Tuesday, April 27, 2021

Radio Free California Episode 2118

 


New music this week from industry standbys like Todd Rundgren, Sparks, Peter Frampton, Dinosaur Jr. and more, plus great new bands like Halema'uma'u, Downhaul, Conner Stevens, Greg Hutto,  and so much more. Enjoy!

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Soon you will be able to purchase the track below as a single. I had hoped to add it to the playlist above but it's been delayed a bit on Spotify. Available at all the usual places, with 3 other tracks.



Monday, April 19, 2021

Radio Free California Episode 2117

 



New music this week from Sumo Cyco, And That, Greta Van Fleet, Liquid Tension Experiment, Cheap Trick, Beach Youth, Son Lux, and even from me. Enjoy!

And just as a reminder, this video has had over 15,000 views on YouTube alone. It's my song "He Takes A Knee"


Friday, April 16, 2021

My Kevin Gilbert Story, and my latest single.

 


As some of you know I’ve had a few brushes with the “big break” that many in my line of work crave. I was signed to a major label in the early 1990s, and the record I turned in was shelved. The label wanted me to be the “next Michael Penn” and by that point not even Mr. Penn was interested in that, let alone me. I had three songs picked up for a movie, which was never released. I got out of my record contract and signed with another label, releasing an album that included 5 songs from the one that was shelved. The label put no money behind it. I had a big hit in 2009 and signed a European distribution deal, which fell apart when the married couple who ran the business fell into a messy divorce. I sold thousands and thousands of records in Eastern Europe – which were being sold by pirates. It took several years to get that fixed.

I had an audition that everyone felt I was a lock for to play keyboards for a Japanese band that had a huge following. My flight to the audition was supposed to be September 12, 2001. I actually watched the plane I was supposed to board land as it was the last flight grounded. I’ve done some engineering and performing I don’t get to tell anyone about – the NDA’s are pretty strong. One of my songs became the theme to a German Television show.

But let me tell you the story of a relationship I almost had with a multi-Grammy-winning star who soared high and made it further than I have, whose song I have made a cover of and released as a single today.

So where to begin. First of all, yes, I knew Kevin Gilbert. No, we weren’t friends, but we were colleagues and classmates. We performed together a few times – all of if school related. That’s it. Oh, and he invited me to a jam session he was going to have once and I turned him down. I’ll get to that.

Believe it or not, I have to tell this story starting in the middle. There was once a band called Toy Matinee. I loved that band. Clever songs, well written melodies, a sense of darkness and a sense of fun. It was a band that me and my roommate Max could agree on and we cranked that album loud and often. We went and saw them live at the Troubadour in Los Angeles, and were about 10 feet from the stage. This is NOT the live album released in 1999, but I can tell you they rocked the place that night. Played almost every song from the album, and did an encore of Elton John’s “Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding” that smoked.

A great night.

Now I jump into the past, to tell the tale of the UCLA Synthesizer Ensemble. It was the brainchild of Professor Roger Bourland, who at the time was only in his 2nd year as a professor at the school and would later become dean of the department. He searched out the most rock and roll musicians in what was mostly a stuffy classical music department. Me. Dave Koz. Joel Harnel. And this kid named Kevin. The five of us took another student’s source material and arranged up a musical. Straight musical theater and full of schlock, and all performed on synthesizers. We eventually put on four shows, with the five of us in the orchestra pit. I wrote the show-stopper ballad and a Latin inspired piece. I hate to say it, but I no longer remember what everyone else did, although I remember Dave mostly for his EWI playing and Joel for multiple reasons – including the fact that he wrote and arranged all of the drum parts.

I knew Joel fairly well – we had played together a few times and he was even more rock and roll than me, with more experience. Dave Koz was, even then, Dave Koz. The only saxophonist I had met up to that point in my life who was better than me. We had played in jazz bands together but he was already a rising star. When he beat me for the gig with Richard Marx’s touring band his career just took off – but all this was before then. I was one of Roger Bourland’s students – in fact, I had been in the “test” classroom when he had auditioned for his job.

I barely knew this Kevin kid. I was constantly getting his name wrong – for whatever reason my brain had him wired as Kevin Anderson.

My only real interaction with him outside of this 12-week experiment was down in the practice rooms. Many of these rooms had pianos in them and on any given day you could hear Mozart, Brahms, Chopin and all of the other usual suspects. I would go and write my own material and be pounding out rock and roll. Kevin did that too. Once while in the middle of the writing process for the musical he came into my practice room while I was working on a song in the style of Elton John. He invited me to a jam session the next Tuesday he was going to, and I declined. Tuesday was when MY band practiced, and as their lead guitarist I needed the practice.

That was the end of it. After the musical was over we all drifted our separate ways and for the most part didn’t run into each other again. I ran into Dave once at a music festival in San Francisco and he introduced me to Clarence Clemmons, which was pretty damned cool.

By now you’ve figured out that Kevin was Kevin Gilbert. Congratulations. I hadn’t. For many years to follow I would remember him as Kevin Anderson.

Now I’ve told you all of this so that you understand that this is long BEFORE Max and I went to see Toy Matinee in concert. I became a fan of the band without knowing that Kevin was its leader. I was ten feet away from him, performing for an hour. I had performed with him myself.

I didn’t recognize him. Nothing clicked in my brain that this was the same guy. I didn’t put two and two together. I rolled for my intelligence check and got a one.

Kevin Gilbert would go on to a solo career, win seven Grammys for his work with Madonna, be part of the driving musical force behind Sheryl Crow’s first album, become one of the founders of the Tuesday Night Music Club, and become one of my songwriting heroes. The man could paint a picture with very few words and his musical ability was enviable.

And then he died; a victim of his own vices. I’m not going to go into that here – I know nothing at all and can shed no light on the subject.

Several years later I relocated to San Francisco with my family. I discovered the band Giraffe once I was on their home turf, and of course discovered the fact that Kevin Gilbert had been their leader when he was a teenager. BEFORE I knew him. Giraffe was a pretty damned good band that had come so startlingly close to making it big – their albums are worth hunting down and they did a fantastic live rendition of Genesis’ “Lamb Lies Down on Broadway” (the full album mind you) that is lots of fun.

I was looking for a recording studio for my second album when I ran across a man named Steve Smith who owned a recording studio down the peninsula from where I was living. In his bio, he briefly mentioned that he was the drummer for Giraffe. Awesome. On his web site of the time if you dug in a little bit there was a bio of Kevin Gilbert, and he talked about the brief time he spent at UCLA.

Parts of the story looked and felt awfully familiar to me. Smith talked about the musical without mentioning the name, and again, it felt familiar. Me being slightly brave, I wrote an e-mail to him to ask what was the title of that musical and that I might have been involved in it. He confirmed it for me.

Holy crap.

All of the pieces started falling into place then. The rehearsals, our discussions about piano playing,  that I went to one of his shows and failed to recognize him? The fact that I think he invited me to come join the FUCKING TUESDAY NIGHT MUSIC CLUB and I didn’t even fucking notice!?!!?!!?!!?

I’m an idiot.

Actually, in looking back at the timeline I don’t think he invited me to join TNMC. That came a couple of years later – I think. I’m never going to know for certain. If he had told any of the other members I don’t know about it. I’ve exchanged about a dozen words with one of the other members over social media but we certainly don’t know one another.

I wonder if he saw me in the audience that night and laughed. I will never know. I can tell you there is an album version of that night you can listen to and/or buy. A then-unknown Sheryl Crow played keyboards in the band, dressed up like a dominatrix biker chick. When I found out about that later I was amazed – I didn’t recognize her either.

I’m an idiot.

Nick D’Virgilio of Spock’s Beard played drums. I don’t remember the name of the bass player but what I remember is this man with the thickest eyebrows I have ever seen in my life. Marc Bonilla played lead guitar. Oh, the people I could have met.

I never did work in Steve Smith’s studio. I no longer remember why.

When I was working on my third album in my newly built home studio I recorded a number of covers and one of those was Kevin Gilbert’s “Tea For One”. It’s a fantastic song of unrequited love and missed chances told from start to finish in only a few dozen words. I have no idea if he would have liked what I did to his song – he had a wicked sense of humor that I can recall now but I never got to know him on a personal level as a songwriter, which was my mistake. I could have but I was so focused on myself in those days that even if the overtures were made I probably didn’t even notice.

I recorded the song in what I called "Garage Pop" during those days. A bit uneven, imperfect vocals - what you might get from a band practicing in their garage instead of a polished studio version. If you want that, I recommend hunting down his version.

But I recorded “Tea for One” just the same – it’s a great song and I’d like to think I gave it some justice – even if it doesn’t come close his version. It was on the original version of my third album "The Long Goodbye", which I released myself, but was cut when the album was moved to digital streaming services (In all fairness, I cut 21 songs from the original release – which was a 2 CD set).

My music career has been dark for several years, but it got jump started in 2020 in the middle of the pandemic and I’ve been revisiting a lot of my unreleased work since, and of all the covers I did this is still my favorite. I am releasing it now, in tribute to a musician I admire and could have called friend if I had just paid a bit of attention.

The guy holding the roses was me, as it turns out. I had no idea.

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For those of you with very long memories you should listen to the full single on Spotify, because I’ve thrown in a little bonus for people who remember the 1980’s band ASK. Just a little piece of a little ditty written by me, Kevin Donville and Ed Lee.



Thursday, April 15, 2021

He Takes a Knee - Blowing up!



 

Just an incredible couple of weeks for the band! The video has 12,000 views on YouTube and another 3,000 on Facebook. Thousands of streams. Thousands of radio plays. And this Saturday a big push forward with an appearance on the Indie Music Network. In addition to all of the usual streaming services and download sites starting April 17 you can hear the radio friendly version of the song (the "Mellon Farmer" edit) on the following:

Satellite
Broadcasting on free to access satellite channel of Bellintersat Satellite covering the area of:
Albania, Austria, Belgium, Belarus, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, France, Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Eastern Iceland, Hungary, Istanbul and province, Italy (excluding island), Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, North Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Norway, Netherlands, Poland, United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Romania, Western Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine
Broadcasting free to total of 595 million of inhabitants.
The signal parameters are:
11350 MHz
45 Msps
8PSK ¾
DVB-S2
Satellite Radio:
Satellite Radio: NETRADIO https://www.netradio.fr Saturday, Sunday 03:00 p.m. PST
Satellite TV:
Satellite TV Channel: TZiK https://www.tzik.com Saturday 11:00 a.m. PST / Replay 11:00 a.m. PST Monday-Friday, Sunday
FM:
M@X FM (Belgium) https://www.maxfm.be/
RPL Radio 89.2 (France) http://www.rpl-radio.fr/
RDM 102.7 (France) http://radio-rdm.fr/
ELISE RADIO (France, Morzine) https://www.eliseradio.com Sunday, 16:00 PM
KOGY 95 Hawaiian Pacific Radio (USA, Lahaina) http://www.HawaiianPacificRadio.com Wednesday, 6:00 PM
Kiss FM 91.6 (Sweden, Denamark, Spain) http://www.kissfm.se Friday 4:00 PM
EVENIMENT FM (Romania, SIBIU-103,2 FM, RM. VALCEA-96,9 FM, PITESTI-96,9 FM, AGNITA-88,5 FM, DRAGASANI-96,9 FM, SLATINA-96,9 FM) http://www.evenimentfm.ro Saturday, 22:00
RADIO XANTHI ONE (Greece, Xanthi) http://www.radioxanthione.gr Monday, 10:50 AM
DAB+:
H2O 90.4 (France) http://www.h2oradio.fr/
Euradio (France, Lille) http://euradio.fr/
WKMT-DB DaGr8FM (USA, Miami) http://www.dagr8fm.com/ Tuesday, 6:00 PM
Web:
Radio EmerGeNti (Italy, Rome) https://www.radioemergenti.net/ Monday 18:00 CEST
LUTON URBAN RADIO (UK, Luton) http://www.lurlive.com Thursdays 12:00 PM
DFM Digital Future Music (UK) https://www.dfm.org.uk/ Sunday 1 PM, Monday 7 PM
HJL Radio (Venezuela, Caracas) https://hjlradio.webs.com Sunday 16:00
Studio Uno Abruzzo (Italy) www.studiounoabruzzo.it Thursday 3:00 AM
Silver Radio (Portugal, Loures) http://silveradio.cf Friday 22:00 PM
POP RADIO (France, Montpellier) http://www.popradio.fr Tuesday 19:00
RADIORUEDA.COM (Slovakia, Banská Stiavnica) http://radiorueda.com Sunday 16:00
NCB Radio (UK, Bodmin) http://www.ncbradio.co.uk Friday 22:00
Radio NumberOne Belgique (Belgium, Mouscron) http://www.radionumberonebelgique.be Saturday 20:00
Silver Radio (France, La ferté sous Jouarre) http://www.silver-radio.fr/ Friday, 20:00
ABC KP (France, St Malo) http://abckp.spiritradios.net Tuesday, 20:00
Web Radio Apollo (Portugal, Viseu) http://www.webradioapollo.com Sunday, 3:00 AM
TAIWAN LOUNGE RADIO (Taiwan, Taoyuan City) http://www.taiwan-lounge.com Sunday, 8:00 PM
RNB Hits Radio (UK, London) http://rnbhits.com Tuesdays @ 08:00 AM Thursdays @ 08:00 AM
KWAKE Radio (USA, Galesburg, Illinois) http://www.kwakeradio.com Wednesday 19:00
The Aaron Broadcasting System - TABS (UK, Birmingham) http://www.aaronbroadcasting.com Sunday 5:00 PM
Tuesday 8:00 PM Monday 7:00 PM Friday 17:00 PM
RADIO WEB-BASE (Italy, Salerno) http://radio-web-base.webnode.it/ Saturday, 12:00 PM
EN5 Radio (UK, London) http://www.en5radio.com Friday, 4:00 PM
Playing Radio FM (Canada, Kingston) http://www.playingradio.com/ Friday, 6:00 PM
IMCRadio (USA, Ridgeland) http://www.imcradio.com Saturday, 10:00 AM
Prospect Radio (UK, London) http://prospectradio.wixsite.com/online Saturday, 10:00 AM
Wrekin Radio (Shropshire) (UK,Telford) https://wrekinradioshropshire.com Friday, 04:00
JMO Radio Show (US, Las Vegas, NV) https://jmoradioshow.com/ Saturday, 18:00
Heat FM Radio (USA, Staten Island) http://heatfmradio.com/ Friday, 15:00
OnTheCity (France, Paris) https://www.onthecity.fr/ Monday, 09;00
Happyness (France) https://www.happyoise.fr/
MixLor Radio (France) https://www.mixlor.com/ Friday 21:00 UTC+2 / 15:00 EDT
RCC Radio (Belgium) http://rccradio.eu/ Monday 02;00 UTC+2 / 20:00 EDT
Stefline (France) http://www.stefline.com/ Sunday 16:00 UTC+2 / 10:00 EDT
Radio Ice Age (Switzerland) http://www.iceagetv.com/radiosite/ Thursday 19:00 UTC+2 / 13:00 EDT
Canal 5 (Belgium) http://canal5-webradio.e-monsite.com/ Thursday 21:00 UTC+2 / 15:00 EDT
W.Q.R.Y (USA, Miami) http://www.wqryradio.com/ Sunday, 17:30
Watts FM (Canada) http://www.wattsfm.com/ Saturday 17:30 UTC+2
Indie Rock Radio (Canada) http://www.indierockradio.ca/ Sunday 18:00 EDT / 12:00 am UTC+2
Radio Augusta New Generation (France) http://radioaugusta.wixsite.com/augusta/home/ Sunday 23:00 UTC+2 / 17:00 EDT
Cosmopolita Radio (Puerto Rico) http://www.cosmopolitaradio.com/ Saturday 13:00 EDT / 7:00 pm UTC+2
Plug Talk Radio (United States) http://Zeno.fm/plug-talk-radio Thursday 20:00 EDT / 2:00 am UTC +2
Inde Spirit (France) http://inde.spiritradios.net Thursday 18:00 UTC+2 / 12:00 EDT
ASWebradio (France) http://asw.spiritradios.net Wednesday 18:00 UTC+2/ 12:00 EDT
829 Online Radio (Canada) http://www.829.gr Sunday 10:00 EDT / 4:00 pm UTC+2
MixRayZone (France) https://mixrayzone.com/ Sanday 20:00
Apple TV
Global and On-Demande. Direct link to download app Indie Network Apple TV app::
Amazon Fire TV
Indie Network Amazon Fire TV app. Global and On-Demande. Direct link to download Indie Network Amazon Fire TV app:
W.Q.R.Y (USA, Miami) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08NHTZRD9/ref=sr_1_1... Sunday, 17:30
ROKU
Indie Network Roku app. Global and On-Demande. Direct link to download app Indie Network Roku app::
OnTheCity (France, Paris) https://channelstore.roku.com/.../4c2b9d9.../onthecity-radio Monday, 09;00