I am thinking of our friend Randy as I post this.

We just had quite the week. We spent it out in Los Angeles, seeing a handful of the folks we know and love out there and getting to play an amazing showcase set in the Acoustic Lounge at the Viper Room on Sunset. The turnout was fabulous and the gig had some truly transcendental moments, and thankfully that appears to be more than our opinion, it seems to include many of the folks who were there to listen.

There was a bittersweet aspect to the week. We heard a long time dear friend, a guy named Randy, was dying from lung cancer and was in hospice. Out of love and respect, and in a desire to be of loving service, we went to see him.

It was Sunday the 8th of August. The place was on Fairfax, near Melrose, over by Fairfax High. The employees were friendly, and the setting was clean, however this was hardly a country club setting. We walked into the room to see Randy sharing a room with two other people, separated from each other by those vinyl hospital style curtains. He had a single bed hospital bed, and at the foot of it a small TV was playing some old 70′s flick starring George Kennedy, I have no idea what it was.

Randy’s eyes lit up when we walked in. He recognized us though he could not speak. We sat at his bedside for a while saying hello. There was no pretense between us that things were anything other than what they were. He could not verbalize, but his eyes were very expressive. When the group that had come to visit him dwindled down to just Victoria and I, we talked to him about letting go.

I remembered being at my Father’s bedside back in 2007 when he was dying, as he lay there in hospice. We had a quiet moment alone to talk about the journey ahead. I thanked him for having been a good man, and asked him if he could relax and let things come. I asked him to let go into the light. His last words to me were from that conversation. ” I reckon that’s about the best way to do this” was basically what he said. I held his hand. He passed the next morning.

As Victoria and I sat bedside with Randy I recalled him at his jewelry store, back in his vibrant health. Quick to laugh and expansive of spirit, he had always just lit up whenever Victoria and I came calling, long after we had moved to Colorado from Los Angeles. We were a sort of family. I would get the occasional message on my cell phone in Denver. He would say, “If nobody has told you today that they love you…I love you”.

We spent that time on Sunday afternoon stroking his hair, kissing his forehead, reassuring him that all would be well, and encouraging him to relax into the light and the love that was there for him.

It was time to go. Victoria gave him a hug and a kiss and got up to leave. I leaned over and whispered into his ear, “If nobody has told you today that they love you…I love you”. I kissed him on the forehead and we walked out as he closed his eyes.

Randy died Monday, August 16, 2010.

I will miss him. I miss my Father. I am at the time in Life where these occasions start to be more frequent. The seeming immortality of youth has faded. The game is on, and the stakes are for keeps. I think about the measure of life.

In the end, the measure of the treasure if you will is all that gets given. That is the story worth the retelling….

Below is a little clip of a song I wrote for my Father. Its called a Lullaby in Passing. I want to send it out for Randy. Its a very lo-fi video of a gig we played about 3 months after my Dad passed. But the heart is there in the song. Since part of what I do is write songs, and occasionally even get to go play them for folks, I want to send this out for the Ancestors now. Randy is dancing with the Ancestors. We are all headed in that direction.

Tell the folks you love that you love them. Even if you are pissed off at them. Make sure you put a little bit more back into the world than you take out on a daily basis. That is the heart of the artistry of Life. Its not about what you get, its about what you give. Its continually amazing that in the giving, the getting takes care of itself…..

Via Con Dios Randy. Love and blessings to all who are reading this, and to the lives we cross along the path. Go work on a dream…that’s the real deal…

Peace and Music

WES

Lullaby in Passing from Wes Hamil on Vimeo.

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Who’s an Artist? Or what is an an Artist? I certainly can’t tell you what Art is in any definitive fashion. Its sorta like saying you know what good food is. There are so many permutations of the subjective label of Art that are culturally dependent, and deeply personal depending on a person’s aesthetic.

I think the heart of artistry lies in Intent. Its kind a of a spiritual thing to me. Spirituality, much like Art, seems to be dependent on the perceiver and their frame of reference, but I guess Intent could be described as the nature of the purpose one assigns to something they are attempting to do. I propose that an artistic intent involves some degree of conscious commitment to “why” you are creating something. The “why” is less important than the intent and the commitment. Intent is alot of other things as well, including the focus on energy, which occurs on levels ranging from the subconscious and “soul” level all the way up to intense concentration.

I used to create in the hopes that it would get me noticed, and in getting noticed I could arrange my life to suit me in some fashion I found more acceptable than whatever the current state was. I was perfecting the “art” of neediness in that process. I guess it was art, because I was very focused and clear on why I was doing it, but it was ultimately self destructive and I walked away from it all.

Then I found my vocation. Not what I do for a living on any given day, but my vocation, in the way Carl Jung describes it. He wrote that your vocation is what your soul is called to do. So it was back to the guitar for me, and telling the stories I felt compelled to tell. The Intent was different though, and it was rooted in making my soul happy. After a few years the Intent expanded. Another spice got added to the mix. I found that when I went out and played live there was often a connection, an exchange, that seemed to be serving both me and the listener. And the further away from needing the approval of anyone to do what I was doing, the cleaner the exchange got.

So I kept doing it. And people started using the word Artist in connection with my name. I thought about all the years that I had associated that term with pretentiousness and narcissism. While there is no shortage of folks running around behaving that way and calling themselves artists, I decided that was a cowardly, cynical approach to the concept of Artist. I began to view the term Artist from the perspective of the name you give someone who is called upon by some unknown mystery to serve. They serve their soul, and then hopefully, others. Because such a gift, to whatever degree of proficiency it may ultimately mature, is one that seems to be requisite with the responsibility of being shared.

So find what your soul is called to do. Forget about whether it can pay the bills or not. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. But it will pay the debt you owe your soul. And once you start paying down on that go ahead and share the wealth with those around. Live as an Artist. Make lattes, fix cars, paint, write, sing, mow lawns, do whatever your soul is called to do with the Intent that you honor yourself and others in the doing. Its no big mysto- airy-fairy concept. Just find the courage to go do it. Then start…we are all a work in progress…

I have been doing that for a while now and when I am living in that intent I am a truly happy person, no matter what I am doing. Last January an email came out of the blue from a label in Germany called Bear- Family records, who was putting together a Vietnam themed compilation. I have no idea how they found me. On the first of July their compilation project came out and our song “The Ballad of Billy Saigon” was included, along with tracks from the Doors, John and Yoko, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and many more. I got a copy of the disc we were on and as I sat there listening to Springsteen’s voice come through the speakers only to be followed by mine a few tracks later, I said a little thank you to the forces of Spirit for helping me move to a point where Intent could guide my creative life instead of the desperate need for approval.

Go chase a dream today…you might catch it….peace- WES

Link to the Compilation

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(Read the rest of this story.)

Musicians are an odd lot. The vast majority of them that are still out there playing live and/or recording music after any extended period of time, let’s say any stretch that extends past late adolescence ( or even extended adolescence) into the 30′s and beyond is doing so primarily for the love of music. Some are able to make something of a living at it, while others may just be playing around a day job schedule.

Whatever, the case, they typically have alot of time and money tied up in getting out into the world at whatever level of proficiency they may have accumulated to that point in their career. The fact that they are out in some club or coffeehouse on any given night of the week is a testament to the muse that they are called to on some level.

I had the privilege of spending some time with the late Alexis Korner, the GrandDaddy /GodFather of the British blues movement. Most of the rock legends and many others consigned to the dustbin of anonymity got their start in his bands.

Alexis told me, ” There are musicians who play for fame, for fortune, and to get laid- and those are all perfectly acceptable reasons to play music. But most of those people don’t keep playing music if one or more of those things doesn’t come to them pretty quickly on. Then there are those musicians who play because deep in their soul they have no other choice. Those are the musicians, famous or not, that I respect the most and have been my friends over the years”.

As a musician and writer who has at various times walked away from music only to be called back because my soul has left me no choice, I have come to appreciate that statement from Alexis Korner more and more over the years. Relative degrees of success and public notice have come and gone, but the music remains, as does the need to express it.

I was talking to a musician from Houston some years back who told me that Music was one of the few businesses where you could make a living and be considered a failure. He went on to explain that he drove the same kind of car as his suburban neighbors, sent his kids to the same schools, paid the same property taxes as his white collar and blue collar neighbors, all of whom considered their standard of living to be that of a middle class successful person. Yet around the pool at the neighborhood parties, he had grown to be wryly amused at the perception from those very same neighbors that he was “not a success” because he was a working musician for a living, but they had never seen him on Music Television, the Grand Ol Opry, or whatever they equated fame and recognition to be and therefore “success” to be.

Every night of the week across the world there are musicians performing music. Some of it may be their own compositions. Others may be playing cover versions of well known artists. They may be playing for any or all of the reasons Alexis Korner listed. Many will be spending time and money creating recordings of their work with varying degrees of proficiency. All of them are looking for an audience.

If you can, take one night per month of your life, if you aren’t already doing so, and go support live music. Whatever strikes your heart. Maybe its a funk band playing nothing but covers, or some singer songwriter with their own material. Maybe buy one recording per month, either in physical media or online, of some new indie artist. Take a chance and branch out just a little. A lot of this live music is available at low or no cover charge.  The recordings are typically offered at or below the costs of any established name act.

Here is what will happen. You will meet new people. You will go to new venues, perhaps even discover a major new act ahead of the general listening public. You will most assuredly contribute to the magical alchemy that occurs when one human engages and supports another human’s creativity. In the process you will undoubtedly get to meet some of those special souls who Alexis Korner described. The ones who are in it “for the love of the game”.

Peace and Music
WES

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Acoustic Music, Folk Music, Americana Music, Singer Songwriter, New Thought Music,Blues Music

Hey folks- we are starting over on all our threads with this wesandvictoriablog.com site. Sometimes you just gotta get some new threads (okay, same cheesy puns I always resort to, but new posts all the same).

Just a heads up that the Bear Family Records “Next Stop Vietnam” compilation comes out in a week and we are on disc 11 alongside Springsteen, Seeger, Big & Rich, and Hnk Williams Jr among others. The compilation has an amazing array of artists, including John and Yoko and  CSNY, list is too long to elaborate here…check out this link

More soon, welcome to the new blog…lots of love from us

Peace and Music

Wes and Victoria