Friday, June 19, 2015

Pieces of Portland





An inside look at America's weirdest  city 


Written by Marie Deatherage/ Photos by Joyce Brekke









My pluperfect spousal unit Marie is a professional writer. Like a real writer. When we met in 1997 and began our courtship, she had been working for a foundation, summarizing grant proposals for the trustees to study before they would offer financial consideration to one of Oregon’s many illustrious non profits. Before that she was writing articles and editing several publications including “The Oregon Clarion”, which was the “go to” periodical for Oregon’s disabled community. And when she was only 17, she wrote an article for the Cottage Grove Sentinel, where she was actually working part time, about famous Oregon heroine Opal Whitely, which won “Best Feature Story of The Year” as awarded by The Oregon Newspaper Publisher’s Association.  

When we were dating, Marie shared with me a few chapters of a book she had begun to write about her son Blaine and her experiences with him in the world of the disabled. It rather blew my mind. Heartfelt, educational, and above all, so beautifully written. Having been drawn to writing myself over my lifetime, and holding writers up as heroes and heroines, my immediate respect for Marie and her command of language (and her babeness) soon morphed into a full blown love affair.


About the book:

Cut to 2013, we are hanging out in our basement, attempting to thin the hoard, when Marie spies two large boxes full of papers and begins thumbing through the contents. “Oh my God”, she suddenly spoke, “this is all the work I did when I was teaching, before Blaine was born, notes I took, interviews, and study I did to write a book about Portland. I did so much work! I have to transfer these handwritten documents onto the computer!” So for about the next month, when she would get home from work at night, and on the weekends, our kitchen table was covered with papers, and those two boxes were on the kitchen floor. And basically the world stopped turning until she was done. And then she announced to me that I could return the much lighter boxes to the basement. 

I am certain that I questioned Marie about what her intention was to do with all that information that she had just transferred to her computer, and I am also sure that she didn’t really know. But the train had left the station. I could tell she was mulling over the whole situation, having reread all the notes she had taken years earlier during her time teaching the geography of Portland, and other related subjects. 

But Marie is not just a writer. Marie thinks like an artist, and has artistic talent. She can also draw. Design a garden or a kitchen. She also possesses color expertise. And she can sew. So when she decided to take up quilting with a vengeance, some years ago, like her grandmother and her mother, I was not surprised. And when there were 30 quilts, she asked me to build her a rack on a wall of our home, to store them. My friend Tim Gillespie calls it “Marie’s Quilt Garden”










I think we may have been driving in the car, maybe a foray to Cottage Grove, Oregon to visit Marie’s mom, or maybe a trip to Longview, Washington for dinner with Marie's sister Sarah’s fam, when Marie expressed to me how she might go forward with writing a book. And I am here to tell you, though I was immediately jazzed by Marie’s ideas, I had absolutely no idea what a magnificent book Marie would finally write.

So she says t'me she says, "I am going to ask Joyce if she would like to join me in the book project. (Marie’s best friend since their days at The University of Chicago). Since we are both quilters, and Joyce is a photographer, I think we could do a book together that would be interesting and unique. We could weave our quilting and the fabric of Portland together. Something like that. And go into some depth about what makes Portland Portland."

"Okay!", says I, having absolutely no idea how in the world such a plan might tumble, "what I'm gonna say honey is, if anyone can pull off such an idea, I know you can! I'm backin' ya!"

So for the next many months, here's the scene: Marie is perched in her chair by our pond (except during inclement weather) with her laptop, for up to 14 hours a day. Or Joyce comes over and the two of them leave together, toting many quilts and camera equipment.








If I may, I want to underscore the amount of time and effort that Marie and Joyce have put into their book. First, there's the book concept. Then, there's a basic outline. Then there's writing the text, interviews, photos, assembling the book as you go so it makes sense. And since she has the computer chops, after she wrote the book, she did the complete design and layout! Placing text and photos, table of contents, everything!

Sunday April 26, 2015:

Today I sit here at 6am in our quiet home with my snoozing dog Drifty on my lap, cruisin' the TV schedule for today's sports, and waiting for my exhausted wife to come tip toeing down the stairs for her requisite cup of strong coffee. She worked late into the night on her book again, as she has been doing for most of the past year. But I am pretty sure that today is the day she will be delivering the thumb drive containing the master copy of her book to Kinkos/Fedex to make the first loose leafed copy, with all the high-res photos placed, the whole deal. So we can see what the finished product will pretty much look like. And so she can make any necessary changes.

During this book writing process, I have been so fortunate to read the text it as it was being written. What a blast! It's fabulous! I've learned so much! It's so well written, the photography is great, the featured Portland peeps and places are all so interesting and beautifully described by an accomplished writer, who, along with providing us with an amazing view of our grand city, can be damn funny! I hope you get your hands on a copy of "Pieces of Portland", by Marie Deatherage and Joyce Brekke. Also visit Marie’s personal blog at https://omaried.wordpress.com. Comments welcome!

And lastly, please allow me to express my pride in both Marie and Joyce for what they have accomplished. I cannot even begin to describe my joy at having been the proverbial fly on the wall over these past months, watching these two amazing women start and then finish this project. That I am closely associated with them both, and married to one of them for godsake, is like some kind of miracle. Many, many thanks to both of you for allowing me to be a part of this process. And yay, now I get my wife back!!!










My story in annoying detail:

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Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Fun With Puff Pastry




My pluperfect spousal unit Marie and her friend Joyce are closing in on the actual publishing of a wonderful new book. At some point in the past months, the much busier Marie and the less busy Ric made the decision to elect me as Chief Kitchen Guy, a title I come by honestly, having owned and operated a bakery for 20 years. I like being in charge of a kitchen. Bring it homie.

So today, I cranked out some puff pastry items, which we just nibbled for dinner, and they were really good. Here's how I done did it.

I found some frozen puff pastry made by the local "Grand Central Bakery", in the frozen section of our favourite grocery store, shown here, right before I opened it up on my floured pastry board.



I pinned it out a little, since it was a bit thick, then I cut it into 15 square pieces, and put my fillings on. The right 9 are basically cream cheese, chicken, and cheddar. The middle 3 have onions and Cougar Gold Cheddar. When Marie ate hers for dinner, her eyes disappeared above her lids for a minute or two.




Made a few sweet ones too, the left 6 are sweetened cream cheese, fresh raspberries, and lemon curd. Then I brushed water on the pastry, folded them up, and brushed them with beaten egg. Here they are right before they went in the oven for around 20 mins at 355 degrees.



Made a little salad, and I easily ate a couple of the pastries. Kinda fun. Made a hell of a mess though. But I know how to clean it up. Also, confessing that a li'l snackin' went down during the making of this here puff stuff.

Lawdy some sweetened cream cheese and a fresh raspberry jumped up on ya digit

Cougar Gold Cheddar from Washington State University, superb.





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Sunday, June 08, 2014

BAKERYLANDIA!


I woke up this morning with a burning desire to write a piece about the state of bakeries in my beloved city, Portland, Oregon. Or as some call it, owing to the popular tv show, Portlandia. Having owned and managed two bakeries over twenty years in this here burg, I am probably qualified to do so. Plus I invented The Cream Cheese Flip, often copied but seldomly made with the same original quality once offered at my stores. C’mon you guys, you have to make the filling from scratch!

I bought a box of doughnuts yesterday at the newly opened Blue Star Doughnuts on Hawthorne, which is smack in the middle of my neighborhood, and just looking at those beautiful rings got me going about baked and fried goods, how the retail bakery business here (and probably all over) has taken a turn for the better. You are gonna pay about 3 bucks a pop for one of the awesome and gorgeous doughnuts at Blue Star.

Please allow me to return you for a moment to the genesis of my baking career, Seattle, 1972. I served my apprenticeship while working full-time at a Safeway bakery, where my German and Finnish trained bosses, Karl and Roger, gave me all the skills I needed to do my job, and were also kind enough to pass along much other bakery knowledge because, wow, they were great guys! Karl, (his given name was Klaus), taught me the complexity of dough, and how to deal with friction and temperature, proofing, all that stuff. Roger was a great baker too, but Roger’s great contribution to my career was that he taught me how to work. “When you cut the tops of the strawberries, Ric, you never cross your arms. You set yourself up so it’s a smooth flow from right to left, since you are a right hander, and you get the job done faster, and then I like you better”.

Working at a Safeway Bakery just outside Seattle in 1972-75 was working in an actual, all scratch bakery. We mixed our danish dough and other doughs and batters from scratch, cake mixes were just starting to come in, but for the most part, we started with flour, sugar, eggs, and went from there. It was awesome. I learned so much, and I developed a love for baking, and for loading up several display cases with “good things to eat”, that I had made with my own two hands. So probably no surprise that in 1975, my wife Donna and I sold our small starter house in Seattle and moved back to Portland, where we had grown up, with our two kids, Stacey and Amy, and built and opened “Richard’s Bakery” in Tualatin, Oregon, near Portland.

The people came! And I plied my trade in Tualatin for ten years, and then moved the bakery to NE Portland, and changed the name to Favourites. Lots of good folks to thank for helping me make that move. You know who you are. The people came again!!

So what you have in Portland in 1975 is a handful of “scratch” privately owned bakeries, and the grocery store bakeries, who were still holding their own as “scratch bakeries”, hiring actual bakers, making quality products, pastries, cakes and doughnuts, right on premises.

My competition, alongside a few other area retail bakeries, was the grocery store bakery, like Safeway, and Albertsons, and a few independent grocery store bakeries. But during this time, in the late 70s and especially the 80s, the grocery store bakeries were moving toward less baking on the premises and more “bake off” products, where unbaked frozen goods would arrive at the store, and bakers (or technicians), would unpack the frozen danish, the doughnuts, cake layers, etc, and then finish the product, add icing, and place the product for sale. This apparently suited the needs of the grocery store bakery, because it provided a standard product throughout the store chain, it lessened production and labor cost, and therefore enabled the store to keep the price as low as possible. “Belly Buster Special! Applesauce Cake Doughnuts, 9 for 99 cents!”

There is wicked price competition in the food business folks, always, and peeps shop for price in most cases, so when you are making a doughnut, and the price of flour rises, and you realize you need to raise your maple bar price by a nickel, you consider it and think about it for days before you do it, because you know you are gonna hear about it. And that you might lose some sales because of it. Several times during my career, I caught sight of a person looking disgustedly at the prices of my products, and even saw and heard a few folks stomp out of the store, saying things like, “I’ll be damned if I am gonna pay 75 cents for a doughnut!! I’ll just go to Safeway!

“Well, fuck you then!”, one may have heard reverberating in the canyons of my mind, “go get your damn mixed and cut in Duluth and iced in Portland maple bar. Cuz I got up at 2am and came down here and started mixing dough, slamming coffee and hollering at employees to get to work just so you could gripe about my prices”.

And speaking of coffee, I was none too pleased when Starbucks set up a new unit within earshot of my bakery’s front door, on NE Fremont St. in Portland, around 1994. The coffee culture was exploding, and Starbucks were being built everywhere, though of course it is a much larger international business today. We had always sold coffee in my bakeries, but in 1993 I had leased the small space next to my bakery to an independent coffee retailer, “Java Man Coffee”. It was a pretty sweet situation. We had quality coffee drinks right next to the bakery, and we didn’t have to provide coffee! I stood with my hands on my hips when they were building that Starbucks a block away, and shouted, “Hey you guys, I thought of it first”, but my admonitions fell on deaf ears.

So, having imbibed approximately 900,000 coffee drinks in my life, (I prefer the pedestrian 16 oz. Americano, room), I have found myself, now, and back then, in many a Starbucks lobby, hanging by the roombar, waiting for the barista to call my name, and though my coffee drinking has slowed down some over the years, let's just say, I am an experienced Starbucks guy.

The Coffee Culture!!! It’s more popular than Jesus! It’s everywhere!! Starbucks started in Seattle in 1971. There were a couple other folks doing quality coffee drinks back then,  but when Starbs started growing and embraced a hip coffee shop feel, BAMM. You know, maybe part of it was timing, but I am going to give Howard Schultz and his crew most of the credit for growing the business into the popular mammoth it is today. And over the years, many, many very good and distinctive coffee businesses have succeeded, Peets, Dutch Bros., Stumptown (started in Portland, now in NY and LA!), Coffee People, on and on, The Coffee Culture!!

I guess it was around 2000 when I started to realize that the coffee culture had basically changed the way people operate. They buy and drink one hell of a lot of coffee. And guess what they also buy, as they stand and chat with the effervescent sales person in their fave java crib? Pastry!!! Tons, and tons, and tons of pastry. Ok first comes the coffee. Ya gotta have that. But buying the coffee puts you right in front of that pastry case, and damn that cranberry orange scone I had last week was the bomb and oh lordy lookit that cinnamon roll and guess what, with your wifes’s Venti Non Fat Latte, your Americano and a couple sweet things, there went twelve bucks, AND YOU DON’T CARE, because that is your life and you’re driving to Cottage Grove for the day and you’re all ripped on caffeine and sugar and you like it that way!

So here is my theory. The Coffee Culture has paved the way for the reintroduction of retail bakeries, and by God, here in Portland, we are very well stocked with new, great bakeries. Little T’s American Bakery, La Provence, St. Honore, Crema, Nuvrei, The Pearl Bakery, Ken’s Artisan Bakery, Back to Eden Bakery, Lovejoy Bakery, Grand Central Bakery, Dot Donuts, Jim and Patty's Coffee and Bakery, I could go on. And all of these bakeries offer a great coffee drinks, and some of them are full restaurants, besides the killer baked goods they produce. I go and buy a big ol’ box of fourteen amazingly tasty and beautiful pastries for thirty five bucks for the fam. I’m thinkin’, it's a bargain!! And the four customers behind me, they load up too! And no one complains about the prices!!! Well maybe a few, but they can still get their maple bar, mixed and cut in Duluth, at Safeway.


La Provence


St. Honore
Little T's American Bakery

The Blueberry Basil glazed raised doughnut at Blue Star
Nuvrei

My story in annoying detail:
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Saturday, December 07, 2013

Ric Seaberg's Holiday Party Meat Rolls


I miss the bakery. The products, the smells, the people. But I don't miss that rising at 2 or 3am, after maybe 5 hours of sleep, and then slamming strong coffee, and telling my staff of 10 or so what to do for the next 8 hours. And other stuff. When I sold my store, in 1995, after 20 years of being in business, as president of Richard's Bakery Inc., and chief sheet pan washer, my friends and customers would say to me, "Haha Ric, you'll never be able to stay out of bakery business", to which I would politely smile, but inside, I was saying, "Haha, pretty damn sure I can". 

But I do really miss making that stuff, and I find myself baking at home, well, probably more than most folks. One product that was unique to my store in Portland, in those days, was a popular product we called "meat rolls", and with my sweetest and most important daughters, Stacey and Amy, requesting me to make some for this holiday season, I bought some ingredients, and cranked up the kitchen for a little practice session. This is a good looking and tasty hors doeuvre I'm certain your fam will love:

Meat Roll Recipe

 Ingredients:

 Meat mixture:
2 lbs lean ground beef
1-1/2 cups fine bread crumbs
4 whole eggs
3/4 cup water
2 tsp granulated garlic or garlic powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
Healthy splash Tabasco 
Healthy splash Worchestershire sauce

 Other Ingredients:
Puff pastry
Dried parsley
Variety of dipping sauces 
Mix all above ingredients (meat mixture) in one stage. It works best to add your wet ingredients to the mixing bowl first, then bread crumbs, then other stuff. Mix thoroughly but not long. Consistency should be such that you can press meat mixture out of a pastry bag with a 1" hole cut in the bag. If you love spicy food, add more Tabasco! But I prefer to provide my guests with a variety of dipping sauces, including some really spicy ones

Method:
Flour your work area ( I use a wood "tableboard" by Spinella) and add your piece of puff pastry
Your puff should be cold but not frozen. Put any unused puff back in the fridge for now. 

Pin your puff out such that it is about 1/16 of an inch thick. If you buy Pepperidge Farm Puff, the way it's folded will inform you how to use the 3 sections for your meat roll mixture. This next picture shows the pastry fully pinned and ready for the meat mixture.

Brush off all the flour, cut the dough as shown with a knife (not serrated) or a pastry wheel.

Cut the end of a cloth pastry bag to leave an approximate 1" diameter hole. Add some of your meat mixture to the pastry bag, and pipe it onto the pastry as shown.

Whip a couple of eggs in a little bowl with a hand whip or fork, and brush it onto the pastry below the meat as shown. Then roll up the dough as shown below, and press the rolls lightly to seal the pastry to the egg wash.

Brush off any excess flour. Then cut the rolls in about 1" pieces with a French knife or pastry wheel, egg wash them well as they sit right up against each other, and add dried parsley for color. Then pick them up and put them on your baking pan. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees and bake for approx 19 minutes.

Suggested sauces:
Barbecue sauce
Ketchup
Ketchup with hot sauce added
Sweet mustard
Sweet hot mustard
Ranch dressing
Blue cheese dressing
Thousand island dressing
Frenchs mustard
Horseradish sauce or mustard
Chinese hot mustard
Wasabi sauce or mustard

Note: This is my recipe, and it works great for me. But maybe you'd like to try something different, like adding a portion of pork sausage or another change to the recipe. Go for it! Have a great party!!!
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Saturday, March 09, 2013

The Photic Sneeze Response


I was very young when I first discovered that I have the photic sneeze response, which is present in 18-35 percent of the population, according to Wikipedia. Basically, when a person who has the photic sneeze response looks at the sun or a bright light, it'll sometimes make that person sneeze. It'll come on suddenly, like when you're sitting in the sun, next to your wife, who is relaxing and calmly enjoying a glass of wine as she reads a little Jose Saramago, and all of a sudden, KERBLOOEY!, you go off courtesy of the photic sneeze response. And KERBLOOEY! again. And yet another KERBLOOEY!. Or maybe you'll be driving along in the car and all of a sudden you turn your head slightly to the left where the sun is and you'll get a little tickling in your nose and then, KERBLOOEY! All this while your wife again sits calmly staring forward, looking at the scenery, as if three or four wild sneezes in a row are not bothering her. Because she is the pluperfect spousal unit and queen of your existence.

Or maybe she's super nice and all, but somewhere deep down my pluperfect spouse harbors complete and utter resentment and anger related to those times when the photic sneeze response rears its ugly head. I have actually suspected this all along even though she puts on a good face about it. Because last week while working in our yard on a lovely, warm pre-spring day, in overcast weather, the sun suddenly peaked through as I dug yet another behemoth hole for planting some new plant that she had purchased at the Chinese garden or some off-the-wall plant sale. And then.... suddenly.... I feel the tickle. (Insert Jaws music here) I turn my head slightly and raise it to the sky because the photic sneeze reponse is calling me to do so. And then as quick as lightning, KERBLOOEY! I look at Marie. She has the look of whatever on her face. I try to dig more. And then without warning, as I look up slightly again, KERBLOOEY! I glance at Marie again and her eyes are closed but her face looks calm. I lift my spade and try to continue my excavating. And then once again, without warning, as I raise my head to the warmth of the sun, KERBLOOEY!

At that moment, I fear my perfect spouse's true feelings came forth. Because after that third sneeze she gave me a look, a staring look that said, "that is the most irritating thing I have ever experienced since the day I was born".

And then she uttered these words. Words that I will never ever forget, as she stood holding a potted plant in her pink garden gloves, and sporting a little brown smudge of mud on her left cheek. (Stop Jaws music). "Ric" she spoke, "Quit lookin' at the goddam sun".

So I wrote a song about it. It's called the Photic Sneeze Response. And it's a rockin' little ditty. Featuring my buddy Tim Ellis on guitars, as always. If you're a photic sneezer, this one's especially for you!


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Friday, February 22, 2013

God Bless The Angry


Anger. What an interesting emotion. And I think, because of its power, a sometimes overused emotion. Flying off the handle, if you will, can sometimes get you what you want. Like say, when you're a kid, and you lose your baseball mitt, and you rail on to your folks about how all the other kids have mitts, and you need one RIGHT NOW for the game today, and you're 12 but you still hit the drywall so hard you punch a hole in the kitchen, by the Osterizer, your Mom might just give in and take you to Caplan's and buy you a mitt. 

And maybe, over time, some folks begin to rely on anger to drive home their talking points, brow exceedingly furled, voice raised above all others, that kind if thing. It's pretty easy to to tell when someone is doing that. It's kind of embarrassing. I mean for an adult to act like that.

But I'm not saying anger isn't a necessary emotion. Sometimes a person has to feel anger rise up in them to make necessary changes in their life, like say, to help a person fire a tyrannical employee, or get out of an abusive relationship. And of course, some folks may be caught in a loop of anger, if they have been abused in their lives, especially as children. 

The way I see it though, is that any of those folks, young, older, abused or not, deserve compassion. Because for me anyway, it would fairly suck to be angry all the time, like a few peeps I've known. Like, when an angry person wakes up to a beautiful sunrise, they're already mad about something. And the motherfucking coffee is too fucking strong. 

I'm just throwing out a few thoughts here. Because I'm certainly not qualified to lead a discussion about the ever so complex emotion of anger. And how people use anger. And the effects of anger. And who was deeply and inconveniently angry in history, like say Hitler or Mussolini. I guess for the most part my little small brained point is that anger is often misused, there's too much anger in the world, and people need to relate to each other more kindly, generously, and lovingly. And so, I'm just going to go ahead and say, God bless the angry. They probably suffer more than most. And those around them do too. The world is the most amazing and beautiful place. And we are so lucky to be alive on the earth. So, maybe chill a little bit. Have a yogurt.

 So I wrote and recorded a song about it, God Bless The Angry, click here. That's Tim Ellis, as usual, cranking out those guitar parts. Fucker's so good, it pisses me off.
My story in annoying detail:


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Tuesday, February 05, 2013

A Certain Level of Luckiness



Hangin' in my office/studio

This is how it started. We had some serious health stuff go down in the fam in January, 2013, which resulted in my son Blaine spending a week in the hospital. Marie also came down with an as yet undiagnosed Shoulder Thang, and we await further analysis on that one, an MRI, other stuff. Sheesh. We look forward to better health!

When Blaine was in the hospital, and before the Shoulder Thang, Marie kept friends and family appraised of Blaine’s progress in the hospital via Facebook. At some point, in frustration, dealing with hospital staff and Blaine's illness, she posted the following, and received a few replies:

“That feeling when you suddenly realize it has required a certain level of madness to survive your own existence. Yeah, that's the one.”

 To which I replied:

Ric Seaberg: See that's how I got you to marry me

Marie Deatherage: Lucky you 

Ric Seaberg: Certain level of luckiness

About a second after I typed, “A certain level of luckiness” and rolled it 
off my tongue, I knew there would be a song with this title.


Okay so in the days prior to our january health issues, 
I had discovered the microphone pictured here, which is a
special piece of electronics. Simply named the “Mic”, by Apoggee,
it is the first studio quality USB microphone that one can use to
record, get this, directly to an iPhone!! When I saw this, for me, it
was absolutely one of my famous, “where do I click?” moments!
Worry about how to pay for it later. I recently received it, and it is
awesome. And I’m thinking, OMG I am going to record a song directly onto the iPhone!

Okay back to the song. So I write the song titled  “A Certain Level
of Luckiness”, and I make it a love song to my pluperfect wife
Marie. And of course I am certainly inspired that the title came
from an actual spontaneous Facebook exchange between Marie
and I. Also awesome.

So I buy the Garageband app for iPhone, watch every YouTube
video I can find about Garageband for iPhone and iPad, and
basically teach myself the software. Learning music software is
always a challenge, especially when you have a song on the tip of
your tongue, and in your heart, and you can't wait to record it, but
you’ve go to learn all this shit first.

I started by opening Garageband for iPhone, and then doing the
set up for a new song, cinchy. Then I chose a tempo, and put
together a little drum track, using a classic drum kit, some congas,
and a tambourine. Then I played two tracks of accoustic guitar,
haha, me! Then I sang what we call a scratch vocal, a first vocal
take, just so, as you record the other instruments, you have a feel
for what the singer is doing. Then I took about a week, off and on,
to fool around with all the amazing instrumental options that are
available in garage band, and ended up adding grand piano, and
pizzicato strings. Garageband makes the playing of these cool
parts pretty easy. I mean, I didn’t have to learn how to play violin!
What fun!! 

The recording tools that are available these days for musicians and songwriters at a reasonable price are mind boggling. Back in the day, when I was starting to become serious about songwriting, I had a little Penncrest (JC Penney) reel to reel tape recorder, like the one pictured here, which was basically complete shit sonically and super hard to use, don’t even make me think about it. I still have a couple of tapes from those days, when, for example, I would set it up in the passenger seat of the band truck traveling from Eugene to Pochatello, and track a song idea or two as we passed through Bend and Ontario, while Cac drove, and maybe added a harmony, as other band members packed zees in the back of the truck. Fond memories, but man, what an ordeal. There was really no way to capture a decent sound then, unless you went into a recording studio, and even there, maybe a studio would have a 4 track machine. Which was still a bear to use, merging (bouncing) tracks at the cost of fidelity to get a few more tracks, and having crappy control of your project. 

Ok so here’s what you will spend to get the quality of sound you will hear on my project. IPhone, $399. (Which I’ve heard is good for other stuff) Apoggee “MIC”, $289. Garageband for iPhone, $4.99. A good pair of headphones or earbuds, $150. Total, around $950. For making a decent demo with exceptional fidelity, of an original song, at home, (or anywhere, it’s tiny!) by yourself, just amazing. And especially amazing for those of us who have dragged ourselves through many years of inadequate and expensive recording technology.  

I used all 8 tracks available in garageband for iPhone to record this tune, plus I merged the two accoustic guitar parts so I could get one more track to do the ad libs in the outro, (which of course I relentlessly rehearsed). In sum, I’m pretty sure it took me about 20 hours. I hope you enjoy “A Certain Level of Luckiness”!

 Oh, and honey, I Love You! Happy Valentine's Day!




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Sunday, January 27, 2013

The Lost Morning Reign Tapes, "Belinda"

Eddie James and The Pacific Ocean, 1969


That’s Eddie James up there, plying his trade as lead singer of Eddie James and The Pacific Ocean, when The Morning Reign visited the famous venue “Gazzarris”, on Sunset Strip in 1969. A four piece band, Eddie and company sounded great as they slammed out R&B flavored tunes like “I Wanna Testify” and their own tune, “Shrink”. Somewhere in his 20’s, Eddie was definitely the lead singer I aspired to become, beltin’ out rock numbers like a real pro, all gutsy, and rockin’ those cool bell bottoms. We Reign guys sat enthralled, throwin’ back whiskey and workin’ on a groovy thing. The unwed Reign members, lore has recorded, smoothly joined tables of pretty hippie chicks and commenced to tell lies. Something.

So Eddie James has a so-so musical career and then switches gears and becomes Edward James Olmos, man. You grow up in LA, you work like a dog, stuff like that happens. Good for you Ed. We were rootin’ for ya!

Next day, we leave Cac’s house in South Pasadena and drive to Capitol records, where we meet our producers, Mark Wildey and Joey Paige, load in our equipment, and record a few tunes. The song from the lost tapes I have included here is a song Mark and Joe asked us to record, “Belinda”. I remember when I first heard the demo, and thought for sure I was listening to John Sebastian of The Lovin’ Spoonful, and I may have been! But I can’t tell you for sure who wrote it. The genre of Sunshine Pop was all the rage back then, with bouncy little tunes all over the radio, and we were right in the pocket with this one. 

In about 1985 Cac handed off some old tapes for me to enjoy and keep safe, but I was never able to find this one song, which features me on lead vocals, until our friend, film maker Chuck Stenberg, who produced the awesome film “ The Days of EJD and Concert Services”, found it for us on one of those tapes! So it was truly lost!! You can hear a bunch of Larry and his keys on this one, and of course all those angelic Reign backing vocals. Fire up some incense, splash on some patchouli, pour a glass of Spanada, close your eyes and transport back to 1969!

 Click here to hear the song "Belinda"

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Sunday, January 20, 2013

The Lost Morning Reign Tapes, "Wish I"




I have a client, whom I have done a good measure of handymanning for, who has a bomb shelter in her basement, built in the 1950s, before she purchased the house. It has a big metal door, and once, we opened the thing, just so she could show me the inside. Super small. I didn’t see any air holes either. Probably useless. Probably a good lesson in how crazy a good bit of fear can make a person. Kind of like a concrete tomb. 

In practice, I guess you hear on the radio or black and white tv that the The Commies are floating a nuclear bomb up the Willamette River, and it’s gonna blow any second. So you grab your spouse and your five year old twins named Lana and The Beav and a couple boxes of corn flakes and roll into this dank cave so that after the blast which of course you stylishly survive, you roll out and mow the lawn, maybe have a cocktail mixed in a spiffy Art Nouveau hand painted glass pitcher. “Whew”, Dad may have been heard to chortle, circa 1959. “That was a heckuva nuclear blast. Hear tell that mushroom was sizable!”

I attended Atkinson Grade School in Portland, Oregon from 1954-1962. These were the years of The Cold War, with that fist pumpin’ Nikita Kruschev and Russia, and the real possibility of some type of actual war. At Atkinson, and in schools all over the USA, students and teachers practiced what was called a “bomb drill”, “air raid drill”, or “duck and cover drill”. When a certain sound,  generated from the school office,  would permeate the school (I think it was a loud buzzer), all kids were required to line up, march into the school hallways, and hit the floor against the hallway wall, and then “duck and cover”, kind of roll yourself into a ball and put your arms and hands over your head. You know, so when the nuclear blast goes off and burns all your skin off, your head will be protected by your arms. But here’s the weird part. At Atkinson, during the drill, and this happened many times, they played some kind of record over the school intercom, or in some teachers room, of what I would describe as the sounds of a gun fight between airplanes, like what went on in The World Wars, NNNNNYOWWWWWWW, (explosion, ack ack ack ack ack ack), NNNNNNNNYOWWWWWWWWW, etc, while we 8 year olds were ducking and covering. If you went to Atkinson during this time, please comment here to validate my memory of this. Even as a young child, I can remember thinking, this is kinda weird. I mean, this is some scary shit, what’s with the sound effects. I bet it was emanating from the room of one Mr. Ball, he was kind of a nut.


Here’s a photo of my buddy and Morning Reign member Craig “Cac” Chastain, who is a couple years older than me, in about 1968.  Cac was a sophomore in high school in Pasadena when I was an eighth  grader in Portland, in 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Cac remarked to me many years ago that this period of our history scared the livin’ daylights out of him, what with all the talk of bombs and the dangers of communism. He once said “I was sure the Commies were gonna be comin’ up the Sacramento River in gun boats”, in a kidding tone, but really, those times were uncertain, and I think all of us kids during that time deserved to be a little nervous. 

Well wha’d’ya know. The Commies did not detonate a nuclear bomb in Duluth, or Pasadena, or Portland. But then the Viet Nam War was heating up, and we boys in the Reign were pretty sure we’d be going to Nam. Several of us were given deferments for one reason or another, but our first keyboardist Bob Baker did join the service, and we all thank you so much Robert for serving our nation and risking your life. 

And I suppose it’s no shock that with my background, and especially The Viet Nam War, some of the lyrics that were coming out of me back in The Days of The Reign were full of images of suffering and you know, being all critical of war, gettin’ my peace and love on. 

Here’s a song titled “Wish I”, which I wrote with Larry Sieber in 1969, whose keyboard figures play a prominent role, and inspired me as I wrote the words. It sort of encapsulates my feelings about what was going on at the time, The War, The Peace Movement, my skepticism, and hopelessness. Which is kinda weird cuz I am down deep a really optimistic person. But that fear, sometimes, it’ll getcha’.

 To hear the song "Wish I" click here



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