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!
Symphonia Lovation was originally included as an “album within the album” on a collection entitled Rainbowland 2006. As it was somewhat buried toward the latter part of the album, and as I consider it to be one of my high-water marks, I wanted to give it its own “release” here.
Symphonia Lovation explores the whole journey of a revelatory experience, from the initial flash of awakening, to the integration of a new awareness, to the transformation into new being that the revelation has invoked.
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.
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
A relationship with music is a love connection that comes and goes right from the source. After all, the expression of source is vibration. Music is vibration, as is life energy itself.
Today, that dance of connection has instant access to every imaginable expression, across time, geography, class, culture… even species.
For one who is a music composer, this palette of influences is both infinite and accessible at the same time.
For one who is a songwriter, you add the element of poetry through lyrics, and infinity becomes multi-dimensional.
Songwriting has always been like journaling to me. I’m in the midst of my 85th album, and around 60 of them have been original music. These songs, which began when I was 15, and have continued to my current age of 53, are a musical tapestry of my ever changing window onto the life experience, and the associated feeling tones.
The process of expressing such views and feelings in music triggers an introspective inquiry, and sparks an opening to a creative vortex where self-consciousness falls away. From this place, the song begins to appear, often quite suddenly. In such moments, the songwriter feels like the stenographer, witnessing and documenting the appearance of the song.
Uncountable styles & cultures have arisen from this unique moment of expression. From cantors to conductors, from musicologists to the popular music industry itself… the opinions, rules and regulations, are as endless as the songs. And they each have their place.
You can get lost in all the other view points. You can get confused, and somehow think the approval of others is important to the validity of your experience. If you do, you can have the fun of rediscovering your unique experience and clarity. Regardless of any of that, the only thing that matters is your personal “intercourse” with that vortex of music. That is equally true for the music appreciator and the performer/creator.
The only challenge to creating music is doubt… doubt that you can do it… doubt that it will be worth anything… doubt that you’re good enough to be even trying…
If popular music has told us anything across the ages, it’s that you don’t have to be good to make good music. A billion songs can use the same chords or notes, and every one of them can still contribute uniquely to the ever expanding whole.
What have I learned from all this? That life is not a f…ing achievement test. Lessons come as they will. Learn what serves you in the moment, and take that into the next one… or not. Everything brings you to your life. Better to just keep turning one’s attention toward what feels best. Life responds to our feelings like an answered prayer. Thus, it’s just more fun when you feel good. The better it gets, the better it gets.
A relationship with music is a love connection that comes and goes right from the source. After all, the expression of source is vibration. Music is vibration, as is life energy itself.