Hey, where have you been?

Greetings True Believers!

Look who’s back after a couple of years off?

Well, it’s been awhile how are you all doing? Did you survive the last two years?

For me on the music front, unfortunately on the original music side it’s been quite the dry spell for me.

2025 SHOULD have been a time of celebration for your pal. It was not only the 10th anniversary of my first solo album HEAL, but it also marked 20 years since the release of The Brady Bastards album “The Deep End” so I really really wanted to get back out there, play a few shows to celebrate these albums and really get back to doing one of the things I love the most.

But, as luck would have it things didn’t necessarily go as planned…

If you were following the podcast my BFF and I were doing “Hey Pal, What’s New?” we wanted to branch out and create our own little community of like minded, local artists and we created “Sack of Sin Entertainment” in 2023-2024 hoping to bring attention to the great talent around, play showcases and really build something special. Why have all of these great bands all fighting for the same nut? Makes sense right? 1 band brings 2 people, but 10 bands would make 20 so to me; it seemed like simple math.

But, in essence I discovered running a “label” was not what it was all cracked up to be.

When you are passionate about a project and you sink money and time and effort into it, I always felt it should all be on the creator. I’ve always said “invest in yourself and make a thing because nobody is going to just hand you anything” If you fail, you have nobody to blame except yourself.

But…it’s hard to make a thing with many people involved that honestly are not as passionate as you are.

Essentially you are doing a ton of work to help boost yourself (cause let’s be honest) and to help others and you hope that everyone involved will be on the same page, but in reality most times you get a bunch of people holding their hands out wanting that success you are hoping to achieve, but are not willing to do anything to help in return.

Don’t get it twisted, I literally hand picked the artists that I wanted to be there and some really stepped up and tried to help.

There were ZERO bands on Sack of Sin that i personally didn’t love either as friends or artists. People like the guys in Blue Alien Mystic and especially someone like Vern from his various projects who is like a marketing machine helped a great deal with our first showcase we put on!

It was with his help that the bands from the first showcase we did at The Loft were playing to a big audience and remember thinking “fuck man, we DID IT!”

But…by the time the next showcase happened in the Summer? It was a flop…

The bands who played, we really did have a great time hanging out with each other! The plan was to have an outdoor “festival” but the weather was sketchy so we moved it indoors to a very hot, clubhouse on the property. Big props for Gary too for securing the site!

We really tried we had WXAX come out to spin tunes, promoted it like crazy on the podcast, online and on WXAX and like I said the bands were great!

But nobody…I mean NOBODY showed and it felt like the rug was pulled out for us. We promoted heavily for months leading up and essentially we ended up playing to each other.

As a matter of fact, that show was sadly the last time The Critically Ashamed played together to this day.

I had one of my usual big manifestos written regarding the status of the Critically Ashamed, but I moved that into the “behind the albums” section on this site, which you are more than welcome to read if you want more details.

So, what’s going on now?

Let’s just say your hero since that last gig has kind of been in a “holding pattern”. dare I say quite the funk….

After writing, recording, releasing and performing my own music as a “solo artist” the past decade to little or no fanfare, after a while it started to take it’s hold on me.

I always would say “look, i’m doing this for myself first because I enjoy it! If it gets some attention, great if not? Oh well…I’m going to do it regardless because it’s what I love”

I would still say that’s true, to a degree but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t affect me the past few years when I would look back at the metrics.

The past 2 years for me personally has had a LOT of big changes and all for the better!

First, my girl Manal moved in with me which has been amazing. We’ve been together for 5 years now(!) living together for 3 and our relationship has been stronger and healthier than it’s ever been! I love that woman more than anything and we truly just enjoy spending time together whether it’s on an adventure or just sitting on the couch together doom scrolling.

Then I got custody of my youngest daughter Violet and she moved in as well, which has also been incredible! She’s going to graduate this year and head off to college and it’s been amazing seeing her do a complete 180 of her life now that she is in a better environment.

For the first time I think ever, I truly feel like I have the family that I always wanted.

However (and this is NOT a bad thing at all) when you are living essentially in a one bedroom apartment with your girl, daughter and retired mother upstairs these things take priority and It doesn’t allow for a quiet space for being creative .

I’m still VERY active with Split Decision, the cover band I’ve been with for over a decade now. We book pretty consistantily from march-november so they keep me very active on the bass playing and performance front.

Those guys and girl are like my family, they’ve been through my alcoholism, divorce and recovery and have been 100% supportive.

Looking back sometimes I feel bad, I would treat the band more like a burden than a blessing. they know that playing pop cover songs is not my particular brand of Vodka and I can goof on it at times, but we play evvvverything in all genres which IMHO makes us unique.

For every “Shut up and Dance” to “Thunder” cover we do, we have some rockers that I truly enjoy performing. plus the crowds we play for do really enjoy it and it’s nice just having a stacked schedule and just showing up. Jeff and Lisa do an amazing job running the ship.

So….back to my own music…

Because of all of the exciting new changes, playing with the Splits AND of course doing the podcast with my BFF every Sunday…which had over 180 episodes and has been so much fun (more on that status on another page) my own music started to take a back seat, which at the time I was 100% OK with.

I released my last solo album “black storms become pink clouds” on my birthday in 2024, which I thought “OK, that’s it, my GarageBand is essentially empty at this point with songs I wanted to get out there, let’s push it, see the response then I can concentrate with The Critically Ashamed for the next album with a clean slate”

Once that came out, it basically came and went nowhere, which really was a shame (more on that in the album breakdowns) and the Gibson sat dormant for the first time in years.

I had ZERO motivation to write, record, perform because for the first time ever, I was like “what’s the point?”

In April I will be 55 years old and the thought of spending time, money, effort to promote my music, put it out there and book gigs to perform in empty clubs just felt pointless to me.

I thought “I just can’t do it anymore and why should I? I’m getting my rocks off with the podcast and playing with the Splits, that should be enough. Nobody cares about my own stuff anyway, it shows in the streams”.

It got to the point where a year after “pink clouds..” was released, I went to my Spotify to listen and it wasn’t even there anymore! My sub to that new service I was using expired, so they removed just that one since that was the only album I released using them.

So I thought to myself “eh….whatever it’s still on Bandcamp. Why re-release it, nobody is listening anyway” I think I literally only have like 2-3 listeners on Spotify and I’m pretty sure one of those was myself.

Like I said wayyy in the beginning of this rant, 2025 was the 10 year anniversary of the first album “HEAL” and I really wanted to celebrate it by getting some of the old gang back together, booking maybe 1-2 shows and make it like a big party with my musical friends!

But…..see above. as much as I wanted to my mindset has been “well who’s gonna care?”

So where am I going with all of this rambling?

With the current “temporary demise” of the podcast that started this year (see that page for the spilt tea) I thought that was going to be the perverbial “nail in the coffin” for me. I thought “what the fuck do I do now? This was my last creative outlet I enjoyed the most!”

But of course, leave it to my best friend in the whole world and podcast co-host to set me straight like he always does. The one thing he said when we were discussing next moves was…

“you NEED to get back to writing your own music again. Now is the time”

This year our plan is, Violet graduates in June and is off to college, so it’s time for Manal and myself move out of the basement and finally get a place of our own. As grateful and lucky I have been that my mother gave me a place to rent when I got divorced, then took us all in and has helped us (especially me) tremendously when I needed it the most? It’s time….

So with a plan in place and the podcast website closed for a revamp?

I slowly started this year to pick up the Gibson again, bought a new IPad, got some new recording gear and started going through any ideas I had floating around.

I hope to start releasing new music here and there this year. I’ve decided to really study up on learning Logic, getting better at self recording and try to make the best sounding group of songs on my end. then fingers crossed I can record some live drums for it, take it to a producer/engineer and really try to get a good mix/master done and release sometime this year.

Here is where I will be doing much like I did on past releases blog the process to anyone to cares to follow along. Hopefully the next few months I’ll be at a new state, new environment and will have a new drive to find some kick ass musicians in my area, get out there and perform again.

Also in honor of the 10th anniversary of HEAL since I didn’t get the chance to do anything last year, since I’m a “Chatty Cathy” as you can see here, I am going to post deep dives on each past album to reflect, talk about them and share some memories. I hope you enjoy the new site and follow along and if not? That’s OK too I’m back to feeling like “this is for you”

Thanks for reading.

G2