Greetings:) I thought you might enjoy the story behind one of my songs on the new “Rise” album:

My six-year-old daughter is a bundle of pure, unbridled energy, to say the least. She’s full of “something” most of the time, in the form of an elusive natural energy elixir, and borders on constantly “hyper,” though that’s probably too strong a word for it.

So she has this other little friend from school named Catherine, who is also very “active,” to say the least! When they get together it all gets pretty crazy energy-wise quickly. It’s like 1 + 1 = more than 2, if you get my point.

So one sunny day I was driving my daughter, Leila, over to spend a few hours with Catherine. My kid was so excited and jazzed about seeing her friend that she was bursting at the seams jumping up and down, hooting and hollering, giggling non-stop and basically climbing out of her seat way before we ever arrived at Catherine’s house. I kept yelling, “Settle down!” but of course that was a total joke and shouldn’t have even entertained that.

Then I thought, “Wow!” If I could bottle this up and sell it, I’d be a millionaire within a week! However, as close as I could get to that was to try to capture my daughter’s disposition that day in a song. Thus Play Date was born.

This is a little story about the pet mouse “Kasey,” in our household..

She became very sick and the vet ordered us to give her medication twice a day in the hopes she would recover. Things weren’t getting any better; she looked terrible, and I was convinced she was ready to say goodbye for good one evening.

I decided to pick her up and hold her for awhile before she “passed on,” with my little daughter watching us both. I told her how sorry we were, and that I loved her, and just sent out as much love as I could to the little critter.

All of a sudden after a few minutes of the love pouring out to her, she perked up, began walking and sniffing around like normal, and has been fine ever since!

Love works..I’ll have to try it more on my human friends:)

Thanks everyone for the recent nice comments..much appreciated.

I wonder what would happen if I tried to write a song about the emotions of the current “health care” debate? It probably wouldn’t fit in with the rest of my stuff! I guess I’ll hold off:)

I began to wonder today just how music actually inspires someone? And I realized I really don’t know!

My closest guess is when anything inspires me personally, it makes me want to create; to go for my dreams even more passionately; to express something “stirring” inside me that still longs to come out, but hasn’t yet..

So when one of you writes and tells me how inspiring my music is for you, I am certainly humbled and very pleased at the same time:)

There’s something creative in the air living here in California. Not sure what it is, but I enjoy the general vibe; it seems to help me stay inspired and able to keep sharing with all of you:)

I’ve always loved the “Indian Summer” thing, and that’s been happening for the last several days too..

See MyStore on Facebook:)

Here’s a complete title track free download

So far so good on the feedback..

This is a piece I wrote/recorded for my daughter Leila. She truly IS a miracle!

It’s taken me awhile to figure out it’s usually best to let some time go by before sharing new music with people!

Sometimes I’m all jazzed about some song I just finished, and a few weeks later I don’t like it anymore at all!

So now a bit of patience seems the better choice:)

We keep learning don’t we? (hopefully anyway!)

For me the melody of a song is like the main actor in a film; it’s the most important character in the mix. So I do my best to make sure it’s a strong enough presence to carry things along.

The melody is also “the voice” that most listeners will remember long after that initial exposure to the song- if we composers can be so lucky!

When it’s right, people can make it a part of themselves, and hum or whistle our gift to them for years to come…

Something definitely happens when you’re connected to a lot of people who love and resonate with what you’re doing.

It steps up the amount of energy flowing through you and out towards them.

No matter which end you’re on, I think it’s what most everybody loves and wants more of!

It’s really all about the Flow isn’t it??