When I look at his picture I think about optimism. What we have here is the sun coming up on the Atlantic Ocean to greet a brand new day. That just sounds and feels good.
There is a great phenomena that goes on each and every morning as I drive to work. On my 54 mile drive to work I go from the dark of the early morning to the sun showing itself and bringing forth the light of a brand new day. That is a reason for optimism.
Have a great day!
And…speak the rights.
Danny Johnson
Fifteen years ago I stepped in front of a microphone at a recording studio in Louisville, Kentucky to record a song that I had written. Just me and a guitar that I played badly at best and a song I enjoyed singing in the confines of my home music room with no one around to listen and…perish the thought…try to tell me what I was doing wrong. I didn’t know if it was right, wrong, or indifferent. I just wanted to sing my song.
So began a friendship between me and Jeff Carpenter, owner and engineer of Al Fresco’s Place Recording Studio. Jeff handled me with kid gloves. I suppose he realized he had such little raw material to work with at the time that he was best served just to let me be. It worked out.
This many years later, I am ready for it to work out again. The last time I recorded proper was a great session that produced six worthy numbers two years ago.
Let me back up.
In 2001 I recorded a collection of 14 of my own songs. We called it Leap of Faith because for me it was just that. One day, when I am ready to hold forth on such a subject, I will report here how it came to be that I turned to playing the guitar and writing songs at the age of thirty. I needed it. Just ask Carrie, my dear wife. Thank God I figured it out.
Over the course of recording sessions in 2004 and a renewal in 2006, I finished 14 more songs. We called this one The Best Thing You Did Yesterday. One of those songs was called She’s Gone with the Wind. This is a hit song. I can say I wrote a hit song. No…it has not been recorded by anyone famous. It has not received acclaim or radio airplay. But…everyone that has ever heard that song, even some folks I don’t think really like me, have been thrown for the best when they heard it. It still sounds very good. I never tire of listening to it. I can’t say that about many of the songs I have written and recorded.
Jeff Carpenter has been at the controls of every song I have ever recorded. He is a Louisville Music Scene Institution. All he wants is to make good music and be respected for doing it. He has an ear that is true to what a song needs and a diplomatic streak that can talk the most umbrage seeking rock and roll wannabe into agreeing that, yes, Jeff (I call him Jefferson) is spot on with his assessment.
There is something so very special about being in the throes of a recording session. It is like we are inside a little cocoon. Nothing else is heard. Nothing else is seen. Nothing else finds its way between us and the music until our sensibility and better judgement has left us only to call time and live to record another day. I think the word organic may actually fit here. And I hate the misuse of that term.
I wrote a post here about Tim Krekel and how he helped me to make The Best Thing You Did Yesterday what it was. Tim died in 2009.
When I went back to the studio in 2012, I knew I didn’t have Tim to fall back on as far as being on our side of the glass. Jefferson did and does more than anyone could ask for on his side of the glass, as he is taking care of the sound and arrangements. But…on my side of the glass…while I was working with guys I liked and respected… my safety net (Tim) was gone. I had to grow up. It was the most satisfying recording for me as an artist. I was helping drive the sound this time. My guitar came alive and held its own. I know…it may sound silly. Yes….I did write all the songs (words and music). Still, in the past I just handed them over and said okay, what can we do with this?
I have the itch again. I want to call Jefferson and get some recording going.
The song I am hanging my biscuits on is a song I wrote for my dear wife, Carrie.
The Way I Wanna Go
Alongside the wintertime There’s a laughter in the air
That still flows…not sure where it goes
But I know that we were there
We spoke of dreams we could share Through the highs and very lows…never sure how it will go
But as long just as long as you’re no more
Than an arm’s length away from me
Just as long as I can reach out
And pull you close to me
Well I know…that’s the way I wanna go
As the shadows grow longer
On the Eastern side of the ground
And the ocean that’s in front of me
Never ceases to bring me down
We’ll walk along this sand again
Not needing to say a word or make a sound There’s a sweet roar in the air that follows us Wherever we are bound
And I hope and I pray and I pray and I hope
As I place my arm around your shoulder
With you it feels like I am getting younger
As I am growing older
And I know….that’s the way I wanna go
Yes I know…that’s the way I wanna go
Speaking and singing the rights…
Danny Johnson
Well…8 out of 10 ain’t bad.
The University of Louisville team shocked me last night. There were very impressive. I thought they would lose.
I also thought South Carolina would beat Texas A&M on the way to a magical season. There are 11 more regular season games to produce. I hope they find a way.
More picks for Week # 2 of the College Football Season later in the week at speaktherights.com
Did you get the grill out today? I did. I suppose it is a bit of a Labor Day Holiday tradition. If it is not raining, I am going to get the grill out.
It was a mixed grill. Garden Burgers….yes they are healthy and I really do enjoy them…were among the fare. I also cooked four chicken breasts. I grilled some hot dogs too. Not to be lost in all the meat, a few small sweet peppers found a way to be seared on the hot iron lines.
Additionally to augment the rest of the meal, my dear wife, Carrie, creamed some cauliflower and she also prepped some honey-glazed carrots.
The unofficial end to summer…that is what I have heard Labor Day called a couple of times these past couple of days. It should be referenced as such. It feels like summer is turning the corner to walk away from us until it decides to come back around again in 2015.
Have a good week.
And don’t forget to speak the rights.
Danny Johnson
As Carrie and I were nearing home from watching the Marshall Thundering Herd beat the Miami Redhawks by a score of 42 to 27, I found myself turning my head sideways when I ascertained that the expectations of the Herd may be a bit too lofty. The rabid Herd fan base that came out en masse to Yager Stadium on the campus of the Miami Redhawks was expecting the Herd to blow away their competition. After all, the Redhawks finished without a victory in 2013. The Herd played them last year to a 14-14 half and a 52-14 final.
Yesterday the halftime score was 28 to 3 in favor of the Herd and the Herdkabobs in attendance figured their team was just getting warmed up.
What happened was the Miami team got warmed up at halftime. They came out and outscored the Herd 24-14 in the second half. It got to 35-27 and the Herd fans were starting to swallow their snuff.
Still…they won. But with the kind of optimism that has preceded this season, the expectation was to score 60 and hold the other team to minimal points.
Herd fans are yearning for glory. They love to love their Herd…when things are going good. If they lose a game, someone will have a website out there ready to fire Coach Doc Holliday. Things are just that crazy in college football. Herd fans are not a patient lot.
Lets get back to the problem: Too much publicity before the first snap of the season. Magazines and other media have made the Herd the team from the lower tiered conference that will get the chance to make one of the BIG bowl games. It is a complicated system that I don’t want to get into right now. Yes, they have Rakeem Cato and a Heisman campaign for him. Yes, they have a soft schedule we highlighted here on this sight. Yes, they have a storied past we will never discount in terms of significance. All that and, hey…the media has to talk about somebody. This just happens to be the Herd’s year for that kind of spotlight.
If they stay healthy, they should win them all. They will be the favorite in all their games. That is a tough spot to be in. Not many teams win all their games, regardless of their competition.
In the end for me and my dear wife, Carrie, we just like to watch them play. We have a team to root for and that helps. The interest factor goes up when you care.
That we can have these speaks is a reason to celebrate. Football season is here.
Speaking the rights.
Danny Johnson
Mother Nature stepped in last night and gave us yet another memory to revisit as we went both backward and forward in a musical event that meshed days gone by and words and music to live by that are filled with love, hope, and optimism for the future.
The Moody Blues played to a sold-out… you couldn’t put someone else in the venue with a shoe-horn…crowd.
As usual The Moodies did not disappoint.
Here is Justin Hayward and John Lodge working out the final details of the last song of the first set… The Story in Your Eyes.
As soon as this song was finished and it was announced that the band would take their customary 20 minute repose before finishing the second half of the show, an official from the The Fraze Pavilion stepped onstage and told us all to clear the amphitheater. There was lightning near and we needed to take cover. We did just that.
My dear wife, Carrie, and I found shelter without having to resort to walking to our car.
In the midst of the mass of humanity we were “subjected” to in these close quarters, we were relegated to confusion, slight aggravation, and a hint of agony.
Carrie and I could see each other. She was on one side of a room and I was on the other. We made eye contact frequently and I so missed having her by my side for the time we stood there…dry…thankfully…but listening to dialogue that came out of rejected episodes of Seinfeld or some other show I could not stand and have failed to make it through a complete episode of.
Some guy knew he was the Earth’s gift to women and must have been hard of hearing because he was filling all of us in on his ways of wooing women. He was not being nasty mind you. He was just annoying. Just know this…the guys around him were laughing at him…they were not taking notes.
One guy standing behind me was downright loud as he felt compelled to shout into his cell phone as if that was really going to make his voice project that much louder than if he would have moved the cell phone closer to his mouth-part.
When Carrie and I finally got together after we were given the all clear to return to our seats for the second half of the show…which I thought may have been in doubt…we were very glad to see each other as usual. She had her stories about the characters around her and I had my stories about the characters around me and we both decided we could have done without either experience. But guess what? It will be there to reflect on….and as a reference point to further appreciate each other all the more.
It was mid-June 1992 when I saw The Moody Blues at Deer Creek just northeast of Indianapolis when a bad cloud came up and wreaked havoc on the show that was a double-bill with our guys and Chicago. The Moodies were supposed to play first that night. I was ready for the band to hit the stage and suddenly their roadies broke down their equipment and set up Chicago to play instead.
Ironically, as Chicago…the group…was playing in place of the Moodies, the Moodies were on a grounded plane in Chicago…the city… trying to get to Indy. They finally showed up. Man it was late. I will never forget the clap of thunder that punctuated the final note of Nights in White Satin. The weather got worse in a hurry and the boys ended the show two songs shy of their ordinary finish. I drove home on I-65 South that night/morning and I have said this before, but I have never typed it. I drove home that night on I-65 in a fierce storm. I did not see another headlight going north or south from the Franklin exit down to the Henryville exit. That was rock and roll! The natural light show I saw that night was better than anything I ever saw from Pink Floyd.
It was good to see The Moody Blues last night. More so, it was even better to HEAR them last night. A live performance is special. The Moody Blues know that. That is why they are still at it…I think that is a case of…speaking the rights.
Danny Johnson
Go Herd!
So I have been challenged. I will answer said challenge. Yes, I enjoy talking about and referencing college football. I like it much more than pro ball. I will even answer the bell and make a habit of making predictions each week on speaktherights.com as the college football season rolls on.
I can’t pick’em all. So I will give my prediction on ten games a week that interest for whatever reason. So be it.
Ole Miss will beat Boise State…there is too much to lose here for the Rebels to lose.
Bama will beat West Virginia…yes, Brother Tim, I do believe the Tide is a good team.
Kentucky will beat Tennessee-Martin….because they better.
South Carolina will beat Texas A&M …and everybody else. They will be champs.
Miami (Fl) will beat Louisville…Florida State won the national championship last year…more than enough to motivate Miami to beat ACC newcomers.
Indiana will beat Indiana State…if Coach Wilson wants to come back to work Monday.
Mississippi State will beat Southern Miss
LSU will beat Wisconsin
Auburn will beat Arkansas
Marshall will beat Miami of Ohio…the Year of the Herd will begin.
I am so delighted that my friend Jerry Brown will be coaching for the Brownstown Central Braves this Saturday as they take on the Charlestown Pirates at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. The game is tentatively scheduled for a 2:40 PM kickoff. I wish I could be there.
Jerry’s son, Clay, is the quarterback of the Braves, he’ll be able to say he played quarterback on the same field Peyton Manning played on. Clay is a senior this year. The Braves should be pretty tough. They were 12-1 last year with a fraction of the number of seniors they have this year.
My dear wife, Carrie, and I will be in Oxford, Ohio watching the Thundering Herd of Marshall play on Saturday. They play the Miami of Ohio Redhawks Saturday afternoon. A report will be forthcoming.
More than anything, I hope all the guys out there playing will do so without the incident of injury. Nothing can deflate the optimism and quality air out of a team like a devastating injury. Still, it happens each year. Just ask Ohio State. They lost their starting quarterback to injury this week.
Man. I will be so glad when it cools off. Carrie warned me it would get hot in August. Remember those cool days in July? I do. I miss them. I used to write these posts on a comfortable screened-in back porch. My pipes can’t take the heat and humidity. If I go out to write on the porch right now, I would probably have a hard time breathing and would not have a very good time.
The cooler weather will certainly be here soon. I am so looking forward to it. Let the leaves fall where they may.
Until then we will find a way to continue to….speak the rights.
Danny Johnson
You may have heard of Minnesota Fats, Indiana Jones, Carolina Steve, The Florida Boys, Texas Pete. They have nothing on Alabama Tim.
Alabama Tim is a Crimson Tide football fan and he needs help. His is a bit delusional about how good his team is this year. I would say the Tide would have a better chance if Tim was their offensive coordinator. The offensive coordinator is problematic for the Tide this year and many Tide fans can already admit it. Not so for Alabama Tim. Please think about him this season. It won’t be easy on Brother Tim this year.
There are too too too many little deer running around my environ to make me un-nervous. I am already nervous. This fall when they are a little bigger and hanging out with their older cousins and moms and dads, the majority of them will be attempting to make contact with my vehicle as I drive down the road. I can feel it. I have felt this way before. It works that way. To date I have hit five deer that have caused significant destruction to the vehicles I have hit them with. My head will be on a swivel soon enough as I drive down the road.
In less than 48 hours I will be sitting here watching the Ole Miss Rebels play the Boise State Broncos in a game played in Atlanta, Georgia. Nothing left to say about that. Bring it on.
I wrote a post early in the speaktherights.com history of posts about a wonderful lady that made a huge impact on my life during a most impressionable time. Vallerie King was a youth pastor at the church I attended as she was going to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. I hope she reads this. I can report to all of you that I remember the date of her graduation…it was December 20, 1985. I was not there. I regret that. At the church I now attend, we recently were blessed with a new pastor. Her name is Pastor Jill. The pastor she replaced was Pastor Jack. Anyway, I have no problem with having a female pastor. I am sure that there are some in the world of faith that probably don’t share this belief. So be it. They can go somewhere else….to church, that is. Pastor Jill’s delivery so reminds me of listening to Vallerie when I was a teenager. She is that good. Our church is blessed to have her.
Education in this country is nothing like I was prepared for. When I was in college to learn how to teach we were engrossed with teaching methodology…which has come in handy over the years. We also…twenty years ago…spent quality time talking about diversity and multiculturalism and learning styles that have actually helped many of us take a thing called differentiated instruction by the horns and make progress with it. What we were not prepared for is the T-Square political mentality that is driving kids off a contrived do this…do that…pass this test…and you too will become this…wooden plank that is not based on learning styles and diversity…or what kids want to do with their lives. Politicians have only been able to screw this up because the kids aren’t old enough to vote. Answer me this. I hear all these stats about how low our test scores are compared to other countries. If this is the case, then why are so many foreign students coming to America to go the college?
Right now I need some help. Nothing a bag of low-fat Jollytime Kettle Corn and a diet ginger ale can’t take care of.
Hope all is well with you and yours.
Speaking the rights.
I think Justin Hayward and John Lodge would agree with me.
Danny Johnson
This evening I surfaced from the basement after my workout.
For those of you keeping score…I did 40 minutes on the elliptical and another 15 minutes on the stationary bike. It was a good workout.
I recently acquired a couple of dvd treasures. Justin Hayward (the Voice of The Moody Blues) has a new live album and accompanying dvd of a live show he did last August in Atlanta. I have watched it all. And I also acquired the complete series of Hill Street Blues. The cop show ran on NBC from 1981 to 1987. I call it my favorite TV show of all time because it is.
I never thought I would get to see the Hill Street collection. After 27 years, there are some things one tends to give up on.
I watch DVDs as I exercise.
I meandered into the kitchen, my sweaty self, after my downstairs workout.
My dear wife, Carrie, was putting dinner together in the kitchen. I murmured a few words and she asked me what I was saying. I told her it was nothing. Then, I thought twice about it being nothing. It was something I had thought about all day.
I spoke up.
I looked at the clock on the stove.
I proceeded to tell Carrie it was about 17 years to the day I talked to a friend of mine on the telephone.
I don’t remember what we talked about seventeen years ago. I do, however, remember exactly how our conversation ended. Just like every other one had ended for about four years.
It ended like this:
Corner King: Later on, Brother.
Me: Later on, now!
That is how our conversation ended. I heard it in my head all day today.
I was on the phone today with Pete Rutherford and left a message with Kelly Samons. Our fourth, Gus Stephenson is up for the date we set. We are trying to figure on when we can play the Corner King Classic.
I mentioned in a previous post that I am soon to be playing in a golf tournament called The Corner King Classic.
We started the Corner King Classic in 2000. We have gotten together and played this match annually ever since.
That phone exchanged between me and Malcolm Todd “Corner King” Lincoln, Sr. was last time I talked to my dear friend. He died the next day. I am still heartbroken. He has a son, Malcolm, Jr. He is a senior in high school. The Corner King would be proud of him.
And so it goes. I hope I win my third consecutive Corner King Classic this year.
The last outing the Corner King and I had together was going to a Moody Blues concert in Ft. Wayne on June 15th seventeen years ago.
Speaking the rights…like I know the Corner King would want it.
Danny Johnson
Our dear friends from New Hampshire had their final summer family getaway (kids go back to school in New Hampshire after Labor Day) this past week, as they visited our Nation’s capitol. Carrie, my dear wife, got a text message about all their visiting of the major highlights one looks to explore when one is in Washington, DC.
One of the places they visited was Arlington National Cemetery.
I have visited Arlington National Cemetery a couple of times. It is one the most sobering places on the planet, if you were to ask me.
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the Changing of the Guard are significant moments on hallowed of hallowed ground.
Arlington is also the place where John F. Kennedy is buried and you can see the “Eternal Flame” at his grave site. JFK was about space exploration, wasn’t he?
All the history of Arlington can’t begin to be touched with what little space and time we have here. I can, however, convey here that I was once moved beyond the words I will try to type as I complete this post on speaktherights.com.
It was the 2nd day of April, 1997. I was co-co-leader of a school trip to Washington. I was in charge of a group of four parents that were in charge of four or five students. I was in a supervisory role. When not supervising, I was site-seeing and had a great deal of time to do so.
I remember it like it was yesterday. The cherry blossoms were in full bloom. It was a lovely clear, sunny day. Later that night, I would observe the flourishing tale of Comet Hale-Bopp floating above the Jefferson Memorial looking like it belonged there . In the afternoon I witnessed the changing of the guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier. It was so still I think I heard sounds I have not heard before or since.
When I left the tomb, I walked down a side of a small hill it seems….and happened upon something I was not prepared for. It was the marker that paid tribute to some astronauts. I was face to marker with the Space Shuttle Challenger Memorial. It was as if I ran into my part of my past head-on.
I was a high school senior strutting down the hallway that January 28, 1986 day. In a few months I would be a high school graduate. I was met in the hallway by my buddy, Virgil Ragland. Virg knew I paid closer attention to the space program than most. He knew I had not heard. His look was bothersome. He then told me that the Space Shuttle Challenger had blown up 73 seconds into its attempted flight. I was done for the day.
That was a tough time for a country not used to watching the news and seeing wars being full of US troops and air planes.
I wrote the following words some time after the Challenger disaster, as I was reflecting on the effect the tragedy had:
“Spirits, if not broken, were certainly bent.”
This many years later, I don’t have a phrase that can add to that. When I think about it, it still makes me very sad. That would be a start of a senior high school semester that would see more heartache as graduation loomed, including car accidents and the death of a classmate three days before graduation.
As I was sitting at my desk at the school where I worked in 2001, I was reading a story about the Space Shuttle Challenger’s fifteenth anniversary; the article made some points about what could have helped. That’s hindsight for you. So often too much too little too late…but now we know.
After reading that article, I came home and got my guitar out. I wrote the following song:
The Sky Looks Much Smaller Now
The whole world can change in a minute and thirteen seconds The sky’ll never be the same… since that glare in the heavens We all watched on TV…I couldn’t cry so I screamed…
Hey you up there…can you hear me now? Hey you you’ve challenged everything Hey you up there…can you hear me now And the sky looks… Yeah the sky looks… The sky looks….much smaller now
I was senior in high school another man of steel just like all my friends Until the day it happened…felt like the beginning of the end We all watched on TV… I couldn’t cry but I screamed….
Hey you up there…can you hear me now? Hey you you’ve challenged everything Hey you up there…can you hear me now And the sky looks… Yeah the sky looks… The sky looks….much smaller now
If we believe all we have heard, the space shuttle era is over as far as NASA is concerned.
I wish this country still had a stated goal larger than the planet we are spinning on.
Somberly speaking the rights.
Danny Johnson