Tin Angel Walls
It’s midway through month one of 2017 CE. I’m in the hours between the 15th and 16th day and pretty tired. My brain feels like the wall in a green room of a live music venue (the pic above is from the Tin Angel). I wanted to write, to both my conscience and you, in order to organize my thoughts. First, I need a cup of PG Tips. I'll be right back…
Ok, good to go. Shara B., get better will you!! Stop messing around and get back to teaching! Your students need you, damn it! Jamie V., congrats on your soon to be new little girl. I’m so happy for you and Chris! I love you guys!
This past week has been a quick flash of streaming “stuff.” Like I said, I just need to chill for a sec and catch up. I started my Masters Degree in Education this week. My head is still spinning. I also started teaching two courses. The past seven days have been a wave of readings, getting to know new faces, writing papers, learning new social platforms like Schoology, PBworks, TaskStream, Voxer, and setting up a semester’s worth of work on Blackboard for my students. It’s all good. I’m sure my fellow teachers and grad students understand my slight equilibrium stumbling. I’ll be ok. Thankfully my new instructors understand the intensity of adult learning, blah, blah blah. Who am I to complain? Just get on with it and move forward, said the cart to the horse.
This week I also played a third gig with Grey Eye Glances – our very last at the Tin Angel and one of the last shows that venue will ever have. It was a sold-out show and a damn good one. I hope I get to play with Jen, Eric, and Dwayne again. I’d love to make a new album with them. They are among the best people I’ve had a chance to know.
The past few days I have also been spent knocking out important details for the Francis Dunnery tour (The pic below is FD and I somewhere lost in my memory). Renting cars to drive on the left, learning It Bites songs, filling out Visa forms, and submitting passports; all part of the melee of the past seven days. I leave Tuesday from JFK Airport. When the hell is Philadelphia going to have better flights to London? The drive to JFK Airport is a royal pain, oh well… better than shingling a roof in January. I say this from experience (concerning both examples). I’m looking forward to England. I love it over there. It doesn’t matter what time of the year I go. It always feels like I’m stepping into a familial book. Weird right? Probably not.
Speaking of England, this past week I also recorded vocals with Simon Godfrey (a Londoner at heart) for the new Valdez album. I’ve recorded hundreds of singers over the years; Simon is one of the best. He’s far better than Mariah Carey because he actually sings, doesn’t make excuses for not singing, and doesn’t wear flesh colored outfits to divert your attention away from what he’s actually doing – which is singing. Weird right? When you work with people like Simon you just record, shut up, and get out of the way. This is the way it is with talented cool people. Great songs by a real musician. His new album is turning out beautifully authentic. What else can you ask for? Authenticity is just a matter of recognizing you’re not perfect and feeling just fine with it.
Speaking of new music: Today I shot a major portion of a new video for one of my upcoming songs. My good friend Bill Schwartz and I are going to win the first ever Oscar and Grammy conglomerate – the Groscar Award! They (the Groscar Trustees) only will give one out, EVER, and we are going to win it for our new video. Bill shot and edited the video for my song Three Walls and has been torturing me with lighting and camera angles all day today… and for the past nine months for my new song – Light of Things. I can’t wait till you hear it. It’s magnificent. Magnificent because Bill is magnificent and will hate me for saying this, though never know I said it because he (like me) hasn’t quite shook hands with social media. I’ll explain more about the new song/video in a couple weeks when it is done. I think I will have to hold off on the last of the releases until I get home from England. I have two songs ready to go, but this week, as you can tell from my partial reveal of what I’ve been up to, has not allowed me to cross the proverbial Ts needed to properly make the next two songs available. I apologize for the disruption of the series but I will continue with the regularly scheduled program when I get back to the amber waves of grain I call home. I have four more that I want to include in this outpouring before I move on to the next collection. Originally I was going to release between 12 and 14 in this series, but as mentioned, I’m following rather than leading with these songs. Ten feels right and will allow me to move on. Move on I must, but I will miss them dearly. Memories like those die hard in saps like me. They are forever scribbled in my mind by thousands of familiar hands
Talk soon friends
Brett William Kull ~16 January, 2017
