http://stephenleerich.com/news.html Stephen Lee Rich: What Just Happened? Jannis' PHPRss class - http://www.jannis.to/ Fri, 18 May 2012 02:09:35 -0700 http://stephenleerich.com/news.html#22
Sandy Andina and I have gone back into the studio to make TWO new CD’s. One will be an EP to be released this year in time for the Holidays and will be about the Holidays. We’re calling it “Merry Humbug”! it will feature Sandy’s wonderfully original Holiday song “Season Of Hope”, my satirical tirade on Holiday Commercialism “Buddy, I’m Just Sick To Death Of Christmas “ , and much more. The title track is a recitation from The Lizard. The other 14 song Andina and Rich CD doesn’t have a working title yet, but is scheduled for release early in 2013.

Sandy has written a whole bunch of wonderful, new songs which just don’t quite fit into the Andina and Rich mold. So she’s hard at work on her second solo project. She plans to call the disc “Candy Apple Red Herring”.

Meanwhile, I’ve gotten started on a couple of solo projects of my own. The full, 14 song CD, scheduled to be release in the summer of 2013, is being recorded under the working title “Reality Checks Shouldn’t Bounce”. I’m also working on a 6 song EP for release in the fall. My current working title for that one is “Free Range Sofas”. But, that could change at any time.

Don’t get the wrong idea here. Andina and Rich is still a going concern. We will still have a pretty full touring schedule. However, Sandy will be undergoing knee surgery early in June. She will be out of commission until, at least, the end of July. I have done very little solo work in the last ten years and, to be honest, I’ve missed it. So, I’m taking Sandy’s convalescence as an opportunity fill that little void.

All of the tour dates for my solo act and for Andina and Rich are on my calendar page. Check them out. We may be coming to a venue near you.

More later.
Be well.
Steve

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/slrich
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/andinaandrich]]> http://stephenleerich.com/news.html#22 Thu, 08 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800 Your friendly, neighborhood, yodeling cowboy - Stephen Lee Rich - What Just Happened? http://stephenleerich.com/news.html#21
We got something of a late start last Thursday. It took us longer to get packed than we had anticipated. We got on the road just before 5:00pm (CDT). We decide that, even with the late start, we weren’t going to rush. We would arrive when we arrived and no sooner.
Destination? St. Joseph, Michigan. Why? Ingrid grew to her teens there and hasn’t been back in forty years. We found that many things had changed, but many others had not.
We discovered the difference between the two in our explorations on Friday and Saturday. Ingrid’s old house is still standing, although it has undergone much renovation. It is a small, two story, very blockish sort of house. The kind that most real estate agents would sell to a young married couple as a “starter” house. When Ingrid lived there it was decidedly a “fixer-upper”. That particular part of town; the housing between the train tracks and Lake Michigan, forty years ago, was considered the poor side of town. That is no longer the case. Somewhere along the line, somebody finally figured out that that was lake-front property and the value shot through the roof, as it were. Gentrification has possessed the neighborhood. There has been a lot of restoration and even some new construction there. The house which used to be just south of Ingrid’s, for example, has been torn down and replaced with a McMansion .
The downtown area is thriving and vibrant with many diverse shops both new and old. Of the former variety is a small bead shop from which Ingrid has been ordering material for her art and jewelry projects. It took some doing to get her out of there to move on to other shops. Of the latter variety, across the street from the bead shop, is an old style five and dime store which Ingrid remembered from her childhood. The young lady working at the counter told us that her grandmother had worked there as a teenager. At the south end of the downtown strip is a small music store. It’s accent is on band instruments. The walls are covered with trumpets, trombones, and the like. There is a small display of stringed instruments; cheap, acoustic guitars, one or two violins, and a fire-engine red ukulele. In the counter display I found something for which I have been searching for years -- a steel slide whistle. The only ones available in most places are the crummy, little, plastic ones. I couldn’t pass it up.
At the north end of the downtown strip in a huge, old, very official looking building which currently houses the St. Joseph Tourist Information Office. The structure was built in 1932 to house a bank. It is startling to imagine that someone had the moxie to establish a bank at the depth of the last Great Depression. The interior has been fully restored. The marble counters and teller-window cages are in tact. Ditto for the original vault doors (although, the vaults are now used to store tourist brochures).

The most jangling change, according to Ingrid, is that St. Joe has become a very arts-friendly city. There many outdoor sculptures , and more galleries per block than many, much larger cities.

We ended our stay in St. Joe watching (and photographing) the sunset over Lake Michigan. Having grown up in Chicago I have seen many sunrises over the lake. One must admit that most of them were seen as an adult, on a Saturday or Sunday morning, after closing some four o’clock bar (they’re open until five on Friday and Saturday nights). Thus, my appreciation of said events were experienced through something of a haze. That having been said, this particular sunset was very different from anything which I have ever seen.
Though the sky was cloudy, they were the sort of puffy, cumulous clouds one associates with a warm, summer evening ( the temperature was in the forties). They formed a great, gauze screen through which bit of sunlight shown , causing the horizon to colorfully glow with the promise of a better tomorrow.

Sunday morning we moved north to Ludington, Michigan. I’ll write more about that part of the trip soon. BTW, new photos from this trip are posted in the photo gallery.]]> http://stephenleerich.com/news.html#21 Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700 Your friendly, neighborhood, yodeling cowboy - Stephen Lee Rich - What Just Happened? http://stephenleerich.com/news.html#20 Most of the summer has been spent on the road with my frequent musical partner Sandy Andina.
The high points were going to Clarkson, KY to kick off a new concert series at Royal Farms and ATV Trails, and going to Sparta, IL to start recording the next Andina and Rich CD.



Royal Farms and ATV Trails are 550 acres located just east of Clarkson, KY. Most of the land is used to raise horses. The rest (obviously) is used as ATV trails. People come from all over the country to run their rigs on these trails. The concert series is produced and booked by Sandy hardin who, on stage, is known as Th River Red. She runs an outfit called RedStarr Entertainment Co. She put on only two concerts this year. But, come next june there will be Twice monthly shows at Royal Farms. Sandy told that they’re rehabing one of the barns to turn it into an indoor concert venue so that the series can run year round.




Last month Sandy Andina and I spent the three most productive day we have ever spent recording at Inside-Out Studio in Sparta, IL. It’s run by a fellow named gary Gordon who is an absolute wizard of a studio tech. He also knows how to create a perfect working atmosphere. Sandy and I went down there in the middle of last month for three days. We expected that, at best we would be able to lay down the raw tracks for abot five songs. We laid down the raw tracks for NINE! We left there on August 14th. Since then, Gary has almost finished the nine songs that we recorded. He’s added bass, fiddle, and a few other elements and they sound wonderful. We’re going back down to record the remaining five song we need for the CD on Sept.15th. When it’s all done we’ll post a couple of the songs as a preview of the new CD. BTW, the working title for the new project is “Two Guitars, A Dulcimer and an Attitude”. The picture which inspired the title is posted on the photo page.



So far, 2009 has been the best year I’ve had in a long time. I hope that your year is doing just as well.

Be well.
Stephen Lee Rich]]> http://stephenleerich.com/news.html#20 Thu, 03 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700 Your friendly, neighborhood, yodeling cowboy - Stephen Lee Rich - What Just Happened? http://stephenleerich.com/news.html#19
The Future is HERE! The Future is NOW!

It’s 2009! Welcome to the Future! I’m going to lay aside my usual Year-end review this year. There are too many important things that will change our lives (immediate and long range) to which we need to give attention.
I won’t belabor the obvious by saying too much about the Presidential Election. My general thought s on that can be found in the blog that I posted at the time. Just click below.
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=88316526&blogID=447029508
What the incoming Obama Administration and the Democratic majority in congress will bring remains to be seen. The last eight years have left us an immense amount of cleaning up to do before we can even begin to move forward.
If you’re in my line of work, or just a music lover, there are radical changes which have been building up and a now coming to fruition. The two top-selling songs in America, “Bleeding Love” recorded by Leona Lewis and “Lollipop” recorded by Lil Wayne, did not achieve that status through CD sales. They are the first two songs in history to top the three million mark in sales in one calendar year through DOWNLOADS! The Future is here! The Future is NOW! While it’s true that both songs were produced for major record labels, it is also true that the bigwigs in the industry have yet to awaken to the full reality of the marketplace. That gives indie musicians a handy little window of time in which to make a mark.
This is the Age of the Indie! This is our time! Proof? Check out the Oscar for “Best Song” in 2008. It went to an Indie. It will be another three to five year before the huge corporate interests in the industry finally catch up to what the Indies already know and find ways to successfully close the doors to us. Don’t think that they can’t! Don’t think that they won’t! Their current organizational inertia and their denial of market realities are the only things that are stopping them now.
Those of us who already have the marketing tools in place need to work them harder than ever before. Aside from advancing your own career it will also help to maintain Indies as a viable economic force. It will help to keep the doors open when the corporate giants wake up to close them. There are many small download services who will take singles directly from you. You need not go through any other larger company to get to them. Most of them will take singles. So, you don’t even have to have a whole CD ready to start generating PR and income. This approach can work. A couple of friends of mine in Chicago, Alan Jay Sufrin and Miriam Brosseau who bill themselves as Stereo Sinai, are doing it. They only make CD’s on special order. They do the rest of their marketing as downloads. This is working for them. They now have music placed in two different films with matching videos on YouTube to get the word out.
I’m not saying that the CD is dead. It’s too soon for that. The CD is still a saleable item. It still has value as a promotional device. People who are middle-aged or older still prefer to have some kind of software in their hands. Ditto for festival and club bookers.
As a music fan you can make a difference as well. Seek out the Indie vendors now and then. Their prices are, for the most part, on par with the major download services and the selection is wildly more eclectic. That’s where you will find the real gems. That’s where you will find artists who are following a muse rather than a formula. That’s where you will find originality rather than imitation.
The Future is Here! The Future is NOW! USE IT!

May you have good health and good fortune in 2009.
Stephen Lee Rich]]> http://stephenleerich.com/news.html#19 Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800 Your friendly, neighborhood, yodeling cowboy - Stephen Lee Rich - What Just Happened? http://stephenleerich.com/news.html#18
“I don't hold out much hope. Obama was voted into office by people who put his skin color first and completely ignored his utter lack of experience and his (proven) evil past associations. These are not the actions of thinking people. As a Senator, Obama couldn't even get a security clearance because of those past associations.

As someone who served this country with pride, and as someone who's "been there, done that", I know what our enemies are capable of, and I know what we've been doing to battle those enemies.

Our enemies are closer than most people realize, and our enemies are gloating. As we used to say in the Navy, ‘stand by for heavy waves’.

The American Dream has nothing to do with entitlements, handouts or punishing hard work and success.”

First let me say that I have nothing but respect for those who serve or have served in the military. My father was in the Navy during the Second World War. My brother-in-law is retired from the Air Force and, in civilian life, works in the maintenance dept. of the local Air Force base. His youngest daughter serves in the local Air Force Reserve unit. I will always honor those who are or were part of our armed forces. You are to be applauded for having served. I save my venom for those amongst our political leaders who would put them in harm’s way capriciously.

That having been said, I take great offense at the idea that I would cast something as important and vital as a vote based on something as trivial and useless as political correctness. That offense is leavened by my mirth at the idea that a concept so inflexibly narrow could gain the kind of broad base of support which is needed to elect someone to the Presidency of the United States.

As for the so-called “past associations” I can only offer the following observations. You might want to keep these in mind at the next election.
***************************************************************

Beware
By Stephen Lee Rich

Beware the man who offers a list of how much we must fear and boasts deliverance.

Beware the man who cries, “Hide under your beds and I will make your beds a safe shield!”

Beware the man who arrests angels from their flight then demonizes the fallen.

Beware the man who proclaims, “Those who do not know terror, who stand up to and face it are dangerous fools! I shall smite them down along with all those amongst the scribes and rabble who applaud them!”

Beware the man who brags that he can make fear know fear.

While it is true that there is much in the world of which to be afraid, we must ask ourselves this question.

Against whom do we need the greater defense,

The foreign terrorist who hates us for being us,

Or the man from our own home who is having breakfast in the bed under which he would have us hide?
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As you have pointed out,” Our enemies are closer than most people realize”. I thank the Lord that the domestic ones, at least, are no longer gloating.

Be well.
Stephen Lee Rich]]> http://stephenleerich.com/news.html#18 Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800 Your friendly, neighborhood, yodeling cowboy - Stephen Lee Rich - What Just Happened? http://stephenleerich.com/news.html#17 This is a significant and positive turning point in history. That goes without saying. What is less obvious is how infrequently one gets to witness such an event. I haven’t felt this stunned and euphoric about any single event since Neil Armstrong walked on the moon!
We can argue the comparative importance of that event until the cows come home and draw no conclusion. There is, however, an important lesson to be learned from that event.
What we proved, with the moon walk and last Tuesday’s election, is that we can set a goal and achieve it. This may also seem painfully obvious. But, in 1969 as now, there were many of us who were beginning to wonder if the light at the end of the tunnel hadn’t been snuffed out. Then as now, there were many of us who wondered if the American Dream wasn’t just some sort of cruel myth. Then as now, the Dream has been proven to be alive and well if we are willing to do the work needed to realize it.
As President-Elect Obama pointed out, there is much work yet to be done. We need to get to it ASAP. Remember that the price of freedom is vigilance. The price of progress is labor.

Be well.
Stephen Lee Rich]]> http://stephenleerich.com/news.html#17 Thu, 06 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800 Your friendly, neighborhood, yodeling cowboy - Stephen Lee Rich - What Just Happened? http://stephenleerich.com/news.html#16
The Downsides (why change seems needed)

For a start, things have been absurdly slow in the last month and a half. One expects a certain level of that from about the middle of June through the return of the students in August, but this has been ridiculous. We’ve had, on average, two to five performers each night. That’s wretched. With a start time of eight o’clock that still leave us finishing up around nine thirty or so. Maybe things will pick up in the next couple of weeks, but I’m not so sure. We’ll see.

Secondly, now that they have started putting bands in the gallery on Saturdays, we are relegated to the lounge for most of the month. That seems to be wearing on people a bit. We’re in the Gallery only on the first Saturday of each month. Even at that I have to remind what few people are coming in what room we’re going to be using each week. Two weeks ago the venue was showing a political film in the gallery and had a band playing on the front patio. The open mic, having been sandwiched between them, actually had six performers and a room full of listeners that week. The whole place was such a madhouse, what with three events going on, that I’m not keen to repeat the experience again.

The third problem is that I’ve been doing this virtually non-stop for nearly five years now. In the music business that’s one hell of a long run. I’m fortunate that there have been a number of people who have been willing to help out and take over the open mic when I’ve been booked out of town. But, I haven’t really had what one could honsetly call time off in five years. As a result, I’m very close to burning out on the whole thing.

Possible Solutions

The first problem may just be a matter of cranking the Publicity Machine a little harder. On the other hand, it could be that folks are just getting tired of me. I could step away from it – only host once in a while and hope that the other hosts would step in to keep this ball in the air. I could also discontinue it. Angela Smith’s open mic at Café Zou-Zou is cast in much the same spirit as ours has been. Maybe it’s just time to pass the baton.

It just might be the fact that the darned thing happens on a Satuday night. I’ve never been happy with that. We can’t go back to Fridays. Escape holds its weekly art opening on Friday nights. We could move it to Thursdays. That, however would put us head to head with Jim Scwall’s Songwriter’s Night at Bab’s French Quarter which is just a few blocks away. Wednesdays would put us in direct competition with Mark Croft’s open mic. No matter which night we put it on we’ll be pushing against some kind of other event. Doing it on a weeknight, however, might help in getting some working performers in to play. Open Mics are great places to break in new material in a no-pressure situation. Maybe moving the night will help.

The last problem is more difficult to solve. I’m back to the passing of the baton idea. Maybe it’s time. Maybe some of the above mentioned changes will help to relieve the burnout factor. What has made this so much fun for me has been to watch people grow and change. There are people who got on stage for the first time with us and are now working entertainers. We’ve given the first local exposure to a number of people who had just moved to Madison and wanted to break into the local scene. We’ve even been written up in a mainstream, daily newspaper. Almost no open mic anywhere has had that happen to them. If they get written about at all it’s in the alternative weekly papers. I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved with this event through five years and three venues (Speed Jump Java Joint, Urban Market, and Escape).

I have made no final decision yet. I’m open to suggestions. In fact I would love some help on this. Please, send me your thoughts by e-mailing me (openmic@stephenleerich.com) or just responding to this blog directly. All suggestions, ideas, and thoughts will be welcomed. As one might well imagine, my perspective is not all that it could be on this subject.

Be well.

Stephen Lee Rich]]> http://stephenleerich.com/news.html#16 Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700 Your friendly, neighborhood, yodeling cowboy - Stephen Lee Rich - What Just Happened? http://stephenleerich.com/news.html#15
Whatever you decide to do with your day off, be safe and well, and remember why we celebrate this day. The United States of America, as we know it, exists because of the events of 4 July 1776 and the decade or so thereafter. It was an amazing and miraculous period of time in history (not just ours, but that of the world).

While a certain amount of reflection on that time is nice, we also need to look forward to see what we can do to live up to the legacy that has been left us and make a few miracles of our own.


Stephen Lee Rich]]> http://stephenleerich.com/news.html#15 Fri, 04 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700 Your friendly, neighborhood, yodeling cowboy - Stephen Lee Rich - What Just Happened? http://stephenleerich.com/news.html#14
http://www.milow.be and http://www.myspace.com/milowbe

He has music posted ther. You’ll get a chance to hear the studio versions of what the open mic-ers heard unplugged.

The evening of the 14th had us packed to the rafters. We had thirteen performers and a roomful of people there just to listen. There was music from
Doug Hamilton
Milow
Marcy Dunagan (her first time on our stage)
Ingrid Frances Stark (poetry and pennywhistle)
Tom Zogrofi
Joe Crash
Kathleen Camilla King (one of our most reliable regulars)
James Rotch
Ken Jackson
Nancy Rost (one of our rotating hosts)
Johnny Darco
Dave Schindele (who, later this month, will make his debut as one of our rotating hosts)
Kid Fear

The best part is that everybody was loose and relaxed enough to sit in with with the other acts as back-up musicians. We always close the show with Bruce “U. Utah” Phillip’s tune “Hymn Song”. Everybody sang and half of the instrumental solos we from musicians who had not taken the stage for that number, but were still sitting in the audience. This kind of sharing and generosity of spirit is what an open mic is for. At least, that’s what our open mic was set up to be.]]> http://stephenleerich.com/news.html#14 Tue, 17 Apr 2007 00:00:00 -0700 Your friendly, neighborhood, yodeling cowboy - Stephen Lee Rich - What Just Happened? http://stephenleerich.com/news.html#13

Whatever one may feel about Mr. Foley’s antics or the Republican leadership’s non-response to it, it must be remembered that had the Democrats been in power at the time, and had one of their own been caught doing such a thing, the situation would have been nearly identical. The Democratic leadership would have turned the same blind eye to the activity until it was too late. Then they would have done the same dithering semi-denials that we have seen from the Republicans so far. The only difference would have been that the left-leaning pundits would be functioning as apologists and calling for treatment and mercy instead of blood. This would, of course, guarantee that the issue would stay in the headlines until Election Day. Thus dooming the prospects of most of the Democratic candidates running. As it is, the right-leaning pundits, at the very least, have enough wit to keep their mouths shut in the hope that it will go away soon.
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I saw a very strange bumper sticker today. It said,”Frodo Failed! Bush has the ring!”
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This sort of thing has been said before, but it bears repetition.
The single most revolutionary or subversive act that one can commit is to create good art. That is to say art which forces the reader, listener, viewer, or whatever to reexamine some small portion of reality. From the reexamination come questions. From the questions can come the kind of answers that sew the seeds of subversion and revolution.
Note that I am not advocating any sort of shooting war, here. The kind of revolution which will have lasting impact and benefit will be a revolutin of thoughts and ideas. As long as we are willing and able to question and challenge conventional wisdoms and that which is said to be “common knowledge” we will be able to grow as individuals and as a society. It is possible that you may wind up agreeing with those coventional wisdoms. But, how will you know if you don’t question them first?]]> http://stephenleerich.com/news.html#13 Mon, 23 Oct 2006 00:00:00 -0700 Your friendly, neighborhood, yodeling cowboy - Stephen Lee Rich - What Just Happened?