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It Starts… Now!

Last night, Acoustic Highway had one of the best gigs we’ve had in the four years we’ve been together. We played up in Oakhurst at the Sky Ranch resort for a Ren-fair. It’s not that the crowd was huge… It wasn’t. There were only about twenty people there. But we sounded GREAT! It wasn’t just that Chris got a new drum set, which sounded so crisp and alive. It wasn’t just that we played a few songs from scratch that we’ve never played as a band before, and those songs came out great! It wasn’t just that Steve started playing a riff he came up with, i added some lyrics I recently penned…  er… texted to myself….  No. It was all this and more. But the creation of a new song right there and then, something in which my input mattered, it’s lit a spark!

It’s time to start laying down and recording the songs I’ve been writing for the last thirty year.

Yes friends….  It’s time to start recording my forever delayed solo album….  Or whatever you want to call it.

The impetus to get this in gear started a little over a month ago. Then a couple of weeks ago, when I went to Dallas for a vacation, an old friend gave me the Carter Albrecht solo album. It is a fine piece of work. Tragically, Albrecht, an alum of the 80’s band Edie Brickel and the New Bohemians, died before the album was finished and never got to see his work completed. Listening to the album weighs on me a little, as does the situation with Glen Campbell’s Alzheimer condition, both reminders that we are all finite. Those more negative thing are not the main motivation for my commitment, but I can’t deny they are not there. No, it’s the great feeling of making music that is stirring my soul to take these steps to a new unfamiliar place.

Anyway, after I woke up this morning, and got on the road to drive the 45 miles home, it all hit me like some divine sugar rush! Every fiber in my body is telling me that this IS the time!

Here is a lyric i wrote back in 89 that I think captures my new direction, my change in course onto a new exiting path!

Yeah, This is my story….
I’ve done what I had to do
Now it’s time to move on

There’s untouched places just a-waiting to be found,
These feet are gonna shadow new ground…
Yeah… it’s time to move on.

PS. I have two pieces of equipment I need to get to get the best sound I can. A direct box in to help beef up the guitar and bass inputs, and an eight channel firepod, or something like it, so I can get a good mixable set of drum tracks. The mix and clarity of the drums and percussion are very important to me – it’s one of the aspects I hone in on when I’m listening to any record. I know, given my non-existent budget, I’m limited in what I can do to produce “The Ultimate Sounding Record”. But I can at least do what I can to get the best sound possible for this thing….

Now… What the hell am I going to call it????

Huntsman’s Problem – He’s Not A Fake Conservative!

My blog-pal Dan at Gay Patriot has glowing praise for John Huntsman’s economic plan, published in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. Dan writes:

Jon Huntsman has taken a lot of grief from conservatives as being a RINO while winning acclaim from the left-of-center media establishment as a “grown-up” type of Republican. On Sunday talk shows, he has taken potshots at his more conservative Republican challengers for the party’s presidential nomination and signed on to the theory of anthropogenic global warming.

Sometimes it even sounds like he’s planning to endorse the man who tapped him as the nation’s ambassador to China should he (as polls indicate he will) fail in his bid for the Republican nomination. I had been skeptical of his bid for said nomination until I read the Wall Street Journal’s praise yesterday of his economic plan.

This plan, as summarized by the Journal, is pretty close to the type of plan I would promote were I running for national office.

Yep! I’ve written of the need for something similar to really stimulate economic growth. But here is the very first comment out of the block:

His economic policies have always seemed attractive, however my problem with Huntsman has usually centered around his character. I’m Mormon, and I watched him in an interview bob and weave in response to a very direct question about whether or not he was Mormon. He parsed his words and wouldn’t really confirm or deny it.

OK. Here you have the ONLY candidate who has laid out a very fiscally sound economic policy, something that you all SAY is THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE of our time…. Yet you won’t vote for him because he gets skittish about discussing his religion, something that he feels is a private matter.

This just confirms what I have said all along… That Social Conservatism is actually THE MOST IMPORTANT item in the movement today, and you guys still, in this horrible economy, will chose that over fiscal soundness every time! Huntman’s fiscal record as governor IS BETTER than either Rohmney’s, Bachmann’s, or Perry’s, yet he trails all of them by a wide margin! And Huntsman had the guts to reject No Child Left Behind via legislation! Even “Mr Real Conservative” himself Rick Santorum voted for it! Huntsman didn’t just talk about how flawed the policy was… He banned its implementation in his state! With the exception of Ron Paul, who voted “No” on the bill that created it, no one else in the field can claim that either. As I noted before, though all the candidates enjoy harping and deriding the last Republican President for his spendthrift ways, not ONE, save Huntsman and Paul, will actually go on record to repeal any of the programs that make Bush such a bad President in their opinion.

Because you still weigh social issue over fiscal ones, you’re going to end up picking another George W Bush… And you don’t even see it!

PS. At Gay Patriot, it was pointed out to me that I misinterpreted the intent of the original comment. Point taken.

Plenty Of Big Government To Go Around!

Due to the brain-washing that goes along with politics, some people just have these blind spots when it comes to certain topics, driving them to mental paralysis when it comes to recognizing problems. For both Liberals AND Conservatives. the effect of government regulations on businesses is a sticky wicket. I can hear some of my Conservative friends friends heads exploding upon including them in this post!

“We’re for LESS regulations and SMALLER government” I can hear them screaming!!!!

We’ll get to that in a moment. But first, lets just focus on liberals… Because they are an easier target concerning this topic! (just kidding of course… or am I?). First, lets look at something very close to my heart….. Guitars! The recent raid by the Feds on Gibson Guitars is kind of mind boggling! It’s not due to smuggling cocaine in guitar bodies or anything like that… It’s about WOOD!!!!

Gibson Guitar Corp., a big user of ebony and other scarce woods, for years has allied itself with Greenpeace and other environmental groups to show it was serious about preserving forests.

That didn’t stop the Nashville-based company, whose guitars are used by such musicians as B.B. King and Angus Young of AC/DC, from running afoul of U.S. authorities over allegedly illegal imports of wood. Though no charges have been filed, Gibson factories have been raided twice, most recently last week, by federal agents who say ebony exported from India to Gibson was “fraudulently” labeled to conceal a contravention of Indian export law.

Henry Juszkiewicz, chief executive officer of the closely held company, said in an interview that a broker probably made a mistake in labeling the goods but that the sale was legal and approved by Indian authorities.

Gibson’s predicament, which raises concerns for musical instrument makers and other importers of wood, illustrates the pitfalls of complying with U.S. law while dealing with middlemen in faraway countries whose legal systems can be murky.

The law ensnaring Gibson is the Lacey Act of 1900, originally passed to regulate trade in bird feathers used for hats and amended in 2008 to cover wood and other plant products. It requires companies to make detailed disclosures about wood imports and bars the purchase of goods exported in violation of a foreign country’s laws.

Leonard Krause, a consultant in Eugene, Ore., who advises companies on complying with the Lacey Act, is telling clients they should hire lawyers in countries where they obtain products. “How many people know the statutes in India?” Mr. Krause said. “The net effect is that it raises everybody’s cost of doing business.”….

Federal agents first raided Gibson factories in November 2009 and were back again Aug. 24, seizing guitars, wood and electronic records. Gene Nix, a wood product engineer at Gibson, was questioned by agents after the first raid and told he could face five years in jail.

“Can you imagine a federal agent saying, ‘You’re going to jail for five years’ and what you do is sort wood in the factory?” said Mr. Juszkiewicz, recounting the incident. “I think that’s way over the top.” Gibson employees, he said, are being “treated like drug criminals.”

Really?… REALLY????? And here is a fun bit…..

The federal government seized wood, guitars and electronic records from Gibson’s Nashville warehouses in 2009 and again last week. According to Juszkiewicz, that’s when the Feds made an unusual request from the American manufacturer.

On KMJ airwaves, Juszkiewicz revealed that representatives of the US government told Gibson that their legal issues would “disappear” if they used Madagascar labor instead of American labor.

Here is the link. Listen to the CEO interview. This is bizarre!!!! God… I hope they have records of this!!!! If Gibson was a smaller company, due to the losses of material confiscated by the Feds (stuff they bought and can’t sell) and costs of hiring attorneys to deal with this, they would have been driven out of business after the first raids!

Gibson has filed…… 80,000 legal documents in this case…

Yes, you read that right! 80,000 documents… Over WOOD!!!!!!

This is just stupid!!!!! I love Chris Daniel’s reaction to this. Here is the official statement from Gibson Corp.

Bringing things to a local level, Twist, a tavern here in the Fresno / Clovis area is closing it’s doors… Not because business is horrible – it wasn’t great, but it wasn’t horrible – but because it got too expensive and convoluted to deal with the regulatory hoops they had to deal with to stay in business. Here is how one of the co-owners describes the convoluted process of trying to run the business:

“Our original business plan was to have a restaurant and late-night lounge with dancing,” said Costa, but from day one “we were forced to close at midnight.”

After battling with the city and winning their request to stay open until 2 a.m., Costa says the next hurdle came when they sought permission to include dancing at their establishment.

Considering Mayor Ashley Swearengin not that long ago heralded the prospect of “letting people dance” at local night spots, Costa couldn’t understand why they had to struggle to garner city approval for a dance permit, “We had to tell our customers they can’t dance, so they were leaving,” Costa noted.

Twist was finally granted a dance permit in 2010 with a sunset clause, which means the permit would expire this year.

Costa says he and the other owners went before the City Planning Commission and won their request for a full Conditional Use Permit (CUP) to include dancing, but there were even more issues like their ABC liquor license.

“One of the conditions of our ABC license is we were not allowed to sell more alcohol than food, ” says Costa.

Considering the makeup of their establishment as a late night eatery and night club, Costa says they were consistently in violation of the license because of that one provision because “we were successful in the alcohol department, you know, we’d sell 60% alcohol and 40% food.”

He says they have been battling with Fresno Police to have the provision removed, but have been unable to reach a compromise.

Instead, Costa says they were only met with more roadblocks so they decided to close up shop under increasing attorney’s fees, and a still struggling economy.

Now, this is where I address Conservative contributions to overzealous regs… The police in this town are VERY Conservative (I know the police chief and have worked on his pool and spa). These alcohol rules are supported by Conservatives. All of this is due to the blind over-reaction the “Tough On Crime” mentality brings out the worst in all politicians! And Conservatives have NO PROBLEM over-regulating if it serves their political desires:

On Friday evening, Virginia’s Department of Health issued a strict new set of rules for abortion clinics—and women’s health advocates fear that facilities that can’t comply could be shuttered.

The regulations require Virginia’s 22 clinics to meet strict new physical standards; pre-op rooms, for example, must measure at least 80 square feet, and operating rooms must measure 250 square feet. Hallways must be at least five feet wide. The requirements are based on the state’s 2010 guidelines for new outpatient surgical facilities.

Tarina Keene, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia, told Mother Jones on Monday that the new rules may actually be the most strict regulations in the United States. “It would be challenging for the majority of our facilities to continue offering first-trimester care,” Keene said. “These are designed to really cease first-trimester abortion services in the Commonwealth of Virginia.”

The president of Washington, D.C.’s Planned Parenthood chapter has already told the Washington Post that she doesn’t believe that a clinic in Falls Church, Virginia, will be able to meet all of those requirements. Keene said that many other clinics in the state won’t be able to meet them, either—which she thinks is exactly the reason the Department of Health wrote them that way. “There’s no doubt in my mind that this is an attack on Roe,” said Keene. “You can ban abortion by making it inaccessible.”

As is demonstrated in the Gibson case, Liberals do this same type of thing when it comes to environmental issues. You may not agree with the pro-choice philosophy, and that is not the point here. When you factor in the resistance to end subsidies for Conservative favored industries, and support of laws like this, there is no denying that Conservatives play the Big Government game just as readily as Liberals do!

PS. Gibson makes Fine Guitars!!!!!!!

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