This is only a test
Hey. Experiencing a weird combination of too busy and bored, I hit that orange B on my Google toolbar. What the heck. Ended up here. So there.
And this is only a test.
A Few of My Favorite Things
- Favorite Team: University of Tennessee Volunteers. Go Big Orange!
- Favorite Book: Thr3e, by Ted Dekker
- Favorite Musical Style: Anything that’s built around a great song, but if I had to choose, it would probably be a tie between contemporary black gospel (songs with a lot of choir participation), country, and rock.
- Favorite Musical Groups: Brad Paisley (and not just because he was at Belmont at the same time as I was), Tower of Power, John P. Kee, and Steven Curtis Chapman. There are a lot of others. Again, it’s mostly about the song, except with Tower of Power, where it’s mostly about the horns.
- Favorite Albums: Spilt Milk. Think the Beatles meet Queen. Well-crafted, quirky lyrics all wrapped up in a nice, melodic package and peppered with interesting musical events all happening at the same time. Not a bad (or even mediocre) song on the entire album. It’s by a group named Jellyfish. Then, Speechless, by Steven Curtis Chapman and anything by Brad Paisley.
- Favorite Song: Lord of the Dance, by Steven Curtis Chapman. Quite possibly the best song ever written. The iTunes sample doesn’t get to the hook, which is the best part. Just buy the thing — you won’t be disappointed.
- Favorite Movie: From the Hip, A Few Good Men, The Rock.
- Favorite Quotes: See a full post of them here (under construction).
Sometimes Author
The creative tendencies I formerly applied to music I now mostly apply toward writing. Besides this blog and my Tennessee Volunteer sports blog, View from Rocky Top, I’ve written a Christian-themed legal mystery/thriller entitled Reasonable Doubt. Email me if you’d like a copy in manuscript form. As I write this, you can still find the novel online, but I’m considering taking it down. I’ve had a couple of nibbles from major publishing houses, but, so far, nobody on the string.
I’ve also had a couple of law review articles published:
Neither of the articles is available online, but there is an abstract of the Save the Cleavers piece. It’s pretty hard to make tax theory interesting, but I gave it the old college try. The copyright article is, I think, much more interesting. It explores how Michael Bolton lost a copyright infringement action against him for his song Love is a Wonderful Thing.
For other writings, check out the blog’s front page and look for the Most Popular Posts section.
Songs
Below are some of my old songs. Disclaimers: First, these songs were written/performed from the mid-eighties through the early nineties, during the era of rock anthems and power ballads by bands with big hair, so keep that in mind as you listen. (I tried the big hair thing. The problem was that my hair grew out instead of down. I looked like a Chia Pet.) Anyway, the songs sound outdated because, well, they are! Call it nostalgia.
Second, most songs were recorded at home on inferior equipment, unless otherwise noted, so they generally don’t sound very good. And while Audioblog is a great service, streaming songs over the internet further degrades their quality. If you’d like to get a copy of an actual MP3, email me, and I’ll send you one.
Third, I’m really not all that good, anyway. I mean, there’s a good reason I became a nursing home lawyer. And when all of those old rock bands start needing our services (think Kiss in wheelchairs), I’ll know how to speak their language. How many times do I have to tell you, Mr. Simmons, no breathing fire next to the oxygen!
Anyway, here they are. Click on the link to play them, right click to download them.
Gotta Do
I wrote this around 1993 or 1994 and recorded it at the 16-track studio (it might have been a 24-track studio, I can’t remember) at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale while I was a student there. I did all of the vocals, the rhythm guitars, and the bass. My audio instructor at the time, John Portuondo, played the drums, and a guy named Rick, who graduated from some guitar tech institute somewhere and whose last name evades me, improvised — yes, improvised — the solo. We made a video of this song as well, and the video got some play on the cable access channel in South Florida.
Us Again
I believe this is from 1989 or so. I remember that the t.v. show Beverly Hills 90210 was popular. I never watched the show, but I remember it was one of several things I noticed that was capitalizing on the power of high school nostalgia. I recorded the thing with a 4-track recorder and a sequencing keyboard. Pardon the digital skip toward the end of the MP3 file that occurred when converting from tape.
Midsummer’s Daydream
This is me playing an old Triumph (Rik Emmet) instrumental on a friend’s guitar. I don’t quite do it justice, but it’s a beautiful song.
Who Am I? Former Musician (and, Sometimes, Music Hobbyist)
As stated in another “Who am I?” post, I wanted to be a rock star when I was a kid. I spent most of my time at Rockridge High School in Taylor Ridge, Illinois, singing tenor in the choir, playing trumpet (and sometimes bass) in the band, and sometimes acting in school dramas and musicals. Most of my time outside of school was spent playing with the rock band Main Entry, which consisted of me, Shawn Driscoll (better picture here), Shawn Anderson, Eugene Reynolds (now pastor “Gene” Reynolds, latest church here, and now planting a new one in Madison, Wisconsin, which has not sprouted up a website yet), and an ever-changing series of singers and bassists. Singers and bassists to Main Entry were like drummers to Spinal Tap.Main Entry continued for several years to play in local and regional clubs after we all graduated from high school. Eventually, Eugene got saved, quit the band, and started writing and playing Contemporary Christian music. I later moved to Florida to enroll in the Music and Video Business Program at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, and the Shawns joined Eugene to form a Christian rock group named Doxa. You can find some of their CDs here.
At the Art Institute, I played a little, wrote a little, and recorded a little, including Gotta Do and a rock version of Yes or No, which got some local video play and local radio play respectively. I learned a good deal from the instructors there, including Ed (I forget his last name), who engineered the Eagles’ Hotel California.
After that, I managed a Peaches Music and Video store in South Florida for a couple of years (they apparently didn’t listen to my advice about getting into the digital age, as I can’t even find a website for them), and as I was becoming more focused on the business end of the music business, I moved to Nashville and enrolled at Belmont University to get a BBA with an emphasis in Music Business. The Belmont experience was great, and I would recommend the unversity to anyone. The place is a veritable breeding ground for talent. One of my favorite writers — James Isaac Elliott — is a professor there, and fellow students Brad Paisley, Ginny Owens, and Selah’s Todd Smith are all having great success today as artists. And those were just the ones that were there at the same time as I was. Steven Curtis Chapman was there and gone before me. As was Trisha Yearwood. The list goes on and on. Music Row is filled with Belmont grads you’ve never heard of working behind the scenes.
But as for me, providence moved me further east to Knoxville, Tennessee for law school (I was wait-listed at Vanderbilt in Nashville until it was too late), then still further east to the Tri-Cities (Johnson City, TN, Kingsport, TN, Bristol, TN, and Bristol, VA (and yes, that’s only three)). I gradually moved away from music and the business of music, except that I played a bit in one of the worship teams at Two Rivers Church while I was there and I hope to maybe add a voice or something to the worship team at Celebration Church here in the Tri-Cities. I don’t know what my life would have looked like had we stayed in Nashville, but I know what it looks like now. And life is good.
Although I haven’t recorded anything in ages, you can still hear some of my stuff here.
Who Am I? Long Term Care Lawyer and Evader of Sharks
As a kid, I wanted to be a rock star, and so it’s only natural that I ended up being General Counsel with a health care company that owns, operates, and provides management consulting and other services to nursing homes. As you can imagine, those two industries have much in common. As my friend David Crow — an entertainment attorney in Nashville and weekend fiddler at the Grand Ole Opry — put it, the synergistic possibilities are endless.
Am I being coy about the name of my employer? Yep. Why? Well, I’ll tell you. But first a story.
I heard this joke for the first time during one of my bar exam prep classes from Glenn Reynolds, a.k.a Instapundit, a.k.a. the blogfather, a.k.a. my torts professor at UT. It goes something like this:
Two campers were sleeping in their tent when they heard a noise outside. When they went out to investigate, they realized that a bear was coming after them. One of them started panicking and the other sat down and started lacing up his shoes. The one said to the other, “What are you doing? You can’t outrun a bear!” The other answered, “I don’t have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you.”
That principle applies not only to eluding bears and passing the bar exam, but to a variety of other situations, including risk management in the nursing home industry. Plaintiff’s lawyers make their living suing people for bad outcomes, and they often don’t care whether it’s anybody’s fault. Some law firms specialize in suing nursing homes, having made the tactically shrewd observation that there are a lot of bad outcomes in nursing homes. Residents in nursing facilities get old, they fall down, and they break bones. Some even die. So, even though it’s usually not the nursing home’s fault, the nursing home gets sued and usually has to pay out some sort of settlement because its cheaper than defending the lawsuit. There are sharks in these waters, and my employer prefers to, in addition to providing good care, stand still and quiet, and let others splash around and attract attention to themselves.
There. Screed over.
Who Am I? Inspired Husband, Father to Freaktoe and Slappy
Angela and I were married in 1994. I’ve taken down her picture, but trust me, she’s gorgeous. She’s a full-time mom, and her only fault is that she merely tolerates, but does not love, UT football.
Angela inspires me to be all that I can be, and I love her with everything I am.
Freaktoe arrived in 1996, the summer before I started law school. Slappy came along in 2002. And no, those are not their real names. Call me paranoid, but I’m not the only one. James Lileks has actually experienced something I have feared:
I can now mention where [Gnat, his preschool daughter] attended school: the University of Minnesota. (I kept this detail obscure because of the whole Lindberg-baby thing; when you get mail hoping that we die in a nuclear attack so your kid doesn’t have to grow up knowing what a chickenhawk daddy was, you tend to err on the side of paranoia.)
Anyway, I was in law school during Freaktoe’s early formative years, so I was able to be home a lot, and we really bonded. She served as a great source of material and motivation for the character Jessie Riley in my novel Reasonable Doubt. Like Jessie, Freaktoe has two speeds — NASCAR and sleeping — and two volumes — NASCAR and sleeping. Despite this early bonding and my continuous attempts to indoctrinate her with the finer points of Tennessee football, she cares more about quarterhorses and computer games than she does about quarterbacks and game plans. She’s a voracious reader — 20,050 pages during a second grade reading competition — and, as of right now anyway, her grandest aspiration is to be an author. She’s already written a couple of short stories.
Why do I call her Freaktoe? Her pinky toe is double-jointed or something, and she can snap it sideways independently from her other toes. It’s, well, freaky.
Slappy is my last chance to have another football fan in the house. The outlook is dire because she’s a little princess. Into girl stuff. Everything is pink and frilly and fru-fru with her. Despite her apathetic view toward football, she’s an absolute joy to be around. I started calling her Slappy a couple of years ago because of the sound her feet made on the tile floor as she ran across it. Like her big sister, she walks nowhere. Slap, slap, slap, slap, slap. Pause. Slap, slap, slap, slap.
If you have a couple of minutes, have a look at the following posts about the kids:
Who Am I? A Mere, Word and Power Christian.
First and foremost, I’m a Christian. More of a Mere Christianity Christian than anything else. Dogmatic on the fundamentals, but sort of laissez-faire on the minutiae that tend to erect denominational walls.
When we lived in Knoxville, Tennessee, we were members of Two Rivers Church, which was a church plant out of Fellowship Church, also in Knoxville. Fellowship was founded by Doug Banister, who, while he was there, wrote The Word and Power Church. This book described Doug’s vision of two rivers — one the evangelical tradition, and the other the charismatic tradition — flowing back into a single mighty torrent of knowledge of, and relationship with, God, as they were meant to be. Two Rivers Church was birthed out of this vision. It is full of great, Godly people, from Pastor Brad Brinson on down, and we miss them terribly.
But we are excited about becoming members of Celebration Church in Blountville, Tennessee. Celebration does not use water metaphors to describe it, but it appears to have the same basic vision. It describes itself as an “interdenominational,” as opposed to “nondenominational,” church. The distinction is one of emphasis, and it’s subtle, but important: it’s not that it doesn’t affiliate with any particular denomination, but that it welcomes all denominations. Again, assuming the fundamentals are in order. And like Pastor Brad at Two Rivers, Celebration’s senior pastor Craig Fry keeps the church anchored while at the same time constantly reminds and encourages the congregation to resist the tendency of Christians to become sour, dispassionate curmudgeons and instead, celebrate the good news of Christ.
