Rice

This project has been unfolding since the late fall of 2012. I recently found myself feeling that I had reached a clear halfway point. As I am an old record album guy, I thought I would go ahead and post where I am to this point, and call it “Side One.” My birthday is April 4th… an opportune release date. Note: the words for Communion are a journal entry written by my wife, Catherine. The words for Faces are from Yogananda.

June marks the 3rd anniversary of my website, rainbowlandmusic.com. To date, there have been over 50,000 visits to the site, and more than 10,000 unique visitors. This is profoundly gratifying for me, and I thank you from the fullness of my heart, for your interest and support. The music is my offspring, and it is thrilling that it finds new relationship with you.

These continue be dynamic and challenging days. Humanity is shedding its skin. It’s not pretty, and it is new life. There are so many right now in my circles of love, family and friendship, who are facing rough roads. There continues to be great polarization and at the same time, deep connection.

“It’s an unstable world, it’s an uncertain time, at the eye of the hurricane, transcendent sublime.” —Words from the closing song on this collection, Alive.

I wish for you bright awareness, great flexibility and fluidity, and a joyful navigation of these amazing days. I Thank you for making Rainbowland part of your adventure. And the music thanks you too.

Much love, Doug

Star People is having another great season of shows in 2012. Here we are at one of our favorite wineries called Bent Metal, playing one of our signature medleys (4 songs from the Stones)… with joy in our hearts, love in our voices, and rhythm in our feet! Feel the tingles!

 

Keys to the Kingsley was completed at 2:00 am on 11/11/11. All but two of the songs were conceived on keyboards, hence the Keys… and Kingsley is my middle name. These are wild days on the planet, with life seeming to be accelerating, and with the landscape changing in radical ways. Old systems of government and economics are collapsing, and new ways of perceiving and communicating are taking form at grass root levels, all around the world. This album explores this time of great transformation from a personal perspective. I’m now 55 (5 sets of 11), and I find myself looking at the whole of my life in this spacious present moment, as I align with the changes occurring within me and all around me. Life is a great adventure, now more than ever, and this album reflects that wide dynamic ranging spirit. It is an epitaph for endings, and an invocation for new beginnings. I hope you enjoy the listen, as much as I enjoyed the creation.

Star People rocked at my birthday party at Amigo’s in Nevada City in April. Here’s the birthday song!

This is my first-ever all-covers album. It comes on the heels of my first-ever involvement in a covers band, Star People. I discovered that getting together with good friends, and playing songs that a room full of people recognize and love, has its own magic. It was, after all, the essence of my father’s musical life.

I have subtitled the album “A Lifetime Soundtrack Sampler,” because there was such an abundance of material to choose from… in this incarnation of musical feasting. A banquet in all directions, and the deeper I look, the further the horizon extends.

Still, picking a few, and going into the experience of making them my own… these songs that already spark places and times, and knowings and remembrances…. It has been an intercourse with musical offspring – an intimate exchange with that sweetest of lovers, music.

Now, I’m looking forward with new perspective, to my next set of originals.
Thanks for listening…. And the music thanks you most of all….
Doug