On Wednesday night, I decided to do some studying at Jimmy’s Cafe in Cuyahoga Falls where Andy Dolson was playing that night. It was a great time–good atmosphere conductive to studying…yeah, right. Toward the end of the evening some guy named JD wanted to get everyone who was still around to line up on the countertop in the kitchen so he could videotape a demo of him performing his magnificent feat on…well…feet. His skill? The fastest shoelace tie-er in the midwest, possibly the nation!

So about 9 of us lined up on the counter top as his subjects and our feet will be featured on the “Steve Harvey’s Big Time Challenge Show”. I’ve never seen it, but I may start watching just to catch a glimps of my feet. You can seem him working on my shoelaces in one of these pics. The funny thing is, I never tie these shoes. I got the laces all pulled out and ready just for this event. It moved me. :-)

All this to say, Jimmy’s Cafe is an interesting place! Check it out sometime. I’ll be playing there in the near future, too!

I love my wife. She is patient, feisty, loving, full of life, beautiful, and fully grounded in reality. Companions like this are hard to come by now adays. Colleen, be my valentine, again and again.

Back when I was a wee lad, my mum and pup thought it would be good for me to take piano lessons. Being the normal young boy that I was (and noticing my propensity to more techy-geek kind of things) I tired of it after a while and thought that piano lessons were for sissys. I had an incredible teacher. Ms. Donna Pawlicki was phenomenal in her crafts of both piano and teaching, but she failed to inspire interest in me. I don’t fault her at all. In fact, I think I was just being selfish, small minded, and…well…a boy.

So, enter 15 or so years later and I AM KICKING MY SELF IN THE PANTS!!! I’ve been playing guitar for about 11 years to date and love it. It’s a fun instrument, but I would love to be able to play the piano now, too. Had I known then what I know now I would have put in the effort. Hindsight is clearer for sure!

I remember a lot of good stuff, like some basic theory, the staff, the keys on the keyboard, basic scales, etc. That’s all been a great help as I learned to play the guitar, but I’ve wanted to know more. So for the last few months I’ve picked up the piano again (and boy is it heavy!….just kidding). I’ve been trying to do little exercises to get my fingers back in the game and remember all the scales and such. It’s been a slow process. Whenever I get discouraged that I can’t play what I hear in my head I gravitate back to what I know well…the guitar. Ugh! That’s no way to improve.

Then there was a breakthrough. Just last week I was sitting down to transcribe one of my songs for the piano and it all clicked. I started to see the chords in my head. Let me explain….when I play my guitar I can often “see” the sounds I want to play as shapes on the guitar neck. In fact, I can often see the shape of chords as I listen to music on the radio, my iPod, etc. It’s a nack that comes with time that I didn’t realize I was missing from my piano skill until it hit me. Now, I feel like I’m having a blast since I don’t feel so foreign around the keyboard. Sweet!

No, you won’t be hearing me bust my chops on some rockin’ Ben Folds tune or a tried and true tune by the great Schumann any time soon. But I’m happy to say that some of my new music sounds great on the piano and I look forward to conquering this instrument as much as I am able with the time left I have. I had to throw this deep thought in here at the end to justify my post…:-)

The Barking Spider Tavern has something freaky cool about it. I had a great time and met a bunch of new people. This environment is fun to play in. I’m excited to go back in a couple weeks when I open for Andy. The only Akron fans who made it up there tonight were Derrak and Melonie Ostovic (and their soon to be born baby, Jackson!). A shout out to Mark from the Capgun Cowboys for helping me get setup. They played after me and were a pretty good gig! Not only were they very tight musically, but they totally looked the part! It was a multi-sensory experience. :-)