Spry As An Old Dog

First, upcoming events, all with DK & the Affordables:
- Saturday Aug 16, Wedding at Pajarito Mountain
- Saturday Aug 23, Beer & Band at Pajarito Mountain
- Wednesday Aug 27, 6-8 pm, Santa Fe Bandstand on the Plaza
- Thursday Aug 28, Wedding gig in Las Vegas, NM (not NV--we aren't that cool yet!)
- Fall piano lessons start September 1
- Saturday Sept 13, Los Alamos Ashley Pond stage 2:30-4 (Science Fest), then the Cowgirl Bar & BBQ in Santa Fe from 9-midnight

The rest of the Affordables are also playing gigs on Aug 24 in Albuquerque and Sept 12 in Los Alamos, which I've bowed out of, but please go out and see 'em if you get a chance.

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Man's best friend on a ski trip in the Jemez Mountains a few years back. No, Rossignol did no pay me to put their name in this shot. But maybe they should! (I love those skis, BTW.)

A few weeks ago, I was walking with my dog, Rusty the Chocolate Lab, on the trails behind my house, and musing on the pet/human relationship. This musing came as a result of reading some John Gehrach (I just finished his book Standing in a River Waving a Stick which is of course about fly fishing). He was observing the relationships hunters have with their flushing/pointing/retrieving dogs. My dog and I are tight, too, and it stems from our time together training for search and rescue work.

Man's best friend, the much younger model, circa 2006, shown lounging in our freshly mulched backyard of sticks.

Rusty came with the house we bought in 2003. He'd been living with the previous owners of the house and was a year old when we got him. At a year old, he was pretty much a 70-pound puppy and barely knew how to sit on command. So, we went through basic obedience class. At the time, I was very involved in ski patrol, and was looking for some search & rescue (SAR) stuff to do in the summer. So, Rusty and I did agility training, wilderness tracking, and wilderness air-scent search training. The following winter, we tried avalanche rescue training.

One winter we trekked up to Monarch Ski Area in Colorado. Here you can see Rusty's hind end as he searches for someone buried in the snow. Avalanche SAR training and work is pretty tough. 

That was before I had kids, when I could spend an evening and a Saturday every week training a dog, when I could travel a weekend or 2 a month to train with some SAR guru or another (I did have the distinct pleasure to train with Elane Flower (who trained Sizzle, one of the best SAR dogs I've ever seen), Sue Purvis (SAR volunteer, excellent dog trainer, and all-around good person from Crested Butte), and Patty Burnett (who literally wrote a great book on avalanche dog training). I ended up with a well-trained, well-behaved dog. Rusty and I were a month or two away from trying for the New Mexico state certification for K9 SAR when my son was born 2 months early. That put an end to our K9 SAR career, which was for the best. I liked the idea of being a SAR dog handler, but the time commitment was getting to be a bit of a drag (and I had some music projects poised to take off!).

Rusty has been a great family dog. The kids love him, and Rusty helps keeps track of them since they are part of the "pack." Rusty ran, biked, hiked, backpacked, and skied with us. For a long time he could ski as hard as I could (A while back, I put up some pictures with Rusty skiing; you can see them here). But that's changing. He's getting to the age now (12!) where he is slowing down dramatically. A long walk leaves him pretty tired. The heat of summer requires early morning or late evening walks to beat the heat. He has a hard time jumping up into the back of the truck. But he still needs his daily exercise, just like the rest of us.

The old dog could still bound through the snow last Winter (Dec 2013), though at a slower pace than he did 5 years ago. Note the gray eyebrows and muzzle--he looks so distinguished. My gray hairs make me look "distinguished," too.

We ran into one of my wife's former co-workers (Debbie) and her black Lab (Noche) the other day on the "new" trails near our "new" house. Noche is one of Rusty's old dog buddies and is currently 13 years old. His hips are failing, he tore an ACL in a hind leg, and his muzzle and legs are all gray. Still, he was out for his 20-minute walk, same as every other day. As I watched the Rusty's and Noche's faces light up (and tails wag) when they saw each other, I realized that we all need a buddy, especially as we get older. I also realized that we all need to keep going, keep running, keep searching for that hidden rabbit, right up until we can't anymore. I also realized that 13 years old in "human" time is the equivalent of 91 or so "years" of dog time, give or take. I hope that if I live to 91 years old, that I'm as spry as these old dogs.

Thanks for reading!

Do You Take Your Music Seriously?

Writing this post actually brought on a nightmare.

In my dream, I had managed to land a gig at Pranzo, the classy Italian restaurant in Santa Fe. Except now, instead of an intimate setting on the terrace overlooking Santa Fe, it was a 100-seat performance space. I was supposed to play some solo jazz piano, and after my first couple songs, the audience remained unmoved. The booking agent and another prominent pianist from Santa Fe came up on stage, kind of like the managers and coaches of a baseball team when the pitcher can't throw a strike, and basically told me to up my game or leave the stage. Daaaaamn. Strangely enough (or maybe not; it was a dream after all), there were Legos on the piano, but when I started to build, they told me I couldn't play with those, either. It was not a happy dream.

Here I am, circa 2010 at Los Ojos in Jemez Springs, NM. do I look serious enough for you?

Anyway, on with the real story. A few weeks ago, while at a local restaurant with my family, I ran into a prominent Santa Fe pianist while we were waiting in the line for the restroom. He had made the trek from Santa Fe to Los Alamos to hear fantastic guitarist Tony Ceserano and the band he was playing with that night (Jazz Baziliero) at the Ashley Pond bandstand. We struck up a conversation in which I mentioned that I played piano in a couple bands. He asked me, "do you take your music seriously?", I think in context of his job as a booking agent for another local restaurant. He mentioned that he was always looking for new acts. I said, somewhat timidly, that yes, I take my music seriously, but I make my living doing other work. In the back of my mind, I was wrestling with the notion of handing him my business card (which, incidentally and somewhat ironically, I was out of). I was also feeling a bit insecure in my abilities--the only act I've seen at his venue was John & Barbara. John in this case is John Rangel, one of the best jazz pianists I've ever heard and seen, and he was accompanying a fantastic singer (Barbara). So naturally, I was thinking that if that is the caliber musician he was after, well, I have some serious practicing to do in order to grace his venue with my performances. At that point, our conversation was interrupted by the opening of the bathroom door, a quick "see you at the show!" and my turn in the restroom queue.

Since then, I've been wrestling with the question, "do you take your music seriously?" It is such a rich question! I take my music seriously enough to practice every day, to rehearse regularly, to play out on nights and weekends, to travel fairly long distances to gigs, to teach others. Heck, we purchased a new house in part to get more space to explore more music! How much of my life to I have to dedicate to music to be "serious?" Some of it? All of it? Do I have to suffer for my art to meet the criteria for taking it seriously? My days of jumping through hoops to meet the expectations of others has come to an end, so if that's what's required to be serious, then I'm not.

I guess I take music seriously enough to know what my limits are. Playing a solo jazz piano gig at a fine venue such as Pranzo is probably not in the cards for me right now, at least not without some practice and expansion of my repertoire--the last several years I've been pursuing ensemble work in rock and jazz. I'm awed and inspired by a variety of pianists nearby, including John Rangel, Andy Kingston, David Geiss, Fran Meier, Juanita Madland, Joe Cox, and Brant Leeper. I would hope to fall somewhere in the spectrum of decent players in Northern New Mexico because I do play quite a bit. But maybe I don't, and maybe I should be practicing right now instead of writing this blog post!

So, do I take my music seriously? As you can see, my answer is "Yes, but..." A "taking it seriously" answer might be "Yes, absolutely. I'm always up for another opportunity to share my music. Here's my business card. Send me an email and I'll get you my press kit." I'd be calling John Rangel to see about a lesson or two. I'd be enrolled in a music program. I'd pursue other music projects. I'd quit the day job.

In the end, answering the question, or at least the way I've limited it here, is a pointless pursuit (or "bogus" as put by one of my band-mates). I am pretty sure that my partner in conversation four paragraphs ago did not mean to limit this question, either. I have (and I'm sure he has) seen too many people ruin their lives for the sake of taking something too seriously. I've seen it in art, music, outdoor pursuits, science, and commerce/free enterprise. (I've also seen people blow things off, to their detriment, but that's another topic for another day.) We should strive to be well-rounded people. So, I guess I'll say that I take my music seriously, but only in the context of a living a full and interesting life.

And (chuckle, wry grin) I suppose I could clear all this up with a phone call or an email to the man who posed the question to me. Maybe I'll get that press kit together and send it along with my inquiry. But then I wouldn't have this essay to show for all my assumptions, insecurity, and musing. 

Thanks for reading!