This & That

“I’m just gettin’ started, bitches!” – Dave Chappelle, from his legendary impersonation of R&B icon Rick James After reading through my last few blog posts, I came to realize that the tone of my writings had become somewhat negative when describing my experiences of the past few months. Based on the feedback that I received, many people seem to have gotten the wrong impression from my post “Game Over”; some assumed that I was going to completely give up making music. Let me assure you: nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I’m about to become more active than I’ve ever been. One of the most important realizations I’ve had in a long time occurred at the time that I wrote “Game...

Last night, I had an epiphany. It hit me quite suddenly, although the signs were there for many years. I’ve decided to give up my lifelong quest for fame and fortune and ‘retire’ – at least partially – from the music scene here in Germany. Here’s why. It came during my weekly teaching session. During my break I received a call that I had been waiting on for some time. As is so often the case in life , one prays for the best but expects, even counts on, the worst; my gut feeling told me that even though previous conversations with this person were from my perspective very promising [wishful thinking?], this conversation would have a negative outcome. Unfortunately, my gut was right. For many artists, especially in the performing...

During my TVOG experience, I had plenty of time to reflect on many aspects of my career, the effect of my job on my family and friends, and the reasons behind my lifelong quest to “make it” in this brutal world known as the music industry. After my exit from the show I received a lot of feedback from friends, family, old and new fans, as well as some industry players and colleagues. While I was soaking up all of this feedback, two things kept popping up in my mind; something Rea Garvey said to me after my exit (“you should really give some thought to how people perceive you compared to how you want to be perceived”), and the feedback I received from many people online (“you should have sung [insert song x here]; that style fits your...

What a summer it’s been! First off: my apologies for taking so long to update the site with new material. I’ve been so busy that I just kept putting it off. In any case, I’m still here! To start off this post, let me just say that this has been probably one of the best summer’s on record for me personally. I went on vacation to another one of my childhood dream destinations: southern Spain. As a child, my parents went to Spain and told me great stories of their travels. Since then I’ve always been fascinated with the country (I speak a little Spanish), and although I’ve been to certain parts of Spain many times, this was the first time I’ve ever been on vacation on the spanish mainland. We were in the city of Torrox...