I like to read before I go to sleep,..if I’m not drinking beer…otherwise I just drink beer before I go to sleep. Kinda explains why I still haven’t finished the current book I am reading, which I started last October…and its only 50 pages long! Naw its bigger than that.
So the other night I read about this dude who has a routine he does every morning that I thought was so simple, cool and easy to remember to do. Every morning as soon as he opens his eyes and is conscious, he says to himself “something great is going to happen to me today”. And then he looks for it all day until it comes…which puts him in the frame of mind to look for and expect something great each day.
But first I suppose one has to define what something “great” is. Could be a bag of money falling out of the sky right? Probably not going to happen and my neck would be sore from looking up at the sky all day. Could be an invite to the Heff Mansion for the weekend right? Probably not gonna happen…plus..THEN WHAT?! Really, then what? What else could there be to do besides that? Assuming “that” even happens there. Is there gonna be beer there? A steam room? Pac-10 games? Could be a long weekend except for a few minutes a day.. which perhaps, is just an illusion anyway.
So I started doing this on purpose last Friday morning…even though great things had already been happening during the past week. During the day, I was trying to think of another song idea…and right before I got in my car around noon to go pick up my son (which is always great) the idea of “100 Days” popped into my head and by the time I had picked him up and got back home I had the first and second verses lyrics and the chorus lyrics…very cool! To me…so to me that is something great…maybe not to someone else but since I had just finished the Sparrows song 2 days earlier, this blew me away…then by the end of the night I had decided to do a 4-song EP with Jdrums. That’s something great in my book because none of this was happening the day before.
On Saturday I continued the routine. Nothing particularly spectacular happened all day. I went to the Metronome coffee shop that evening to write some more lyrics for 100 Days and not much happened, so decided to stop in at the Crown Bar and had a couple beers and not much happened…so I left and decided to walk the long way home.
I was walking down the sidewalk on 6th Ave and walked past some windows that were kinda tinted and from what I could see it appeared to be packed with people partying! “Cool” I thought and I walked in. Sure enough it was a bar called the DOA , mostly younger crowd, probably a lot of college kids from UPS.
I ordered a PBR and I fit right in…plus I was wearing my black leather jacket! Ha, that’s another story. Anyhow, I stood by the pool tables, drinking my beer with a perma-grin.
Of course I’m smiling! I’m in a bar with people half my age and I think I fit right in! I’m doing the same exact thing I was doing 25 years ago and it cracks me up.
In fact, I smile so much that if I happen to look at a girl and our eyes connect…(you know? When you look at the same time?) that they think I’m hitting on them,,,wouldn’t you? If some older dude is looking at you while he’s smiling from across the bar? Creepy! So I actually have to purposley make sure that doesn’t happen, even tho some ladies smile right back!…plus their boyfriends get jealous..serious! I can pull my own..,HA…but what ups with younger dudes being sooo jealous? That’s funny I say that now cuz that was me..
Anyhow…it was 11:30 pm and I remembered thinking to myself “well maybe something great or good will happen tomorrow”…in that moment I hear a girl say “Jeff!” I thought there must have to be another Jeff cuz nobody in this bar knows me for sure…then I heard my name again and this time I saw this stunning girl walking towards me…and she says “its me Danielle!” “Unbelievable” I thought as I hugged her. It was Danielle Lee an old friend and friend of friends from Gig Harbor, who from what I thought, from facebook as she’s one of my friends, was living in LA.
Danielle made my very first Count Gilbert website…the colors and text at www.countgilbert.com are still all her initial ideas…so seeing her again was awesome.
However, here is where the “great” comes in. Remember”great” is different for everybody! She was with 2 of her friends and here is how she introduced me “you guys this is my friend Jeff…he’s Count Gilbert this is Count Gilbert” HA! I have never been introduced as Count Gilbert before! I mean …what do I say to that? One of her friends, Theo, looks at me like “WTF is a Count f**king Gilbert?” haha kinda embarrassing but I really was honored tho…So I hung out and drank with them till near closing and had a “great time” in a nick of time.
So Sunday I do it again…wait and expect something great to happen. And instead of finishing the lyrics that I had already started for 100 Days, I got totally all new lyrics that were way better and recorded both an acoustic demo and a rock demo version of that same song….that is something great happening, to me..in my opinion…cuz I just sit there with a pen and wait for the universe to deliver and it did in a hurry.
Okay so things are going well so I’m not stopping now. Oops gotta back up a sec.. My son likes to collect records and loves to shop at used record stores and there are 3 or 4 right around the corner.
On Sunday afternoon we went to 2 of them and as he shopped I just thumbed thru some old albums and couldn’t help notice the amazing art that was on the covers…from The Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, Scorpions and on and on. Just big huge killer art on the every one. It made me want to do something completely random for the 4-song EP we’re gonna record…Now, don’t get me wrong…my daughter Lorren has done all my music art and it is priceless, random, perfect! but it all came naturally. Nothing forced,,,that’s what I wanted. I didn’t know what I wanted to make for this art cuz Lorren already said she would do it for me. But I didn’t have a clue what we were gonna do for this one.
So Monday I’m expecting something great again and nothing comes along…just a normal day. Then as I was messaging the girl with the sparrow tattoo yesterday afternoon…again, I’ll call her Kim! I thought BAM! I’m gonna totally, randomly ask her if we can use that photo for the cover…she said sure!…so I sent it off to Lorren and she was available (shes a busy kid) and immediatley added the text “Sparrows From New Mexico” on the arm in the photo…so COOL cuz the font makes it look like one of those barbed wire tattoos, whatever they call ‘em, and it fits perfectly. She used a font that makes it very southwestern looking. So we changed the name of the EP to “Sparrows From New Mexico” instead of 100 Days. And I got my killer, random, actually “beautiful” album art that I was hoping for. A great thing had happened…to me.
Because I changed the album name, the theme also changed…in my head. The 100 Days song is more rockin to me and the Sparrows seems a little more vulnerable? So, again, in my head, the new theme is not as aggressive.
So today, as I was thinking of where and when I ‘m gonna get the extra cash to start recording right away with Internet Music Production (not cheap! But James does a lot and is really really good…adds drums, bass, edits, mixes, masters…the works…so it is definitely worth it)…I get a phone call.
This person who I admire greatly had a random idea..out of nowhere .he randomly said “why don’t you record the songs for the EP acoustically, just you and an acoustic guitar so people can hear the words?” hmmm… he went on to compliment me on the lyrics and that “in his opinion” sometimes when I add all the distortion the true meaning of the song doesn’t match or gets lost…”fair enough” I thought. Because I do like to hide behind the noise!
He went on to say that these 4 new songs especially, have a lot of feeling and vulnerability behind them…thus again, the reason I like to hide behind the noise!
Hell, I grew up in Port Orchard…if you were a kid growing up there and were vunerable? You get your aaaass kicked!
This isn’t the first time someone has told me they liked the acoustic better…and I am always flattered. So after talking and getting a couple other opinions, from sparrows included, I have decided to professionally record the 4 songs acoustically for the EP…and this style compliments the new cover art…it all fits... saves me a lot of time and money…and I get do something I’ve never done, which kinda scares me..
A GREAT DAY for sure
Seems like everything that I perceive as great that’s been happening these past few days is totally in sync with what im already doing. I can imagine if you were building a house, or going on vacation or selling cars or anything that people do…great things would happen accordingly…my thing just happens to be music right now.
Even morely (is morely a word?) maybe great things have always been happening, …everyday… my whole life, but I just never noticed…
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