I thought I’d test out linking this here old blog to the Fediverse so people can follow it from Mastodon or any of the other Fediverse nodes! Now I’ll be shocked if anyone actually reads this though.
I dropped a new song tonight!
This year was the first year I watched The Oscars in as long as I can remember and I really enjoyed it. I was particularly happy that “What Was I Made For” by Billie Eilish won Best Song as I thought it was the most powerful. It made me want to write something like that. I took a walk that night and the words started coming to me immediately. I knew I wanted something simple with just piano, vocal, and a string quartet.
I was house/pet sitting for a friend so when I got back to the house, I sat down at the piano there which was a bit out of tune and had some dampers that didn’t work. At first “What Was I Made For” was stuck in my head and I was having a hard time getting away from it to write something original, but enough experimenting finally got me there. Interestingly, my last song, New Year was also written while house/pet sitting for a different friend on the keyboard they had at their house.
I knew I wanted to do something simple not only because of the inspiration of Billie’s song, but also because I knew I had a tendency to feel the need to make things more complicated to try and feel more “musically advanced” or original even though there’s plenty of very simpler songs that I love. So the song is largely one repeating motif with a few variations. Of course me being me, I could just keep it to simple regular chords but had to find interesting voicings and changes. Writing 4 parts for the string quartet (which I played using the BBC Symphony Orchestra plugin from Spitfire) keeps lots of motion and variety in it as well.
Another sort of exercise is that I generally write pretty autobiographically and have always admired songwriters who could write purely fictional “story” songs. So while there’s definitely plenty of elements from my life, I also decided to pay homage to a song written by Elvis Costello and Paul McCartney called “That Day Is Done” where it is eventually revealed that the singer is dead and watching his own funeral. So my bridge was written from the perspective of someone who lived a long happy life but ultimately died alone with no real friends or family. I think the last verse manages to finish on a positive note though.
While looking for some past info on my blog last, I stumbled upon this fun collaboration I did with the late Craig Davis. I had first met Craig as a kid when he was friends with my Aunt and Uncle, but then had crossed paths with him as an adult when my band served to be his backup band for a show playing his originals at The Palace Theater in Bryan, TX (I still lived in College Station at the time). WE stayed in touch and started doing some musical collaborations.
Craig actually came to College Station and helped me and my then wife move to Austin. He and I did a lot of really great collaborations where he would send me a demo, and I would add all my touches and fully produce it into a finished song. It is still some of the best work I think I ever did but sadly none of it ever saw the light of day and I’m not aware of any of it existing anywhere anymore.
So I was thrilled when I stumbled upon an old blog entry where I had posted one such song and the story of how it came to be. And I’ve been earwormed by it all day today. Craig was a great and prolific songwriter. He and I did a duo performance ridiculously early on some news station locally here in Austin. We performed as a duo at the funeral of Tommy Smith, another great guitar player who was my neighbor and a major influence when I was just a kid learning guitar. Craig was a wonderful, eccentric, unique, and talented figure. I hadn’t really been in touch with him for many years when he died in 2021 but I still love so many of his songs.
Tonight I found myself reminiscing about my days working at NCsoft. Probably because I’m housesitting for a friend who I met there all those many years ago. It was a very important event in my life. The year was 2004. I was married and we had moved to Austin in 2003. She got a soul sucking job in retail. I got a soul sucking job in telephone tech support for lottery machines. Since my job had benefits, she quit her soul sucking job, then later got some decent admin jobs, so I could finally quit my job which made me miserable. I set my sights on getting into the video game industry and NCsoft specifically as the company I wanted to work for.
When my friend since 4th grade, Andy Hunter moved to Austin as well with his wife, I told him he should apply there since he was an artist. He got the job! He then started keeping an eye on jobs for me and recommending me. Reviewing this blog, I was reminded that there was one round that I was hoping to get an interview for but didn’t due to my lack of experience and them forgetting I was a recommendation. He did also alert me to someone at the company holding auditions for a play. Both my wife and I auditioned and got cast and this turned out to be “A Christmas Carol,” the very first show that opened Richard Garriott’s Curtain Theater (Richard was one of the big bosses at NCsoft), directed by Athena Peters who I am also still friends with.
Eventually, I did get an interview in the Quality Assurance department and got the job (my boss was Andrew Wagner, also still a friend). I was SUPER excited. This was the company and the exact job I had been chasing. A little while later, my wife got hired there as well and stayed with the company long after my layoff, our divorce, and the company move to Seattle where she still currently lives now (my friend Andy also ended up in Seattle for a time as well because of that).
It was one of the best “office jobs” I ever had. I loved the company, the games, and the people and in fact I am still friends with so many people that I met there. So many in fact that I don’t even want to try and tag people as I know I’ll forget someone. It really was a very special time and a defining event in my life. One of those magical eras you never forget. The layoff from that job really hurt but also was the thing that led to me pursuing acting and music as a full time freelancer. In a weird way, I had been released from my very nice, comfortable prison that I never would have just left on my own.
I’m really glad I kept this blog, and still do to an extent though I don’t post here much since social media kind of took its place for me. It really helps me research and remember things as well as reminding me of things I’d totally forgotten. I wish it went back further than 2000!
Let’s see how much I can remember from the variety of stress dream situations I encountered last night. I wonder if housesitting and sleeping in a bed that was not mine contributed to this.
I think this was all one continuous day but it’s hard to say for sure in dreamland and dream logic. The first part I remember involved me and my ex-wife. In the dream we had only recently split up and it was all amicable and such, but she was with someone new now and there was a bit of sadness for me as I was not yet with anyone else. I think we were also still roommates.
My friend since 4th grade, Andy Hunter picked me up as we had plans. He had his completely fictional dream little brother with him who was driving. We went to some kind of improv show that was in a large outdoor area and there was a lazy river that went around the perimeter. I was in the lazy river and wanted to get out but suddenly realized I didn’t know where my clothes or my phone were and I couldn’t get out of the lazy river naked.
Fast forward and suddenly somehow I was now dressed but trying to track down my phone and other missing possessions. Now it was an indoor club with several different rooms, stairways, halls and such. IT had the feeling of being behind the scenes of a funhouse or a theme park. HArd to explains but kind of old, wooden, maybe like an old theater or something. I had put my stuff in a cubby in the main performance room, but now they had moved everything and cleared the room for some kind of rehearsal. I asked if I could speak to the lady in charge to see if she knew where they might have taken my stuff, like if there was a lost and found or something. She said she’d talk to me if I could catch her and ran outside. I kept walking toward her and she would walk a different direction, playfully trying to avoid me. I eventually kind of corralled her and as she tried to sprint past I grabbed her in a bear hug.
Next thing I remember, Andy, his dream little brother, and I were now in the car again, but now it was my car and the steering wheel was on the right side. Andy’s brother was once again driving. I was stressed out because I remembered that I had left my Helix (a guitar amp/effects modeler) in the back seat of my car (another car at home I guess, as it wasn’t the one we were in) with the windows down and the doors unlocked. My car door was still open (on the car we were now in with the steering on the right, so I was on the left as a passenger), and Andy’s brother started reversing which caught my door on a small grassy incline which bent the door completely backward, damaging the hinges, the door and the car.
We found a mechanic shop still open late at night and I had the car looked at. I think the guy running the shop was Pedro Pascal. He handed me a bill for $150. I was shocked as I expected it to be far higher. That’s when he informed me that $150 was the bill just for looking at it. To fix it was going to be another $750. Andy, dream brother, and I all left and needless to say, I was quite down after this whole crappy day. It was now sometime well after midnight and Andy invited me to join him and his dream brother to get some “breakfast for dinner” as “breakfast for dinner” always made things better. Then I woke up.
I feel like envy is a hard-wired human trait that we must actively and constantly fight against. I’m sure there’s some evolutionary, survival-based reason it seems so hard-coded into the fabric of our being. We seem to naturally want to focus on that which we lack, and take for granted where we actually are and the always countless things we have to be grateful for. It takes constant, sometimes exhausting vigilance.
Today I had one of those moments. I have several friends who are full-time musicians playing all the time with great bands. Sometimes touring, sometimes mini-tours, sometimes just occasional jaunts to other cities and states. Big crowds, great venues, and busy all the time. I had a moment of sadness when I thought about how none of my full-time bands can ever be what those bands are. We have a ceiling we will never break past due to the fact that everyone (including myself) plays in multiple bands and even coordinating just occasional dates can be like orchestrating a rocket launch. Also, most of my band mates don’t do this full-time. They have jobs and families and other bands and even if Yacht Z, my Yacht Rock band started to really take off, we couldn’t do the things that my friends’ bands are doing. I’m the only one who could conceivably do this full time (and, well, kind of do along with all my other creative irons in fires as well). So it was kind of a let down for a moment knowing that we can never be [insert band here]. There is a pretty hard limit to how far we can go and how much we can play.
However, being someone who tries my best to always reframe from a place of gratitude, I had to remind myself that every journey is unique. I have to believe that I am exactly where I need to be. Like most of humanity, there is so much more I want to do, wishing I was so much “further” (a loaded and ambiguous word). I continue to believe that my whirling maelstrom of a constantly churning mind is both my biggest asset as well as my biggest flaw. Always thinking at the speed of light, layers upon layers of multi-dimensional overthinking. I haven’t had a “day job” since 2013. I play with some of the best musicians in Austin. Many people wish they had what I have, yet this human hunger plants that voice deep inside us always yearning for more, MORE, MORE. Insatiable.
If I was in the “enviable” position of some of my peers, I could probably only play with one band. Maybe two at most. Neither good nor bad, just a fact with pros and cons. It would probably make it much harder on my acting career (not that there’s been much of that for the last few years, but that’s another hunger that will be forever fed as long as I’m alive). I most definitely am grateful. I actively try to always keep perspective. I am a paradox, both always at peace, present, and grateful, and simultaneously a slavering beast, straining at my chains and fighting frustration and dissatisfaction.
I don’t know if I’m extra thinky because I just had a birthday, because it’s the end of the year, or just because it’s a new day and I am me.
Mysteries of Heath, #127:
I cannot stand doing a cover song and not doing it “right.” Now this is a complex and possibly volatile subject among musicians so let me be clear that I do not think that my personal preference is “right” and other opinions are wrong. The mystery here is really why it bothers me SO MUCH. Like it actually sucks a lot of the enjoyment out of a song for me. It’s painful.
I LOVE getting the details right. It’s fun. Will most listeners even notice? No. Hell, most listeners are content with half-assed, butchered, mediocre covers, but it matters to me. Now I’m not talking about purposefully doing your own spin on things. I’ve released many covers, some of which were painstaking recreations which are fun and educational in their own way, and some were very different takes, such as my all guitar versions of “Eleanor Rigby,” “Tomorrow Never Knows,” or the theme from “Downton Abbey.” Or my rock version of “Kiss The Girl” from “The Little Mermaid.”
The most egregious version of the “incorrect cover” to me is the “lazy” cover. People just can’t be bothered to put the work in to getting it right, so they get “close enough.” Luckily, this doesn’t apply very often to the awesome folks I get to play with. There’s lots of other reasons it happens, but it almost always really bothers me. Every time I play an altered version it’s like a little stone in my shoe.
Now of course, this often works in my favor when people are impressed with how prepared I was, or how accurately I got some cool details right, but it can also be a PITA both to me and those around me. I usually try very hard to be diplomatic and polite and bring it up in a way such as “So, I just wanted to check if this was an oversight, or a purposeful deviation…” I try my best to hopefully be easy and fun to work with and to feel out the tenor of every individual situation and be a collaborative team player. And believe me, I very much WISH that it didn’t bother me as much as it does, because that’s not fun for me. But it does. And I guess for better or worse, it’s part of what makes me who I am as an individual.
I fell in love last night (in my dreams). There was some woman name Meagan (a fictional dream person) and we had absolutely magic chemistry. Like we’d just known each other forever. She was one of those people everyone falls in love with. My friend Esteban who was with me had fallen for her too but he could see that she and I had magic. We were all parting ways and Meagan and her friend were walking off one way while Esteban and I walked another. I looked back at her longingly, pondering if I should just let her walk away. Esteban smiled and waved her direction like “Go get her!” She and her friend disappeared around the corner of a building and so I ran after them shouting her name.
As I rounded the corner they were just…gone. Impossibly gone. It was a big open area and there was nowhere they could go I was baffled and crushed and confused. Had it all been a dream? Was she some mystical muse or something. I screamed “NOOOOOOOOOOO!” In frustration. It was too late. Then my tears woke me up.
I was at a large table having a meeting with a bunch of folks including Paul McCartney who was seated directly to my right. The person to his right made a joke and mimed punching Paul, then Paul as a joke mimed passing it on and punching me.
I said “Oh you don’t want to do that. I’m from Texas and you our reputation,” and I pulled out my phone and opened up a gun app that had a gun on the screen that you could swipe to pull the slide then tap to shoot. I tapped it a few times. Paul laughed and then asked if I had the cool lightsaber app. I did and Paul and I both fired up the lightsaber apps on our phone and waved them around in mock battle making lightsaber noises with our mouths even though the app made its own noises.
Many years ago I put together photos of many of the locations that I knew of where “Office Space” filmed around Austin. Much has changed over the years and I updated some of the photos again years later to reflect that. They’re probably out of date again by now but they should still be identifiable. Click on each photo for a timestamp and information about the location.