Welcome to the Secret Radio Tree House, my new blog

Every Saturday this blog will follow my music career, from studio to stage. I will also chronicle some goings-on in the television industry where I work and where I live here in Hollywood/Los Angeles as well as wherever I travel.

I may also go completely off-subject if I find something interesting or important enough.

Mostly, I want your company on this journey of mine while I step forth on this adventure.

Some Background

As a fresh start, and for those reading from the beginning here is some background: I grew up in Canandaigua, New York, an idyllic setting for an idyllic childhood. I had, and still have, awesome parents. I lived in the country across from a diary farm with lots of woods and gullies and fields to play in, all on a hill overlooking a beautiful lake.

Perhaps this is why I am generally a positive, glass-is-half-full person.

Optimist: The glass is half full
Pessimist: The glass is half empty
Engineer: The glass is twice as big as it needs to be

My wife (the-glass-is-half-empty-and-about-to-be stolen-anyway-by-evil-monkeys) sometimes calls me “Joeliana”

I had then, and still have, a so-called learning disability. This essentially means that my brain learns and thinks differently than other folks. In school I had a hard time learning and studying. This gave me some social and self-esteem issues too but who didn’t have those growing up?

My unique ‘scatter’ brain is both a difficult challenge and a tremendous asset. I mention the learning ‘disability’ not to illicit sympathy. Frankly, I would not trade being this way if I could. It is a character in this story that I will mention from time-to-time and thus requires an introduction.

I play bass. I play a bunch of other stuff too but my number one, desert island favorite is the bass guitar.

Admittedly, drums would be a good bit handier on a desert island. Signaling rescuers, no need to plug them in, the cymbals make handy sun hats, scaring away predators and above all: they are more likely to float a raft!

Bass is just so damn cool and I have always had a knack for it. I have developed, innovated, borrowed, altered and stolen a series of techniques for bass that make it, not only sound unique, but change its role in the band.

I also sing and write songs based, most often, on stories of Americana.

Singing did not come as easily as playing bass did. Though I sang and performed on stage as a kid, something happened when I was around 14 that created some sort of psychological block and it’s been a challenge to sing ever since. That struggle has caused me to work very hard at it and my voice has never sounded better. Still, after performing before thousands, I struggle with a fear of singing in front of people.

I was in a handful of some pretty cool bands throughout my twenties (late eighties/early nineties). We had dreams of making some really cool music and hitting it ‘big’.

The really cool music part: check. The hitting it big: not so check.

As the classic tale goes life intervened and we all gradually slipped into our jobs and mortgages.

We got married, we got ‘real’.

Frankly, I’m quite grateful that things didn’t go as they might have. Stardom, in-and-of itself, is an empty dream. Sounds like sour grapes, I know, but living where I do, I've seen it all too clearly. I would have easily been sucked into that vortex, that lifestyle and spit out after five years of record sales if I was lucky and wind up like the somewhat pathetic drug-addled old ‘rock stars’ that I see at the grocery store.

What? you've never seen "The Osbournes".

But still, my dream, not of ‘stardom’ but of recording my own music and making both a fair living and a difference at least to other musicians, persisted like an itch that wouldn’t go away. It seemed my band mates didn’t share my dream with quite the same commitment or fervor that I did. That's fine; they all have good lives and each keeps playing music on their own terms.

At the time however, I needed a new start and to cut the strings from the mental/emotional blocks that were telling me just to be sensible and live a normal life.

I sold the house, packed up what would fit into a 16 foot rental truck, and moved far enough away that I wouldn’t be tempted to turn tail and run home.

Los Angeles.

Eleven years later. I’ve done a lot of things: worked in film and television, written and recorded film scores, traveled the country in a tour bus, met the woman of my dreams and somehow tricked her into marrying me.

Here and there, I allowed myself to get distracted from my primary goal though: to make my own music and make half a dent in this hard town.

After I came off the road playing other people’s music, I felt like a fraud. I recommitted myself to produce an amazing album, perform it wherever I could and dare to think it will find a large enough audience to support a modest career and a respectful following of fellow bass players who will take my lead and forge their own 'new ground'.

Right now that album is about eighty percent complete. Even in its current state, it’s the best and most ambitious thing I have ever created. That last twenty percent is proving to be up-hill push. Financially and time-wise it's been tough going. Some of the pieces I am recording are technically daunting and performing them without 'cheating' is proving to be physically trying and a long-term challenge.

I am sometimes hampered psychologically too. I look back and see how I have subconsciously sabotaged my music career in the past. I can’t let that happen this time.

Hence this blog. It's not just to entertain with wit, and bawdy humor, it's to keep me present to my goals and to keep me accountable. To do that I will need a supportive and watchful eye:

Yours.

Next week's blog: The Mission, should I choose to wrestle it to the ground till it says "Uncle".