It was in my fortune at a really bad Chinese restaurant in a dream I had about being forced to live in Idaho on a commune with retired television executives.

I play live almost every night at Spider's Fly and Ant Bar. But the patrons usually are more interested in catching the flies and the ants. But they do like it when I do the Eddie Van Halen-style fingertapping solos.

It puts the creation of music somewhat outside the hands of the suits, which is ALWAYS a good thing. It gives us all options for what we listen to, that we didn't have before. I've become a fan of several artists that I found on the internet that I wouldn't have known about if it was up to executives in board rooms.

Only if they promised a pyramid of only blue M and M's on a platter of priceless French Crystal every night at 8:37 PM. Until they cough it up, I'll be here waiting...

Scarecrow Stare was born a sharecropper's son of a shoeshine man, and sold used newspapers out of the back of a truck that he had to pay rent on, all while holding a job at the coal mine, and walking uphill both ways in ten feet of snow with cardboard shoes. Once he was mauled by a Yorkie while all the townspeople laughed at him and poked him with sticks.
He started playing a homemade cigar box guitar on the porch to ease his troubled mind, and when the townspeople started laughing again, he moved it to the back porch, which faced the town's septic pit. When that was too much for him to stand, he moved into a railside shack and learned to emulate the sound of typewriters banging around the insides of the boxcars. But then the bluesmen laughed at him, so he started emulating the sound of the bluesmen laughing at him, and when the bluesmen realized he was making fun of them, and got a new sound to boot, they shut up. Then ole Scarecrow moved to Memphis.
When he got to Memphis, several people with nowhere else to go started to listen to the new "laughing bluesman" sound, and started to like it because they had nothing better to do. Then they realized that they should start a record company (since they had nothing better to do). When they did, they found rockabilly, and forgot all about the "laughing bluesman" sound, and it was lost forever. Until now.
You might not hear it in this music. You might have to point your speakers toward each other, and slather them with butter, or chant mantras for six hours before listening. If you don't want to do that, you could always try putting your index finger (gently!!) in the ear on your dominant side, and pointing the other ear away from the speakers. That works for some people. If that doesn't work, maybe the bluesmen have finally stopped laughing.

Enjoy.

Allison Krauss, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Bill Monroe, Flatt/Scruggs

New York, Chi-town, Southeastern Tennessee in the mountains (how's that for schizophrenic?), the gently rolling Motherland of Eastern Iowa

Cheap Guitars of all stripes, Garritan softsynths, Audio Technica 3035 condenser mic, Sonar Producer 7, other softsynths, lots and lots of coffee

This is just one genre that I write in. I am working on a newgrass-type record. It's harder to write good songs when you don't have fancy studio tricks to hide behind.