Wondering...??

I haven't posted a blog in "forever"
is anyone noticing this post??
Just curious

Andy

Song for you

one of my Favorite James Taylor songs

Blogs

I think the whole world is blogging. I don't think people keep journals anymore. I think I have noticed that most people who blog seriously probably prepare, edit, redo, censor, redo, reedit, and then finally post their blogs.
I don't do that, in fact I hardly call myself a blogger. I wonder how many people out there are like me and post a blog when then feel compelled to do so, and also just kind of type what has been happening with themselves. (sounds like a journal to me)
I kind of want to continue with that thread, but I won't

I am noticing that my laptop makes a funny sound everytime I use the letter "T".

Ok, music wise.

I have been answering Craig's list ads for musicians and or gigs, and getting some show dates that way.

Also pick up a gig from a Twitter person, that one is for the band, Road to Real

I do have a wine tasting gig coming up on April 9th Tues from 5-7:30pm. Which reminds me I have to start preparing for that.

it's at:

KORKAGE wine shop

6351 SW Capitol Hwy (Hillsdale)

Portland, OR 97239

I am not getting paid for this gig, well I guess I am getting some wine.
I tried to get Mike my Bass player in on it as well but they only wanted the Singer/Songwriter person.

This kind of changes things for me and I think I will have to really look at my play list.
I might also have to do some Cover tunes to keep it mixed up a bit. Swallowing my pride on that one, but it makes sense.

I am on vacation this week.
I had a friend from Vancouver, BC come down for a 4 day weekend, which was a lot of fun

I was supposed to leave on Thurs to drive down to Ca. to visit Michael my friend.
I was getting an oil change and the oil change guy spotted a problem with my Differential, leaking grease.
So now my car is in the shop and will be there till Friday, so that Thwarted my attempts to go to California.

The pic above is of me at one of the falls along the Columbia River Gorge from this last weekend

Ok this was basically boring....

talk at you soon

As Well I Could Original by Andy Frost

this is a new original tune...

Neil Diamond Play me

Just posted this on YouTube...

3 day weekend....

My natural body cycle is stay up late and get up late. Yet everyday I have to get up early to get to work, somewhat early.
So, when I get days off, I stay up late and get up late. Not that interesting but it shortens my daylight hours.
We are having what I call "teaser" days in the Portland, Oregon. The temp sneaks up to round 60 degrees for a few days then we slip back into the rainy days. If you happened to have moved here this week, and you think "this weather is nice" hold on to your hats cause it's gonna suck again. Sucks till you get used to it at least.

I am thinking today La Resa and I are going to go down to water front park and walk the entire length, which isn't that bad except that you also have to walk back.

For those of you not familiar with Portland, WaterFront park is where Obama drew 72,000 people for one of his presidential rallies. It was amazing, glad I wasn't there tho', too many peeps for me.

This blog isn't all that interesting, I am not painting pretty pictures with words or anything, do I ever??

So on the 2nd day of my 3 day weekend, which was not planned sort of spontaneous, that is what we are going to be doing.
If you happen to follow me on twitter, I am sure I will be sending tweets and pics as we make our way down the park. I am really enjoying tweets. I think I have met some interesting people on there. Like I have stated previously, it is totally egocentric in a way, if you only twitter, and don't read and/or acknowledge others.

I am probably going to also use my gps today to track my walk. Oh and sometime today I have to take Taylor, 18 year old daughter, out driving. She is learning, if you never hear from me again.....

MyHope (original song)

This song is excellent! it's culminates all that is "now". Not only that this girl seems to have either created the "Girl with Uke" sound or she has mastered a sound that was there. That is not meant to be an insult but if you listen to girls on youtube with ukes it sounds like they are imitating this person. Either way I think it's a great sound, and with 202,794 views I am not alone in my appreciation of this performance.

Andy

Wow entering a whole new world

I can't remember the last time I actually blooged.
I look and I see I posted a few things here and there but I really haven't posted anything of significance.
I forgot about this until I followed a link from Twitter that was posted by Dan Christensen, aka Danbusdriverman.
I read his blog about open mic nights and decided to follow his blog and saw that this profile came up and here I am.

I used to be almost exclusively My Space and now I find myself hardly at all on myspace. I am mostly on Twitter now and Facebook also, but i am loving Twitter.

Twitter is mostly a really encapsulated face book where you are reading mostly one liners about what people are doing at that particular moment. Some people are really interesting and they "twitter" all the time.

I am following, bus drivers, software developers, college students, high school students, people from Portland, Oregon, People who sell sex toys, people who make/ sew purses, teachers, people who make adult vids of themselves and sell them, people with iphones, people who do I don't know what, musicians, people who just twitter.

I thought this was great but now it's fantastic cause I have the iphone and on my iphone has the "app" "tweetie" which is a small version of twitter. I can take a break at work and read what everybody is doing.

This is such an egocentric thing to do, well if you mostly post, and dont' read other people's stuff. I find myself reading a lot and posting very little. I try to post things I may get a response to and I try to be whitty, but I fail at that.

So anyway, if you search a topic that you might be interested in and then you will see who has "tweeted" about that topic, if you find it interesting then you "follow" that person and everytime they post something it shows up on your page so that you can read it.

It's a bit of networking as well. When you type in a key phrase and someone searches that, they will start following you. It grows and grows, you follow, then they follow you. You can get quite a following. At this point for me it is the most interesting thing that I have ever found on the internet, except for maybe CamFrog. Cam Frog takes a lot of my time, but I will save that for another post. ...

Hopefully you got something out of this blog and if you are interested I highly recommend you to look at Twitter.

oh and if you have the opportunity to get an iphone, there is nothing like it. The apps are what makes it all worth while.
My life is in my iphone, I have the world at my fingertips, my email, like no other email. I use my iphone more than my laptop.
It doesn't replace all that I can do with my laptop but it gives me the connection I need during my day..

ok nuffa dat!

Andy

Playing For Change: Song Around the World

this will give you goose bumps!

Time for Change by Andy Frost

Just finding another way to get my videos out there! I am sure I have over advertised this

My Blogs...

Just sending this as a note to whomever is reading my blogs, which I haven't posted here in a long time.
Most of my blogs are being posted now on the road to real blog site, since most of what is happening to me is going on musically, so you might want to go there and check out my latest postings.
I still will come here when it comes to more personal stuff, but definitely check out
http://roadtoreal.blogspot.com/

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day Dad!!
I love you

Borders Books

Hi All!
this is a little longer of a blog than normal...

Yesterday, Friday June 9th
I started my first day of vacation, we went to Selea's first grade graduation, which was cute.. who has ever heard of a 1st grade graduation??? not me.. but it was put together well.
After that is was a day of La Resa and I just driving around doing some shopping type things.
At about 2pm I got a call from Mark, who is the bass/guitar player for the group "Centerline" it seems that he got a call from Borders books because the store in Beaverton had a last minute cancelation from a group that was supposed to play there. Mark and Centerline had a full schedule and didn't feel they could perform that night, so Mark recommended our little group "RTR" to Dan the marketing guy at Borders.
I had to scramble to figure out if we could do it or not. Mike was tied up in class all day, so I couldn't contact him. I forgot Stephanie was working that night to cover a shortage in Mgt. staff. I didn't want to lose the opportunity that was given to us because ever since I saw a young lady playing at Borders, and also since seeing "CenterLine" perform there I thought it was a cool place to play, and I kind of set it as a goal of mine to play there. This thought/wish was forming before the thought of the forming of the group.
I wanted to lock in the night so we could do it, so I called Dan directly and spoke with him and told him we would do it, even if it meant me performing solo.
I knew also that Mike had a big practice set up for that night for his main group,
"DreamLand Cafe".
Dan explained the arrangement to me, not a paying gig you can do this and that etc. to which I agreed, obviously I have a paying day job so I didn't care about that.
I got a hold of Linda, Mike's wife, as I was talking to her, Mike came home, and said he could do it.
Long story short, got there at 6pm to set up. Mark was kind enough to do our sound check set up, did a great job, and actually stayed the whole time (show was 7 to 9pm).
Mike and I ran through our Sunday night line up (minus the crucial ones with Stephanie) we did an hour long set then took a 15 min. break and then played another 45 mins. We played a lot of stuff that we hadn't played in a long time, and some we had only done 1 or 2 times before. Mike was great, remembered a lot and winged it on the rest.
We made some mistakes, but laughed our way through it. We had some nice compliments from the crowd, met some nice people. The whole "Centerline" group showed up.. that was special to me because I like their music and sound, they were very supportive and gave us a lot of great Kudos, this meant a lot to me.
I think we opened the doors for some "Borders Books" tours in the local area.
Dan said we were doing him a big favor..and that he could start booking us for August and beyond, covering local stores including Vancouver.
What an opportunity this was for us... it turned out great.
It happened so fast I didn't have time to get nervous.
Thanks also go out to the Francos who seem to always show up at a moments notice when it comes to seeing me perform, this was their first time seeing 2/3rds of "RTR"

Nuffa Dat'

PS) we played at a local coffee house on Thurs night, no amplification just acoustic, that was fun also, very small crowd.. but it was good experience.

Andy

Our Logo

Here is our official Logo...

A couple of pics from the "White Eagle"

Group Name

Well,
we finally came up with a name for our Group, and as you can see by the pic it is somewhat based on a song I wrote called "The Only Road to Real".
So with it being "Road to Real" it can be shortened for space purposes to
"R to R". I don't think it's the most perfect name but it seemed to be best by consensus.
I don't want to go into all of the meanings of that moniker but there are some deep meanings behind it. Hopefully people will pick up on that. I know the first reaction is.. Hmmm that's an odd name, but it's different enough. I googled it, no one out there has used it.
Drop me an email with your thoughts.

Nuffa' Dat!

Andy

Another night at the "White Eagle"

Hi all,
Last night went better than the previous week, even though the previous week wasn't bad. We ended up just being Andy and Mike, which we hadn't planned on, but we got it done. Everyone before us was extremely mellow, so we decided at the last minute to do 2 fast ones, so we did "The other Guy" and " You just do what you do"
Took a little bit for me to loosen up, but I finally did on the other guy.
I look out at the end of that song and saw a lot of smiling facing in the audience.
One guy came up to Mike and I and shook our hands when we were done, that was nice.
The audience was the best audience that I had seen there ever. They were very quiet and listened to every artist, that is unusual. John the "Host" even thanked everybody.
The main attraction for that night was beyond awesome but I couldn't even begin to describe what he did, it was just musically like nothing I had ever seen before, the guy was truly creative, he is so good that I don't think he will ever make it, he just won't be understood. He played bass guitar, but it was so eclectic and beautiful, at one point it was like "whales" signing. I can't go on from there.
Part of the pleasure of the evening was in the fact that Kim and Tina both came to watch us and show us support. It was great having them there and it gave me some room for some audience banter with Kim.. it was fun


We had a good night especially since we didn't have to get up and go to work the next day

Nuffa' Dat!

Andy

Hi All,
Last week Mike R. and I performed at the White Eagle Open Mic night. We are also going to do the same thing this week. This week Stephanie will be joining us. Last weeks review: Went pretty well, I didn't feel all that great about it, but the reactions were good. I kind of went into a zone and didn't hear too much, pretty much just went on automatic. I lost my voice after the first song.. don't know why, I think I tightened up due to nerves... Couldn't hear my voice at all on the second song.
Again, the reactions were good, my guitar went over well. Took the Breedlove "Pacific" it sounded great. We played "She Brings that to me" and " He ". It was a small, mellow crowd, so we went with a couple of mellow tunes. This week we will be doing..
"Anywhere but Near" and "You just do what you do"
I will let you know how it went

Nuffa' Dat!

Andy

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's day everyone!

Sitting out on the Deck this fine sunday morning, very sunny, nice temp of 60 degrees feels warmer because of the sun out. It is so green in Oregon right now.
The apple tree is at full mast with it's leaves all firm and healthy, our Kiwi plants are all wrapped around the rails of the Deck, it's a wonder we even have any sunlight shining on us. My hop plants are taller than I have ever seen for this time of the year. The birds have so much choice for food and shelter that I can't even see them all but I can clearly hear everyone of them.
I have my humming bird feeder out but it is not being visited all that much because there is so much nectar on the plants and trees, they just don't really need it. I see more of them on my apple tree than I do on the feeder... I will be patient though.
La Resa and I actually went out and bought a bird book because we have seen so many birds and we just don't know what they are, and had enough curiosity to want to know.

We are under a severe weather alert because our temp is supposed to go up into the mid 90's today, doesn't sound like much after leaving florida last week.

I am sure everyone knows this but the little group has a "gig" on June 11th. Have been working toward that, preparing 8 songs. Mike and I practiced outside this week, out on my deck. There is no better sound than just acoustic guitar and upright bass playing without any amplification... it sounded so good...

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY MOM
HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY ELAINE
HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY LA RESA

I hope your day is as nice as mine has started out... I feel so good sitting out here typing to you, La Resa is reading the Sunday paper, Selea is running around the yard, Dontay and Chancey are out here with us along with "Precious" the cat...

Nuffa' Dat!

Andy

some more stuff about the group

Haven't blogged in a while..
work has been going the same, which I never blog about anyway (okay except for that time during Christmas)

I have been continuing with getting together with Mike R., the bass player, and we are getting pretty tight. Stephanie has joined us and has started coming to practices.

I went to see the group "Centerline" http://www.centerlinetrio.com a few times, one time at Borders books and one time at "Bethany Village Grill". I really like that group, they are a trio of 2 guys and a gal, that sing very nice acoustic songs, covering a range of sounds like Country(ish) folkish, and songs that tell stories. Not all that unlike my stuff.

I have been conversing via email with Mark, the bass and acoustic guitar player. He has helped me with a lot of information for setting up a PA system. I actually went to watch them play Friday night and Mark went through all of his set up with me. I really appreciated that.

At the Bethany Village Grille I met with Mike R. and his wife, and another guitar player named Gary. We chatted and ate dinner there while watching Centerline.
In the mean time Mike had a conversation with the owner of the Grille, Les, and Les asked us to play there on the second Sunday of the month, and I am not sure if it's every month or not, have to talk to Mike about that one. So anyway it sounds like we have our first Gig.

We are also working on a name for the ensemble. I will keep you posted on that one.

Nuffa Dat

Andy