And Another Year Passes...

Here's to 2012!

2011 is a bit of a "well we made it through that one" for me, and I think many other people as well, having heard from friends and fans. But then, so was 2010 for me... 

For 2012, I am truly looking forward to a number of things. The release of NAIADES, my long awaited Book & CD. I'm updating the NAIADES page to give full website info to each artist. Official preview video below:

Full video of the Mighty is coming later in January! Seraphemera Books' Marc Moorash is currently editing  as I type this. He was the brilliant artist/editor behind F&TM's "Battle Hymn" and "Sovereign" videos as well as the : shoumei : DVD... I cannot wait for this to come out. Perhaps it will be available the very day pre-orders begin shipping!

As far as performing live, look for me later in 2012. It's up in the air as far as what kind of show I plan to do, but I do know the *music* will be live! I have a wonderful group of musicians around me, and I am thankful that they plan to go on adventures. Stay tuned!

2012 is also going to be wonderful because Sonny is still with us, (and had we not begun the chemo program for his lymphoma when we did, he wouldn't have made it to Xmas)! I don't have the words for how Steve tirelessly raised the funds through his artist friends, or their amazing generosity and immeasurable talent in creating and/or donating art for Sonny's treatments. We'll be putting out a sketchbook for the art below!


THE SONNY PROJECT 

Top row: Jill Thompson, Kelley Jones, Miran Kim. Second row, l-r: Bernie Wrightson, Fiona Staples, Bill Sienkiewicz, Antoine Dodé. Third row, l-r: Ming Doyle, Scott Morse, Nathan Ooten, Liz Wrightson. Fourth row, l-r: Greg Ruth, Menton3, Daniele Serra, Gabriel Hardman. Bottom row: John Rozum, Monty Lewis 

Sonny is bouncing around with new energy and is a very happy dog these days, which - our vet pointed out - shows that he was sick for quite a while before we discovered that his neck glands were like golf balls. I can now safely say that - though I find many problems with chemo and human reaction, having seen it through my own sister 's losing battle many years ago - it does work in dogs...

This year I also plan to do some soundtrack work with one or two of Steve Niles' books...  Soundtracks and theme music are styles I have clearly been moving towards, so I figure this may be a great place to start. More on that as it comes... I have also begun doing some remix work, The March Violets will be releasing remixes, one of which was made by yours truly!

I may also put out (finally) a little Book of Tales... Little micro-stories that I have been writing for many, many years... I called them Tales from Parallel Planets for a long time, I may or may not use that as the title. I will include the original tale behind ANAFAE.

And speaking of ANAFAE, Jim and I may move this to a web comic, we're in the beginning of discussing this...

So 2012 shows great promise! Onward and upward!

NAIADES Update!

So I realized it's been a few months since I updated this blog!

NAIADES is in manufacture, due to come out January 15th, 2012! I have a video I will be posting this weekend with highlights from the CD and all sorts of views of the artwork! Stay tuned!

Sonny is doing great, he has one more round (4 weeks) of chemo, and we hope it will really kick his lymphoma into remission!

Here's to a great Holiday! More info to come!

THE SONNY PROJECT

THE SONNY PROJECT  Some amazing artwork is being made of Sonny!

Top row, l-r: Scott Morse, Fiona Staples, Bill Sienkiewicz, Antoine Dodé. Second row, l-r: Ming Doyle, Miran Kim, Liz Wrightson. Third row, l-r: Greg Ruth, Menton3, Daniele Serra, Gabriel Hardman. Bottom row, l-r: John Rozum, Monte Lewis.

Originals are now starting to be auctioned!

See Menton3's gorgeous Sonny painting HERE!

See Greg Ruth's Sonny in Ministry of Silly Walks HERE!

More to come!

They'll also all go into limited edition print sets or possibly an art book, we're deciding as more art pours in!

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.