When I was born there was no such  thing as climate change science. When it was first mentioned in the press I was open minded and followed it. Since then my opinion on the subject has not been positive. By the time Al Gore was flying around on a jumbo jet telling everyone to ride bicycles my mind was made up. If he truly believed what he was saying he would be using a different mode of transportation. 

Then there is the obvious lack of peer review. Anyone who does not believe in the man made global warming theory is black listed. And there are plenty. They do not get funded for any research. It is highly political. Even Albert Einstein was subject to peer review. When he released his Theory Of Relativity a book named 100 Authors Against Einstein came out. He retorted “If I were wrong one author would have been enough”. 

In the 1950's a Doctor released a paper stating trans fats were causing all kinds of health issues. He was ignored. 30 years later they realized he was right and trans fats were banned. Science is neither easy or fast. Melding science and politics is a really bad move. 

I am sure there are several occupations where you can be wrong 80% of the time and you get to keep your job. Three I can think of off the top of my head are Politicians, Meteorologists and Journalists. Okay I will throw in Mechanics for good measure too. Too many of them are glorified parts swappers. 

When the climate gurus can get the weather right here locally next week I thinks folks will take them more seriously. In the mean time I have no doubt we will never hear the end of this climate change hysteria. The bottom line is what exactly do they propose we do about it?  Fortunately those of us here in the United States can watch the Green New Deal unfold in Europe and see what happens when bad science becomes bad policy. 

Watch this closely. They have no concept of how science, industry or even civilization works. This is poor leadership on parade! Passenger vehicles are a small percentage of the fossil fuels used. Before you even turn the key on your EV it already has a huge carbon foot print due to the mining required to produce the battery. I'm no ecological expert but I am pretty sure that when when of those EV batteries catch fire it is not good for the environment. 

Maybe the EU passing this crazy Green New Deal is a good thing as the rest of the world will see how it impacts ordinary citizens. In effect, they will not be able to afford a car. I know people who can not afford a decent car now! It restricts developing nations like Africa to burning wood for energy. But what do I know? I am following it all as best I can and I am not hearing anyone say anything very positive about it. Not people from the industry side of things any way. They are using words like delusional.

In the mean time just remember the predictions were originally all of the dire consequences of global climate change were supposed to already be in effect. Global warming is real. But what would you expect coming out of an ice age? Some scientists say it ended ten thousand years ago, some believe we are still in it. It lasted for 2.5 million years so by global climate cycle standards that was like last month. By the time our global temperature starts cooling again I hope our science is better. And that the global climate change alarmists will be long forgotten.

Maggie May is the song that launched Rod Stewarts career in 1971. By any standard a classic. In his own words: At first, I didn't think much of "Maggie May." I guess that's because the record company didn't believe in the song. I didn't have much confidence then. I figured it was best to listen to the guys who knew better. What I learned is sometimes they do and sometimes they don't.

Just one of many songs destined to be great that no one saw coming. "Unchained Melody," by the Righteous Brothers was the B-side to: "Hung on You". "Good Riddance," by Green Day was the B-side to: "Brain Stew". "Black Water," by the Doobie Brothers was the B-side to: "Another Park, Another Sunday". 

Gloria was one of the first songs Van Morrison wrote and recorded with Them after signing their first recording contract. In the decades since, it's been covered by Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, David Bowie and a host of bar bands too numerous to count. Yet Decca thought so little of it that "Gloria" was originally relegated to the other side of a single led by Them's version of "Baby, Please Don't Go," a song that's been covered approximately one million times since it was popularized by Big Joe Williams in the '30s.

The other members of Kiss didn't want "Beth" on 'Destroyer' and initially buried it on the flip side of the album's third single in the summer of 1976. Then Rosalie Trombley's daughter fell in love with this out-of-character ballad. Trombley happened to be the music director at a rock station in Ontario, where she put "Beth" into heavy rotation. It eventually became Kiss' highest-charting single ever, and the band later reportedly presented Trombley's daughter with a gold record.

The take away is even when the record company, producer and even the artist believe a song is just not that great, it could be the best song ever. So always do the best you can with every track because you just never know.

Most of my time is spent raising capitol for this very elaborate hobby of mine. My day job. Which I am not sure when I will ever give up. I enjoy metal straightening. There is a process from the time I begin until the job is complete that I use every time. My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to create a process for recording my songs that works. And that is where I am right now. 

I am in the middle of reading Berry Gordy's book To Be Loved. He talks about working on an auto assembly line early in his life and how he applied that experience to Motown. I want to use that idea to create a process in which I create my tracks. I guess it is a use of best practices and good habits. 

My little studio is not as much a studio as a mad scientist laboratory. A place to experiment and try different things. One small step I have taken is to identify as a tinkerer. And now I am tinkering with the process. The most important aspect of the track is of course the vocal. 

At this point I have decided to start putting together set lists of my songs and cover songs and getting my little show together. I want the vocal tracks on my songs to sound like I have sung them a thousand times. Of course the rehearsals will be great for my vocal chords, which are muscles and could benefit from a good work out. 

Hope to see you soon from the corner of a local venue or on a live stream! 

During a conversation with a friend this week I realized I needed to add a new keyword. When discussing words to live by, consistency should be at or near the top of the list. Never underestimate what you can accomplish just by showing up. Consistency eventually leads to muscle memory. 

We as human beings are creatures of habit. If you are not familiar with the concept of muscle memory, here is an example. You decide you need to stop at the grocery store on the way home. During your drive you start thinking about something and the next thing you are in your drive way and you don't remember even driving home. You were on autopilot. 

In my endeavors with my very elaborate hobby, the social media side of things is very new to me. New books to read. New skills to learn. New habits to make. My idea of fun!

I do not remember all of the details, just that a group of girls had a spare ticket to see Van Halen's 1984 Tour. When they picked me up I learned the spare ticket no longer existed. I went anyway and bought a ticket. More effort searching out a scalper than any other concert I remember going to. As close as I will ever get to living out some John Hughes teen movie. 

I walked in believing I was about to see the greatest Rock And Roll band in the world! Was I ever disappointed. I have nothing but respect for Edward, but that night he just looked bored. Maybe my expectations were too high. Who knows! DLR was his normal over the top self, but the rest of the band just seemed to be going through the motions. 

That concert left an impression on me that has lasted to this day. I am sure I have disappointed plenty of people who had to listen to me over the decades, but it was not for lack of trying. I have always tried to have the time of my life during a performance and at least look like I was having fun. 

In my late twenties I put together a song book of covers and originals, took it to Kinko's and had it spiral bound and everything. Went out and found a gig at a bar named Gators and played my first solo acoustic gig. It had it's moments but for the most part was not fun. Never did that again. 

Maybe because I started singing in a rock band I just need a beat to keep the momentum up. In my thirties I started solo acoustic with midi backing tracks and eventually graduated to audio backing tracks. Looking forward to trying to incorporate some DJ'ing into that concept. Taking singer songwriter with a beat box to the highest level I possibly can. 

I have nothing but respect for those who can pull off a solo acoustic or solo piano show. Hats off to you! I am also always impressed when I see some one sing acapella and make it work. That is just not my super power in any way.

The long and short of it is, unless people can dance to my music it just is not fun. I try to have fun myself and share that with the audience. Not a difficult concept. I also try to have a sense of humor. Maybe it comes across as off the wall dad jokes, but I am a Song Dad after all. 

Since my last post I have decided to adopt another keyword. Maybe the most important one of all. I will tell you all about it next time.

As luck would have it I joined the Special Boat Unit 20 reserve unit at exactly the right time in my life. Still in my early thirties, in a bad marriage that would not last much longer and about to be a single parent. I got a look into the ethos of Naval Special Warfare. And latched onto it. When life seemed tough I compared it to going through Basic Underwater Demolition / Seal school and it didn't seem so bad after all. 

At first the idea of running five miles seemed ludicrous to me, but after awhile I was running 10K's on a whim. If you tell yourself you can not do something, of course you will never do it. If you get in there and try, you at least have a chance of doing whatever it is. I was never a Wanna Be Seal. I was a Wanna Be Dirty Boat Guy, or SWCC. The Navy's best kept secret of Operators. I signed of a lot of the PQS but when push came to shove being a dad and a singer songwriter were higher on my list of priorities and I backed out.

I was never really a Blue Water Sailor. Amazingly enough I fit right in with the unconventional folks in NSW. That community is pretty much the opposite of Big Navy. The bureaucracy is still there, just not on the same level. I never tired of watching the conventional officers squirm in this environment. It must have turned their worlds upside down.   

Being in the Navy did not make me unconventional. I was already an independently minded creative wierdo. It just made me better at it. So now here I am, loving life and enjoying my very elaborate hobby with what little time and energy I have left over after getting up and going out to “Raise Capitol” every day! 

My first single is out there today! The first waffle off the iron. This is a learning process and I am learning plenty. I have no idea where to start making a lyric video so that task is getting farmed out. I will be back soon with the last keyword. Fun!

During the three years or so I was with John and Wally trying to approach my music through a band I used three keywords for how we did things. Working solo I will continue to use them. The first one is “Organic”. I try to be as natural as possible. Technology is of course the solo singer songwriters best friend. I prefer the sounds of guitars, drums, bass, pianos and keyboards. 

Some people are using AI to create  music. I have been working with IA (Intelligent Arrangement) for about a decade. It is one way to go when you are trying to create music all by your lonesome. It is time consuming finding just the right mix of samples but imho a step up from just blatantly sampling music that has already experienced some success. 

I have a penchant for the AABA song form. This seems to throw NSAI song evaluators for a loop when they critique my songs. AABA is verses with the hook at the end of it, or maybe beginning too, with a bridge thrown in. Dylan and the Beatles wrote quite a few AABA songs. If it was good enough for them, it is good enough for me.

Based on a family story handed down I began using the stage name O'Conner in 2001. In 2009 I learned my ancestor Daniel I. Conner settled at the fork of the river in Roanoke shortly before the Revolutionary War. Notice the lack of an O' before his surname. To the best of my online detective work regarding my heritage and that long lost O' it was dropped in Ireland somewhere around the Reformation. 

 Had the story about Charley O'Conner having to drop the O' from his name had any basis in reality that would seem organic to me. That was not the case. A few years ago I determined organic was plain old vanilla Conner. I probably have more in common with the character Dan Conner from Roseanne than Donald O'Conner. So the O' got dropped for a second time. I hope this explains the change for those who know me as Mr. O'Conner. 

In my next post I will dive into the second keyword, Unconventional.

This post is not as much about songwriting as it is me. Getting this blog started I am trying to lay a ground work for who I am as a person as well as a songwriter. Last night I went to see a movie, The Sound Of Freedom. I tend to be one of those people who likes to look at everything I consume, whether it be food, entertainment, news or whatever. So I did some research on the film and it's main character Tim Ballard. 

No shortage of people criticizing Mr. Ballard for one reason or another. Not surprising. Human nature is bent to disagreeing on just about anything, for any reason. As far as I am concerned the man is doing something and something is better than nothing. Especially when it comes to something as insidious as child sex trafficking.  

It has been roughly 2023 years since the dawn of Christianity and to this day there are Christians who argue over whether the Sabbath is Saturday or Sunday. My layman, simple man perspective is fairly simple. Saturday is and always will be the Sabbath. Just as it was before Jesus came to Earth. The Sabbath was part of the Mosaic covenant, kept with the Jewish people. Just one example of how people love to disagree. 

I am a Christian. I am saved. I base that on the observation while I am still perfectly capable of sinning, I can not enjoy it. Just doesn't sit right. So I do my best to avoid it. 

The other Gorilla in the room / world, politics. I am not a political person. Firmly an Independent. Always have been. I weigh each individual I vote for based on their individual merit. Sometimes I hold my nose when I vote. Sometimes I am pleasantly surprised. I believe we should be skeptical of everyone in government. Keep a close eye on them. From our law enforcement officers right up to the POTUS. We as citizens endow them with power, and power corrupts. There is plenty of history to support that. 

As an artist, I highly recommend the art of diplomacy. It has been described as being able to tell some one to go to Hell and make them look forward to the trip. We do not have to agree on everything 100 percent. You could go as far to say considering human nature that is never going to happen. Something is better than nothing. 

Let us all do something to stamp out child trafficking / exploitation. It has no place in any civilized society.

Being not only a blog but a web site devoted to my songwriting, it is at this time particularly devoid of music. I am working on it. My first single, It's Complicated, will be mixed by a guy I hired this weekend. I let my boss Hanson listen to some of my tracks after work one night and he said he really liked the music in that track the most. When I told him the lyrics that go with the music he was sold.

I got the idea for the title from the movie of the same name. Sometimes movies are named after songs, like Pretty Woman. Sometimes songs take the name of a movie, like Dancing In The Dark. I put two different song ideas together and they worked. The song is inspired by a conversation I had with my dad. In essence, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. I would not say it is the best song I have ever written. It was not included in the songs the band worked on for the last three years. I would say it is the most personal song I have ever written.

When I played it for fellow songwriters at an NSAI meeting my friend Mark told me “It's perfect! Don't change a thing!” At the very next meeting he played the song for me with a new second verse he had written. The second verse is the reason the song is so personal, so I told him to go ahead and play the song with his new verse and that will be the Nashville version.

My time with the band was  dedicated to making an EP. At this point an EP is still a goal but I have decided to do singles for a while first. Like the way Motown Records released Temptations singles until they caught on. So next week will be devoted to getting this little song baby out there in the world! 

I Am A rock Star! At doing body work. Simply because I have worked at it every day for decades now. And because I had a really good teacher. My Dad. Senior taught me that every aspect of body work was an art. Keep in mind his own mother once remarked he could not blow his nose without making it a work of art. I tend to approach every aspect of my life as an artist. Everything from my work day, to rehabbing my house to my music is basically an art project of some kind.  There is a certain amount of tediousness with no artistic merit whatsoever thrown in for good measure. 

Nearing the end of my Navy Reserve career I faced High Year Tenure. It was imperative for me to make the leap from E-6 to E-7, Chief Petty Officer, to buy a few more years serving as an active reservist. I studied for the advancement exam like never before. I maxed out my Physical Requirements Test. My friend Bryan I had served with for over a decade and who had risen to Master Chief and was poised to take the position of senior enlisted in the command  told me they were working on my Eval and were going to make me a Rock Star. On paper. 

Unfortunately my High Year Tenure date fell between the day I would have taken the Chief's test and the day the the results would have been released. So I retired as a First Class Gunner's Mate with an Expeditionary Warfare Specialist qual and years of soaking up the attitude in the NSW community. Whatever amount I receive in retirement benefits when I turn 60 pales in comparison to the benefit of observing the day to day of true Rock Stars at what they do for so many years. 

The secret of the NSW community is everything they do is mechanics. Muscle memory. It becomes second nature. That is how you become a Rock Star. All in, all the time. Get comfortable being uncomfortable. If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying. Pain is weakness leaving the body. Pays to be a winner. The only easy day was yesterday. 

In a nut shell, this is how I approach being a singer songwriter. It is a combination of my two careers. My day job, which I am really good at, and my side hustle for many years where I got to see up close and personal ordinary people excel and shine as true Rock Stars. Everything I do is an exercise of one kind or another. Songwriting sit-ups, Music production push-ups, social media squats. Trying to build muscle memory into every aspect of the art of wearing my heart on my sleeve and making it work. 

I am having the time of my life gearing up for my second childhood!