The First Days of Spring

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The first days of spring always remind me of a favorite poem. With “Loveliest of trees, the cherry now,” A. E. Housman picks up his pen and smacks it out of the park.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

I don’t read poetry anymore, but the poems I enjoyed most when I was younger remain with me. Among other things, I admire the simplicity of this one and the “riddle” feel I get when reading it. I marvel at the wisdom the poet has acquired in only 20 years of living, and I’m reminded again how wonderful it is to see another spring.

The Jerrys Drop New Single “Think for Myself”

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The Jerrys have released a new single, “Think for Myself,” their first new music since last year’s full-length Ready or Not. Fans of power pop will like this one, complete with big guitars, handclaps, and attitude.

I’m not a big fan of people thinking for me, so once I decided on a song title, writing the rest was easy. Each of us has our own life, and each of us gets to make our own decisions. While writing “Think for Myself,” I kept recalling Eric Burdon singing “It’s my mind and I’ll think what I want,” and I thought, yeah, that’s me. Don’t push me.

I’m happy to say that after a short absence, Robert Porche has rejoined me and Jim Losby on the new single. Both Robert (drums, backing vocals) and Jim (bass guitar) have appeared on numerous recordings of The Jerrys, and we’re working on more releases for 2023 and beyond.

Listen to “Think for Myself” below.

“Think for Myself” is out now.

Books I Read in 2022

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My reading this past year included the latest issues of Tape Op magazine, The Old Farmer’s Almanac 2022, and content received via Feedly (I still like RSS feeds). I also read or reread the following books in 2022:

  • Buddhist Suttas for Recitation: A Companion for Walking the Buddha’s Path (Bhante Gunaratana)
  • A Peterson Field Guide to Stars and Planets (Jay M. Pasachoff)
  • 7 Treasures of Awakening: The Benefits of Mindfulness (Joseph Goldstein)
  • The Kentucky Bourbon Trail (Berkeley and Jeanine Scott)
  • In the Buddha’s Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon (ed. by Bhikkhu Bodhi)
  • The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering (Bhikkhu Bodhi)
  • A Hard Day’s Write: The Stories Behind Every Beatles Song (Steve Turner)

I read dozens of books a year for decades, but now I’m lucky to read more than a handful–and not one work of fiction, even! But here we are.

Creating Goals for the New Year

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For most of my adult life, I’ve used the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas each year to create measurable goals for the coming year. These goals never included professional ones, as those goals only helped me achieve the success I needed to support my family. The goals I create for myself are infinitely more meaningful and focus on what I need to do next to achieve my bigger lifetime goals.

An honest assessment of the previous year’s goals versus achievements goes a long way when it comes to creating better goals for the next year (it’s important to create measurable goals so that it’s easy to determine whether the goals were reached). The whole process gets easier each year. Similarly, the experience gained over time helps when creating the strategies needed to meet those goals.

I find it helpful to divide my goals into several main categories, and those categories change according to need. For 2023, my main categories are musical, literary, and personal. While I’m still in the drafting stage, I already know what my priorities are for the new year, so I’m off to a good start. I won’t be pinning all my hopes on a future that’s not guaranteed, but I like having a roadmap. As George Harrison put it, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”

The Jerrys Release New Album, Ready or Not

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In February, The Jerrys released “Alicia” ahead of their upcoming album. That single, the band’s first new music in three years, was quickly followed by another, “Love Me Now and Leave Me Never,” a 007-inspired spy rocker. Today, The Jerrys are releasing Ready or Not, their first studio album since 2011’s Let’s Groove, as well as a third single from the album, “Lean on Me.”

I liked Ready or Not as an album title for a couple of reasons. For one, I’d barely started recording the album when I had to put my studio in storage between moves. My wife and I had sold our house but hadn’t found another yet, so we lived with my father-in-law for a few months. By the time we found a place of our own and settled in, I joked the album would have to be released “ready or not.” Also, I’d written a raga and a country song that I wanted to include on the album, so I was thinking “here they come, ready or not!”

Listen to “Lean on Me” below.

Ready or Not is out now.

The Jerrys – “Love Me Now and Leave Me Never” (LISTEN)

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Last month, The Jerrys released “Alicia,” the first single from their upcoming album Ready or Not, due out 5/4. Today, the band is putting out the album’s second single, “Love Me Now and Leave Me Never,” a Bond-inspired spy rocker.

I’ve always enjoyed watching spies on the screen, and I wanted to know what it would sound like if my band did a Bond movie theme. After creating a fictional movie title, everything fell into place, including using a sitar (I always loved that sitar in the Bond-like intro of the soundtrack version of The Beatles’ “Help!”). The lead guitar solo is a tribute to Johnny Rivers’ solo in “Secret Agent Man,” an old favorite of mine. I was encouraged throughout the writing process by listening to several really bad Bond movie theme songs.

Listen below.


Also, in case you missed it, a new lyric video for “Alicia” was released a few weeks ago, and you can check that out below as well.

Get ready. Or not. Ready or Not is out 5/4.

The Jerrys Share New Single, “Alicia”

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The Jerrys will release their new album, Ready or Not, on May 4 and they just shared the first single, “Alicia,” a power pop homage to the real-life Alicia.

As a teenager, I wrote a song about my girlfriend Alicia dancing to the record player. To fit the lyric, I used her first name, but no one knew her by that name and The Shadows of Knight and others had already made the name a hit anyway, so I ditched the idea. Decades later, I returned to writing a song about Alicia, even spelling out her name and singing about her dancing when the music’s streaming. For the record, though, she’s my wife this time around.

Listen to “Alicia” below.

Ready or Not is out 5/4.

Peterson Field Guides

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During my formative years, I cared more about sports, music, and reading than nature, but I enjoyed learning about things that interested me. When a kid down the street invited me and a few others to watch him feed a live toad to his pet snake, we accepted. I’ll spare you the details, but witnessing nature firsthand inspired me to check out a handbook on the subject.

Reptiles and Amphibians (Golden Press), a “guide to familiar American species,” presented more than 200 species with color illustrations, and I loved flipping through its pages. Better yet, the library had other Golden Guides in the series, including Mammals and Rocks and Minerals, and those books interested me even more. A few months later, however, my fleeting interest in natural science had all but disappeared.

Fast-forward a few decades. I’m at Lowe’s browsing through books on projects I hope I never have to do when I spot the sixth edition of Roger Tory Peterson’s Field Guide to Birds of Eastern and Central North America. I bought it, and as in my youth, I discovered the book was only one in a series of great books, so I ordered the latest edition of the Peterson Field Guide to Stars and Planets. I’ve started reading the latter from cover to cover, and it’s fascinating!

Peterson Field Guides are “Golden Guides for Adults” published to assist curious lay people in identifying natural phenomena, and I’m amazed at the number of guides available. Like most people, my pursuits leave little time to explore every shiny object that comes along, but those looking to take a break from time to time will find these books packed with fun facts about the world in which they live and the universe in which that world exists.

Vegetable Garden Experiment

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Back in the spring, my wife and I decided to try growing vegetables in our backyard for fun. With the exception of flowers and a few herbs that Alicia had grown in a window planter, we had zero experience growing anything, but we were curious to see what would happen. After watching a few videos, we bought some rolled-up fencing with anchors, a few 5-foot T-posts, and 5- and 15-gallon grow bags (I’d never heard of any of these things), as well as seeds and starter plants. Our vegetable garden experiment had begun.

After setting everything up, we adventured to grow Yukon Gold potatoes, tomatoes, Sweet Spanish onions, kale, broccoli, lettuce, and green peppers. Some of the seeds had be be started indoors under a grow light bulb and then moved outside, but eventually everything was up and growing. A few weeks later, one of our trees began to fill out, covering half of our garden with unwanted shade for several hours each day. Fortunately, the use of grow bags kept us from having to transplant everything, and I’d found T-posts easy to work with, so moving the garden to accommodate the sun was easy.

It’s nearly August now, and we’ve learned a lot from our backyard vegetable garden experiment already. The food tastes great, and we enjoy being able to step out back to grab fresh salads whenever we want. While the experiment was successful and fun, the summer temps combined with high humidity make it too early to decide whether we want to do it again next year. Maybe we’ll watch some videos on drip irrigation over the winter.

Update on The Jerrys’ New Album

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A few weeks into spring, The Jerrys‘ new album is coming along nicely. Writing, playing, and producing a full-length album takes hundreds of hours, but I enjoy the work and the challenges that confront me along the way. I ditched my career to do what I love, and I’m doing what I love more than ever. If one were to say I’m living the dream, I couldn’t disagree.

At least a few tracks have been recorded for each of seven new songs (more songs are planned), and I’ve written titles and lyrics for six of those. Among the new tunes are a James Bond theme song (“Love Me Now and Leave Me Never”), a song about my better half (“Alicia”), and a song about a guy, his girl, and his guitar (“Just Us Three”). The first two are rockers (as is “Lean on Me,” another new track), while the latter recalls the style of The Everly Brothers.

I’ll provide another update on the (as-yet-untitled) Jerrys album in the summer, as well as news on the single that will be released in advance of the album. Until then, there’s a lot more studio work to do. One thing is certain: If anyone has half as much fun listening to the finished album as I’m having making it, it will be The Jerrys’ best effort yet.