I'll Stop the World and Melt with You!!

Anyone that knows my surf/rockabilly family band, The Legendary D-Fenders, knows that we tend to attract a very eclectic crowd. There's the ol' standbys like Nashville Gerry, Crazy Dancing Lady, Alfredo, Killer Joe, and several other die-hards. But now we're attracting one-hit wonder celebs! While playing one of our favorite joints, The Stephen Talkhouse in the Hamptons, Robbie Grey the rhythm guitarist of Modern English was in the house. He would not stop raving about our music and said he had to come on stage and do his hit with us. We'd never played the song before, but probably 60% of our set are songs we've never played before! We could not pass up the chance. Well, we did their hit and another song off of his new album called, "Some of my best memories I can't remember" or something to that effect. Here's a clip furnished by my sister Kristina of "I'll Stop the World" with Robbie Grey!!

Travel: Past and Present

One of the best choices I ever made in my life thus far was to study abroad in London. I had to take 21 credits the semester before and have three different Dean's sign an appeal because I wasn't allowed to take the three highest level Mathematics courses in the same semester. (For those interested, they were Number Theory, Formal Reasoning, and Calculus of Several Variables) Well, I got A's in all of three. Take that Dean, Dean, and Dean! Anyway, traveling to London with 32 of my friends is an experience that still influences who I am as a person and what I expect from life. As a high school teacher, I tell every one of my students to spend a semester abroad. I really dove in to the culture, and returned to London and Paris two months after the program. I have since been back to London a couple of years ago, and have been to Sicily a couple of times as well. The video that accompanies this post is from Fall semester 2003 on the Roger Williams University trip.

I've been through a lot of stress, and for lack of a better term depression the past couple years, and I decided several months ago that I must return to Europe. So my ticket is booked and I will be spending the month of August in Europe. Here's my itinerary (I'm backpacking so it may change on a whim. Remember whims?)

• Week in London
• Week in Paris
• Weekend in Belgium/Netherlands
• Two days in Normandy
• Few days in Loire Valley
• Few days in Provence
• Week on the Riviera (Nice, Cannes, Monaco, etc.)
• Two nights in Dublin (very cheap to fly out of Dublin)

This trip is probably the main reason I started this blog. I want to post pictures and hopefully video of my trip. That's why this is a blog of life. I feel like travel (like music or theatre), is one of those intensifiers that helps you make decisions about the way you see the world and what you expect from life. I can't wait. I depart Aug 3. Enjoy this old footage!

New Year's Greeting

Since my blog posts thus far are going backward in time, I thought I'd post a New Year's video Sean and I did in January. This is a Zombie's song called "This Will Be Our Year." I hope you enjoy watching it, it was a blast to make. Just as a note because everyone comments about it. Sean is looking directly at the camera because it was recorded on my macbook's built-in camera and the lyrics to the song are on the screen. So he is not watching himself or anything like that. I on the other hand know the words down cold (this is very uncharacteristic of me, especially with my own songs. As soon as I write them, I forget them). Enjoy, and I hope 2009 will be your year.

Spring Break 2009

The past few years I haven't been able to travel during spring break because of grad school or other conflicts. So this year I flew out to California with my sisters to visit JP and play some beach volleyball. After a few days of that I drove down to Virginia to visit Troy Marshall III. Here is some footage of our adventures in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I apologize for the quality but it was filmed using my telephone.

Paraphernalia Sessions

Sean and I are back in the studio after a long hiatus (is that the same as a short lowatus?) recording our fourth album of original tunes. Here is a video of us hard at work in the studio recording two songs from our forthcoming album: Paraphernalia (To be released Aug 1, 2009).