People are so amazing...

I can't even begin to say enough about how wonderful our friends are! So many have been helping and donating money and artwork! Here are 4 wonderful pieces made for and of Sonny to help offset his vet and hospital bills! 


Top left clockwise: Ming Doyle, Bill Sienkiewicz, Menton3 and Greg Ruth.


 If you'd like to donate, Steve has set up a donate page on his site HERE!  Anything will be great, from $1 on up!

We're going to be listing ebay auctions for Sonny as well, which will be so instrumental in getting him the every best treatment we can!

Sonny made it through his first chemo, and we are so very hopeful! We are currently talking to some amazing artists to do artwork for him to help offset the vet and hospital bills. With the artwork, we plan to sell as limited edition print sets as well as auction the originals. To the left are some lovely images of Sonny, left to right, by Ming Doyle, Greg Ruth and Menton3.

Sonny...

I find that the hardest, saddest animal rescue cases can also be the most heartwarming. I can't resist the hard luck stories as in the end, they end up being the happiest of all animals. This has lead me to adopt a three-legged dog, a kitten with a near-blind eye, a cat that needed to get broken her tail removed, the list goes on and on. We love our kids, each one has a very unique story.

Our dog Sonny is one; he's a very, very special pup. He was rescued in 2005 on a hot Summer day in Los Angeles where a bunch of street guys were feeding him beer. The woman that rescued him pulled up and demanded that they let go of the rope they had around his neck. He immediately jumped in her car and I met him a few hours later. He was a very sweet greyhound/terrier mix, completely dirty at the time with a giant scar that traveled half-way down his body. Vets tell me it was a Frankenstein sew-job. He also has scar tissue covering the skin under his ears. For years he had nightmares nearly every night. And a severe fear of being left alone.

With all of that... Sonny is one of the friendliest dogs I've ever known. He loves meeting people, loves kids, and finds himself more at home around humans than other dogs. He has an intelligence I've never seen in a canine, almost as if he could actually speak to you.

In 2008, Sonny came down with ITP, an auto-immune disorder that caused his body to destroy his own blood platelets. He nearly bled to death while they worked day and night to lower his immune system and stop the attack, as well as get him blood and plasma transfusions until they actually worked. It took three transfusions before his blood began to go back to normal. After that we had to work on keeping his immune system low and getting him tested repeatedly to make sure the ITP didn't return.

Sonny is a very happy dog these days. After everything he's been through, he's now stable and secure enough to be home alone, and he hardly has nightmares now.  He and his pal Zendra are like two peas in a pod.

So... I was quite shocked when I found the glands under his neck to be swelled out like golf balls. And after being tested, we find he has lymphoma. Most likely brought on by his immune disorder. He is not in any way acting ill, so hopefully we're catching this early.

Tomorrow we get him to the oncologist and figure out the plan of attack. I hate to do chemo, but Sonny is a very special case, and we have to really walk the tightrope on how we'll proceed. I've just gotten a whole new holistic supplement system for him to help with what he's got to deal with.

With everything else happening in our lives, this is going to be so hard to afford. Steve has been talking to artists about making special artwork of Sonny. We plan to sell sets of prints of our boy while we deal with the hospital bills to come.

How Things Were... and How They Are.

I have in my possession an antique melodeon. It was hand-built by my great-great-grandfather. It doesn't work, the vacuum bellows are in need of repair. Someday I hope to find someone who can fix it. But I have something that is directly connected to my own roots, my family, and I can't tell you how much I appreciate it… I run my hands along the cherry wood that he sanded and stained. I can play with on the keys that he carved. It is an heirloom.

When I was a teenager, one of the things I loved about getting a new album was that it came with a big cover, often with a lyric sheet, and I would just sit and read over the lyrics and look over the artwork while listening to the music. It was an overall experience. It was a journey. Many from my 80's generation and older are just like me, but I do also know that some young people (and I HATE using that term, but, eh... I'm the older generation now, no denying that) are wondering what that was like. These records, some of them I have now 20+ years later, and the smell of them, holding them, it takes me back to those times. I love that...

We are locked into this high-tech, lightning-fast age and it gets faster every year…  which devalues all aspects of creation and Art as it now can be turned into digital media: visual arts, music, books and films. Younger generations grew up with and therefore always expect instant gratification. That also makes for a feeling of being uncentered and out of balance. The faceless world of the internet allows for no knowledge of action or reaction to what one does on the computer. Apathy prevails. 

I know that people will be able to download my next album free, and torrent sites will pretend that they are "promoting" my music, but really... once someone downloads it, the chances are nil that they will then actually buy it once they get it free. And what hurts Underground musicians is that our music is hard to find anyway, you have to really search to buy our music, I get that. So people just hit the button and download, then they have it and it's done. 

This is really affecting us, causing us to now to be forced to cancel tours, stop recording, or take years longer... because the source of our small supplemental income is now drying up. It's always cost to be an Underground musician, but now it is costing so much more... We used to sell a couple thousand of each release. Now it is a couple hundred. It affects us deeper than you know, especially when each downloader thinks "I'm just one person, my download won't matter." Times that by a few thousand, and there you go.

Here are some facts about what Underground bands get paid, and why it is so important to support them:

• If you buy something directly from a band's website, and you spend $10, they get the whole $10, minus only the processing fees from either the credit card company or Paypal. 

• If you purchase something from iTunes, the band gets about 67 cents for each dollar you spend. 

• If you purchase a CD from someplace like Amazon, they get about 45 cents for each dollar you spend. 

• If you download something from a torrent site, they (WE - as musicians), of course, get $0.

Possibly, there will be some sort of a Renaissance towards slowing things down. To spend some time in Nature, to enjoy your food, to take time out to read an actual book, or just lie in the grass.  With the insane amount of audio and visual input overload at every turn - the idea of waiting for anything seems so strange. So I ask you to take a little walk with me to an earlier time, when you wait patently for a new release, and you sit down, put the music on, and take the journey with me!

This is why I decided to go for a serious hard-cover book for NAIADES, so that fans will really have something solid to own, to hold, to keep forever, and years down the line, they can return to read and read again. I am doing this by the very seat of my pants, with the hopes that fans will really understand the value of my choice of music and art.

Love and thanks to Patty Hele, and kaRIN and Statik of Collide, who began this conversation with me...

Downloads die off with old computers and ipods, but Art is indeed forever. 

NAIADES

I love researching! It fully enthralls me to get to the source of things. It also gives me so much inspiration and is so fascinating as I move through the mythology as well as the work itself...

NAIADES were associated with fresh water, as the Oceanids were with saltwater. Naiades presided over fountains, wells, springs, streams, and brooks.

But the NEREIDES were fifty Haliad Nymphs or goddesses of the sea. They were the patrons of sailors and fishermen, who came to the aid of men in distress, and goddesses who had in their care the sea's rich bounty. Individually they also represented various facets of the sea, from salty brine, to foam, sand, rocky shores, waves and currents, in addition to the various skills possessed by seamen. To the left is a Greek vase, depicting Nereides.

So like the ethereal piece, 'Naiades', that I had opening my last two shows, (and will also open my Los Angeles show) I have also create a piece called 'Nereides', which is much deeper and a bit more ominous...

I'm also very excited about the new album as far as the music! Though the first InfraWarrior album, which really was centered around electro-tribal work - for the most part, though... songs like "Into My Own", "We Are the One" and "The Turnaway" were quite different.

Paul Mercer and his producer Bruce Bennett are working on a gutwrenching classical song entitled "LureinLay". There is also a purely tribal drums and vocal piece entitled "Scylla and Charybdis" where I really have fun with multiple vocals. I even have a couple near punk rock-like tunes due to Steve Niles' help. Steve was in Gray Matter back in the day, one of the first Dischord bands, so he's been writing riffs with me. We knew each other when we were just kids in the punk rock scene, and I love how things have come back full circle for us! Just finished recording a song called "Pride" which I am quite proud of!

And then the song "EndBegin" which I listed the lyrics in my last post, the end is something I am so proud of! Mutliple chant vocals that intertwine, with tribal shouts that caused our dogs to bark throughout the house thinking I was hurt. Hilarious!

Info on the album artwork to come! I have big plans, and hope to report soon on them!

Full Immersion into NAIADES

I am eagerly awaiting the finished painting by artist Chrissie Zullo of the album cover, and working away on the full album now as well as the booklet artwork. Bits and pieces of lyrics may show up, as well as fun mermaid imagery that I've been playing with. Here are the working lyrics to a new song "EndBegin"...

Through the cracks in the wall I'm going back to Nature

Through the holes in the floor my roots search for the waters

Along crumbling brick I'm building back my forest

Over collapsed walls I'm stretching myself homeward

As the sidewalks break I'm dropping down my anchors

Along rusting wires I'm stretching out my fingers

From the rotting beams I'm reaching towards the answer

Upon broken glass I may walk forever

The trees are burning and the wars unseen

What we know and what we believe

The walls are blurring and the lines between

What we know and what we believe

Leave the endless noise I'm going back to silence

On the crumbling bridge I cross back to the mountains

Through the blood red sea I'll sink into the alters

Through the cracks in the wall I'm going back to Nature

Leave a bounty of fruit at the base of the cinders

Through the holes in the floor my roots search for the waters

When the oceans die, your tears will fill the rivers.

Beating a song into shape.

Words bristle and ignite themselves

Backwards and upside-down before a pen can be found -

Claiming a strange reward in shattering bursts

That flame and die all too soon

To recreate such catastrophe.

I have left Life fall cold a plunging necessity somewhere behind me,

As I retrace its electricity...

Like a weed that triumphs charred ruin,

I suppose Nature springs from me then.

Blowing its brilliance through my lungs

Blazing its secrets forth

Changing colors against the frost

While I capture it thus -

Imperfectly -

Letting it cool past my fingertips,

Shaping it numb and trimming it to proper form -

Elementally agreeable

And trained to speak.