Music Music Music

I am going to gush a lot in this next blog, there is just no way around it.  I have some really amazing people in my life right now and my life has taken on this magical force that I am going to find difficult to describe… It’s like everything that I have needed has been offered to me before I even had to ask for it.

I  decided that I before I left Seattle I needed to have the following: 1. A face book page  2. A few recordings 3.  Business cards 4. Professional Photos for promotion

COLLABORATION

1.CARDS:  I actually stayed with my friend Kassie when I first arrived in Seattle, and she got me my job at the Crab pot, I wanted to write a blog called Kassie in Wonderland about Kassie and her little dog Alice, about our Seattle nights full of dancing, and the time we got stoned from pot brownies and laughed until we cried at the Double Rainbow youtube video, but she doesn’t have wireless and my blog ended up on hold.  So I will just tell you a little about Kassie here.

Kassie loves music as much as I do, but she doesn’t play music, she paints it.  She paints brightly colored portraits of the local Seattle musicians, and when she isn’t painting music, she is dancing.  She goes out at least three times a week to dance.  When I stayed the night with her we would come home after dancing to a live local band, blast music on her mega speakers (she doesn’t have any neighbors…or if she does they probably want to kill us) and hop around/dance like crazy white girls until 4 or five in the morning.  I will tell you right now that nothing shakes off your blues like dancing until 4 in the morning.  Aside from giving me lodgings, cheering me up, and getting me a job, she has made my business cards and is helping me set up my website!

2. TRACKS: Randy has offered to record and mix some of my tracks (which is a serious gift because recording takes hours, and mixing can take days!).   Aside from being an awesome friend, and a really awesome man, Randy is…odd.  This is probably the only thing that he would feel I need tell you about him.  (I believe his website is actually oddology.net)  But I will also tell you that if Randy were a super hero, his day time persona would have glasses, and wear a mock turtle neck and jeans, which he actually makes himself (not because he is into fashion or sews any other kinds of clothes but because…he is Randy and for some reason, Randy sews his own jeans).  His nighttime, super villain alter ego would be a leather clad, guitar shredding, headbanging…zombie, with a shaved head.

I was in metal band with Randy called Ara’Kus, (Ara’Kus as in their logo is a giant spider), and he is also in a Zombie themed punk band.  We recorded at the Ara’Kus studio for twelve hours straight one day and forgot to eat.  As we were leaving the studio Randy reached over, ran his fingers through my hair, and pulled out a spider that had been crawling down the side of my head.  Surprisingly I did not scream.  Maybe I was just delirious from hunger, or maybe I just figured that If you record all day at the Ara’Kus studio and someone pulls a big spider out of your hair, it’s probably a good sign.

3. FACEBOOK: My musical project pretty much started with my good friend Amy, a drop dead gorgeous and no nonsense business woman who General manages/controls all of the pr for a busy Seattle restaurant.  She has been encouraging me to make some of my own music for a while and when I told her that I was finally going to start she asked to be my manager.  She has set up a facebook page and an email account and has been comfortably talking me up while I uncomfortably shrug my shoulders, and use my scarf to hide my face.  A trait which just makes Amy look at me, smile, and say “deal with it.”

Lately Amy and I have been having fun playing the when you are famous…game  I have a hard time imagining myself as famous (in fact the thought of it kind of seems ridiculous and a little uncomfortable) but I do admit that it is really fun to say.  You can say pretty much anything if you start the sentence with when I’m famous… For example “When I’m famous I’ll buy all of my dresses from Alexander Mcqueen “…or “When I’m famous I’ll ride a circus elephant to work every morning,” Or “When I’m famous I’ll throw diva tantrums about sandwiches made of round bologna on square bread and only buy amps that go ELEVEN.”

4. PHOTOS:  Amy set up a meeting for us with her good friend Thomas Wolfe Northcut to talk about getting some promotional photos taken.  I burst through the door of Top Pot doughnuts 5 minutes late for our meeting, Thomas rolled in about 8 minutes late, and Amy, the responsible business woman, was five minutes early.  Thomas is an amazing photographer, this photo to the left is a picture that Thomas took of Amy (I told you she was gorgeous), but this isn’t the first thing that I thought of when when Thomas strolled in.  My first thought was about how much I liked his stylish gray leather jacket, my second thought was how much I appreciated his boyish Justin Timberlake good looks.  I think that my third fourth and fifth thoughts were about how nervous I was to do my first professional photo shoot!   But Thomas is charming and charismatic in that cute, Justin Timberlake, photographer kind of way, and I soon forgot to worry about anything.  Thomas liked my project and he loves his good friend Amy, so he is going to shoot all of my photos for free.  ❤

As our meeting came to an end Amy pulled out her computer, and and played some of my tracks, out loud, on her speakers, for cute Thomas Timberlake, in the middle of a crowded coffee shop, and I slide down in my chair, trying to casually hide myself behind my coffee cup.  Amy said “deal with it” and I peered over the ceramic rim, which really wasn’t doing much to hide my face, and thought to myself, wow, it is really surreal and amazing to have friends who believe in you this much.