Jerry Lott's First Blog; First Day

Hello, Jerry Lott here.
I guess that’s as good a way to start my first day of blogging as any, you think?
I have much to say that I have wanted to bring to people for a long time. And also, many of my friends have told me I should. It looks like I’ll finally be able to do so. It took long enough…
My main obstacle has been my deteriorating health, which allows me less and less time each day to do those things that require me to remain upright, with my feet on the ground; you know; laundry, shopping, Doctor and therapy appts., and, yep, writing in the blog, now.
[My first day…this is very exciting].
Fortunately, I have some much younger friends who will be helping to bring me into the 21st century, through the computer, [of which I have been woefully ignorant for too long].
I will be filling you in on my life’s history eventually. It’s generally considered to be a bit strange, but you can decide for yourself.

My life in the present is this: I’m a 64 year old, physically disabled musician/songwriter. I am also a teacher of self-help through avenues ranging from the meta-physical and so-called “New Age” type practices, meditations, past-life regression therapies, and include paranormal, psychological and any other methods that I find positive and workable in both my life and/or others’ lives. If it brings more loving happiness, joy and peace into one’s life, I’m all for it.
I’ll be writing about these and many interests I have that I hope to be of interest to others.

First on my list must be my music. First, because…well, I can’t make an income doing regular jobs anymore. My disabilities don’t let me be reliably “on time”, since I never know if I’m going to be able to even leave the house on any given day, until I wake up and assess my situation. So, selling some of my songs seems to the best alternate I can come up with to help me survive in these tough times.
I was forced to take my social security rather early and, with only that coming in and what little savings I had, I lasted as long as I could; ten years or so. But now I’m only a few months away from homeless on the street, and this is a last effort to try to help myself out of this hole I’m in, instead of relying completely on government programs or the like. And, rather than begging on the street for spare change, I thought maybe I could find enough people that like a song or two of mine to generate just enough income to cover my medications, rent, food, and the basic necessities. I don’t need to be rich.
Best of all, if it will, it will also allow me to bring help to a lot more people than just the one-at-a-time help that I’ve been limited to in the past. This is the reason my friends have been pushing their help on me…to help me share with many others, those things I have discovered on my own life-long personal quest, and use to help all I can, to squeeze a little more happiness out of their lives. You’ll understand much better as I start writing about that, later. But, I have to take care of the bills first…

If you listen to, and/or buy, Independent songs on the web, I’m just asking that you listen to some of mine.

For better than 30 years friends have told me repeatedly that I should be selling my songs. They liked the lyrics and the guitar pieces, and I wrote a little from many different musical genres; ballads, country, blues, humor, children’s and others. Only in recent years have I finally been able to get them recorded, thanks to a supportive and encouraging friend in town, who had opened his own studio, and personally engineered my recording sessions, with just me and my acoustic guitar. […He did a great job, I might add].
My health had been deteriorating and I knew the time I had to finish the project was limited when I started losing the feeling in the fingers of my left hand. As it turned out, I was right about the timing and completed this work, my last guitar work, just in time. I was forced to give up the guitar within months of the project’s completion so, this will not only be my first recording, it will also be my last. That took a little adjusting, but I was thankful that I had had better than 45 years of playing; longer than many others. And I still have harmonica and autoharp, for a while yet.
One of the greatest things about launching this recording is that finally, I will actually find out, once and for all, before I leave this planet, if the general public thinks that my songs have any value to them; do the people, complete strangers, like my music? Yes, my friends say they like it, but do they really mean that or are they just saying that to make me feel good? I think that’s something about which a lot of creative artists think. We can be a bit crazy in that area, sometimes. And please, if you have comments, suggestions, or criticisms, e-mail me. Even though I’m unable to answer, they will not go unread.


These are the best of my songs. The last few years of reasonably good health, I performed them many times in small dinner clubs and restaurant lounges in California’s “Mother Lode Gold Rush” area of the Sierra Mountains, where I was living at the time.
And with the help of my friend at the recording studio, I think that most, if not all of them, are the best performances I’ve ever done. I’m hoping you’ll feel the same way, too, and will be able to find one or two that you’ll be able to enjoy again and again.
Thanks for checking them out. Click on the following link and ask for “All My Own Stuff”, by Jerry Lott. They’ll give you a 30-second cut to listen to each of them. If you like any of them, you can download them at a buck each or $12.95 for the whole album of fifteen songs. Please go to : http://cdbaby.com/cd/jerrylott

Since they don’t go into much about the individual songs, the following is a comment or two about them, in the order they appear on the album, just so you have a bit of background to which you can come for a little help with your choices:

1. “I’d like to hear from you” ; Creative writing instructors will tell you to “…write about what you know.” That was apparently so with this one. It’s a piece of my own history that many people identified with, and many found emotionally touching [so they’ve told me]. It’s been one of my most requested songs.
2. “Femme Fatale”; This was a fun stroll through a darker side of whimsy.
3. “Whisper in the Wind”; I had the lyrics and tune for this one long before I had the guitar parts worked out. I think it leans toward “Country”…What do you think? It was one of my favorite pieces to perform.
4. “Another You”; Love found, then lost…
5. “Heartfelt”; I had been working on the guitar lines for this one for about two years, exploring a novel tuning, a full dropped “D” tuning, requiring new runs and their placement, and even entirely new chords. It was excitingly strange, but very beautiful in which to play. My son announced his engagement about this time and I found myself considering writing a song for his wedding; Could I…?,Should I…?, etc.. While playing this piece one day, two entire lines of lyrics popped into my head. As a writer of songs, one does not ignore these things and I quickly wrote them down, which prompted another line, then another…and it just kept going until, about 45 minutes later, I had the whole song, more or less. A few more minutes of refining touch-ups and it was completed. I’m still undecided as to whether to deem it my “Master Piece” or just my most inspired. [ Okay, I’ll tell you; it was a hit at my son’s wedding.]
6. “Movin’”; Yeah, yeah, I know this one’s not very “P.C.” these days, but don’t take it too seriously. I don’t always share the philosophies of the characters in my songs. I found my self unreasonably depressed with how my life was going at the time and needed a song that would [or could] pick up my spirits when I played it. I have enjoyed it and happily played it, now, for many years. [It’s a joke, ladies, a joke…]
7. “That’s all over, now”; Another love’s lost…Alright, so I’m a borderline hopeless romantic.
8. “Baby’s Pissed at Me Blues”; Ha!...Love NOT lost, but his lady is not real happy with him right now [or even lately]. […Been there, thanks]. This one usually got a laugh or two, as intended.
9. “The Reaper’s Comin’”; My only good-old-fashioned Protest Song. I guess, one day I just got tired of seeing the same old totally useless and unnecessary crap happening, seemingly everywhere in the world, that you and I and every other decent person sees handed down to us from “The Powers That Be”, every single day with no end in sight…Whew!...I still get wound up whenever I dwell on it! Don’t you? When the lyrics came, they flowed thru me so fast it was like Automatic Writing. I just let go and watched my hand write it. It didn’t stop until they were finished. I suspected that they were coming, after the music and guitar parts came streaming out of me the day before in the same way. [My songs often write themselves like this, kind of like from another Plane, you know?] […40 years of meditation may have something to do with it, also.]
10. “Grounded”or “Teener Blues”; A fun little ditty that came popping out of my pen after a nostalgic visit with my brother. We started reminiscing about our own teen-age years and comparing them to the same years in our own kids’ lives, long grown up by this time. Seems like, generation after generation, things are just the same, only different, right?...Maybe it will remind you of someone you know.
11. “Sit up and eat your vegetables”; Very popular among all ages, but definitely the most popular among the elementary kids, at the school concerts I did from time to time. I gave copies of my album to family members, and my cousin said she couldn’t get her husband to stop singing it around the house for weeks. Get this one for the kids as a gift and I’ll bet they not only thank you for it, but they’ll be the ONLY ones at school to have it in their collection. [Please, tell them where the other kids can get their own copy.]

This would also be a good time to mention a word about artistic piracy. The world is losing artists every day to this insidious act, not to mention that it’s illegal. Please, when someone says, “Here, I burned you a copy of this new CD I bought.”, just say “No, thanks, but, if you thought I’d like it, where can I buy it?” I hope you agree.

12. “Jimmy the Ape”; Based on a true incident I witnessed [repeatedly] at the San Diego Zoo, back in the early nineteen-fifties. My older brother and I were in our “ ’round-tens”, and we thought that it was the funniest thing we had ever seen at that time of our young lives. Many years later, I discovered that similar scenarios were not uncommon at other zoos, apparently worldwide. You’ve probably guessed what the subject of the song is, by now, but I’ll let you find out for yourself. When ever I was performing this piece, I could almost guarantee that the audience would be singing along with me by the second chorus and practically screaming it by the last, great fun for any performer. [Barely PG-13].

13. “Comin’ Along”; Instrumental
14. “Desert Rendezvous”; Instrumental
15. “Due Home”; Instrumental
To me, instrumentals are just musical pieces that never lent themselves to use as a springboard for any lyrics that may have presented themselves at that time or since… […sometimes I find the lyrics, sometimes they find me. No, I don’t completely understand it yet, either, but then, I’m not finished working on that…]…but some were still fun enough to just play that I didn’t care.

Well, assuming you have read my song comments and maybe listened to one or two, that’s my album. I hope you go explore my music a bit. Feel free to e-mail me with any comments, criticisms, or questions. However, I will apologize to all, now: I can’t reply to any of them. Sorry, I just don’t have the time each day for remaining in an upright position. It really limits my time to do the things I want, and need to do. I will be taking time to respond to some of them, right in the blog. Please understand, what you see written here so far, has taken me almost two weeks, working a bit each day, but I’m hoping to get better as I proceed.
This is actually very good therapy for me, and not the lowest of reasons on the list for pushing my self to continue. It’s already helping me to regulate the amount of time I can and/or should take with those needed and important things in my life. I feel a bit freer in ways I had not fully expected and already growing more in that direction. It’s very uplifting and more than I had actually hoped. And, of course, positive reinforcement through the focusing of my daily meditations and visualizations towards this always helps.
I have so much to tell you all and now I’m seeing that this is going to work out well. My writings are not that of great writers, I know, but I will do my best to get my ideas and suggestions across. And, with the help and support of all my old friends, and, hopefully, a whole lot of new ones [nudge, nudge], I can keep this thing rolling.
And, very important, I will finally know exactly what all of you think of my music, not just friends and relatives telling me positive things about it that may be true or may be just well-wishing compliments to make me feel good.
Come back and see me soon, regardless of your opinion of my music. I have other subjects planned for here. The next one coming up; the one I’ll be starting very shortly, is all about…ME! Hey, big surprise, right? Yep, my history, and how and why a seven year old, terminally ill boy, would seek spiritual answers to his questions about life and death, finding few answers that satisfied him or gave him any feelings of peace, and leading him on a life-long quest.
See you soon.
Peace, Love
Jerry
http://cdbaby.com/cd/jerrylott