted me to sign the shirt. I knew that this would make for a good story so I agreed to this exchange. The couple were really nice and they bought a CD. I still get e-mails from them every so often.

Until last night, I think that may have been my only real “rock n roll” moment. No matter who you are or what you do for a living, if someone asks to buy the t-shirt you are wearing (not because they like the t-shirt but because they like you or something you just did) then you are in that moment a “rock star”. This kind of thing happens to rock stars on a regular basis. It doesn’t happen to me on a regular basis and that’s why I still don’t think I am in general a “rocker”.

Last night was another “rock n’ roll” moment for me though. I played a gig at Café Coco with two other solo artists, Andy Elwell (www.myspace.com/andyelwell) and Adam Burrows (www.myspace.com/adamburrows). After some discussion we decided it would be best if we each did a couple of short sets instead doing one long set each. Now it’s been a while since I played a real gig so I was a little nervous. My first two sets didn’t go without hitches as a result but were still decent. By the end of the night the people who’d come to see us play had gone home and a new crowd of young punk rockers had arrived for the show that was after ours. This was a good thing because we each got to play to a full room of people who’d never heard our music before.

For some reason I was really relaxed during my third set and played two songs just because they were the songs I wanted to play. I nailed them both. Most performers are either naturally gifted with a sense of empathy or they develop it the more they perform. This means we can read a crowd and we can usually tell the difference between polite applause and genuine applause. After my last set last night I got the latter and as soon as I got off stage this guy came up to me and asked to buy a CD.

While I was packing up my guitar, Adam came up to do his last set and he said he really liked those two songs. I said something like, “yeah, I always play better when I don’t care what the crowd thinks.” To which he responded, “Exactly. That’s how you should always play.”

I think that’s what makes a real “rocker” though; a person who lives genuinely all the time. A real “rocker” plays what they want to play because that’s what they want to play. Even though they want to be liked (because why else do you get up on stage and play music) they don’t play that way. They just play and they play better because of that. So in that sense it’s possible for a classical pianist or a ballet dancer or a sculptor or, I suppose, an accountant to be a “rocker” sometimes.

Lately I’ve been trying hard to be the person that I am all the time. I tend to be a “politician” in that I sometimes say things I don’t really mean just to be polite. I agree with points of view that I don’t really agree with because it’s easier than arguing the point. I realize that’s no way to be so I’ve been trying to tame my natural tendency and just be who I am and think what I think and play what I want to play. I think that will make me a better person and a better “folker” and probably more of a “rocker” too.

Nibs Van Der Spuy

2009-05-20T09:21:00.000-07:00

When I started taking the whole music career seriously a few years ago and began performing on a regular basis in South Africa a lot of people kept asking me the same question; “Have you met Nibs?”. Everyone agreed I needed to meet Nibs and talk to Nibs. “What the heck is Nibs?” I thought. I was vaguely aware that someone named Nibs Van Der Spuy had been in a band called “Landscape Prayers” that had been pretty popular in South Africa when I was in high school or maybe university, but I wasn’t certain that the Nibs everyone was asking me about was the same guy. It seemed like everyone had met Nibs but me. Finally someone gave me his number and I called him up. We arranged to meet for coffee and a few days later I wrote this piece. Since our first meeting I’ve bumped into Nibs a few times and he really is a genuinely good guy.

One of the things Nibs told me to do was to record an album. I had done demos and demos and demos and had even released an EP but had never done a full album in studio. In a strange way he made it seem very important and at the same time managed to convey that I should relax and just get the thing done. I think he was probably instrumental in getting me to that place where I believed an album was the ‘essential’ next step.

SNAPSHOT: NIBS VAN DER SPUY

According to John Mayer, “Belief is a beautiful armor”. What makes belief so beautiful is that it cuts through all the ‘stuff’ of life that makes you feel like you’re nothing or wrong or worthless; the ‘stuff’ that just leaves you tired, sick to your stomach and wanting to run away. Sitting on a black pleather couch at some little coffee shop somewhere I’m feeling fairly hopeful that my life and my career could be looking up.

Much like the rather orange cushion I placed to one side when I sat down, my anxiety over the music industry and my place in it has momentarily been shelved. “You’ve got to get out there and take the music to the people, Tim. In the beginning they won’t always come to you. But if you believe in what you’re doing then you’ve just got to do it.” Nibs’ eyes are bright as he speaks to me from across the coffee table amidst orange cushions and black pleather. Enthusiastically bobbing its agreement, his braided, beaded goatee nicely punctuates this wisdom like a flashing exclamation point. Belief practically oozes from this easy-going, but clearly energetic man; a quiet confidence that he’s on the right path and that everything will be o.k.

Cars need petrol. Cows need grass. Belief needs feeding just the same. That powerful force that enabled men to walk on the moon and build churches in the jungle and sometimes just ‘keep on trucking’ is the same thing that got me here talking to Nibs. Certainly it wasn’t a direct route. It all started in a Biology lab a few years ago, sometime between teaching Sexual Reproduction to my Grade 9s and The Digestive System to my Grade 12s, with the seeds of belief.

Those seeds have names like; “I can”, “I have something unique to share”, “If they can do it, so can I”, I really want this more than anything”, “I will try”, “I won’t give up until I’ve done this”. With seeds such as those great journeys begin. But as the days turn to weeks and months and years the seeds are sometimes forgotten, buried in muck and dirt from too many frustrations and too many unrewarded efforts.

Suddenly though, while sharing a coffee with Nibs amidst the orange and black, I’m reminded of my seeds. Nibs’ belief in what he’s doing stirs something in me and I realize that while my seeds of belief may have been battered and bruised they haven’t gone anywhere. They’ve begun to sprout and are soaking up the good energy that seems to be a part of Nibs. My belief in myself, so hard-won, so tired and fading, is being fed by the belief of another.

Consuming our coffees we talk about integrity and sound engineers and the perils of being pigeon-holed as an artist. Our CDs have been exchanged and we’ve each discovered a new thing and it’s time to head our separate ways. Belief is a beautiful armor and with guys like Nibs around that armor will stay polished and gleaming and the journey will continue. Thanks Nibs.

Please do check out Nibs for yourself here: http://www.nibs.co.za/site/home

Tis The Season For Porches

2009-05-14T15:20:00.000-07:00

Sitting on porches is something I’ve done a bit of in my life. Something about a porch makes sense. Porches are sturdy and elevated. It’s important I think that they’re elevated because it gives whoever is standing or sitting on them a sense that they are overseeing something. That’s a good feeling in general as long as it doesn’t involve a lot of pressure and most porch experiences I’ve had were fairly scant of pressure. The porch is a place to sit and think and smoke and drink coffee. It’s a place to be with a friend and talk about good times. It’s a place people in the movies go when they’ve just been given bad news and the great thing about that is they always seem to be rescued by someone while they’re on the porch and then everything seems like it’s going to be ok.

It’s springtime in Nashville and porches are in fashion. In the past week I’ve sat on three porches. Here’s a few glimpses of my fairly ‘porchy’ week:
---
There are two women sitting at a table on the porch at the 12th South Tap Room. The brunette with long hair keeps getting up to fill her glass with water and I notice she’s wearing green camouflage pants with cowboy boots. It looks wrong but somehow o.k. at the same time. None of the guys who keep chatting to her seem to mind anyway so it must be o.k.

From where I’m standing on this particular porch I can see two more young women playing guitars and a cello and a ukulele (not all at the same time of course) on the stage located inside the bar. These young women are beautiful. They’re singing songs that have obscure meanings I think but which I love. These young women are smart. I know this because I spent a couple of evenings talking to them and their respective boyfriends about music, which I like to think I know a little about, and politics, which I know almost nothing about, and songwriting and America. There were no porches involved but the conversations were still pretty good.

If they weren’t already spoken for I’d probably fall in love with one of them. These are not average girls. These are music-playing, opinionated, independent girls. The high school I attended in South Africa had class rankings. The A class was the really smart people. The B class was the nearly, really smart people and so on. After the D class or so everyone was lumped into ‘mixed ability’ classes which was really just a euphemism for ‘not conventionally bright’. Tristan and Larissa are A class girls. When they play it’s all smiles and passion and swaying hips and head shakes. The head shakes are from the cello player, Larrisa, who does that very cello-esque head shake at particularly intense musical moments. It’s very attractive. The hip sways are from Tristen who sings and sways just so. It’s likewise very attractive. If these two girls aren’t famous in a few years then the world is truly a dorky place.

From where I’m standing on the porch I’m suddenly thinking that Nashville is a pretty cool place and that this is some of the best music I’ve heard since I’ve been here.

you can listen to Tristen and Larissa here:

www.myspace.com/larissamaestro

www.myspace.com/tristentristen

---
I’m on another porch about a stone’s throw away from where camo-cowgirl sat last night. I’m drinking a glass of Pig’s Head merlot, writing a very long letter. The letter is a relationship post-mortem addressed to a woman who I was engaged to only a few weeks ago. I don’t think I’ll be sending this letter but I need to write it as much as anything I’ve ever done.

The view on this porch is stunning. It’s full of girls drinking wine and wearing their spring wardrobes. Something about the post-relationship haze combined with the change in weather and accompanying shift in the clothing Nashville is wearing makes every woman I see seem strikingly gorgeous. It’s not so much that the ladies are wearing less, even though they are wearing less. I grew up in a town where it’s always hot. The ladies there wear bikinis a lot and that’s very awesome but you get used to it eventually and don’t think much about it. This winter I appreciated all the ladies wearing their cool coats and bum-hugging jeans and scarves very much. They looked lovely and stunning and chic and cute. Now the seasons are changing and a metamorphosis is taking place. I’m seeing legs again. I must say there are a lot of runners in this town and that makes for a lot of good legs. But I think it’s the change more than anything that’s made me suddenly aware of all the ‘amazingness’ surrounding me. I can’t compare it to butterflies emerging from a cocoon because cocoons are ugly and that’s not what’s happening here. It’s a bit like all the lovely, bum-hugging jeans wearing camp were packed up along with their cool scarves and coats and beanies and shipped off to a colder climate and they’ve been replaced with a whole new set of summer-dress wearing, wine-sipping joggers.

Again I’m struck by the thought that this town is looking quite attractive at present.
---
The expansive porch I’m sitting on is full of metal chairs and tables. There’s a not-quite-awesome cappuccino in front of me and I’m reading a book by Chuck Klosterman. The cappuccino is at least in a ceramic coffee cup and I like that a lot. The contents are too milky and more like a latte than a cappuccino. I think a place called Café Coco should know the difference. But I’m not all that upset by the average jo because I’m sitting in the sunshine and there are people chatting quietly around me and I’m reading a book about rock music, musicians and other famous people and I like that a lot.

I think I need to instruct the barrister next time to please make sure my cappuccino is what it’s meant to be, i.e., 3 equal volumes of espresso, steamed milk and foam. Actually I probably won’t instruct the barrister about anything because she seemed nice and I work in the service industry too and I’ve served ‘that guy’ before; the obnoxious, know-it-all who likes exactly half a slice of lemon in his water and absolutely nothing on the plate except the sandwich. I think that guy should relax a little and I probably shouldn’t care so much that my coffee is a little milky today. I still get to sit here and appreciate the day and its wonderment and read this excellent book and that’s all pretty great.

So Nashville, when it’s not freezing my too-small-for-bum-hugging-jeans-that-even-the-guys-are-wearing-these-days bum off, in the springtime, is a pretty cool place for porches and lovers of music and jogger legs and wine sipping…. Oh, and coffee.

That Worky Me

2009-05-11T12:48:00.000-07:00

So I have a facebook and a MySpace and a website and this blog and several other micro-sites around the internet that I established mainly for the purposes of promoting my music. Lately though I’ve noticed that the internet has started encroaching into my real life and into the lives of the people I meet.
I’m at work talking to a customer and I’m dropping the phrase, “you should check out my website” into the conversation, “I was just writing a blog about that the other day..ha ha ha.”. Now when people casually ask that old party favorite, “so what do you do?” I find myself wondering how I can work an URL into the answer.
I noticed during my years of teaching Biology to high school students that my colleagues had two personalities. They had the “teacher” persona which was strict and stern and conscious of the rules of the school and in very many ways this persona was very much like a jerk. I don’t say this to be derogatory to my colleagues because in general I liked most of them. I liked them a lot. But I knew the other “normal, average-joe or –jane as the case may be, every-day” persona because I hung out in the staff room with them and listened to their jokes and drank coffee with them.
I think that’s a pretty common fact of human life though. People tend to separate their job and their personal life. But it goes deeper than just a division of labor. It affects our personalities. Weekday dad is not weekend dad. Power-suit mom is worlds apart from sweatshirt-n-jeans, soccer mom. One of the reasons I couldn’t be a teacher was that I knew to be a really great teacher I needed to embrace the “teacher” persona and basically be an asshole for 8 hours a day, five days a week. I’m not saying all great teachers are assholes. I think the ones who get it right without being an asshole are amazing people though. I was the ‘nice guy’ teacher. I had a hard time enforcing rules and being strict so for me to do those things I felt like I was being an asshole. In any case I wasn’t being me.
I had a hard time being someone I wasn’t for the sake of the job. I know I can’t be the only one and that brings me back to facebook and other such social networking sites. I wonder how real our profiles actually are and I wonder how much thought people put into the candid pictures and comments they post. I wonder how many companies Google potential candidates to find out what the person is really like. I wonder if what they find out is really worthwhile information or not.
I could be the biggest jerk on the planet and still be good at my job. Would a ‘jerky’ facebook profile cost me a job or a career? I could be a totally different monster at work than I am during my free time. Should it matter either way? More importantly, will it matter and does it already matter? Maybe switching personas is a natural part of humanity and it’s ok. Maybe we should be allowed to be a jerk, or a nice guy when we’re not at work and whoever that ‘work’ persona is should be judged strictly on the merit of their ‘workiness’. Actually I suspect I have it backwards. Perhaps we are in a dangerous place in society when it has become so common to do the personality switcheroo every Monday morning. Maybe we need to be aiming for a more balanced equilibrium between ‘workiness’ and normality.

I’m imagining a time when the facebook profile (or its equivalent) becomes as closely guarded and masked as the work personas we now portray. Maybe this is some kind of golden age where everyone is using social networking as its creators intended, i.e. to connect with people, exchange information and generally show off to the world and be ridiculous in a fairly public but controlled manner. Are social networking profiles doomed to become just another résumé which only tell people what we really want them to know about our achievements and experience and leave the personality at the door?

Fearful - Defining Moments

2009-05-08T11:12:00.000-07:00

I’m afraid of just about everything. I am the guy who never raised his hand in class. I never talked to girls who I thought were pretty. I never tried so many of the things I wanted to try. I didn’t dance because I didn’t want to look stupid. I didn’t take the game winning shot…I passed the ball to someone else. I didn’t say what was on my mind because of that little voice in me that told me I would fail. “You will look stupid.”, it said. “You will miss.”, it said. “She will think you’re a doofus.”, it said. “You will sound like an oaf.”, it said.
A habit of behavior becomes our very personality. Maybe I’m not cautious by nature. I just learned to be that way. That old familiar feeling of excitement that comes when some new opportunity presents itself is something I learned to dismiss so much so that my demeanor has been molded by it. I play it safe. I stay in the background. I’m the “strong silent type”. But really I know I’m just scared.
There is some truth in the voice. I do look insanely stupid on the dance floor. But in those moments when I did venture out and shove a sock in the throat of that voice and I did dance…I had fun. I had fun. Let me say it again. I had fun. It could be the fear itself that makes the experience all the more enjoyable.
So I wonder sometimes why I still listen to the voice. I wonder why I still accept the fear. I am convinced that successful people hear the same voice that I do but somehow they learn when to listen and when to disregard that voice. They’ve learned that sometimes failing is not so bad as it might have seemed. They’ve learned that certain, “must fail” situations turn out to be brilliant success.
In the movie, “Tin Cup”, Kevin Costner’s character talks about ‘defining moments’ explaining that at certain moments in life, either you define the moment or the moment defines you. I know that in my own life I’ve let the moment define me far too often. I’ve listened to the thundering sky and decided not to go out of my cave. I’ve heeded the call to safety. I’ve missed a lot of opportunities. I’ve missed a lot of fun.
I don’t know who said it but I am beginning to understand that famous statement, “The only thing to fear is fear itself.” Was it Churchill? It doesn’t matter. It’s true beyond belief. I hope and yes even pray that instead of listening to the voice I might start to understand that the moments when the voice is calling at its loudest and clearest are the very moments that I must act. Those are the moments that lead to greatness perhaps. At the very least I won’t spend my life sitting in the back of the class, never speaking out, only ever being noticed for the fact that I don’t say much.

ER

2009-05-05T14:46:00.001-07:00

I’m in the backseat of a black Volvo with a bumber-sticker that says, “Ithaca is Gorges!”. My feet inside my shoes are swollen and painful and burning and itching. I’ve got red bumps all over my body…
Saturday night after work I go out with a few of the guys from RuSan’s. My left shoe feels like it has a stone in it. I keep taking it off and trying to find the troublesome titbit that I’m convinced must be in there somewhere. It’s late and I finally decide to leave the partying to the pros and go home and get some sleep.
I’m home now and my left foot is really giving me trouble. I have to walk on the side of my foot. I shower and go to bed. At some point Sunday morning I wake up and get up to go to the bathroom. Both feet are sore. I’m walking on the sides of both feet and the pain is getting worse. I sit down on the bed again and a burning stinging sensation shoots through both feet. I’m freaked out now.
What the bejeezus is wrong with my feet? I’m sitting on the bed staring at them and notice that both balls are really swollen. I can’t touch them because it hurts and itches and burns. I stand up again and can hardly walk. There’s a lump in my throat and I keep drinking water. It feels like a vitamin got stuck and won’t move. I’m not sure if I smoked too many cigarettes last night or if this is related to what’s wrong with my feet. I start looking at my body and notice the red spots which have started to appear all over me. They itch. I count the spots starting with my legs. I stop counting on the right leg at 20-something. There’s more on my hands and arms.
What the bejeezus is wrong with me? I need to eat food. I have oatmeal in the kitchen. I limp to the kitchen and am very concerned that the pain isn’t getting any better. I put water on the boil and then sit down in the middle of the kitchen floor. I’m freaking a little bit now but not too much. I stand up and finish stirring the oatmeal and grope around to find a clean bowl.
Sitting on my bed eating oatmeal I’m trying to figure out what’s wrong with me. What did I eat? What did I touch? I think I might be reacting to too many bags of trailmix which I’ve been snacking on a lot lately. I had a bag of trailmix for supper last night. And the night before. Maybe I should ease up on the nuts. Is this shingles? I just had the flu and got off antibiotics. Maybe my immune system is weak and this is shingles. My dad wrote an article about giving blood after he’d had shingles so I’ve got shingles on the brain. Maybe I’m reacting to the antibiotics.
I limp to the computer and Google medical clinics in Nashville. Everything’s closed because it’s Sunday night. I decide to go first thing in the morning. I read my book and go back to sleep. I wake up to go pee and I still can’t walk. I’m limping really badly now. The balls of my feet feel like grapefruits.
I give Tim a call and get no answer. I call Larissa and get no answer. She sends me a text a few minutes later and I send one back asking if she knows of a medical centre I can go to on a Sunday night. She calls and speaking to her I start to freak out good and proper because now I’m explaining my situation to someone and thinking how weird it sounds and we decide she and her boyfriend will drive me to the ER.
So I’m in the back seat of her Volvo smoking a cigarette and looking at Nashville and wondering what my body is doing. Jonathan (Larissa’s very cool boyfriend) is making jokes about how he was planning to go to the ER later anyway, trying to make me feel better about dragging them both out on a Sunday night.
I talk to a bunch of doctors and nurses at the ER and the consensus seems to be that I’ve had an allergic reaction to Amoxycillin which I had been taking because of a cold/flu type thing that I’d had a couple of weeks previously. They give me drugs and I go home.
I’m thinking about how something I put into my body made me sick and so I have to put something else into my body to make me better. We do very little taking out and a whole lot of putting in and I’m wondering why we don’t do more taking out or at least less taking in. There’s a constant stream of food and drink and medication and vitamins and nicotine and caffeine and ‘stuff’ going into me. All of it affects my body and my attitude and my behavior. I’m wondering if any of that means anything or if that’s just the way we are.

ESJAY (JONES?)

2009-04-29T18:10:00.000-07:00

Note: this was the first interview-type-thing I ever did with an artist. Esjay is one of the coolest people I know and she's always been a good friend. Her life and sacrifice for her music were one of the reasons I eventually decided to pursue my own dreams. I wish her all the success in the world. This article was written in 2008......

Taking a meanderous route through the winding streets of Westville, past the prison, round the bend and down the lane I arrive at Face Studios to meet up with Esjay, lead singer and front person for the Durban-band Stealing Love Jones. The band has been recording a new album with American producer Bjorn Thorsrud, who’s done work with the likes of The Smashing Pumpkins, Shania Twain and The Dandy Worhols, tentatively titled “Bleed To Bloom” and due for release in South Africa and North America in late September.

Sitting on my fuzzy, studio stool, I’m doing my best to stay in the background as Esjay does some tra-la-las, warming up in the vocal booth in the background and Bjorn fiddles with buttons and knobs in the control room. “Can, can you here me? Awright, one for level…”. Cue music and there’s Esjay, suddenly in the zone, feeling her way through “Hospital”. Outside in the garage-come-foyer, Jason Every, guitarist for Stealing Love Jones, is napping on the sofa. He’s waiting to record the final guitar tracks for the album.

“Take a break.” Says Bjorn and with that Esjay makes us a cuppa. Two sugars and milk for me. Honey and Jack Daniels for her. “It helps the vocals.” She says. Over a steaming cup, Esjay offers a little inside info on the recent Stealing Love Jones tour of North America. “In the first 11 days we did the equivalent of the Durban to Cape Town drive 6 times. We all got a wake-up call over there. We were paying 8 dollars to sleep and shower in truck-stops along the way. Emotionally and physically it was very hard and made us all feel so blessed to have come from a place (South Africa) where we are loved and supported.” Jason, still sleepy-eyed on the couch, says they were driving a senior-citizens van and pulling a trailer. He elaborates, surprisingly talkative for having just woken up, “Six hours of driving, an hour to unpack and set up the rig, an hour of sound check and rehearsals, then waiting for 4 or 5 hours for the show. We’d do the gig and then pack up and hit the road again to haul anywhere between six and thirty hours in one go! It was work. Fun, but hard work.”

Esjay, speaking of the album name says, “We’ve all been through so much. I’m thinking of calling the album “Bleed to Bloom”. Taken aback, I confess to Esjay that I think any artist will know exactly what that name means. “Sometimes it’s just the vision of so many people believing in you and your dream that keeps you going.”, she says.

I ask Esjay what it’s been like returning home. She tells me the pace hasn’t eased much. After a quick tour of S.A. with Sarah Bettens (K’s Choice) the band hit the studio again. “Bjorn has been working from 7am-7pm for the past three weeks… we’ve been working until 1am for the past three days to finish vocals and all the quirky stuff. He’s leaving in two days so we’re pushing to finish the guitars and vocals on the last three songs of the album. We have a benefit concert in Zimbabwe on the 4th July in support of the community of Bulawayo. It’s a bold and pioneering move in the current climate of political uncertainty there. We wanted to go against the grain and do the opposite of what everyone else is doing. After that we hope to return to North America and gain some more ground there. It’s scary because I’m leaving everything that’s comfortable. I know there are thousands of others out there trying to do what we’re trying to do but I’m comfortable with it. I can’t see myself doing anything else. Jason and I wrote a song together called “99” and it describes that feeling in the lyrics, “I SEE THIS AS DESTINY… I SEE THIS WRITTEN ALL OVER ME.”

As I sit on my fuzzy chair sipping my tea I listen to Esjay, now singing again from the vocal booth. A couple of lines keep repeating in my head, “Days turn to night…to the echo..to the echo..to the echo…forever…forever.” It seems to me that this life of touring and studios, singing the sun down and long into the night, the endlessly repeating cycle of writing, recording, gigging and touring is Esjay… forever.
________

For information on Stealing Love Jones, including music, tour dates, management and booking info, check out http://www.lovejonesband.com/ or WWW.MYSPACE.COM/LOVEJONESBAND

Lonely

2009-04-28T22:17:00.001-07:00

The art of being lonely is a shrewd one. It’s cool to be free and all that. My time and my money belong to no-one but me. But tonight I went to a concert and then ate supper alone. Standing in a room full of people or eating at the bar (because that’s where they put you when you are a party of one) falls a little short of the full experience.

That ultra-stupid song, “Lonely. I’m so lonely. I’ve got nobody for my own.” keeps popping into my head. I’m the guy that hums the McDonalds tune until another song or t.v. commercial replaces it so it’s unavoidable really. Whatever happens to be on my mind works its way through the neurons and synapses in my brain and somewhere along the way gets turned into the tune that most closely matches the message.

The trick is to make sure that when you’re in a crowded room you hum quietly in your head and not so anyone else can hear you. Occasionally I do slip and that always draws looks of suspicion from whoever happens to be close enough to hear. There’s no coming back from that either because people generally avoid conversation with those deemed to be “not right”.

Gone are the romantic images in my mind’s eye of the cool loner that everyone secretly admires and wants to be like. I used to want to be Brad Pitt’s character from that movie, “Legends of The Fall”. But now I realize that he wasn’t cool. He was just lonely.

At my last count I had 507 friends on Facebook. Many of them are genuine friends and not just Facebook ‘friend’ friends. But tonight as I stood in the Cannery Ballroom on 8th street in Nashville, watching James Morrison I sort of wished that one or two of those friends were with me.

Homey-D-Angel

2009-04-27T12:00:00.000-07:00

Approaching the garbage can on the pavement I have this thought, “If I throw this away that homeless guy (Homey) is going to stop me and ask for money.” I’m right. Homey wants a cigarette so I give him two and ask if he needs a light. He assures me he has a light so I start to head off towards my original destination which is a Boston-style fish restaurant in East Nashville, almost directly across the street from Homey.

At the curb I hear Homey calling me again. I turn around and he asks me for two dollars and a quarter. “I’m alcoholic.” he pronounces and I tell him I can give him three dollars but that’s all. Homey asks me what my name is and I tell him, “Tim”. He sort of smiles and introduces himself, extending his hand for a shake, but I don’t catch his name. I’m too worried about the fact that my hand is now firmly clasped by his. I’m thinking, “When’s the last time Homey washed his hands? No offence guy but I can feel the germs crawling on me.”

I guess Homey doesn’t get to talk to a lot of people so the handshake becomes a handhold and I am his captive audience for a few minutes. “Germs are proceeding up my arm to my elbow now.” He tells me he had a son who died at the age of 27 who I remind him of. He asks me where I’m from and tells me all the places he’s lived. The whole time I’m in this uncommitted sideways stance, trying to keep my body facing the restaurant and my head listening to Homey.

I’m finally able to catch a break in the conversation and I tell Homey I’m going to head across the street now. He looks at me and says, “It’ll come back to you..”. I’m still thinking about the germy handshake but I also wonder if he means that the three dollars will come back or the fact that I stopped to talk to him. Sitting at the bar a few minutes later (germs washed off in the bathroom) I order a shrimp basket and think about getting one for Homey but I look across the street and he and his shopping cart are gone. I guess he scurried off to get that alcohol.

So I’m watching a baseball game and eating my fried shrimp (which were awesome) and thinking about homeless people and wondering if maybe Homey was actually an angel. I’m feeling a little lonely (as one does when eating alone) but probably not as lonely as Homey….

My America

2009-04-26T10:36:00.000-07:00

I stepped off the plane from South Africa, in Washington, DC. I went outside and smoked a cigarette and surveyed what I could see of the city. It was early morning and gleaming. I saw people with coffees and cell phones looking busy and badly dressed.

I used to drive by Africans waiting at the bus stop on North Coast Road in my home town of Durban, South Africa. Those Africans had something I never saw in the fabulous people that lived in my neighborhood and went to gym at Virgin Active in La Lucia. They carried a sadness with them that was visible even when they were smiling. There was a hardness to them that couldn’t be covered up with their clothes.

I live in Nashville, Tennessee now. My neighbors; the people I see at the gas stations and in the malls all have that sadness I used to see in the Africans. I used to think that it was there because of the injustice of the lives of the African people. Living in their squatter camps and villages and commuting into nice neighborhoods every day to work. But here I see people who weren’t politically abused or unjustly oppressed living in a kind of squalor that that they bought into of their own free will. They have more money here and they have more stuff, nicer clothes, better cars, i-phones, i-pods, good jobs. But they’re just as lost and hopeless as those Africans who are still standing at that bus-stop every day.

The America in my memory is a backyard next to a football field with warm summer rains and bare-chested summer days. The America in my memory is a friendly place full of familiar places and things and routines. The America in my memory is proud and right and confident and righteous and just. Now it seems America has doubts. There is an awareness among Americans that maybe things are changing. All that seemed so sure and steady; our position in the world, our economy, our jobs are in question. “Where are our troops?”, “Why are they there?”, “Are we fighting the right battles?”, “Are we right?”; These are the questions America is asking. Where is my America now? Maybe it was only ever in my head.

Street signs bark at me everywhere I drive. “Jimmy’s Auto Parts and Repair” shouts in peeling paint. “Kroger” screams high atop its mast; a scream that can be heard a mile down the road. America is strip malls, signage and parking lots. America is fast food. America is fat people. America is BIG. Big is good. Bigger is better. Big cars. Big trucks. Big movie theatres. Big popcorn. Big people. Big houses. Big highways. Big signs. Big churches. Big sin. America is fast.
America is cars on highways always moving, always going, always driving. Where are you going America?

America is vast and beautiful. From the sky she is mountains, plains, trees and water. Rigid cities rise from the earth. They look small and peaceful, surrounded by so much nature, dwarfed by mountains. Tiny roads like symmetrical arteries spread and fade into the distance.

America is 9 to 5 and 5 til late. America never goes home. Always moving, eating, going, doing, meeting, greeting, partying, playing, running, gymming, driving, watching, seeing, using, buying, selling.

I am 32. My generation expects so much and appreciates so little. Everything is a ‘given’. Everything is taken for granted. There is no country where this is more apparent than in America.

But I love America. She is my home. She is my people. She is opportunity upon opportunity. She is welcoming and warm. She is a Sunday afternoon nap. She is a symphony of cultures, sometimes dissonant, but always music. She is free. She is everyone matters. She is a conversation with a stranger. She is speak your mind. She is wealthy.

America is a personal journey that for me has just begun.