Tag Archives: music

What while waiting

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Morning!  Haven’t posted anything about what I’ve been up to for some time so I thought I’d take a silly photo (in which a probably copyrighted character steals the show) and put something out there.  Here it is.  It’s out there.

Not actually sure if I want to give that lamp a lampshade yet.  I mean, I don’t really need to give every lamp a shade.  It belts out lots of light for when I work at the desk at night.  This is morning page style rambling which is really coming from my now scrutinizing of that ridiculous photo.

Even before I left the day job world behind I have been doing morning pages, based on the Artists Way series.  If you want to read books on creativity the Julia Cameron books are a natural place that if you haven’t gone to yet you definitely should.  Another less know one is The Widening Stream by David Ulrich which I went through over the last month and now my co-writer Cheri Jacobs has my copy.  Much in the same way as Julia’s classic it takes you through understanding the whole creative process and then gives you exercises that force you to stretch.  I far prefer that over anything that screams affirmation time.  My ADHD brain goes straight from people telling me to do an affirmation to “and gosh darnit, people like me.”  Some things simply link like that.

Cheri and I have been working more than ever on our different projects including the Ollie and Emma show in a collaborative writing group.  Cookeilidh is getting ready for a very busy Christmas season including shows at Craigdarroch Castle which has become something of a band tradition being that it was built for the Scottish Dunsmuir family and designed by Robert Dunsmuir himself.

I also have my recent little project Westsound Magazine which came from honestly trying to figure out what to write about on here.  I don’t want to slam everyone who comes to my page with blatent self promotion, which is sort of weird because naturally this site is unashamedly just that.  I might try doing some other outside myself posts in future, which I would explain better if I knew what those subjects would be but we will just have to see as the time comes.  When I say outside myself I am not referring to some sixth sense sort of thing.  I won’t be very likely going there, though I do like spooky and strange sorts of stories.

The Westsound project came from wanting to write about music in a way that was unique to me.  Having been trying to make it for twenty years I know how every little bit helps in getting your word out and I now have the background with all this social media stuff, writing and music so the idea flowed together easily and I set up the whole thing Saturday morning with part of the work done in the back of a friend’s car because I was too excited to leave it for later.  The reaction to it after not even being a week now has been just great and I have been working out things I can do to make the project all it can possibly be.  Part of this will be interviews with the groups since I already have the little Dictaphone recorder that Cheri and I use to work on dialogue for our shows.  I honestly don’t know if or when that project will make any money but I just like the idea of doing it in the first place.  It’s a bit giving something back.  It’s naturally a bit rock and roll.  It could be even a little bit country.

I haven’t decided what I will do in terms of putting my band in it.  I mean, you don’t want to make it look like that’s the only reason you did it but you can be too self effacing and sometimes its best to just be honest and let that elephant go smashing around the room.

My Adhd thing is moving me along so here is the links to the project-dropping I’ve done.  My elephant just jumped into the kitchen and wants a muffin.

Cheers,

Tom 🙂

Cookeilidh – Celtic Band

Ollie and Emma

Westsound Magazine

It’s really all so very small.

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There’s a few people who would be good examples of this that I could have chose but Peter Jackson was my most recent biography find so it’s still the freshest in my head.  I could have also mentioned Peter Hook of Joy Division for this one, the man who literally grabbed a bass and joined the band.

Peter, the one pictured that is, was inspired by film at a very young age.  Only in his teens he was trying to make his Super 8 go as far as it could until he finally discovered a slightly better camera and began messing around with other little films.  Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit was a long way off from those first initial attempts.

Being a singing bass player Sting is another huge inspiration that naturally springs to mind.  Sting played gig after gig for years in a variety of bands (including a cruise ship gig) before he ever met a drummer named Stewart Copeland who already had this idea for a band called “The Police”.

The work these three gentlemen have created is indeed timeless, and they are only three examples of probably hundred of artists I could name.  The connection to me is those early years of the work and the creative approach.  During a tour of American colleges, Sting explained to music students “We’re not building cathedrals, we’re building sheds.”  This is an insight that I think is worth keeping in mind when approaching anything creative, and possibly other things in life that don’t fall under that category.

It doesn’t have to be great.  It doesn’t have to even be good.  If you think of the early Beatle’s cuts from the beginning of their career they genuinely did not know what they were doing.  Most bands (using music as an example) evolve slowly over a period of years and that’s the stuff we hear.  The same goes for writers, visual artists, and film makers.  Defy the white page and it’s patronizing nature.  Make it all messy in spite of it because the odds are that it probably isn’t a big deal anyways.  You’re just mucking around with it.  I do this with Twitter and Instagram and I fully admit that.  I just kind of go “Hey, what about this?”, usually said out loud because I admit I do in fact talk to myself.  That’s me.  I’ll be talking one way or the other and someone else may or may not hear it.

It even fits into most creative theory with the fact that the first part of creativity is simply getting it out of you and the second part is editing that mush for the little bits of gold in there.  Also if something isn’t working, or you find it boring, try some other thing.  Considering the expanse of possibility and remix culture out there you can always switch gears and bear in mind that you never have any massive thing expected (and should share that same expectation to others).

Even my biggest projects typically have roots that started little bits at a time, little bit each day at a time.  You just relax and let those small things pile up.

So go ahead and mess it up all messy now.  I’ll try to not sound like a motivational speaker now.

Cheers,

Tom

🙂

Days are like little lives

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Perhaps it helps that I’ve had some background of being a morning person out of work related necessity.  I worked a lot in cafes and therefore being ready and bright early just started to flow after a while.  I’m also an insomniac so I kind of get a version of both with exhaustion kicking in somewhere midday. As I steer closer to my existence of working on my creative endeavours full time, my focus has become more about how to best use my time.  I’ve always had the job that set the days program and now I will be doing that.  I won’t go into the specifics of it all because it is not as mountaintop-with-guitar/notebook-and-windswept-hair as you think.  The image I chose probably doesn’t help with that.  I wanted to represent time.

So much gets piled on mornings I’ve found.  There is so much of that “first thing in the morning” suggestion out there that I almost think it is like your early years of child development.  Everything calls for attention.  The evenings are like later in life when you can relax. 

Which thing do you do first?  For me its morning-page like free writing with coffee and something light after a walk and then bass practice before steering into the primary work that I do.  I’ve heard exercise and water should be first.  The Artist Way series got my writing going first.  Some of these things I like at home and others out.  I don’t know who else feels this but there is some thing in leaving the home to work on a creative process elsewhere.  Your away from home distractions and you know are there to do the work.  The word work shouldn’t scare creators away.  Its still creative but as Billy Joel said “there’s a job…there’s a gig here…”

All of this hinges on any kind of major event.  And yeah, I do like structure.  It’s my parents coming out in me.  My mom is the creative and my dad is the logical former service planner for Hydro.

And so I’ll be up again, in the young hours with the practical and exhuberant playing out.

Houston, we’ve left normal

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My long time co-writer and friend Cheri Jacobs

     It’s really early.  It’s early enough to still be considered late.  Making coffee now because I know I won’t be going back to sleep for quite some time.  That’s the perfectly normal thing right about now.  I have never slept well, due to a large part that I never liked to do that.  My schedule has little power naps and as I type this on the tablet Cece is sleeping.  I give full points to a girlfriend who sticks by her creative man.  We’re the most difficult breed there is if we’re good and likely worse if were not.

      In now less than two weeks I voyage out into the waters that I have always wanted to sail.  Thanks to a mixture of my work with Cookeilidh, my work with Cheri Jacobs and our partnership with Less Bland Productions I have made the leap to being a writer and musician full time.  I do feel ready for these waters but naturally it is a place that I sort of half thought I wouldn’t be sailing.  The choice to make the leap is one that does scare me since it’s not as though I have made it in the conventional sense.  The work I do is exhilarating in both fields (two sides of my expression  that have always been there relentlessly since I could make baby noises most likely) but the work is still very much in the day to day grind of a local craftsman.  That is something that doesn’t bother me that much.  If you want superstardom you don’t really pick the fields of bass player and screenwriter.  I’ve certainly stepped out of those less lit parts of the stage to do things like acting (in little bits with Cheri on the Tom and Cheri Show) and singing (open stages and backup for Cookeilidh) but with those the need to do that came from the fact that there is this material and its simpler just to do it.  I swear its not false modesty.  I have, when a singer has been I’ll in the past, tried to fake that role for the evening.  Didn’t like it.  Much more relaxed to stand on my side of the stage and focus on making the best work I can.  Its similar to writing.  I want your imagination or the actors to take my ideas and make them soar.  I far prefer to get up early, make coffee and get an idea that makes my toes wiggle in the carpet.

But I won’t say that the ides of venturing out into doing this full time isn’t scary too.  Part of me does feel like “who do I think I am?”. I have routines down so I am always busy, which can include blogging at 4:30 a.m.

Still less than two weeks to go before I officially sail.  With all the making preperations for the journey I still wonder how I’ll feel when the anchor rises.

Straight away, First thing

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Good size for mug 🙂

That was my first time using the quick photo feature.  Right now I’ve got, well a decent supply of coffee and a 300 page notebook and a bass which is pretty well perfect.  I have considered bringing a coffee maker in here too but as Cece is also in here I’m not sure her feelings on me brewing in here at 6am.  I could sneak in a Bodum perhaps.

Today we have the Emma and Mandy table read which I’m very excited to get into.  With the main shoot for the demo/pilot coming up it will be great to start working one on one with the cast again.  With recent events of course things have not been easy.  Wolf was not only a great cast member and someone who got our dream and our idea straight away but he was also my Cece’s beloved cousin.  We will be doing a tribute to him in the Ollie and Emma WordPress site early next week when we have time to focus on it properly.

I’ve also been working on a new blog story idea that comes from my own background of working in Victoria and living in James Bay where all the big hotels are situated.  It’s called Closer to Heaven and it’s a romance set here in working class Victoria, BC.  Our city is perfect for that, which I know any local anywhere would say but we are set on the ocean and one of Victoria’s quirks is, thinking of my mention of James Bay, the number of little mini towns within Greater Victoria and how, as I mentioned, the very rich and others can not only live close by but even right next door.  This also leads to all kinds of exchanges and therfore story possibilities.

Cookeilidh is also starting up our festival season which is looking to be really busy!  After such a supportive crowd at The Highland Games our next show is June 7th at World Ocean Day in Sidney, right down by the water.  Moving here almost 30 years ago now from the Mainland to Saanichton it’s great to play only a few blocks away from where I got my first bass! 
If you haven’t yet, follow the band on Facebook!

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Victoria Highland Games!

Created by TomPogson.com

The Open Stage

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You're up.

It’s you’re turn at the mic.  Every possibility is there to do anything and the room is about half full.  You haven’t had much more than a glass so far.  That was just to calm your nerves.  As the last guy finished his last song you went over your little set list about ten times.  Maybe there’s a bit your forgetting that’s really good.  Maybe you should lead with a cover.  Or finish with one.

All over this little town of ours there is a open stage on just about every day and what is interesting about these is just about everything.  You get every kind of performer from jazz singers (not in a smarmy way) to world musicians to guys with a background in hard rock and every other style you could name.  Naturally you see every level of player but what’s interesting is the fact that little communities of musicians start up here and sometimes even groups.  This makes it really interesting if you want to get out there and try.  I mean, yes there is that chance you will get together with others to play but at the root of it is guys who play the open stage circuit regularly and so there is a sort of fellowship there.  One basic rule of the stage is if you show up, your there until you absolutely have to go.  I might seem a bit extreme by saying that but it’s about being part of the community.   If you have work that night or your girlfriend is texting you or its last bus then fair enough.  But you don’t want to get known as the guy who gets signed up and is just there to do his 3 songs and then is out the door.  Listen to the other sets.  Pick out what you like in the material.  Talk to the others during the switch overs.  If you’re a real pro you can offer to sit in or even be there to help with any sound problems.  Everyone there wants to give the audience there best show so if you can help a little with that without suddenly coming down like God from mountain everyone will appreciate it.  However I leave one story with you.  I have lots of experience with playing live shows.  In Cookeilidh I have played different stages with different equipment and my own for eight years now.  At an open stage I cohosted just for fun I needed to quickly tune so I turned my bass down on the board, pushed the signal cut on my cable and pulled out.  I did that at the Highland Games yesterday with not a blip.  But with that piece of equipment, on that stage, with the other guy playing I set of a screaming roar of signal insanity that went from a discreet tune to an embarrassing crash of a set.  I apologized my ass off for that.  So much as you may be a ninja with pro audio there are surprises no one wants.  So if you want to help it’s best you give the open stage host (starts show, runs gear, usually has last song…that guy) your idea and he or she will try it out.

The open stage circuit is just one of the little communities in town.  Like wheels within wheels there are groups centered around these different arts like the Jazz community, the filmmakers community and with Cookeilidh the community of celtic and bluegrass players who we met over the weekend.  Community is your best way to view working in town with other artists.  They are not the competition.  It’s not like Coke and Pepsi out there.  Show your respect and enthusiasm for what’s already there and people will respond the same.  All you need are three songs.  It’s your fifteen minutes up there.

What are you gonna do?

For a list of stages in Victoria click
here!

Google open stages available in your area! See you out there!

Tom

Created by TomPogson.com

What really changes?

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About to practice. As always.

    Morrissey is someone that even if you don’t like his music you should at least check out his interviews.  It’s the straight sometimes brutally funny honestly that I admire.  His songs actually make me happy despite their somber nature.  Maybe it’s because of that nature.  It doesn’t push me to smile.  It slaps me on the back and I smile at life’s built in absurdity.

I’m literally sitting on my bed about to practice as I write this.  I have the Victoria Highland Games coming up with my band Cookeilidh and as such I’ll keep it short.  But the question is, do we really change over the years?  Morrissey stated that who we are at age twelve is pretty much who we are.  Comedian Dylan Moran states “you’re not an adult…you’re just a tall child holding a beer” and Tracey Thorn of Everything but the Girl sings how “The Heart remains a Child”.  Here’s me sitting on my bed, which is a rumpled mess of course, surrounded by the writing and other stuff I’m working on and have big, big crazy dreams about.  Someone else is all about serving people and making people smile.  Want to bet that person had a little tea set growing up?  Someone’s working on cars.  Definitely grew up around their dad in the garage (or a variation thereof) and had a love of Hot Wheels.

What do you simply do the grown up version of now?  I do think we fine tune our distinctions over the years and I’m with Jax Teller that “what doesn’t kill you doesn’t make you stronger…” since these things that don’t supposedly “kill you” just make you seek inwards from the world that can be hurtful.  I am so at the risk of the inner child discussion here, and I do laugh at some of the thoughts I had back in my early years.  Why even last week…yeah, yeah…

But embrace it.  Reminice.  I still have my old 8 bit Nintendo games.  Nothings more fun that walking around town listening to a remix of the Legend of Zelda theme song.

Zelda remix.  So worth it.

Cheers,
Tom

Created by TomPogson.com

Unconventional love

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It took me a bit to come up with an unconventional love for today’s prompt after going through the discussion about love a few days back.  Love for people and pets is considered understandable fair game that no one would question you for and so anything outside that box is naturally going to seem strange.  There was the runner up of the characters I create but as someone who is putting them self out there as a writer that seemed a bit cheesy.  But at the same time so does this as a musician.  I can only suppose that cheese is inherant within this subject.  As a barista a love of coffee…same.  As a man love of women…I probably should just leave that one alone.  You get the idea.

So I chose headphones.  It’s not naughty by any stretch of the imagination.   And no, I’ve never walked around listening to naughty noises.  Though I could see the surreal quality of listening to amore secretly while taking public transport to return bottles.  I think it would get old fast and I would probably prefer podcasts or music in its place.

But with that extreme concept aside it does show the reason I enjoy them so much.  Within those speakers you have total freedom to create a world of enjoyment that is tailored to what you want.  It’s a wonderful chance to explore something new while you are already in transit, feel the comfort of something heard before, or stay dialed in with local radio.  I know when I use to do Janitorial my connection to local talk radio made every bit of difference as I didn’t feel quite as disconnected to the rest of the world.  These recent ones are Bluetooth so I can also make phone calls from them, though this isn’t always best as you do get to look a bit strange talking like that, but people can suppose it is Bluetooth.  I have also used my headphones as I mentioned before to “test drive” music I have created, taking it out of the home studio context and setting it against the world outside.  As a cleaner I have also spent loads of time with, well, what use to be books on tape but is now podcasts, downloads and things that end with “this is Audible.”

You can use them before work like audio caffeine to get you going. You can switch to a soft playlist to slow things down again.  Another unconventional love I nearly used was that of public transport actually because when you get a decent spot (which is what failed this title as it is not always possible) you can use headphones to create a insular world of quiet ambience and with another honorable mention, my 300 page notebooks, you can use this world to create while you are already on the go.  I created not only ideas this way but entire characters have come from these moments in the back of a low floor double decker passing Uptown on the way to Craigflower and Tillicum where I use to live.  Longer the ride the better.  With headphones on and my Memo app (yet another) I planned my entire last move while supposedly “stuck” on a BC Ferry returning from Christmas holidays.

If you listen to music this way it actually spurs you to discover more music as you naturally want to expand the range of what you hear.  It is where I discovered Karl Pilkington and the Ricky Gervais Show, headphones on, cleaning my way through a newly renovated office.  I also listened in that same place to Sol Stein on writing, which I can’t praise highly enough.  Between those two gentleman’s work was quite possibly my drive to create comedy because a year later I was on the set of my first film shoot.  That film didn’t work out, but my present project with Cheri Jacobs continues to build towards completion.  It’s called Ollie and Emma and if you haven’t seen that yet, please check us out on one of our social media platforms.

Our WordPress blog
Ollie and Emma on Twitter! 
Ollie and Emma on Facebook!
And Instagram too! 🙂

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Cheri Jacobs and I


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Ollie and Emma - The Series

Created by TomPogson.com

So much time spent…

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Life long joy.

     This favorite little thing in life goes back so far that I’ve forgotten when.  Somewhere in the 80’s, back before I noticed girls or had my first 8-bit Nintendo game I found this in the house.  There was no planning or plan with borrowing it from dad’s office and using a blank tape.  I remember using the q – tip to try and clean the tape heads with alcohol.  I remember my fascination with its mechanism and the fact that I could record myself doing little skits and singing songs.  Like any child with a favorite toy it was me, cross-legged in front of the recorder, holding down play and reverse to make that screeching sound that everyone hates while I scanned for the intro.  Eventually there was a second machine which had the high speed feature.  Novelty of making myself into one of the Chipmunks lasted for a bit.

The use of the machine lasted to today.  There is something about the solid reliability of tape that digital can’t match.  I’ve used multitrack digital but it always feels like I get lost in the engineering role.   I’ve used tape 4 track of course, and had so many Type 2 tapes for this but what I remember is doing a really lofi song recording with two machines recording over and over until the first track was like a distant echo.  Every detail of that magic machine was a curiosity.  The smell of its speaker, the buttons I never understood to use.  Something about the recording process was so interesting as well, which I still find in the recording process.  When it’s recorded it’s like the songs enter their own universe with strange phantom sounds and foibles.  Mix tapes of songs are like a musical diary. 

Oh and with the band…yeah I’ve got a couple tapes of them (switched to digital more recently out of convenience but am considering returning)

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The library.

And as a kid who also liked things like Robotech and Tron there was this idea when creating any kind of battle.  It’s supposed to be a gun thing from Star Wars.  It just looks like…well…two pencils and a tape.

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You may fire when ready...

Those days are past but the use of my tape recorder still remains as the primary songwriting platform to this day.  The tapes of songs are great as they can’t get lost somewhere in the bowls of a hard drive, just somewhere in my desk.  I still have the Walkman that after recording a multitrack song would take it for a “test drive” walking through Cook Street Village with headphones to see if the song felt right outside of the home recording environment and see what I could change or add.  And of course, for anyone who knows about my band Cookeilidh or the blog post on being a celtic bassist, yes…i still have where it all started…with an extra whimsical ” o ” 🙂

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Still plays

Cheers,
Tom

Created by TomPogson.com

Created by TomPogson.com

St Patrick’s week and more!

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Cookeilidh are : Woody, me, Kim David

     Been a really busy week since last Tuesday when St Patrick’s started.  That’s the thing about being in a celtic band.  St. Patrick’s for us is, and sorry if this sounds ego driven but it’s a whole lot more than one night of green beer (even though that’s fun too!)  We’ve been pretty much doing one gig a night for well over a week and there is still more to go.  One thrill was having tracks from our new cd played on All Points West CBC with Jo-Ann Roberts just before our show at The Copper Owl (pictured above)

It’s funny…just jamming along to Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus with my bass (ok that’s wierd) and how even though lots of things change…lots more are always the same.  I love playing acoustic music and playing a lot to the band’s I’ve loved over the years (some celtic, some acoustic and some really neither) and I love writing and creating things.  I’ve probably said that before and it’s easy to go with the things you know but the main thing is not to leave any place unexplored because you’ve got a prejudged notion.  That was the wierd story behind me as an acoustic / celtic musician liking Depeche and others (weirdest cd I ever had was definitely “Coyot” which was aeolian strings stretched across a Swedish abandoned military base)  I was very much focused on my style of music back then and I heard of Depeche but lumped them in with those “wierd stuff over there” bands.  When a friend gave me a tape I never even listened until one day making a tape (yeah, tape) as a joke.  From that I brought the whole tape to work and it seriously turned my head around.  Learned my lesson.  I think that applies to way beyond music.  You simply never know.  You never know what the young man with the skateboard on the bus next to you or the lady in front of you in line at Tim’s is really all about.  The idea that other people have it easier is also illusion.  Rich or poor live provides its struggles and it’s joy.

Went philosophical there.  Anyways, check out my other new thing I’ve been working on this week if you get a chance.  It’s a story that is based on my own background when I use to aspire to bike mechanics and was seriously into cycling and going to bike shops…and listening to loads of classic rock!
Journal by Max

You can also follow the band at…
Cookeilidh’s main website!

Cheers
Tom 🙂

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