Author Archives: Shalaman

DownTown Blog – DownTown Mystic On E Street Deluxe

Leave a reply

After going 4 years between releasing albums, DownTown Mystic has released 3 in the last 3 months! Ok, technically Welcome To Sha-La Land is not a DownTown Mystic album but DownTown Mystic is featured on all the tracks and released the Test Of Time single from it. But the release of the DownTown Mystic: Used Records History 1979-1985 album in November sparked the idea for the release of DownTown Mystic On E Street Deluxe. Going through the archives and listening to the music made back in the 80s and then releasing it was somewhat liberating. All those years of silence would finally be rewarded because of the reaction that the music received from fans and especially from the airplay at Radio.

Living in New Jersey, everyone knows Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band is the biggest thing that ever happened to the state. And that’s pretty BIG when you consider that Frank Sinatra, Tom Cruise and Bon Jovi also come from New Jersey, as well as many others like Jack Nicholson! People like to make fun of the Garden State but just look at those names!! Seriously, Thomas Edison invented the light bulb here. Come on people!! In the 80s Bruce was “The Boss” and about to release the biggest record of his career—Born In The USA. At the time, I happened to be working with his bass player, Garry Tallent.

As previously mentioned in the Used Records History blog post, I had met Garry when I was in The Tupelos, and Garry would record and play a show with us. We re-connected a couple of years after I left The Tupelos and Garry had returned from The River world tour. Garry had bought part ownership in a studio in Long Branch called Shorefire Recording. He was interested in learning to be a studio engineer, and when I asked him why he told me in part because of what he saw had happened with my band when he recorded with us in Washington D.C. That had been a disastrous situation where the engineer had sabotaged our sessions. That’s another long story but I knew what he meant. He said he never wanted that to ever happen to him. So lesson learned! 🙂

Garry & Max
Photo by Danny Clinch

I sent some tapes to Garry and he picked some songs to record. Hard Enough was his pick and when it came time to cut the track he had contacted the E Street Band’s drummer—“Mighty” Max Weinberg to come down and play with us. I thought this was going to be interesting because even before Max had gotten the gig with Bruce, he was already well known in my town. He was a BMOC in high school because of his drumming and when he showed up at the studio while setting up to record Hard Enough, I started throwing out names of people we both went to high school with. Max had graduated the year before me but we knew some of the same people, so we started reminiscing about our alma mater—Columbia High School in Maplewood, NJ.

While mentioning various names of people we had in common, at one point Max stopped and asked me, “Do you remember this girl?”—and was about to say her name, when I looked at him and we both said her name together, which really got Max going, “YES, you remember her??!!” LOL Garry had been slightly paying attention to our conversation, but when Max and I both roared about this girl (who I will not name to save her any embarrassment), he wanted to know all about her. Garry asked us, “Who is this girl? I want to meet her!” Max began to tell Garry about the hottest girl in our HS, and how every red-blooded male in that school would drool over her. I added that she was like a Playboy Centerfold at 17, but looked like 25. The irony was that the song we were about to record was probably written using her, from my subconscious, as the model for the girl in the song! Crazy, right?

Needless to say, the good vibes carried over to the session because Max kills on Hard Enough and Garry’s bass line reminds me a bit of the bass line he played on Springsteen’s Ramrod, which is a fave of mine. Like any good classic RnR song, there’s a double meaning that’s sexual in nature. However, I must confess that the double entendre of “it gets hard enough to love her” was more by accident than planned. The only reason I wrote hard enough was that “it gets difficult to love her” didn’t fit or sound right. The whole song is about how difficult this girl makes this guy’s life, but she’s too hot for him to say no to. Garry had a good laugh about me and Max still being able to rave about this girl so many years later. How could this song not be about her? I’m telling you she was hot!! 🙂

We also cut Sometimes Wrong that day, which I picked. The version that appears on the Deluxe album is listed as a “demo”.  This is mainly due to never quite getting the track right. Garry and I would tinker with it over a 2 year period, adding parts and mixing at least 3 different versions. Going back and listening now it’s easy to hear “Mighty” Max and how bombastic he could be live. He’s the highlight on the track. It wasn’t until the Standing Still sessions with Steve Holley and Paul Page that I cut the original version the way I wrote it and it finally worked. I was probably too close to be objective because the “demo” gets rave reviews now from reviewers. But that was the great thing about working with Garry because he would try everything. He had the studio time and it didn’t matter if something worked or didn’t because we were learning as we went.

At the next session we cut And You Know Why and Way to Know. Max had just written his book called The Big Beat where he interviewed great drummers like Ringo, Charlie Watts, Levon Helm and Hal Blaine to name a few. I think he really took to heart what some of these great drummers told him so he could become a better well-rounded drummer. On And You Know Why he put that knowledge to good use. It might just be the least “Mighty” Max you’ll ever hear on a song he plays on, but he’s still solid keeping the groove against Garry’s economical bass line.

The next time I was going to the studio, I stopped at Garry’s to give him a ride and he told me to come in and sit down. He had headphones out by his stereo and told me to put them on. He then put on a record and I heard the Born In The USA album for the first time in its entirety. This was a week before the official release of the album, and as with all things Bruce, I had to swear not to tell anyone that I had heard the record until its release. The album floored me, and I understood why Garry played it for me when we got to the studio.

Up until then, Garry was not interested in using synths but after Born In The USA, it was obvious that synths were now going to be a big part of Bruce’s sound. In the studio waiting for us and already set up with his synths, was Joe Norosavage, who Garry had brought in to play on the tracks we recorded with Max. Joe immediately made a great impression when he came up with a cool lead line for And You Know Why. The rest of the session went just as smoothly and I started up a friendship with Joe, who would work on many of my projects in the coming years. I’m pleased to have been able to unearth the tracks and make them a part of the DownTown Mystic On E Street Deluxe album.

Looking back, the thing that I find really interesting is that at the time, Garry wasn’t doing any recording for himself with the studio. I couldn’t believe it when he finally recorded and put out a solo record a few years back. I never knew he had it in him and when I asked him why now, he said “67”. He had just reached that age and felt if he didn’t do it now, he never would. It just goes to show it’s never too late, even for an “old pro” like Garry Tallent. 🙂

DownTown Blog – Welcome To Sha-La Land

Leave a reply

2020 has been one tough historic year and it will be long remembered for the life-changing events that seemed to happen almost daily. People and History will talk about surviving the deadly Covid-19 Pandemic in the years that follow. What might not be talked about is the emotional toll it took on everyone. People had loved ones die and many never had a chance to see them or say goodbye. The pandemic has been like something out of a sci-fi horror movie. Hospitals were so overrun with Covid cases, that many died without anyone claiming their bodies, only to be buried in mass graves like something out of the Middle Ages when plagues were killing people.

It was back in the summer that the thought occurred to me that I should release some musical ‘positive vibes’ out to the world dealing with this pandemic. Sha-La was releasing The Discontent Specialty Shows album and the song Dying Breath struck me as being perfect for this time we were all going through. When I thought about all the music released on Sha-La I decided to make a compilation album with positive messages. It was obvious that the cover art for Welcome To Sha-La Land had a Christmas look to it with the green and reds flowing together, so I thought a Holiday release would be in order. Even though there are no ‘Christmas songs’, I felt that making the album have a ‘positive vibe’ would capture the ‘Christmas spirit’.

I needed a strong lead track to start the album that could also be a single for Radio. Test Of Time seemed to fit the bill. I had written and recorded the song as a gift for my wife Barbara on our 25th Wedding Anniversary, but taken another way, it really speaks to those who lost loved ones to the pandemic. Also, a pattern soon developed, with DownTown Mystic featured on the other tracks with Bruce Engler and The Discontent. It only seemed fair to feature Bruce on Test Of Time because of his great slide playing and harmony vocals on the track. Moving next to One More Chance, which I co-wrote with Bruce, seemed like the perfect segue. It’s also the title track from the album Sha-La will release in 2021 called One More Chance featuring DownTown Mystic.

https://soundcloud.com/shalaman/standing-still

Pollution is a track I co-wrote and produced with The Discontent. DownTown Mystic recorded the song and called it Breathe. Again, it seemed like perfect timing with the lyric “I can’t breathe”. Standing Still is one of my favorite DTM tracks and it was a tough song to write. I had started to try and write about my father’s parents (my grandparents) who both died within a couple of weeks of each other in different hospitals. My father and his 3 sisters never got to see their parents to say goodbye, which is something that’s been all too common in 2020. It became too difficult to get the story down so I focused on writing the song to my father, who died when I was young. The song comes full circle in my feeling like he must have felt with his father and mother.

https://soundcloud.com/shalaman/dying-breath-the-discontent

I included Bruce’s song Fiona because it’s one of my faves and I think one of the best he’s ever written. I wanted to record it from the 1st time I heard his demo of it. I feel the same way about Dying Breath by The Discontent. I recorded more guitar and harmonies on it to bring the track out a bit more. It really hits home right now with all of the lives that have been lost in this pandemic. It has one of the rare positive lyrics from Jessie where he flips the script, from asking to take his dying breath, to not wanting to die and finding meaning in life. It’s profound on a level that Jessie is not usually known for. 🙂

Next, we move on to a 3-song acoustic set starting with Better Day. This was a bonus track on the cd and is the acoustic mix of the song. It has a totally different vibe from the main version, mainly because the acoustic guitar plays a different rhythm than the electric guitars on the track. I wrote The Last Teardrop in 1980 and I’ve always considered it one of my best. It’s an Elegy about loss but it also offers hope for the future. I asked Bruce to sing it because I never liked my voice on it. His vocal is just so natural and I remember when he cut it in the studio. It was amazing! Then I got to record a harmony to it and finally got a definitive version of the song. Also, producer Rob Harari had us track 9 acoustic guitars that created a very cool sound landscape.

https://soundcloud.com/shalaman/the-last-teardrop-bruce-engler

Dead End Space is one of the rare acoustic tracks by The Discontent. Come to think of it, it’s their only acoustic track. I was trying to get the band a song that would allow the listener to ease up from their usual intense attack of material. I co-wrote the song with Jessie Hobbs and the late Ozzie Caccavelli and we recorded the track at Ozzie’s home studio. I’ll never forget Ozzie’s reaction after we finished writing it. I saw the look on his face, which seemed to be shock, and asked him what the matter was. He just shook his head and said it was too good for them. Lol

Welcome To Sha-L Land finishes with 3-Way Heartbreak, which I included because it was not on the Used Records History album and Good Karma by Monte Farber. Monte and I share the same birthday (he’s 2 years older) and first met in the NYC clubs we were playing back in the late 70s. Our lives parallel each other’s in so many ways it could only be coincidence. He’s an astrologer and I’m a numerologist. Monte would go on to become one of the leading New Age authors, creating some of the most incredible divination systems with his wife, artist Amy Zerner. Sha-La released Good Karma almost 30 years ago and it’s become a perennial holiday season favorite.

Sha-La Music celebrated its 33rd year in business in 2020. We started the year by releasing the positive Better Day album in January, not knowing that the Covid-19 Pandemic would soon be taking over the world and changing lives forever. We’ve all lost loved ones and friends that in many ways still feels surreal. It only seems appropriate that we end the year with Welcome To Sha-La Land and put out some more positive energy at the most emotional time of the year. We hope that 2021 will find an end to this pandemic and allow all of us to get back to our lives for the better.

DownTown Blog – DownTown Mystic: Used Records History 1979-1985 Part 2 “A Long Strange Trip”

Leave a reply

What a long strange trip it’s been…or words to that effect. Going back into my musical archives and listening to all the songs I recorded 35-40 years ago brought back memories…both good and bad…but mostly good. The main thing I took away from the experience was how much the music always mattered to me. I left a band that was my life for 10 years to go solo because I wanted to concentrate on writing better songs and getting more into the recording process…and that’s exactly what I did. I stayed true to myself and the music, and that’s not something many people can say.

When putting the album together I decided to arrange the songs chronologically by the year they were recorded, starting with 3 tracks by The Tupelos (1979-80). The only exception was the 1st track Please Be There, which features Garry Tallent from The E Street Band on bass. This song had been on the 45 single with Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little 16 from 1979. We changed the arrangement with Garry. I thought it should be the lead track because it was recorded as part of a Production Deal that was the last highlight for the band.

The Tupelos 1980

Actually, it was that single that attracted Garry to the band at the end of 1979, when he was recording The River with Bruce and The E Street Band. Garry came over to my house in 1980 to jam with the band and agreed to play bass and record with us when we got a deal. We got the deal and Garry came down with us to record in Washington DC and then last played with us on stage at The Fast Lane in Asbury Park. Garry would be our bass player from April to August 1980. There’s no other band that can make that claim outside of Springsteen himself. LOL

https://soundcloud.com/shalaman/sweet-little-sixteen

I left The Tupelos in early 1981 and went to LA, driving cross country with the bass player George (who we met at that Fast Lane show). My publisher hooked us up with Gregg Thomas, a drummer who had worked with Neil Young and Leon Russell and we recorded some songs with him. This was really the 1st time that I got to play with a pro drummer and I learned a lot from it. There’s something that I can only describe as “solid” by the way guys like him, Max Weinberg and Steve Holley all play. It was this same quality that I saw in Tommy Mastro when I heard him play with The Discontent that made me want to get back into recording my songs again.

Robert at Alley Studios 1981 N. Hollywood

 When I got back from LA I knew what I wanted to do and went solo, recording my 1st project in 1982. I would play all the instruments with the exception of bass, enlisting the help of my good friend and fellow Aquarian Monte Farber. Monte has since gone on to become one of the leading New Age authors in the world. Along with his wife, artist Amy Zerner, they’ve created some of the best-selling divination systems ever created. You can hear Monte on the Welcome To Sha-La Land release and his own album, Good Karma.

I chose the 3 best tracks recorded with Monte for this album. Baby Believe Me, Night Time Girl and I Just Want To Love You all feature piano as the main instrument. This was something new for me and helped to add a new dimension to my songs. Night Time Girl was written right after I wrote Brian Jones in 1980 and both were in The Tupelos setlist. I Just Want To Love You was one of the 1st songs I wrote for The Tupelos and it was the last song I recorded with the band. I also recorded it with Gregg Thomas in LA. I clearly had a thing for this song because I couldn’t let it go of it until I had a definitive version that I felt was IT. You’ll notice that I have 1979 & 1982 listed for Sweet Lies. This song was recorded with the band as part of the 1979 Single session and then I went back to it, recording piano and re-mixing it during my solo session in 1982. 30 years later, I borrowed the intro and verse chords to write Read The Signs with Bruce Engler.

The next 2 songs, You Didn’t Know and Same Old Lover are from a 1983 8-tk demo session which would be a very important turning point for me. It’s not these songs alone, but the ones that were also recorded and are missing–the original versions of And You Know Why & Way To Know. These were much different from the versions I recorded with Garry Tallent & Max Weinberg. This was also the 1st time I ever played bass on a recording, thanks to swapping my pedal steel with Garry for one of his bass guitars. I wish I could find those original demos, especially Way To Know. Most likely I sent the reel to reel tape with them on it to Paul Schindler, my music attorney at the time. It was another era.

The remaining 4 songs (1985) were the last recordings I did until starting the DownTown Mystic Project 12 years later. I think you can hear a marked improvement in my writing and recording. I hooked up with Joe Norosavage, a keyboard player I met through Garry Tallent. The 80s and MTV were in full swing, as were synths, sequencers and drum machines. I decided to forego a band to make a state of the art recording. Turn Around and Go gets the full 80s treatment here. Who could have guessed that Fly Like The Wind would be discovered 30 years later and become one of my top sync-licensing tracks!

If you’re wondering why I called the project Used Records it’s because those songs from 1985 would be released in Europe on a cd called Used Records by a German label called Long Island Records in 1995. I was managing bands by this time and was out in LA when I met the label’s owner and all-around nice guy, Sondi. He wasn’t interested in a band I was shopping at the time but then we got to talking about this project I had done with the likes of Garry Tallent and Max Weinberg. This seemed to get Sondi’s attention and we made a deal. I wanted to get my songs on a cd since all my tapes were wearing thin, so this was a win-win! 🙂

Robert & 1976 Les Paul

It’s been strange to go back over songs I wrote and recorded in another century. I still think about getting Nik Cohn’s letter in the mail 3 years ago and just how strange it was to read his words. I look at it now like someone tapping me on the shoulder, trying to get my attention to look at this music. There’s certainly karma at work here. So in a very real sense, this album feels inevitable to me now. As I said at the start of this post, what a long strange trip it’s been. 🙂

Listen to DownTown Mystic: Used Records History 1979-1985

DownTown Blog – DownTown Mystic: Used Records History 1979-1985 Part 1 “Almost Famous”

Leave a reply

A letter arrived in the mail back in June 2017. The return address listed the Asbury Park Hotel with Attn: Nick Cohn. This was strange. What could this be? The letter opened with Nick Cohn saying he was a British music journalist. He had been in Asbury Park for the past few months working on a project to chronicle the historic music scene that took place in and around Asbury Park in the late 70s and early 80s. Well now…I had a band that played in AP during that time.

Mr. Cohn continued. He said he was looking into the records of bands that made an impact, big or small, during that time period and had come across “one curiously unknown band that seemed to pop out of nowhere then mysteriously disappear”. He said the band was called The Tupelos. WTF??!! That was my band!! Mr. Cohn went on to say that The Tupelos had done a show in the now defunct Fast Lane club, and in interviews with locals, it “was the best rock n roll show they’ve ever seen”. Ok…am I being punked?? This is really weird!!

The Fast Lane Asbury Park, NJ

The letter went on to say that he had traced the origins of the band back to me and he hoped he was correct. He apologized for taking up my time if he had been wrong, but if I was a member of the band, then I should read on. Mr. Cohn said that he and his publisher were putting together a very detailed account of that music period, along with any live recordings they could find. He wanted to consider The Tupelos for a chapter titled “Almost Famous” and then went on to ask some questions he wanted me to answer. He ended the letter by saying he was flying back to the UK and gave me his email to contact him.

The Tupelos 1979

Wow…this was a lot to take in. Was this for real?? I immediately googled Nick Cohn and found that he was indeed a British music journalist. But he was listed as Nik not Nick and was considered by many to be the father of rock criticism. His book Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom, written in 1969, is considered to be one of the best ever written on rock n roll. His 1976 New York Magazine article Tribal Rites of The New Saturday Night would be the basis for the movie Saturday Night Fever. Are you kidding??!!

When I emailed him I asked him how he found out about The Tupelos and if he was the same Nik on Wikipedia. He wrote back and he said he was the same Nik on Wiki. He also said that he had run into Pat Fasano, the former owner of The Fast Lane, who had a 45 record of the band. That would have been the 45 single we put out in 1979 with a cover of Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little 16 on one side and my song Please Be There on the other. This would be the same single that would get the attention of E Street bassist Garry Tallent.

Garry Tallent

That was 3 years ago and as far as I know, nothing has yet to come of Mr. Cohn’s research in Asbury Park. But his letter did make me go back and start to look into my music archives and rediscover some of the songs that would be the musical seeds for DownTown Mystic. All of the music from that period starting in 1979 was on reel to reel and cassette tapes. I tried to get as much of it onto DAT when I got a DAT machine in the 90s. Listening to the music I was making in those days took me back in time…from my work in The Tupelos to my solo stuff after I left the band. I took what I thought were the best tracks and had Larry Bentley master them one night at Cellar Dweller. The thought of possibly releasing them one day began to intrigue me, but when and how would I be able to do that?

It seems that after 3 years the right time to release those songs has presented itself. In January 2020 Sha-La Music released the DownTown Mystic Better Day album. 2 months later the Covid-19 pandemic hit and was closing down everything here in the NY/NJ area with everyone having to quarantine in their homes. While Better Day was having a good run at Worldwide Radio as well as Americana Radio here in the US, it provided a good time to revisit the idea of releasing the early material. Sha-La Music looked at its catalog and thought this was a good time to release projects that DownTown Mystic has been involved with and tie-in the early material. To that end, the DownTown Mystic: Used Records History 1979-1985 album was created.

To kick off the catalog releases, Sha-La Music released The Discontent Specialty Shows album last month in July. This album had been released on cd but never digitally. Its release coincides with the 20th anniversary of The Discontent making the Specialty Show charts, which brought the band national recognition. It was produced by DownTown Mystic (Robert Allen) and the late Ben Elliott. The track Dying Breath features DownTown Mystic and is a perfect single for this time of the pandemic, but might hit too close for comfort. In November the DownTown Mystic: Used Records History 1979-1985 album will be released and then the Bruce Engler One More Chance featuring DownTown Mystic album will come out in 2021.

Sha-La will release the 3-Way Heartbreak Single in September as a way to introduce the DownTown Mystic: Used Records History 1979-1985 album. 3-Way Heartbreak is the original track that was recorded in 1985. The single also includes the 1983 recording of Same Old Lover, which differs slightly from the original version on the album. 3-Way Heartbreak is a pure 80s track with the use of synths and drum machines and should fit in with the current comeback of 80s music.

Stranger Things Music Supervisor Nora Felder loved the song and wanted to put it in the 2nd season of the show until she found out that the song had not been a hit in the 80s because it had not been released. It was recorded at the same sessions that included Fly Like The Wind, which was selected by Music Supervisor Alexandra Patsavas for her TV show The Carrie Diaries because it was recorded in the 80s when the show takes place. Fly Like The Wind has become one of DownTown Mystic’s top sync-licensing tracks and will be in the upcoming Disney movie Flora and Ulysses. 3-Way Heartbreak will be released at Worldwide Radio and I’ll talk more about the album in Part 2 of this blog post.

To be continued…

Click link below to listen to 3-Way Heartbreak Single:

https://promo.theorchard.com/UrJ1v4vyODctbpYAArzn

DownTown Blog – Better Day Part 4

Leave a reply

So I was ready to get my Stem Cell Transplant in March 2019 but there was a Mercury Retrograde going on and I was not going to have any communications or equipment break down at such an important moment in my life. So I asked to have the transplant moved to April and it proved to be a very good move because the 45 year old woman, who had been a perfect 10 out of 10 match to be my donor, failed her physical in March and was taken off the donor roll. It was time for Plan B.

Plan B was to go to my family because of a bloodline and find a donor. I’m an only child with no siblings, so the next circle would be my first cousins. The cutoff age to be a donor is 60 yrs. because at that age everybody starts to make cells which are unique only to them. Science doesn’t quite understand why this happens, but it happens. All my cousins are over 60 so now I needed to go to their kids. Luckily my oldest cousin’s son volunteered to be tested at Christmas and had been a match. Actually, he is what is known as a Half Match because my father and his grandmother (brother & sister) shared the same gene and so do we. It’s called a Half Match because the bloodline is on only 1 side of the family, but sometimes it’s favored over a stranger who is a 10 out of 10 match because of the bloodline.

The hero to my rescue was Marc Dral, my first cousin once removed, who had just turned 40. He was in from the start when I first asked him at Christmas and now I had to call him to let him know my 1st donor had failed her physical. To his credit, Marc never wavered in his help and support and for that I will always be eternally grateful. In fact, the whole experience of having to ask my relatives for their help was a very emotional experience. I had an outpouring of love and support from my wife’s family lining up to volunteer, including their friends. Unfortunately, like my wife, they’re complete strangers blood wise, but it was very gratifying to know they wanted to have my back.

Robert & Marc

Marc made his stem cell donation as planned in April and I received the transplant in May because I got sick in April a week before the scheduled day. I went into the hospital on May 2 and for 6 days they hit me with heavy doses of chemotherapy to kill off my immune system. Then on May 8th, I got my transplant and it’s considered to be your 2nd birthday because the nurses come in the room with a balloon and birthday greetings because I’ve been technically reborn with the immune system of a newborn baby. The idea of the transplant is for Marc’s cells to take over and form a new immune system in my body. I’m as defenseless as a baby and need to get all my vaccinations all over again. My blood type is now the same as Marc’s.

I would spend 26 days in the hospital. I had my own private room on the transplant floor at HUMC and the best of care from the doctors and nurses there. Just days before I went in I received my copy of TunedLoud Magazine with my photo on the cover. It came as a total surprise because the editor had to cancel the original cover because the artist wasn’t ready to release his project, which left an opening for the cover. The editor thought I was deserving of being on the cover and put me on and made me the centerfold story with other great photos that Mark Maryanovich had shot. Every time a nurse of doctor would visit I would pull out the magazine to show them and tell them that “I bet you didn’t know you were treating a celebrity”. LOL

I also brought the Rock’n’Roll Romantic cd to give out to anyone who might be interested in listening. Music would become a big part of my rehab there, particularly with 2 people. I gave the cd to an aide named Mark who looked after me. One day he came back to tell me he had listened to the cd and how impressed he was with my music. He went the extra step by playing me on Spotify over the speaker system on the ward. Every time I would go out of the room to walk around the ward (23 laps=1 mile), Mark would have my music playing in the halls. It was very uplifting for me to hear my music being played as I did my laps. THANK YOU Mark!! 😎

The other important person who came into my life there was Ike Lester. Ike did the caricature of me that’s on the inside panel of the Better Day cd. He used to do political caricatures for the Village Voice in NYC and was now volunteering his time doing them for the patients at the hospital. Ike is a soul man all the way and our talks about music and life were inspiring for me. I wasn’t very impressed with the 1st drawing he did of me until I realized that I really did look that bad. It wasn’t Ike’s fault. He might have made it a bit better. Then one day I showed him my magazine cover and he flipped over the photos, immediately picking one he wanted to draw. A couple of weeks later he knocked on my door and brought in the finished copy. It was GREAT!! I told him I would put it on the new cd I was planning and was able to give it to him after I was over my 100 days of quarantine after leaving the hospital. THANK YOU Ike!! 😎

I’m always surprised that people want to hear about what I went through during my stay and I understand why. Modern medicine is really doing amazing and unbelievable things but I will leave it here, except to say that I have 100% of Marc’s blood in me. The latest bone marrow test showed that there is no cancer or any blasts and I continue to regain my strength. Besides Marc and the great staff at HUMC, I owe my recovery to the love of my life—my wife Barbara, who is also my caregiver. I know it’s because of her undying love and care that I’m still around to tell my story. I’m a very fortunate and lucky man. 🙂

DownTown Blog – Better Day Part 3

Leave a reply

Going through this experience made me take a closer look at my life and reflect on many experiences. I took stock of where I’d been and where I was going despite trying to stay centered in the present moment. As I said at the end of Part 2 of this blog, I was going to have a Better Day in more ways than one and when I started the Drug Trial and chemotherapy, I began to focus on how to promote the new music I just recorded. I needed to keep my mind on my music and keep myself positive and moving forward, while I was spending 6-8 hours a day for a week each month sitting in the Infusion Center. I had music business to deal with.

In 2018 I signed a new Digital Distribution deal with AWAL/Kobalt Music and released a couple of singles off of Rock’n’Roll Romantic in the second half of the year. I promoted them to Worldwide Radio via the iPluggers online Radio platform and scored some good success. The plan for 2019 would be to release 3 new singles before putting out the Better Day album by the end of the year. I had new music but couldn’t decide which track to release first.

The decision would be made for me when iPluggers ran a special promotion for Valentine’s Day looking for love songs. With Love Light ready to go, it was a no-brainer for me. But instead of just releasing 1 track, I decided to add a B-side with the Americana tinged Tomorrow’s Clown. This is without a doubt the most unusual and unique track in the DownTown Mystic catalog and I wanted to give it some extra exposure before the album release. This song would also bring back an epic memory about how I came to write it because it involves meeting the legendary songwriter John Prine.

Trilogy

Way back on December 16, 1972, a month from turning 21, my band Trilogy would play a sold-out show opening for John Prine who was headlining with his self-titled debut album on Atlantic. A buzz was building in music circles about his unique songwriting skills. A week before Christmas, a capacity crowd of over 2000 people filled the gym of my alma mater Rowan University in historic Glassboro, NJ to watch an amazing all-acoustic show. We were the big band on campus so this was a really huge deal for us and as you might imagine, this was the largest audience we ever played for. We were out of our skins!! LOL Looking back we managed to play a strong set of our original songs and went over very well with the audience. However, John Prine was somewhat of a surprise headliner that night when compared to the other artists on the bill.

That bill included a young up-and-coming Bonnie Raitt, who was very popular in the Philadelphia area, which was only a half-hour away. She was touring behind her new critically acclaimed 2nd album Give It Up on Warner Bros. and getting a lot of radio play. But the guy from South Philly who really should have been the headliner instead of being the Special Guest, was the guy whose career was taking off like a rocketship with his 2nd breaking hit single Bad, Bad Leroy Brown—the late great, Jim Croce. He was the main reason the gym was filled to capacity and that WYSP in Philly was simulcasting the show on the radio. Also, his sideman, guitarist Maury Muehleisen, who left school at Rowan to sign and make a solo album for Capitol was returning home to Glassboro! It was heartbreaking to hear the news that both men had been tragically killed in a horrible plane crash only 9 months after this show.

Jim Croce & Maury Muehleisen- (Photo by: Fred Sabine/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images)

Jim Croce was a really cool, humble, open kind of guy. You would not know he was on the verge of a meteoric rise to stardom, and he graciously gave me a great tip that night. He went on after us and did a killer set that brought the gym to its feet. I saw him backstage afterward and asked him how he could play his acoustic guitar without being miked up like we were. He showed me a brand new tiny acoustic pickup called a Barcus Berry that he taped to the bridge of his guitar. You couldn’t even see it from the stage and I was right up front watching. The next time I went home I made a trip to W.48th Street in NYC to visit the mecca of music stores—Manny’s Music and bought 3 brand new Barcus Berry pickups for the band. It changed everything. Thank you Jim Croce!! But I digress…

Bonnie & John

Bonnie Raitt would actually close the show because her flight from Syracuse had been delayed by a snowstorm. So John Prine followed Jim Croce as Bonnie was being driven from the airport to the show. As he was walking up the back of the stage, the backdoor to the gym suddenly opened and in walked Bonnie with her bass player Freebo. She ran over and grabbed John around the neck in a hug that nearly pulled him back off the stage. Luckily he was able to maintain his balance and avoid a nasty fall. He then went up to the mike and with a sly smile muttered something like “I knew a little snow wouldn’t stop Bonnie”, much to the delight of the crowd at hearing Prine’s inside joke. But I digress…again…

On this night John Prine was 25 and just starting out on his musical career. He had recorded his major-label debut album and in 1972 he earned a Grammy Nomination for Best New Artist. Nearly 50 years later he shed his cult status and was honored with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. That debut album, John Prine, is now considered a classic, filled with little masterpieces that got the buzz growing on the mailman turned songwriter from Chicago. Backstage there was definitely something about him that was different from other people. You could see it in his eyes and I was intrigued by him. It made me want to see him play. We chatted a bit as he sat a bit bemused by his headline status, quietly drinking beer to take the edge off his nerves before the show. I probably spent more time talking to his manager Al Bunetta because the 2nd artist that Al was managing, Steve Goodman, was having a breakout hit with his now-classic song City of New Orleans.

John Prine (Photo by Tom Hill/WireImage)

It’s funny thinking back to that night and just how much I absorbed from watching John Prine’s performance. I was like a sponge back then and I was paying very close attention to him and how he started every song with a certain style of fingerpicking that always had this little rhythm to it. It certainly rubbed off on me because it wasn’t long after that show that I came up with the fingerpicking for the music that would become Tomorrow’s Clown. The other thing about John Prine was his way with words and how he just seemed to have a knack for writing about life. He could take something small and natural and make it sound offbeat and still get to you.

Robert/Trilogy

I know he got into my head that night because not only did he influence my fingerpicking, but he also got my attention with his lyrics. Tomorrow’s Clown is a love song about a serial killer (pure Prine). The inspiration for the song came from watching an episode of Kojak, a popular TV series at the time, but the lyrics are definitely due to John Prine. I say this because I’ve never written anything like it before or since and I can only conclude that there’s just no way I could have written the song if I hadn’t seen and met him that night.

Ben & Robert

Tomorrow’s Clown is one of the oldest songs that I’ve written and recorded and like a John Prine song, there’s something particularly poignant about the song itself, as well as the recording of it. 2 of the people involved have recently passed away. My engineer of 20 years, Ben Elliott, who recorded everything DownTown Mystic ever recorded, just passed away a couple of weeks ago as I write this. Ironically, the only time I’ve ever used his voice on a recording is at the start of Tomorrow’s Clown, when he hits the record button on the Studer tape machine and says ”we’re rolling”. It’s something he said to me hundreds of times in my headphones over the years and I have it for posterity now.

Tommy & Robert

The other person who’s no longer with us is the drummer on the track, Tommy Mastro. Tomorrow’s Clown is the last track we ever recorded together. Once again, it turned out to be a totally unique experience. We had started that last session around 1 pm and it was now 1 am. Tommy was set up in the studio and I was set up in front of the mixing console with my acoustic guitar miked in front of the floor to ceiling studio glass so that we could see each other. It was the only time that I ever did this working at Showplace Studios with Ben. The basic track was cut live as you hear it. Ben says “we’re rolling”, I start the count and then start fingerpicking my acoustic in the control room looking at Tommy playing in the studio, just the 3 of us. I’m forever grateful to have it on tape. As I said earlier, Tomorrow’s Clown is the most unique song I ever wrote or recorded and I’m lucky enough to owe it all to one man. Thank you John Prine!! 🙂

To be continued…

DownTown Blog – Better Day Part 2

Leave a reply

As you will see, the making of the Better Day album would become an adventure. 2 weeks before going in the studio to start recording, I had done a photoshoot in NYC with LA photographer Mark Maryanovich, which I considered to be part of the project. I had never released any DownTown Mystic recording with my face on the cover and I intended that to change with Better Day.

The following week after the photoshoot, Mark got back to LA and sent me the photos. I hate to take photos of myself but Mark had done an incredible job. Even I was really impressed. There were so many great shots to choose from. Mark had given me everything I needed to get the project rolling. With my head filled with good vibes, I entered the studio ready to rock!

courtesy of @markmaryanovich

The tracking sessions took place at Showplace Studios with my engineer of 20 years Ben Elliott and then recording moved to Sound Spa here in NJ, helmed by Stephen DeAcutis, also known as Stevie D. I had worked with Steve before and knew he was also a great guitar player. Given that DownTown Mystic is primarily all guitars, I figured Steve would be the best man to work with on the new songs. Steve was still in the process of finishing his own album Torn From The Pages with Cory Glover, of Living Colour fame, on vocals. So I was in very good hands.

Steve Holley, Robert & Paul Page

The sessions were a blast. Steve Holley and Paul Page provided the backing as the rhythm section (which they also do for Ian Hunter’s Rant Band) and the end result was some of the best music I had ever recorded, including some of my best guitar solos. From the Tom Petty inspired 12-string solo on Better Day to the ripping guitar on Modern Ways. One of the more memorable moments came one night when I was trying to flesh out the solo on The Wish. I had asked Lance Doss to put down a guitar part for me just before he was to pack up and go home. He laid down a part in one pass. Some of it worked and some of it needed some improvement. So for about 30 minutes I toiled trying to piece something together with what Lance had played and it wasn’t working.

Lance & Robert

Now sitting next to me punching in my takes is Steve. I’m looking at him and thinking, “what am I doing here”? I handed him my Les Paul and asked him to have a try and just play whatever he wanted. I think he had the solo finished and recorded within 10 minutes and it was perfect! These are the moments, as a producer, that I live for. It was truly magical! Lance and I never stood a chance. So my intuition to work with Steve had already paid a big dividend.

At The Spa

We finished the sessions in early October and it would be another month before I could get more studio time. 2 weeks later I went for my annual physical with my primary doctor, Dr. Edward Gold. When the doctor called a few days later with the results, I was not really surprised by what he said. For the past 2 years Dr. Gold had been trying to find out the cause of my hemoglobin dropping. His diagnosis had been Chronic Anemia, which I was never really satisfied with. Now he told me my hemoglobin had dropped from 9.2 to 7.2 in the last 6 months (normal hemoglobin range is 14-18). He said we needed to do another bone marrow test to see what was going on.

I went for the bone marrow test and got the results from Dr. Gold on Halloween before I left for the studio to continue recording. The doctor said I had what they used to call “pre-leukemia”, now called MDS (Myelodysplastic Syndrome). Actually, in an odd way, I took this as kind of good news because there was finally an explanation for what I was going through in the last 2 years. The doctor wanted me to see a specialist, Dr. James McCloskey at HUMC. I called and made an appointment and then headed out the door for Sound Spa. I was not going to let anything deter me from finishing the album, especially now. Who knew what was ahead of me? The main thing was to stay in the moment and make music.

Steve & Rob

I remember walking into the studio and talking to Stephen. We would usually chat before a session about what was going on since we had seen each other last and I told him my news. I could see the concern on his face and I told him I would be ok. In previous conversations I had with Steve, I told him about my sessions with Dr. Peebles and Natalie Gianelli, who channels the good doctor (this would make for another post). The main teachings of Dr. Peebles are to take responsibility for your life and to connect with your heart, which will connect you to your Higher Self and who you really are. The mind (ego) will always try to get involved and micro-manage everything, which makes it hard for us to get out of our own way. Dr. Peebles told me that everything in my life was always working for me and never against me. So I was now applying that to the MDS and looking at how it was going to benefit me. Little did I know how much this new mindset would help me in the days to come.

courtesy of @markmaryanovich

With the discussion over, I changed my focus back to the music and spent the next week recording and mixing. Song titles like Better Day, The Wish, One More Chance, Love Light, One Step Closer, Read The Signs and Lost & Found took on very different meanings then they had just a few days before and the irony wasn’t lost on me. The positive vibes that started with the photoshoot had continued with the recording sessions and helped me to keep my attention in the present moment. What was about to occur was not something I was giving a lot of thought to and this will be the 1st time I’ve ever talked about it at any length, so please keep that in mind.

courtesy of @markmaryanovich

I continued recording and mixing the Better Day album in the first week of November 2018. The following week I met with Dr. James McCloskey, the head of the Leukemia Dept. at the John Theurer Cancer Center at Hackensack University Medical Center here in NJ. Dr. McCloskey had looked at my bone marrow test and told me that the test revealed I was making these irregular cells called “blasts” at 12% of my cells. He said that at 20% it’s considered to be Leukemia. At 12% I was in the high range and needed to be treated as soon as possible, because unchecked, the blasts would become Leukemia cells. He said that I was a good candidate for a new drug trial he was doing that was in its 3rd and final stage before getting approval by the FDA. It was a chemotherapy drug in pill form that took the place of the intravenous drug and with fewer side effects.

But the real news of my meeting was that there was a CURE for MDS, usually a bone marrow or stem cell transplant. I then met with the Transplant Team headed by Dr. Scott Rowley. The plan was for me to enter the drug trial, get as healthy as possible and then get a transplant. I started the chemo treatment in December for a full week and every month after until March, when I met with Dr. Rowley and was told that I was ready for the transplant. My hemoglobin was up to 13.2 and the blasts had been reduced down to 2%. I was feeling so good I asked them to put off the transplant until April. It seemed I was going to have a Better Day. 😎

To be continued…

DownTown Blog – Better Day Part 1

Leave a reply

In the last blog post, I wrote about how the album still lives and the new Better Day album I’ve just released will be a case in point. I decided back in late summer 2018 that I would create an album of all positive songs and call it Better Day. This was a year before I would hold the actual album in my hands. Now I was gearing up to go into the studio in early Fall 2018 to start recording the material that would become Better Day.

I had started the year by deciding to finish writing 2 songs that were “sitting in the can” as it were, meaning I had recorded the basic tracks for them during previous projects and never finished them. One had been “sitting in the can” for 9 years and the other one for 6 years! It was finally time to get down to finishing each one and then recording them later in the year.

courtesy of @markmaryanovich

The 1st song that I finished writing from 2009 was called The Wish and the other one from 2012 was called Love Light. I had put the rough mixes from the studio sessions on my 8-Tk digital recorder so that I could record vocals and guitar parts and get a demo for each song. Soon I added demos of 2 other songs, Better Day and Modern Ways. I was so happy with the results that I booked time for the end of September to record them.

It had been 7 years since my last photoshoot and I knew this was the time for new photos. I was supposed to have a photoshoot in August with LA photographer Mark Maryanovich but it had been canceled due to a week of constant rain. Mark called me a couple of weeks later and said he would be in NYC the 2nd week of September and we should book a session. This turned out to be a stroke of luck as the weather was now 20 degrees cooler than back in August and with the studio already booked for the end of the month, this would allow me to get in the proper frame of mind as an artist.

courtesy of @markmaryanovich

Mark had asked me to scout out some locations for the shoot. He said he was looking for a kind of gritty street vibe, or something like that. I had recently seen a video that Bruce Engler had done using the Brooklyn Bridge. There was a shot at the end of the video that had the bridge in the background and I sent it to Mark to see what he thought of the location. Mark loved it and said it was perfect for what he wanted to do with me.

courtesy of @markmaryanovich

Bruce said there was a warehouse area on the Brooklyn side under the bridge. This seemed like the logical place to start with Mark. So a week later I got up with my wife Barbara at 3am on a Saturday morning to meet Mark and his wife Carolyne down at the Circle Line on the West Side Highway in Manhattan so we could get over the Brooklyn Bridge at 5am because Mark wanted to shoot with his light setup. The area under the Brooklyn Bridge would turn out to be a better location than expected for a photoshoot.

Courtesy of Barbara Szala

Not only was there a warehouse that was lit up at night, but once you walked around a small bird sanctuary with trees and bushes blocking the view, there was a small park and Jane’s Carousel, glass-enclosed and all lit up with the East River rolling by. We worked for over 2 hours as the dawn broke in a light misty rain. We left about 7:15am back over the bridge to our 2nd location in lower Manhattan.

Courtesy of Barbara Szala

I had picked the Wall St. area because I knew it had some of the oldest bars & cafes in the city. There was one area where 2 streets crossed by Del Monicos but it was Saturday and that’s trash day. The streets were filled with black trash bags piled all over the place. We needed to find another location. As luck would have it, we had passed a cobblestone street, appropriately called Stone Street, as we made our way up to the 1st location. With all the streets being 1-ways, we circled back around to find Stone Street.

Courtesy of Barbara Szala

I pulled in front of the oldest café in NYC on the corner of Stone Street so Mark and his wife Carolyne could get out and scout the location. About 10 minutes later Mark came running back and motioned me to get out and follow him. I walked down the cobblestones to the middle of the block where Mark was standing in front of a private residence that was undergoing renovation with scaffolding all around it. In front of the residence’s entry was a small thru street that was now blocked off to traffic, making it a private driveway.

Courtesy of Barbara Szala

I quickly ran back to my car and backed it down the street and into the private driveway, hidden from view. Mark set up his equipment and for the next 90 minutes, we had our own little set and a complete run of the street. The rain stopped as Mark started shooting me on a street unlike anywhere in NYC. You would have thought we were in Vienna or some other old city in Europe. It really was unbelievable and thanks to the clouds, there were no shadows that would have been created had the sun been out. Mark and I couldn’t have asked for a better day or 2 better locations.

courtesy of @markmaryanovich

As we wrapped up the shoot I went into the bakery across from the driveway, which had just opened, to buy everyone lattes. Then we packed up and headed back to mid-town Manhattan to drop off Mark and Carolyne at their hotel, having completed a somewhat magical morning in NYC. Mark and I had been talking about doing a photoshoot together for over a year and now it had finally come to pass. There was no way back then that we could have planned such a day. With the photoshoot behind me, I was now in the right frame of mind to head into the studio. 😎

To be continued…

DownTown Blog – The Album Lives

Leave a reply

I know that the word on the street is that the album is dead but I think it’s premature, or at the very least, debatable. I think one of the problems with the album, as we know it, is that it was a product of the vinyl record. But with the passing of vinyl and the CD becoming the main medium for recorded music, artists lost the focus of what an album was or could be.

Recently, Sheryl Crow released her new album Threads and announced it would be her last album. Her reasoning was that since streaming had now become the main way that people listen to music, it was individual tracks that were important and not a full album of tracks. She said she would still record music but just release individual tracks when she felt like it. I can’t say that she’s wrong because what she says makes sense. But I still think the album has a place if done in the right way.

I think that Threads is a really good album but I also think that Sheryl lost her focus with it, and here is where the cd vs the vinyl record debate comes in. When the CD became the main medium for releasing music, we went from being able to fit 35-40 minutes of music on 2 sides of a vinyl record to being able to put 80 minutes of music on a cd. Also, the price of a cd doubled the price of a vinyl record, and artists felt that they needed to give more music for the money. So it wasn’t unusual to buy cds with over an hour’s worth of music and 15-20 songs.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is threads-cover.jpg

I don’t care how talented you are, you’re not going to write 15-20 great songs, record them and put them all on one album. As an artist you’ll hold some back, which means some of those 15 songs will be ok to fill time and that’s why interest in albums began to fade. I know that I don’t really want to listen to more than 6 songs at a time, let alone 14-16 on a cd. Sheryl Crow’s Threads would have been a great album if she had decided to release 10-12 songs instead of the 17 that she put on it. There’s no way to focus on 17 songs in one sitting.

I stated earlier that the album was a product of the vinyl record because the medium supported the concept of an album. You had 2 sides of music to listen to, so you could only listen to 4-6 songs at a time, depending on the amount of time the songs took up. When one side of the record stops, the listener has to physically get up and put the other side on to play. Think about that, compared to listening to cds or MP3s on an iPod or streaming on Spotify, Pandora, etc.

When you look at what are considered to be classic albums, generally you get 10-12 songs on them. That’s because of the limitation of time allowed per side of the vinyl. Back in the day, the 1st and last song on each side were important, particularly the last song on Side 2. Some of those last songs on Side 2 are classics from the bands that recorded them. Take A Day In The Life from The Beatles Sgt. Peppers or We Won’t Get Fooled Again from The Who’s Who’s Next LP. These songs became classics because of what came before them on the album.

I’m not saying that these songs don’t stand on their own, but if they were released today as individual tracks for streaming, I don’t think they would have the same impact. That’s why the album is so important to the artist. That’s also why vinyl is important. An artist can release 5 or 6  unrelated songs on one side of an album and put 5 or 6 songs with a central theme on the other side to make a statement. It’s working within the limitation of the vinyl that gives an artist more freedom than stacking one song after another on a cd.

So is the album really dead? I don’t think so and I offer up the resurgence in vinyl records as proof. The comeback of vinyl will keep the album alive and kicking for years to come. It just goes to show that the “old school” way of doing things like analog recording to tape, vinyl records, etc. will never really go out of style, allowing a new generation of musicians and artists a chance to innovate and put their own brand on making records now and in the future.

DownTown Blog – One More Chance

Leave a reply

One More Chance Single Cover

It’s not every day that a song sneaks up on you and stays with you for years and years. That’s kind of the story for me with the song One More Chance. It was back in the early 80s that I would come up with the chord changes for the verse of the song. I had quit a band I had been with for over 10 years and I was intent on finding my own way as an artist and a songwriter. This was a change that was new to me.

I had just finished my 1st solo recording project and was now in the “after-birth”, as it were. I kind of connect it with postpartum depression. You give birth to something you’ve created and now you’re finished. There’s a kind of emptiness you feel because after being creative, all the work you’ve done is suddenly over. There was a beauty to it as you felt totally fulfilled, but now it’s come to an end and you’re not quite ready to start over on something new. As a matter of fact, you’re feeling a bit depressed and trying to start something new is the furthest thing from your mind.

Eventually, I forced myself to pick up my guitar and start doodling around, in hopes of finding a spark to catch my attention. I can’t remember when it happened but one of the things that I came up with was this chord progression that definitely caught my attention. It became like a meditation for me. I would play it over and over, this descending 4 chord progression. It was hypnotic to me as I played it every time I picked up a guitar, but I had no idea where to go with it. I just loved playing it over and over. After a while, I knew that I needed to find some other place to go to in the song.

CIMG6199

After awhile I came up with 2 more songs to work on. One of them was in the same key as my meditation song. If you read the blog post on The Wish, I would take a section of it to use as the chorus for my meditation song, which would become One More Chance. Now I had verse chords and chorus chords to play with. It would stay that way for a number of years as I never could seem to get beyond this point. I would try to put a melody to the parts but I was never really satisfied with it, which is probably why I put it aside.

With the dawn of the 90s I was in full swing with my publishing company Sha-La Music. I would be out and about in clubs or at music industry functions meeting people, who would give me their tapes. Songwriters would send me their songs in the mail. Generally, the tapes in the mail did not have anything of interest for me. That was, until one day a tape arrived that caught my ears in a big way. A songwriter from the area named Bruce Engler had sent me a tape and when I put it in the cassette player I was immediately struck by his voice and style. I liked his songs and felt like I had a connection with him.

Bruce Engler

Bruce Engler

The following week I gave Bruce a call to see what his story was and what he was looking to do. As it turned out he had been in a band that had won Star Search, a TV talent show in the 90s that was the forerunner of shows like American Idol and America’s Got Talent. He had left the band and wanted to try his hand at songwriting. I told him what I thought of his songs and that he should also consider being a solo artist. Bruce was a bit ambivalent about the artist thing, having just left a band. I could relate to that. 🙂

After a few more calls we finally met and began a working relationship. I felt that the songs that Bruce was writing were really good but the artists that they would be a fit for, were artists who wrote their own material. Again, I brought up to Bruce that he should seriously think about being an artist to showcase his songs. He had a great sounding voice and was an excellent guitar player. He just needed a bit of confidence in himself and more songs. At some point, as we got to know each other better, I decided to show Bruce the meditation song of mine.

Bruce & Robert

We set up a time to get together and he came over to my house. I played him what I had and we began to play around with the verse chords. I got inspired and started to come up with lyrics for the melody I had for the chorus. I hit on the title One More Chance and all of a sudden the song was taking shape. Bruce liked what we had created together. I told him to take it home and finish it. I had a melody for the verse but I thought it would be better if he came up with his own melody to write lyrics to. This would allow him to be free to go in whatever direction he wanted. It would prove to be the right move on my part.

The next time I saw Bruce, he played me the finished version of One More Chance. He was quite happy with it but said it took a lot of work, especially the lyrics. He also added a B section after the verse to connect to the chorus that worked really well. I was impressed with his melody and lyrics and how it all fit with the chorus we had written. After all the years of playing the chord pattern over and over to myself, my song was finally finished. It was kind of a surreal moment for me. To think that a random tape in the mail would connect me with the person who now sat in front of me playing me the finished version of what was now our song, One More Chance. 🙂