Focus the Nation Theme Song

Tomorrow is the huge Focus the Nation Symposium on college campuses nationwide. They've been working on this forever, and it finally comes to fruition tomorrow. It recently got props from Woody Harrelson, Governor Ahnold, Obama, and a whole mess of important people. The reason I mention it is that I wrote their theme song a while back for a promotional video - here it is for your listening pleasure. It's possible that millions of youths may hear it tomorrow. Weird, huh?

I gave up political rap a few years back, but this seemed like a worthy cause to get ol' LiberalCaz out of the closet:
Gavin Castleton - Focus The Nation theme

Gavin Castleton Interview on KBPS

Here's an interview I did a week or so back:
Gavin Castleton Interview on KBPS 01-18-08
check how many times I say "Amazing."

This happened.

FULL FRONTAL


RUTHLESS GANGS OF PORTLAND

How Many Blankets Do You Have?

We drive by Seal Beach in Waldport, OR at 10:40 pm. I feel quite inconsiderate showing up at my grandparents' home this late, but I-5 South had presented numerous obstacles: not only were we fighting through a monsoon of sorts, but there were three completely separate accidents choking our path. The first two weren't that bad, but the third was that wonderfully annoying traffic that seems glacial until the second you pass the scene (which is of course far off the road), and then you're at warp speed all of the sudden. I go blind with rage when that happens because it means that I've been held up for hours due to a long line of selfish uncoordinated craning necks and not some street-blocking wreckage or rush hour. The only justice I can really serve in that situation is to purposefully NOT look at the wreck and the ambulance as I pass. And really, what kind of justice is that? I noticed that Lumas also did not look at the accident. In fact, he may have been more spiteful than I, opting to express his feelings of futility in a rigorous and defiant groin-slurping.

So we pull into my grandparents' rocky driveway just before eleven. I knock on the door apologetically, haloed in the porch light and rain soaked: the way every prodigal son comes home.

Grandma has meatloaf (the dish not the guy) in the oven for me, which I graciously inhale, having subsisted mainly on cashews and truck stop fruit the entire day. I will admit I've been a fairweather vegetarian this month. My nutrition and my sanity seem to be on opposite ends of my own private seesaw.

I hang my hoodie in the closet downstairs, and use the bathroom. Grandma calls me to help reach something upstairs in the kitchen. It's easy to get. I think about the fact that she's alone here for much of the year, and this is a well-weathered pot she's ask me to retrieve, one she probably uses daily. I like that she wants me to feel tall, and I silently thank her. But I think about it maybe too much, and feel like it's a mixed message - spiritually, they often treat me like I'm a little boy, confused about my direction and my purpose [This is a ghastly side effect of monotheism that I know can never be reconciled for us. We have mended so many things, but these two planes can never truly converse - because one insists that the other doesn't exist. The hopelessness of it pulls my face skin down]. But this pot-getting thing is a nod to my adultness... errrrrrrrrrrrrrrr I decide not to think again until I've slept. Grandma gives me soup and I find my spot on my favorite couch (The All Business Couch - the one with no throw pillows, no doilies, no arm covers, just the hard plushy facts). I think about how this couch has been here forever. I start to think that maybe grandparents are placed on this earth to hold on to the furniture you love. I decide again not to think until I've slept.

We don't talk much. I think I'm too worn to explain myself, and I think they might not want to know why I'm here, fearing the worst. Or maybe they know that home is a place where you don't have to explain your presence. I don't know, but it felt ok to be still. It felt wonderful, truthfully. While Grandma told me a story about one of my cousins, Grandpa was getting acquainted with Lumas. My grandfather has taught me everything I know about dogs, and for ten years now I've wanted him to meet my son and see how good I've done for myself. I knew he would understand the magic of Lu.

He always introduces himself to any animal by grabbing its face in his sausage fingers (the very same that I inherited), shaking it playfully, and speaking in a pseudo-aggressive low gravelly voice, "yesh yooor a good boy, Loooomas." He is immediately the alpha. Then he will stroke its head in weighty, enthusiastic waves to let them know they're in good hands... Hands that can either snap your neck or caress that perfect spot behind your ears, depending on your next move. Within minutes Lumas became my Grandpa's furry satellite, following him into the kitchen for snacks, and then down to put more wood in the wood stove. I accused Grandpa of keeping beef jerky in his pocket, but he turned them out, empty. I didn't have the heart to accuse him of keeping beef jerky anywhere else on his person, so I had to take him at his word. To date my grandfather is the only person who has accomplished this transference of authority with Lu while I'm still in the room. And for some reason it doesn't really bother me.

Grandma sends me to the downstairs closet where I find stacks and stacks of blankets. There are blankets from Chile, Guatemala, the Philippines, Mexico, Brazil, Honduras, and India. Most of Central America is itchy, so I go India. I think for a second how it must say something about people when they've acquired this many blankets. I have three blankets in my life.

I sleep fourteen hours. I wake up dry-mouthed - my body knows I'm on the west coast before my mind remembers. When I follow my nose up the soft green stairs to what Grandpa will call the Pancake Palace, he declares loudly, "Daylight hits the swamp!" I smile bashfully, and Grandma says, "Oh, hush now, Bob" and then to me, "Now you sit yourself down and see what nonsense Grandpa has cooked up for you."

"Is this Pancake Surprise?" I ask, delighted and horrified.
"You bet your doggonenoggin it is, buster!" [I know, I know. Sometimes I too believe he gets his dialogue from some sort of Grandpa handbook]. "Pancake Surprise" is what it's called when Grandpa puts whatever he wants in the pancakes. Often times you'll find last night's leftovers, or ingredients that aren't the best of friends: bananas & sausage, potatoes & strawberries, etc. I know I have his DNA because I'm somehow looking forward to this PS sesh.

I survive the breakfast roulette (it's just plain old agreeable blueberries and raspberries) and then he says in our signature sarcasm, "If you're going to just show up and take over our humble home like this, the least you can do is help me bring wood over to Betty." I'm excited to be useful, but I feign lethargy, "Well, to be honest, I thought maybe I'd watch some TV, maybe take a nap." This is where the witty exchange ends because Grandpa has lost maybe 40% of his hearing. He hands me a puffy flannel vest from the closet ("Here!"), rebuttal-by-way-of-humiliation, and then leads me out the front door and down the street.

There is an eighty-nine year old woman down the street that my grandfather visits every morning. He gets her wheelbarrow, and transfers two loads of wood from her shed to her living room. She thanks him and offers him a Little Debbie treat. He passes it to me, pretending like he isn't interested in it's chocolate goodness, but I see a basket of them by the door, and I know that this is the payment he's worked out.

Racing Trains

Driving along 80W, we were racing trains for what seemed like hours. I was bored with it; none of them offered much competition in the speed department, and whenever I tried to get a good gander at the graffiti they wore, I found myself drifting into oncoming traffic. But Lu was licking the Nebraska wind and barking playfully at the Union Pacific, and I felt like if I slowed to sixty I would lose his respect. So I did my best to make it look like a struggle... keeping up with those trains. We came upon what must be the country's largest train depot and decided to have lunch there. We cut lunch short, though, because there were so many rusty spikish things about and I wasn't positive Lu was up to date in with the rabies juice; I started having these visions of him getting Cujo up in that piece.
These last two days I've grown to love him more than ever before. He stays within an even smaller radius when we're on the road, which oftentimes means I'm driving with this seventy-pound furry cinnamon roll on my lap. And when we stop somewhere he's on his best behavior, waiting outside the restaurant or gas station patiently (though still terrifying small children and minorities). The few times we've stopped at bigger shopping centers, we've played this game we call "Delayed Entrance." I go in first and he gives me a two-minute head start before coming in to find me. If he can find me before he gets thrown out, he gets to select any single item in the food or hair care aisle and I have to purchase it for him. If he doesn't find me, then he has to lick his own gents for a twenty-minute stretch. Our record is fourteen minutes in a Home Depot, and even when they got him that time, they didn't really wanna kick him out because he was so polite and awesome looking. We disqualified one round that took place in a Walmart in Cleveland because he got spooked by something he saw in the Home Entertainment area (probably a movie starring Eddy Murphy as four different fat people) and bolted from the store before pandemonium could even begin to set in. Come to think of it, out of the four times that we've played Delayed Entrance he's never actually found me; I think because there are so many different smelling people to sift through, so many snacks to try, and because he's constantly having to run from security.

10 Lessons I Learned About Music, Business, and Life in 2007

1. Devon Sproule: A great musician can demonstrate the same beauty, dynamic, and emotion with a single instrument that they can with an entire orchestra.

2. Paul Curreri: The fastest way to improve a live performance is to actually learn your instrument.

3. The Bad Plus: The rarest element in modern music is an honest and palpable enjoyment of playing it.

4. Mark Donahue: Insecure musicians use compression where dynamics would suffice.

5. Sigur Ros: Knowing not to speak is far more important than knowing what to say.

6. Rob Pemberton: The best business model is a foundation of ability with walls of humility.

7. Ian Bahoroquez: Know what you're worth, and ask for that - no more, no less.

8. Mike Viele: The best way to get the best results in a production is to hire the right people and let them do their job.

9. My Mom: You don't owe the truth to those who punish you for telling it.

10. Me: There is no greater evil than lying to your own Heart.

As a side note: I saw two of the best performances I've ever seen in my entire life this year... one was The Bad Plus at the Regatta Bar, the other was Devon Sproule and Paul Curreri in a living room in Cambridge.

I'm Not Roger.

This overheard at a truckstop in Zanesville, OH, yelled into a phone by a striped burley man with a big mac blossoming forth from his paw:

"You aren't who I thought you was, neither!
...no... nope... wrong again...
I always said so. I ALWAYS SAID SO!
...Pam-a-LUH! PAM, listen! Are you listenin' to me? Or are you keepin on talkin to yourself---
no, NO---I BEEN listening, now you take a turn!
listen... (bite)
listen... (chew)
LISTEN GOOD, PAM:
'I'm.
Not.
Roger.'

Never was!
I... NEVER... was. I may LOOK like Roger, I may've SAID I was Roger, but I ain't him. I ain't.
...(sigh)...You CAIN'T tell me who I AM and who I 'm not, Pam.
...Go ahead then! Tell her---TELL HER! Might do 'er some good.
'N YOU CAN TELL HER THOSE AIN'T MY TEETH, WHILE Y'ER AT IT." (hang up)

Like a shark.

Yesterday I was like a shark all day, always moving so as not to devolve into a crumbly, crying mass, curled up somewhere way too public and asking to be taken away. I hadn't slept since Dec 27th, and the holiday itself had been a veritable bloodbath.
I have a bad habit called ambition and when it manifests in a momentous year-end record release party the results can be disastrous.
For two months my life was funneling towards this night. Rehearsing, recording, mixing, mastering, and arranging the manufacturing of this epic album "Worlds" was the easy part. The feats of financing, promoting, acquiring distribution (in this case, building an entirely new web store: 100+ hours of excruciating, bug-battling coding and data entry), and arranging what we'd hoped would be an unforgettable show were the true tests of my sanity. It is the world's biggest blessing (well, no, GPS is...) that someone like Justin, bass player for Ebu Gogo, was there to match and, most of the time, surpass my dedication to the project. Without him I would not have lasted the first week. Even with his aid I was unshaven, unfed, and irritable for the month of December.
When our set was pushed back half an hour past the new year count down we were supposed to lead the crowd with, we didn't complain. When my thoroughly-notated set list disappeared just before the first note of our first song, I just cursed under my breath and smiled. When the bartender turned the lights on at 1:15 and cut the last 5 songs of our record release show set (the very same we had been rehearsing for 4 weeks) so that she and the rest of the AS220 staff could leave early to attend a party at the Dirt Palace, and had the audacity to tell us, straight-faced, that New Years Eve was actually now a 1:15 night, I quietly packed up my equipment. When the violently drunk stage manager told us that we wouldn't be paid for "a few weeks" because "that's how First Night usually goes, and I don't give an Eff because I don't work here anymore" I shook his hand and loaded out.
Once home, I took my 80 lb keyboard out of the back seat, removed the amp and merch from my trunk, and let Lu out for his three AM constitution. I went up to my bedroom, put my few remaining clean clothes in a backpack, along with a pen, a paper, a ruler (I don't know why), and a book about card tricks. At this point Lu was giving me the furry worry, and trying to lure me to bed with groans and obscene tummy posturing. I took the pillow from under his head, the old brown Mexican blanket from the chest, and my boots from the closet. I bagged my laptop, headphones, and my dictaphone. I went downstairs, put the rest of his dog food in a plastic bag, took his two bowls, and emptied the fridge (two apples, burrito wraps, and purple stuff) into another plastic bag. I put all of these things in the trunk, put Lu in the back seat, and left Rhode Island.

When I saw the sign welcoming us to New York, relief took ahold of me so suddenly that I nodded off in the middle lane of 90 West. I woke up seconds later (I hope) careening into the breakdown lane of the right side, with Lumas licking my face. I pulled over, took my sweat-soaked t-shirt off, and slept for 11 hours.