Back To Art-From The Beginning-How To Get Good

So I felt the urge to get creative with drawing and painting again, thinking I would jump back in where I left it when I was studying art at Alma College and The University Of Michigan. Cakewalk, right? 

No.

Tonight I learned that I am but a child wanting to run but still figuring out how to crawl, let alone walk. I bought the paper, pencils, brushes, paints-everything I would need, but you can’t buy skill. That, I’m afraid, has to be hard earned by trial and error and a great deal of practice. 

I left the art world for music, which was a good decision many years ago. Still, that little failed purpose of becoming a skilled artist who could draw and paint has nagged me for years. For that reason, I decided to return. I’m not quitting music. In just wanted to learn new things and pick up where I gave up. 

After a few days of messing with watercolor and gauche, I realized I was spinning my wheels and not really getting anywhere. I’d never show what I came up with to anyone. It was terrible. Kindergarten. No, worse. My niece made much cooler art in kindergarten than my feeble attempts. 

Give up? Not so fast! I learned a long time ago from watching my old friend Karl Dickinson, that   there is a gradient to creating anything. He was building a pedal steel and making these wooden boxes with dovetails and such. Everything has steps that need to be followed. In music, for example, you don’t start off playing songs and wailing great solos. You learn scales, chords, timings, keys and patterns. You practice these things and gain proficiency. 

It is the same with art. One starts with simple exercises-shading, creating line and shape, learning color, form and composition. You have to learn to draw and how to use your mediums. All this takes practice and repetition. It is all one step at a time, whether it is playing an instrument, writing songs, learning to draw, painting, sculpture, watercolor, cooking, writing novels or short stories-you name it. One skill builds on another. 

Yes, some are blessed with extra ability, but most mortals who become good at anything do so by long hours of practice and dedication to the craft-following then logical steps. Then, there is also the element of passion and a never say die attitude. All the greats started out knowing nothing. Study, sweat equity, practice, determination and a never say die approach can take us far. 

Tonight, I am taking my own advice. I want to paint watercolors and do illustration. I am a long way from declaring that I can, but I also know that there is a road to what I want and I have to follow it. Michelangelo, Tiger Woods, Eric Johnson, Paul McCartney, Rodney Dangerfield, John Irving and a thousand others took that road. I’m going to follow it too. 

The Last Years Of Herman….And Mine

The Last Years Of Herman….And Mine

Herman was my grandfather. He began his independence as a farmer in Iowa and Missouri, then moved to California, where he became a cabinetmaker in the booming real estate market. He build his own house in 1951. He was a masterpiece of cabinetry, tile and rock solid workmanship. In over 50 years, despite upheavals, time and earthquakes, the 4 car garage floor did not have one crack in it. Perfect. Like people had when they actually cared about their work. 

When he finally retired, he occupied himself with woodworking. He turned amazing wooden lamps, made chessboards, multi-piece tables and lamps, and, finally-three entire grandfather clocks from scratch. By the time he had finished his third clock, he had emphysema so bad that he had to enlist my grandma to help him finish the last one-which they did together. 

Obviously, this is about legacy and purpose, pride and soul. I suppose we all get to the age where we start to look back and measure the years and the output of our lives. Why? Because it helps to make sense out the chaos that can be life. Sometimes, yes, it is just about the pride knowing you did something great. Maybe it has to do with purpose-of sticking to high standards and keeping the bar high. Kind of like passing tests in a way. “Yes, I worked and slaved but I got two kids through college and I built this house myself. I could retire and take care of myself and my wife. I succeeded.” 

Then there is thing of leaving behind proof that our lives were fruitful and important in some way. Herman-my grandfather-left those three clocks which are still beautiful and working. Old school craftsmanship. And, yes-carefully looking at these marvels reflects a part of Herman’s soul and spirit. Messages to the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren-(I was here. I mattered).  And each is in some line of generational history. You start as a kid, then you become husband or wife, then a parent, then a grandparent-and then maybe you get to be a great grandparent if you are really lucky. 

At some point, it is your legacy and story that matters. You want proof that you were here, that you actually existed and that your life mattered in the fabric that is life. You already know you are on the slow road out-its just a matter of when and how long. The idea of a total vacuum is reprehensible and impossible because you know, deep down, that you are a spirit that will go somewhere else in the next life. But, right now, all that matters is to make some monument to this life so that you can be remembered for what you were. 

So, it was the clocks that made me know this truth. I’ve got some years left but I do not know when my number will come up. So I have begun to look back on what I did. I‘ve started thinking about what songs and music I want to finish up. I want to record all the good ones into the archive. Maybe it will be ignored because people cant play tapes of CD’s anymore and the internet got too expensive to stream music, lol. 

Ah, but I could buy a dozen portable CD players and some headphones and burn them the whole catalog! Some night 40 years on, an aging grandfather will pull out the CD player and ask, “I wonder what all this old music of great-great grandfather Carmichael sounded like?” And the CD will come on and it will show them that I once was. 

The only thing that is constant is change. Haven’t we all lived through so many? Baby, youth, teen, young adult, middle age, semi-old age and then the old folks home. Change is the only thing that never changes. Count on it. And so we must somehow find a way to pass the best parts of our spirits on-to inspire and support the coming generations. I see it as a pay it forward thing. Maybe a shred of my wisdom will make a difference to somebody in the future. I think it is what all musicians, songwriters, film makers, novelists, painters, sculptors, actors, playwrights, etc-all want. If we can’t be immortal, at least let a piece of my art outlast me and be some sort of message. 

It has taken a long time, but now I think I really know what went on in Herman’s psyche in his final years. I suppose I see it as a natural part of the passage in life that only happens when the twilight begins to fall. 

Dylan wrote:

Our days are numbered

Your’s and mine   (Mississippi)

I guess I just want to shout out with music, what an incredible and wonderful ride it has been so far! (And I hope I get another 25!)

Why Not?

Why Not?

I last spoke about pursuing dreams of drawing and design. I have had some progress in the area, but I feel kind of like I did when I first tried to play a simple melody on the guitar. One may “know” music or art by hearing or vision, but it is another thing to create it from the artists point of perspective. It seems that with anything worth learning, there are a series of steps to take to novice and beyond.

I continue to study guitar, songwriting, production, gigging, and recording. 

I did have a viral setback-the dreaded coughing bug. I think I may be almost done with it. 

And so, back to recording projects. I am thinking out of the box on a couple, a bluesy thing, and a more Americana pursuit. Then there are a series of “best” Al songs from the 70’s and 80’s that never saw the light of day. The story is really more interesting than the final result, in a way. Because, nothing is final as long as one is alive. One day a mistake can turn into the next big MUSIC WAVE!

 But the story had germination in the 60’s. I’ve been chasing songs ever since then, and I think that is an accurate term. The Muse, Universe, God, Holy Spirit—whatever name you need to give it, sometimes says, “Here-Al-Here is an idea that will vibrate well in this universe.” And so you write it.

And you keep doing this until that evil little voice keeps whispering that “insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.” Well, on one hand, yes it is. But on the other, it was about the only way anybody could get a record deal except to kill at the Troubadour. Songwriters had to keep on hitting people with their tunes. And that special-“ah-ha” thread always is there to get picked up on. 

And theres always a lot to say for persistence, isn’t there?!!

Now, the weird and special thing is that the old gets recycled and renewed. There are only so many emotions, so many responses to tempo, so many responses to grooves or even lyric. Things are bound to be recycled in some way (without getting sued, lol). (Add your favorite AI ChatBOT to taste, lol!) 

I wish there was some agency to pay me for what I love to do most-play, sing and record music ! If there is, we’ve missed the boat somehow…

I’m Still Old School In A New Music World

I’m Still Old School In A New Music World

I just listened to Rick Beato go through the top 10 country songs circa right now. I heard some positive sounding songs and powerful records, but it left me slightly disturbed. I guess I am old school and still a fan of the worn idea that “the old ways are the good ways.” So, yeah-laugh at me and put me down, like I’m some old dog not wanting to learn new tricks-a fossil stuck in the past. I will plead at least partially guilty.

For me, it is less about songwriting and more about the recording process. To understand this, let me backtrack to the 50’s and 60’s, when most band tracks were recorded live on the floor-drums, bass, guitars and keyboards. Sometimes horns and percussion tracks played along too. Usually, the vocal tracks were overdubs, but not always. And there were often overdubbed strings or orchestral parts as well, but that initial band track was, for me, a thing of magic. There is just something special about a group of musicians playing a song together in real time that can’t be beat.

Fast forward to today. A lot of music is put together a track at a time, quantized (made to be in perfect rhythm), and built up track by track. And the mixes I heard used echo and reverbs to make the tracks sound huge, modern and larger than life, at least compared to the old traditional way of capturing a realistic representation of what the band sounded like. I get it. Sometimes, it is kind of cool. Yet it seems like something often gets lost in the production. It might sound big, but something human is getting eaten by the ghosts in the machine. There is just something life affirming to me about music played by humans at the same time. 

As for the recording process, the advancement of digital recording was a huge step ahead in many ways. Sounds, parts and effects could be manipulated, used, repeated and remixed in many ways that old analog recording was incapable of. Almost anything became possible. At the same time, old school tape recording offered something unique-a spatial depth, compression and a certain overall sound that digital could never reproduce

Yes-a great song or performance makes these distinctions mute. And I can’t even put my finger on what makes so many of the old recordings sound so amazing, except for the tape and the fact that humans were playing together, without all the excess effects and possibilities to “fix it in the mix” later.

I’m sort of a believer that limitation can be a boon to creativity. The obvious case in point is “Sgt. Pepper”. If we go back to the 60’s, there are way too many classic tracks that had no Pro Tools or 24 track recording machines, yet artists made incredible recordings on a shoestring. And I think that getting back down to the “real nitty gritty” is something lost in todays world of endless choices and options. Me? I still like that kind of sound. 

New is great too. I just wish some of these producers would concentrate more on the band and the live performance than the endless host of effects and tricks that can be added after the performance. I think it is  big part of why certain songs have endured. 

To Mr. Harlick

Sometimes little messages come to us in unexpected ways. That happened to me last night. In my dreams, I saw your record album cover with the whale and, at first, I thought it strange to choose such an image. But then I thought about whales-specifically, whale songs. 

What do whales do? They make these whale songs. Why? Because the songs come to them for some reason that I will never know. And what is the payoff for singing these songs? Well, I don’t think they have any payoff beyond the act of singing them, and I find that both inspiring and beautiful. It is wonderful to simply send out a message with no ulterior motive. 

Duane, I took it to heart. Unlike the whales, I’ve never accepted the payoff being the singing or creating of the songs. Always wanted something more, as if I was supposed to get some kind of reward for my efforts beyond the joy of creating them. 

Having such expectations defeats, invalidates and ruins the joy of the making of the music and the songs within. That, in itself, should be all we expect. We can’t make anybody listen or like our songs. Sometimes people do, and that is a fine and wonderful thing, but thats the gravy. It often comes not from those we admire most, but from strangers. Most of my friends place very little value on my art, but there are others that it resonates strongly with. Lesson #1: we can’t choose who will gain pleasure or meaning from our work and we should not try. Always, the joy was in the making of the work. Let that be the payoff. 

I am revisiting and recording the best of my work over the many years of my songwriting career. I’m doing it for myself and to leave a footprint for my grandkids to explore someday. 

Maybe this was your motive and intent when you chose the whale. I hope so. If not, it does not matter. You have written some fine songs either way.

Lost Loves

Dear Lost Loves,

I have not seen you for many years. In each of your eyes, I saw love and I saw a future. I gave my heart every time-I promise. I think of all of you often-just thirsting to know the “rest” of your story. I know that young love, especially, is fickle and often comedic at this stage of our lives. Back then was back then. No strings. I just sort of wish I knew “the rest of the story”, as I guess, thats not a #1 method to do such things. 

God answered my deepest prayers when I met my faithful and loving spouse, Nancy Marr Carmichael, who has been my wonderful wife for over 40 years. Let me tell you, it ain’t easy to live with a crazy, songwriting guitar slinging, live gigging guitar addict. Fortunately, she hasn’t locked me out yet! (she never would).

As for me, I married, and I played music in bands, trios, duos, singles for 40 years and I still do it. LOL.  See? I wasn’t your doctor/lawyer budding millionaire. No disrespect to millionaires. It just wasn’t my need or my bent. Instead, I wrote prose and I wrote songs and it helped others write songs and sing our souls aloud. And I kept making records, best I could. And Nancy supported every dream I ever dreamed.

My story, basically, is that I made a living singing and playing guitars in a variety of scenarios. I played blues, funk, jazz, pop, rock and folk all these years, and I always was drawn to the songs. They are spark, the impetus to creation of feelings. Even wrote a big hit once.

But I keep thinking about this life as a gift: as special gift of sorts:  “Hey! Here is your next thirty years?. What are you  going to do about it?!!!”

Who can think that far ahead, unless you know yourself so far forward and backward?Somehow, we did. back then.

I no longer know any of you, except in my heart. My greatest wish is that you feel nothing but happiness for the rest of your lives. We were all being signposts to exactly what were looking for, after all! 

In Gratitude,

Al

The Birth Of Loud

When I was around ten years old, my friends across the street-Mark and Kirk Stevens-had a couple of guitars around the house. I used to pluck the strings and wonder what the underlying mystery of the guitar was all about. Obviously, I was ill equipped to decipher the code that would make music spring forth from these six string boxes. Soon after, I asked my folks if I could have some guitar lessons and they obliged. After a short stint with a rented classical guitar, I had my eye on my first electric, which was a Kay Barney Kessel. The next Christmas, it was under the tree.

I didn’t know it, but at the time, I was plunging right into the middle of the electric guitar revolution, which is so masterfully documented in the book “The Birth Of Loud” by Ian S. Port. In it, Port traces the evolution of the electric guitar and, especially, the shift from the hollow body electric to the solid body electric guitar.

The reason for the title is that, even though the electric guitar had been invented and had been available decades before, it was always a hollow body instrument, prone to feedback and limited in volume. It was frustrating for guitarists on the bandstand who wanted to stand in the front of the mix, but could not because the guitar would feed back if it was turned up too loud. 

On the contrary, Hawaiian lap steels and the evolving pedal steel guitars were solid body instruments that could be played much louder without feedback problems. Musical instrument inventors such as Les Paul, Leo Fender, Paul Bigsby and others began to dabble in experimenting with new solid body designs and even meeting together for a time to share ideas. Their initial experiments were also the birth a of a growing multi million dollar industry based on solid body guitars, amplifiers and effects. 

Leo Fender actually made a prototype solid body before making the Telecaster, and he rented it out to guitarists playing in country and Western swing bands on the West Coast. Eventually, he designed the Telecaster and Esquire and started the Fender Musical Instrument Company. 

My purpose here is not to synopsize the book but to recommend it to those interested in the electric guitar and its vast influence on modern music. For me, it reads like a musical tale of my lust for electric guitars in general and how I saw them impact the music I grew up on. 

I still recall drooling over the Gibson guitar catalog that featured the various cherry red Gibson SG models introduced around 1961, replacing the original Les Paul model that was waning in sales at the time. Of course, in 1966, Eric Clapton used the original Les Paul on the now legendary John Mayall and The Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton album, creating an overdriven tone unheard before. Soon after, the old Les Pauls became like holy grail instruments and by 1969 or so, Gibson was forced to reissue the original Les Paul. 

I stumbled upon an original in an Atlanta music store in 1968, which I purchased for $225.00. It was a rare “59” and was finally sold many years later to Billy Squier for around $225,00.00! I also had a Gibson 335, a ’65 Telecaster and a Gibson Byrdland back then, before “vintage” was a thing. 

Back to the book, it is a fascinating story of the electric guitar. It is an interesting read for guitarists and non musicians alike, as reading it allows us to see how the electric guitar shaped modern music in many different ways. For me, it took me back through all my guitar dreams as I grew up playing the instrument. 

Special thanks to David Albery for the loan. 

On The Passing Of Robbie Robertson

It was 1968. I was driving down Sunset Boulevard in a convertible and “The Weight” was playing on the FM station in LA. It was so different. It had a funky, down home quality. And those voices! So rough yet so fragile and tender in their beautiful harmonies. “Music From Big Pink” had come out and it was the antithesis of jive-almost like the first Americana record of note. I knew I was hearing something coming from a different, more honest place than the contrived pop and rock songs of the time. I instantly became a fan. It was like R&B, folk, rock and roll and country all fused together into one unique amalgamation. This was music unlike anything I’d heard before, yet somehow strangely familiar.

When the second band album-“The Band” (the brown album) came out, I listened almost daily for a year. Every night, I’d put on the headphones and absorb this masterpiece. First time I heard “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”, I could feel the tears well up. It had captured the horrible sorrow of a war that had decimated the South. This was no teen heartbreak song-this was the stuff of history put into song-like the folk tradition was keen to do. The whole record oozed this incredible vibe. Someone once called it the best rock album from 1860, and I get that.

So I continued to listen to everything the Band did, and Robertson became the songwriter giving the band the legs to keep going. Levon Helm expressed his ire about the songwriting, thinking he should have got credit for feeding Robbie with ideas about the South. While this gripe was not without some merit, Levon didn’t actually write anything bearing Robbie’s name. He wrote “Strawberry Wine” After the band split, it was proven that Levon rarely wrote anything. Robertson was the de facto songwriter for the group from the start.

This seed, once planted, gave some the impression that Robertson was the bad guy, denying his bandmates credit for songs. He was painted as the manipulative and greedy self-serving artist. The truth was anything but. The rest of the band stopped writing almost completely, leaving Robbie to shoulder the task of coming up with fresh material for the group, yet Levon wanted a cut anyway.

I have read “The Band In America”, “This Wheel’s On Fire” and “Testimony”. I’ve seen “The Last Waltz” and “Once Were Brothers”. My takeaway is that Richard Manual, Rick Danko and Levon Helm were reeling alcoholics and drug addicted casualties of the rock lifestyle, despite their incredible musical gifts. When The Band played Watkins Glen, Manual was in such bad shape, he couldn’t even do the show in front of 500,000 concertgoers. The rest of the group was not in much better shape, except for Garth Hudson. I think the writing was on the wall.

For Robertson, I think his view must have been, “how are we going to tour when we are in such bad shape?” The Last Waltz, he said, was a time to take a break, let everybody do their individual projects and then get together fresh, hopefully no longer strung out. I can easily see his worry, thinking that somebody might give up the ghost with continued touring. But the members of the band never did get back with Robertson.

Eventually, the Band reformed without Robertson for a spell. But by then, Manuel was a hopeless alcoholic, eventually hanging himself in a motel room while they were touring. When they went to clean out his Malibu apartment, they emptied out five hundred Grand Marnier bottles.

Now, that doesn’t change my mind that every member of the Band was special and each made the whole larger than the parts. But I get what Robbie Robertson must have been thinking at the time and I don’t blame him. I understand the animosity that band members must have felt when they saw Robbie making money from the songwriting, but Manuel quit writing. So did Helm. At the bottom of it all, drugs and alcohol were wearing away what was left of the Band.

So, looking back at the creative output of the group, my take is that Robertson’s songs drove the group and they were very good at making remarkable works of recorded art from his songs. That material remains some of my favorite music ever made. Tonight, I wish to applaud the creative genius that Robbie poured into his songs. He was a brave and original writer, mostly undeserving of the nasty criticism cast his way. I am grateful to have known his music. May he rest in peace.

Time, Quantum Physics and Rock Songs

Quantum physics, as much as I understand it, says that time is an illusion and that, in essence, everything is happening at once. If so, we live in multiple histories and everything we have experienced is happening as you read this. 

And in a very weird way, this idea is perfect for the aging rock musician who still feels the spirit of the music but wishes to add a more mature and adult lyrical story to the music. 

It led me to the idea that rock music split off into many different things many years ago. It became many things, mainly all under the umbrellas of pop, rock and roll, folk music, soul, country and blues. While Cream  and Jan and Dean are both considered rock acts, they are certainly not the same, or even influenced by any of the same things. “Wild Thing” and Simon’s “American Tune” both exist in rock/pop space, but are so different.

All this got me thinking. Rock and roll, followed by rock, became the voice of the young generation, probably saluted by some older Gen folks too. But does it have to remain that way? No, it definitely does not. And in no way am in favor of negating rock, or music in general, for the young. I was there. It gave me something in needed. 

Jackson Browne-a favorite of mine-has walked the line between snappy pop tunes and songs of confession and social relevance-even aging-in his work. Dylan, Springsteen, Henley, Simon, Petty and many others have reached for lyrical meaning as they pass through this thing called time. Its like rock music should be a blank piece of paper that anyone with a viewpoint, old or new, should be able to make a mark on. The music is just the paper but the message that is written on the paper is for anyone to express. 

I know some listeners grow old and just want the musical memories. True enough-but some of us are still growing and yearning to hear new thoughts sprung from adult consciousness. That is a good thing and, for me, a reason to forge on with my largely ignored original music. War is won, one bullet at a time, or-maybe-one prayer at a time. 

And think of this: as the master painters aged, their work got better and better. Experience gave growth to their work. It happens to songwriters too, but the whole “rock is for kids” myth seems to negate that songwriters should do any meaningful work much after puberty. Todays musical artists should get at least the same respect. 

But I truly pity the AI machine that attempts to conglomerate all music from every moment in time into a present time experience. But, man! I’d pay to hear that! It might be needed proof that my aging body still possesses an 18 year old soul. 

My Facebook Page IS Gone Forever

If you see this, and you are on facebook, you may have seen a friend request from me. It is real. My old account was hacked and destroyed-I can’t access any of my music pages either. So if you want to stay connected either accept my friend request or send me a friend request so we can reconnect.

Thanks!