day 68 "the making of...."

interesting; today someone contacted me on facebook and asked, "if i had never heard of you or your music before, how would you describe yourself as an artist?" good question. my response was, i think what i am doing now describes me better than anything i've ever done: earthy, soulful music with a message. i also said i've always been part of someone else's dream, which is very true; doesn't mean i didn't or don't have dreams of my own. of course, I've done some amazing things in my life and i'm so grateful for that, and i've had lots of success which is truly incredible! i am truly blessed to be able to do what I love to do and sustain myself after all this time. weird, but, i just never felt i achieved the kind of success i've always dreamt of, the kind on my terms. that is the clincher. when i first started out, i was lead singer in a few bands, then got into doing backing vocals for many notables and that was great. in a way, i think doing that for a major part of your career puts you in a niche so to speak and it's hard to break out of not only for yourself, but for other people who are very eager to judge and compartmentalize; in saying that though, i obviously realize, it's not been so terrible for me, i've been lucky as hell on one hand and on the other, music is what i've devoted my life to! but, my advice to anyone beginning their life in music: follow YOUR dream. if you don't, it can have a tendency to slip away from you. be true to who you are, follow your heart and all that good stuff. it's so so easy to get sidetracked. once you do, it's very hard to see which way to go; you can lose yourself if you're not careful.
sometimes you just gotta pontificate! anyway, on another note, i spoke to jp today. we made a plan to get together tomorrow to talk about what to do next. unfortunately, he called me back tonite to say that he forgot he already had something to do tomorrow, so we pushed it to monday which is fine for me. tomorrow, i have some work to do here. i am going to start rehearsing and practicing for some live shows i will be doing soon. so, time to build up those already 1/2 inch thick calluses on the fingers of my left hand. i used to have a little night club set up in my living room complete with p.a..[well, actually, i was just singing through one of my guitar amps!] and it worked fine. but then we decided to remodel/recycle our furniture in our living room and voila, we now have a much more aesthetically pleasing room to hang out in. my baby grand takes up a lot of the space, but we managed to cleverly move things around and make the room appear as though it is not dominated by the piano, so that's a good thing.
so, tomorrow, aside from some writing, i will set up all my gear in my studio and start rehearsing songs i will be doing for the next onslaught. should be fun.

got a fun gig to do with a good, old friend of mine, shaun murphy. she is a powerhouse! we sang together with bob seger and clapton doing bv's. shaun is coming to l.a. to perform at a benefit for the great drummer of little feat, richie hayward. he's been diagnosed with serious liver problems, i.e, tumor, cirrhosis, you name it and he now needs a liver transplant AND hes' got no health insurance!!! oh dear, dear dear, poor richie. does anybody know how much it costs to have a liver transplant? feel free to have a guess! the person who gets it right first will be declared the winner and will be mentioned in my next blog! exciting eh??!
back to the benefit. it's at a place called the canyon club in the san fernando valley this sunday october 4th. I'll be doing some vox for shaun, she starts at 9pm. I may also be jamming with jimmy vivino who is heading the major jam with the amazing steve lukather at midnight. i think the whole event starts at 5pm.

so, that's it for now. got to get some sleep. i am such a nite owl...

love always;

marcy xoxooxoxo