The Inland Empire is the only part of the country I’ve ever seen that is virtually built on a swell of heat and wonder.  I was raised on an egg ranch in Fontana California, my father was a carnation milkman, and my grandfather made his own brandy in the basement of our Spanish revivalist Date Street dwelling.  He was actually one of the fabled copper miners in Woody Guthrie’s acclaimed ballad, The1913 Massacre.  I remember crawling and climbing through the black walnut orchard in a 1960’s sunshine that struggled with the steelmill emissions like Cain and Abel chosing a reality. My friends and I grew up on the music of Grand Funk Railroad, Blue Cheer, and Buck Owens like a good swatch of our individually stamped pubescent America, but I still brought my steel guitar to high school and kept it in my book locker, taking the pick-ups apart at recess.  We all had the slight varnished inkling of a 4H vibration; smoking pot turned the clouds to sheep.

(Photo credit: Mike Brayer)

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“I believe there is scarcely a corner of myself that is safe from me”

(something Henrik Ibsen almost said)

If you know me, you probably then know just about how not interested in the feat of contest I can be.  “Contests, a little nosegay of common flowers!” (to further misquote Ibsen).

So on a note of hill-torn paradox, I’ve  entered of late the NPR Tiny Desk Concert’s battle to honor the terminally unsigned.  You will see, as evidenced by the video included below, that i’m not trying all that hard to emerge the victor.  I’m doing what I alway defer to, and that is in the act of statement.  One of the rules of the contest was that the filming contain a desk, thus I raided my daughter’s doll house one last time.  ‘Doll House’ will be the last Ibsen reference, i promise.

Let it be know that I’m not making fun of the music series on NPR, quite to the contrary, i think it stands as one of the best bare bones music shows going.  It gives you some great examples of how an artist can be set astray by the vaudvillian layers called production.  I’ve seen some acts on there that I then ran out to investigate in exuberance, only to find out that they were really thier most powerful and honest sardined around just one weisel-shaped microphone.

My wife thought that I could have done a much better performance of my song. I said yeah maybe, but then i might win.  As you know, musicians are  nothing if not notorious for being non-present parents, evidenced so much so that the contest lures one on with carrot-dangling promise of airfare, whisking one in to do one career bursting concert on their inter-nut show, dragging you around on tour, and then never once in the ant-like fine print do they ever talk about maybe paying up front for the babysitter while you are out doing all of this.  Proving perhaps, once and for all, that being a musician is perhaps not the best job for a person with a life.

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