music

Gurgalicious

Release A Day #7 ~ March 23, 2020

Ok, it’s time to get some weird on.  

There are times in life where after climbing to the top of a mountain you just want to raise your voice and holler I AM HERE!  It’s a celebratory thing.  A declaration of presence.  I’ve made it this far.  Whew.  But there’s no-one else around, you’re in the wilderness, so it’s really all just for you.  

This piece of music was born in sheer freaky joy, the celebration of a flow state having discovered what I still think to this day is a truly unique lead guitar sound.  There’s not much more to it than that.  I think that is every guitarists dream, to find a unique voice that is distinctly theirs, and this is decidedly one of mine.  It’s murky yet distinct, just like many passages in my life.

Yes, it’s a canned drum track. Sorry about that.  At the time it wasn’t meant to be anything more than a glorified metronome, but it ended up in this one-take-recording so it’s there for whatever it’s worth and there’s nothing I can do about that.  This is definitely a flow vibe that I want to do more with in a better rhythmic context, but it’s still one of my fav pieces from over the years.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgVQzB47ftE

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A Release A Day Project

Mid March 2020 ~ cooped up by the corononvirus stay at home protocols, I’ve set myself the challenge to release a piece of music a day for the foreseeable future, and have realized I need a central location to track it all. So here it is, a chronological list of each release and its direct link. For more detail about the project, visit the blog entry that started it all.

#1 Our Story ~ Small Craft Advisory ~ The Spoken Word of Eric Geoffrey https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvRSq_nRcmc

#2 What Will It Take? ~ Small Craft Advisory ~ The Spoken Word of Eric Geoffrey https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rzuHKujVYU&t=2s

#3 Equinox Greeting ~ original banjo composition https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQyiw_jHv0k

#4 New Beginnings ~ original nylon string guitar composition https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JO32Xd-LQsA

#5 Sitting On Top of the World ~ COVER https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIPXVWuWm84

#6 Alchemical Reaction ~ original 12 string acoustic guitar composition https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyl4udns7T0

#7 Gurgalicious ~ original electric guitar flow state weirdness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgVQzB47ftE

#8 Angelic ~ original 12 string acoustic guitar https://music.ericgeoffrey.com/angelic/

#9 Stewards of the Planet ~ Small Craft Advisory ~ The Spoken Word of Eric Geoffrey https://music.ericgeoffrey.com/stewards-of-the-planet/

#10 Five Foot Two ~ COVER song featuring ukulele & electric guitar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgjBG_tl1Rc

#11 Water Is Life ~ Small Craft Advisory ~ The Spoken Word of Eric Geoffrey https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4iN_oKtyG4

#12 StirCrazyCabinFeverReliever ~ original piece featuring banjo & bass https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce0e_30bqc8

#13 Blue Waters ~ original guitar piece inspired by snorkeling in Belize https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YSE55ytrWg

#14 HarpSong ~ original banjo composition https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv82bJLwO9g

#15 The Meaning of Life ~ Small Craft Advisory ~ The Spoken Word of Eric Geoffrey https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev-B_gBXWCY

#16 Glass Uke Ditty ~ original ukulele piece inspired by Philip Glass https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKnRnPqkmXQ

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Equinox Greeting!

Release a Day #3 ~ Spring Equinox 2020

I moved into a room once when I was in my mid 20’s and found an old banjo in the closet.  It needed a lot of love, but of course I was intrigued.  I nursed it into playing shape, bought new strings for it, asked a friend carve me a new bridge for it, and it became playable.  I’ll never forget the first clear note that rang out from it, and that moment shaped my relationship with the banjo ever since.  It made me think of so many other things than a banjo, and I resolved then and there to discover how to coax new life from this wild creature, figuring that there were enough banjo players in the world already, I wanted to do something different.

I’ve spent years exploring that path, and rarely have I ventured into territory where my banjo sounds like a bluegrass instrument, and I really like it that way.  

This piece was born in the summer of 2019 in the backwoods of the Adirondacks of NY while on retreat with my family.  I instantly fell in love with the vibe as I feel it captures the essence of a peaceful summer day.  

On this first day of spring 2020 I thought I would offer something more in the spirit of the day as we welcome an uncertain spring with so much turmoil and challenge. I hope that this serves as a reminder of pleasant days both past and those to come.  Perhaps this is my prayer for healthier days down the road for all of us…

Our Story…

Release A Day #1

Our Story is the poem that sparked my explorations with spoken word expression set to music and started this whole Small Craft Advisory trajectory.  It’s birth in 2016 is a remarkable example of a piece of creativity “coming through” as it was hand-written in one sitting with over three pages and there are no cross-outs. It just exploded into being in one fell swoosh, and my wife laughs about this because I had been telling her for at least a month prior to writing Our Story that I was feeling pent up and felt that I needed to be doing “something” in relation to global issues though I had no idea what.  

Since then I’ve changed the phrasing of only one line as I feel it delivers better, and I still marvel at the process that brought this thing through.  I shot the video in 2017, and though I was generally aware of climate issues, I wasn’t aware yet of the full extent of the problem and my general enthusiasm for the human story and our possible futures was still pretty high at the time.  You can see that enthusiasm especially at the end with my “and I can’t wait to see what we’ll write next…” conclusion to the piece.  I suspect if I was writing this now it would have a much different tone.  However I am choosing to keep it intact as it was written because even though courage has rapidly replaced hope as the operative M.O. for woke folk, I do believe that the sheer amount of variables, especially regarding potential human responses, keeps an extremely cautious optimism in play though it is certainly not dominant.  

Regardless, thinking about our story as a common thread binding humanity has a lot of power to it, and in this day and age the more connections we recognize and nurture between individuals, communities, and species, the greater the odds that we will have something of a fighting chance to not go down with the ship.  

If this resonates anything with you, please share, send the link to friends and family, tweet it, whatever. I just love the conversation that this piece sparks and hope you explore it too.  

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