The New Year has caught me unaware. We had several gigs booked through the holidays and I got a little overwhelmed. Also I thought for sure Mike & I were going to lose everything and I was feeling very scared. Along with all of that I am just physically worn down because I have been fighting a wicked cold off and on for about a month now and it is making me tired and unable to sleep soundly at night. I am really ok. We all go through these wicked spells in our life when it seems that life itself has handed you more than you can possibly take. Fortunately I am a strong woman and I can get through it. Enough about that. I have a desk full of work, gigs scheduled for the band and the acoustic project all the way through to August and Mike & I are ok for now. He got a reprieve from Unemployment and he will hopefully secure a job that he interviewed for.
This year I am making no resolutions! Instead I am making evolution’s. I have plans to evolve into a better musician, a better human being, a kinder and gentler person. I want to evolve as a writer and artist. Last year at this time my future looked very bleak indeed. This year I have high hopes! We have things this year that we didn’t have last year. This year we have a full 5 piece band that is working. This year I have a job as a free-lance writer for a company that actually pays me what I am worth. This year we also have a small acoustic side project going on. This year the only thing missing is Mike finding a good day job that still allows him the freedom to keep pursuing music, I know it will happen with a little faith and good karma. This year I am changing my stage appearance. Over the years it went from heavy black to pinstripe outfits to hippie. This year I don’t know what I am shooting for, I guess you will have to wait to see. This year I promise to keep my anger in check. I kind of lost my mind at the end of this year and spewed a bunch of crap that I shouldn’t have, and for that I am sorry. I am human, and I make mistakes. This year I also promise to forgive myself. This is the year of the sublime evolution! Happy New Year to all my friends and family, I love each and everyone of you for all your love and support and only hope I can give back 1/10th of what you all have given to me! With that I leave you with Fleetwood Mac, enjoy!
Happy New Year to all of my wonderful, beautiful friends here at WordPress!!! I love each of you. Everyday, the very best part of my day is to get up with my coffee and read your blogs. Each and everyday that you have posted you have let me into your hearts and homes for a brief moment in time and it has been such a joy. I don’t have enough room to mention every single one of you, but you know how you are, I have liked your words and thoughts and have even shared some of my thoughts with each of you. There have been happy times and, yes, there have been tears. There have been times that I have been driven to anger and times I have been driven to laughter, and through it all you have all been there at my side, and shared with me when I was wrong. For that I love each and everyone of you! Have a beautiful 2013 and I hope to share more with you as the next year rolls by. I will try to post a vlog later for you if I have time!
On that note I leave you with The Greatest Jazz Singer in my book, Miss Billie Holliday…
Sick or not I survived the gig last night. It was a great time and we had a full house all night long. My voice held up all night, which was a blessing and I was real worried. It was a very nice acoustic gig and is a nice change up from the whole 5 piece band. I hope the New Year finds everyone happy and healthy. We are set to play at the New Frontier Club tomorrow night and it should be fun! Here a re a few random pics from the gig at the Brewery.
Here is our Xmas card to everyone. I wanted to thank all my friends at WordPress that have been following my blog, every like, every response, and every bit of feedback I have gotten from everyone over the last year has meant the world to me! Your warm responses have only helped me to grow as a person, to learn more about my own nature and helped me to be able to pay forward my kind thoughts and wishes to you all. Rosie and I hope that each and every one of you finds yourself happy, healthy and surrounded by loved ones, not just for the holidays, but for always! Much Love to you all, Jaz and Rosie
As some of you may know Mike and I are preparing for a gig at The Crescent Brewery on the 29th of December. We are playing from 8-11 and are doing 3 sets. It has been my goal to make this set list the strongest we have done yet as an acoustic duo. We are playing many blues songs and songs from the 60′s and 70′s. Just for fun I added in a great song by the Violent Femmes. I have also added in a song I have wanted to do for the longest time, “If You Could Only See” By Tonic. As well as the usual suspects we are also doing a few Welsh folk songs that some are sung in Welsh, some are macaronic, 1/2 Welsh and 1/2 English, and some are in English. Probably the parts of the set list I am most happy about are the 3 originals that I wrote and the original that Mike and I wrote together. I finally finished up the last of the changes on “No Feeling” which is our joint compilation. First I transposed it and then I added a capo on the second fret to bring it up to the key I wanted the song in. I am really pleased with the originals. 2 of them, “Journey” and “Make You See” were songs I wrote over 12 years ago and the other 2 were written this last year. For me the song writing process is either really fast, or very painfully slow. It took me over 6 months to lock down “Empty” and “No Feeling”. “Empty” has always been complete as far as the chord progressions went, what took so long was the vocal melody lines. It took over 6 months to find the vocal melody line that I was happy with and then I had to lock it in my head to where I could actually hear the melody line without actually hearing the music. I finally got it locked in this last week. So we are rehearsing every night and getting ready. Acoustic duos take much more work because every mistake is painfully obvious, you don’t have a bunch of other background noise to cover up when you make a mistake, hence the extra rehearsal time. On that note the full 5 piece is back in rehearsals tonight getting ready for the New Year’s Eve gig and life is very good….
On that note I will leave you with The Violent Femmes…
It’s hard to believe that I started this blog almost a year ago. I started writing this blog on New Year’s Eve 2011 and as it almost dawns on New Year’s Eve 2012 I was thinking back at the amazing amount of changes that have occurred in our lives over the last year. When I started this blog Michael and I had just gotten back together after a forced separation due to legal circumstances. We almost broke up several times at the beginning of 2012 and, in fact, I almost left him and he almost left me more than once. We both struggled with bouts of alcoholism, me more than him. We went through the AA program together and are stronger for it. This last year I have hit some of my darkest nights and yet at other times I have seen some of my brightest days. In the last year we have lost “friends” to betrayal and back stabbing, we have lost musician friends, but at the end of the day our relationship has grown stronger through all the trials and tribulations. We have grown closer as friends and our love has grown deeper. We have managed to regain something through our music, that something special that has always been the glue that held us together.
During the last year I gained some of the lost time with my daughter and grown closer than ever to my mother. I have become a better rhythm guitar player and taught myself to sing in Welsh. I have learned more about myself as a musician in the last year than I have in 42 years of life. We have played some really fantastic gigs over the last year, and have many more to come. I moved up in the writing world from being an internet writer to writing for a real magazine and making my worth for the articles I write. My photography editing skills are getting better and better and I am continuing to work on my dream collage. I have no idea when, if ever that will be finished. It’s an ever evolving dream journal in images.
I have seen friendships end and new friendships sprout. I have also seen friendships that I thought were dead in the water re-sprout with new life of forgiveness and understanding. With each dying flower a new one sprouts in its place, a more beautiful one I believe, richer in color and smell. At the end of the day, and almost year, life is very good. It is as hard as it ever was, but we are happy, and I know that come what may Michael and I will continue to grow together, to love together, and to perform together. Life is very good my friends!
With that I leave you with The Supremes and the beautiful Diana Ross…
Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem. W. Somerset Maugham
I love Halloween and when we got booked to play New Year’s Eve I thought it would be fun to make it into a masquerade party. I have never actually been to a masquerade ball but I thought it would be a lot of fun and mysterious since no one knows who anyone else is. We do the unveiling at midnight. It is mysterious, alluring and romantic to me. This is going to be the best New Year’s ever for me! Well I am off to the craft store to get my supplies, watch me go now! With that I leave you with one of my favorite all time movies and the masquerade ball scene…
I never swore I was going to be perfect or idyllic. I never swore I was going to be this perfect image of a wife, a mother or a daughter. I think sometimes you forget that I am human. I am a human first and always, therefore I am prone to make errors and mistakes. I never said that it was all going to be perfect, it mostly never is. I strive, just like most people, to be the best I can on any given day. That concept, however, is prone to come asunder to my mood swings on any given day. When I created this blog on the eve of the New Year I swore I would try to write everyday. Most of the time I do, but sometimes, yes sometimes, I just don’t give a crap because I don’t want others to see exactly how black my mood is. Today is one of those days, and guess what, most of the time I am positive about life and all its funny little speed bumps. Today those speed bumps feel like massive trenches. Sorry, never said it was going to be all roses and butterflies. It is what it is. Now, would someone please hand me my helmet….I’m going in….
Perception shapes in countless forms. The longing for attention, affection and connection are the same; only the intensity of giving and receiving it differs. All is connected even when seemingly disconnected.
