YONDER BREAKS

If you've read this blog even infrequently over the years, you probably know I grew up in South Carolina, started trying to make movies for a living around 2008 and moved to Los Angeles, where I put a heavy emphasis on writing. This led to writing books and then I started feeling a pull into music , which is most of what this website is about. Some time ago, I was at a wedding and one of my relatives told me, "I understood the whole movie thing, but I just don't get why you got into music. Why music ?" I didn't really know what to say or how to explain all of the things that had led me there, especially in a brief conversation on the way out of a wedding reception. There had been several events that brought me to the point of making music production my main focus, and so I'll write them here, partly for anyone wondering (which is probably much of my family!), but also partly for me, to recollect, remember and write down for future reference. My first instrum...

It's been about a year since Golden Coast Summertime was released to the public (folks who purchased my book, All Roads Lead to Dockweiler , were given an early release download of the album), my first full-length album. It was such a pleasure to produce these songs alongside the written material, and I've already been working on the next book/album combo! I wanted to highlight a song from Golden Coast Summertime , as it has a little story to it. "Let Go (Abandon)" was written after an encounter of hearing God's voice while absent-mindedly driving on the 10-to-405 freeway interchange after work one evening. If I remember correctly, I was ruminating about writing novels (my main endeavor at the time) and, out of nowhere, felt like God said something along the lines of, "If you let that go, I'll show you who you really  are."  I regret to tell you that I immediately rejected the notion, as writing had been quite a bit of my identity up until that poi...

The other day my daughter took a photo of me, pseudo punching towards the camera. I found an AI button on my phone (which I hadn't used before) and told it to make me look like a kung fu master. Here is what it spit out: For reference, here's the original: My first thought? Man, I look cool. Maybe I need to get back into karate... Then I thought how amazingly real that photo looks. If I sent that to ten friends I think at least nine of them would assume I was going to a costume party dressed as a Shaolin monk and made a commitment in hairstyle for the role. But my next  thought was, Wow, my daughters are going to grow up in a world where nothing is true... We've all seen or heard photos and videos of famous people saying things they never really said, all generated by Artificial Intelligence. But the farther along it goes, the less fake they appear to be. Now imagine the digital Wild West that we're heading into where nothing you read or see or take in can be trusted a...

For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Corinthians 1:18)   Way back in high school, when I first started trying to follow Jesus, I was really open about my faith. I wrote songs about God and watched Christian TV (even though most of the programming was geared towards old folks). Everyone kind of knew where I stood with Jesus, which I think was a good thing. However, as I got into college I realized that a lot of people around me, some really close to me, withheld parts of themselves because of my faith. They wouldn't tell me certain things or swear around me; ultimately, they didn't want to "disappoint me" if they weren't living the way I did. It was a rude awakening when I found this out, as I asked myself if I even really knew these friends and family members around me... A teenage me at our local skatepark in my "Got Christ?" beanie. And so, when I became an adult...

I haven't been skating much lately, as I've been spending much of that time rebuilding my backyard mini-ramp . I've also been trying to get into surfing more lately so I don't feel like such a poser, having written  a book about surfing  and all... Anyway, after getting home from a bike ride and then a surf, my friend Shawn asked if I wanted to skate that day. Three sports? Why not, and so I headed out the door for a noon session. Here is Shawn doing a sweet layback from an earlier session. It was pretty relaxed, cruising around the bowl with him and another middle-aged skater. I don't think any of us was feeling particularly gnarly that day, though I did learn to roll-in to the mini-bowl frontside (I usually go backside ), which is kind of scary. But as we skated, I threw a few flip tricks ( kickflips , varial flips , etc.), and they were working. Now, this is fairly rare, as the energy it takes to flip your board over from flat ground far outweighs the ener...