What can I say?, this is my first blog post on my new website. I've been working really hard for a long time to get to this point and I have overcome a lot of bullshit. I started this business as a side thing in Santa Barbara, back then I was working at a music store called Instrumental music and bar tending part time at this local venue the mighty "Velvet Jones" (still in my opinion the best place to see a show on state street). Clients would find me through the store or the bar, at first I picked up a few jobs here and there and I quickly decided it was way too much hassle with my other two jobs taking up so much time. So to offset the hassle I started jacking up my rate thinking it would scare people off, and sometimes it did, but usually people wouldn't bat an eye, my rate quickly grew to over $100 an hour or any part of an hour I kept it real strict to weed out the time wasters and hopefully get these people to go away and give me a reprieve from eighteen hour days and let me relax. (It didn't hurt that SB is one of the wealthiest cities in the state) but the business rolling in couldn't be discouraged and I never found it hard to keep busy. I did mostly repair and design installations. People primarily hired me to come to their house set up their stuff recommend what to buy to get it all going and walk them through the baby steps of all this gear they bought. Some of these jobs could be annoying but what wasn't annoying was the money and when I made the move over to doing jobs for local clubs, churches, schools, businesses, institutions it was no longer a question of my rate and more a question of my availability. I had to cut things back at the bar and kept plowing forward with side jobs while working full time at the store. Around this time the potential for working for myself became way more appealing and closer than ever it was also around this time the day in day out of Santa Barbara started to weigh heavily on me, first world problems right? A friend of mine described it perfectly, he said to me when he was getting ready to leave town "santa barbara is the island of the lotus". That stuck with me, you can literally wrap that place around you like a warm morning blanket and hit the snooze button forever. We found ourselves hanging out at the same old bars thinking to ourselves "wait, is this today? or last week? or six weeks from now?" The weather is perfect year round, the people are beautiful year round the scene is beautiful year round but it wasn't changing and the days were falling off the calendar like one of those classic cartoon montages. I had eaten of the fruit, laid amongst the flowers and soon the vines would overtake me till I became just another part of the scenery. I needed a challenge, I needed to be somewhere I could get down to working on making my goals a reality. The catalyst came in the form of a beautiful love one who had saved me body and mind but was alas moving on, I couldn't imagine life as before and wherever that was I wanted to be there, where that was turned out to be.... Spokane, the land of milk and monster energy drinks where slim viewed flyover state mentality and a bourgeoning hipster doofism clash in a maelstrom of beards, flannels, bedazzled jeans and fried foods. Where lifted F-150's barf clouds of smog as they roll coal past crappy chevy novas, oldsmobile cutlasses and all manner of former blues brother stunt vehicles whose owners likely sneered at a cash for clunkers programs in a "not my president" NO MO BAMA act of big guvment defiance. If you are down for filling that back seat window dash with dutch bro empties, half eaten chicken nuggets and troll dolls till you can't see out your rear view or if you feel that your opinions are more eloquently expressed plastered across your bumper, look no further I have found your people. AHHHH the Lilac city, Spokane, Spoakdishu, breath, it, in, like a fine box of wine.... the town slogan is "near nature, near perfect" true enough of a slogan I'd say; they got mad trees up in this bitch. While nature adjacency is immediately apparent one must take caution where one seeks ones bucolic respite lest one run afoul of the not so rare hoovervillian shanty towns of lashed tarps pasted together and draped over soiled mattresses marinating amongst whiffs of human effluence and burning garbage, (I'm looking at you downriver park i wanted to look at the river not dodge syringes). But wait friend, before you cast the die of judgment just remember these lovable foley'esque tramps livin in literal vans down by the literal river are not merely here as objects, scruffy bindle toting hobos unto which you project your derision and tap for the scoring of a chunk of toilet bowl meth. Nay! these human dumpster fires are also a reflection of us as a society and give us a chance to peer into the very soul of our own zeitgeist as the layers of ash, tar and subcutaneous taco fat are peeled away we can all begin to relate to the sorrow, suffering, and hard luck hard knock shit show that is the human condition. They are here! they breed and bleed and laugh and cry they want what every body else wants a hug.....and your shoes. But fuck that, you can be the one to give it to them, I could go the rest of my life being perfectly happy never having contracted a big ol dollop of MRSA across my eyeball or any other number of potentially horrific cases of feliculital-conjunctivitas. Call me a germophobe but if you look like you brushed your teeth with a brown sharpie and a swig of steel reserve and you wipe your ass with just another piece of poop I definitely don't want to wear your headphones or listen to your demo disc no matter how "fire" it is and no I don't have a cigarette. Maybe it says something about me that I'd rather watch it all burn than be a human pooper scooper maybe it also says something about me that I confess, when I first moved to the jewel of the inland northwest I wanted to burn this motherfucker down and shit, maybe I still do. But then again maybe I'm an asshole maybe I always have been and maybe I just haven't given things here a chance, maybe I saw the cause as lost without ever really mining the gleaming nuggets of decent humanity tucked into the avalanche of backwater buttdarts and negative flakes. Maybe these jagaloons that keep getting dragged into my orbit are only there due to my own gravitational asshole pull. Maybe I'm the fart in church and its me that stinks and I need to go back to california with all the other smoothie drinkers and yoga posers. Maybe I should haul my transplant ass back down the 101 and go back where I came from. Theres no shortage of people here that think I should do exactly that, and I'll admit I think about doing that sometimes too. I think of the ventura highway in the summertime just before dark when the sun is spread across the ocean like an inverse supernova of blues red golds and purple. I think of fiesta (which I used to hate) and all the parades (which I never got to go too) and the real, I'm talking real mexican food not the shit the try to pass off here spokane I'm talking the real shit. I think of those and the all the other reasons why, I think of all the people who want me here hardly or not at all. I think of all that and I feel it, I feel the pull like a gravity well of old memories and comfortable faces and places. Then I remember the Lotus and the flowers and the sleepy way ten years goes by and I remember all those beautiful people tangled in the vines those beautiful vines. I remember the way I felt towards the end like I never belonged, like I was just passing through and happened to get stuck for more than a decade. I remember feeling like I needed more, a lot more, I'm talking inspiration, of the earth moving variety full on fucking self realization and actualization I wanted to be like Justin Vernon and get mono in some cabin and spend a summer writing a masterpiece I wanted to pick at the root of the reason why the dark was so dark and the cold was so cold. I wanted to belong for real real not for play play, I still haven't found that.... maybe I never will, maybe I put my eggs in too many baskets. There is one thing I have hope for, music, the reason why I'm here the one thing we will all hopefully always have; What I'm searching for is a fucking music scene a real fucking music scene with people that lust for sound, that scratch and claw their way the front of the crowd just to get more... Despite its short comings I think that Spokane has that, when I go to shows I see some of that in the kids eyes here that and a rabies-like speck of froth at the corner of the mouth maybe brought on by Krokodil horse glue based vape fluid and too much faygo or maybe its some sort of hippy dervish trance; Whatever, its a chance to check out for a minute one fucking moment on this fucking planet not filled with death or despair or money or hustling or fucking or loving just sound fucking glorious sound bashing your motherfucking brains in. They don't just stand at the bar with a limp wrist beer and an arms crossed attitude they fucking charge! They crowd the front and they get in your face and if they know the lyrics they are getting spit on that fucking mic. Its a ride the wave watch your shit or get steamrolled kind of show and thats the shit that I fucking live for. Those are the only times that I have ever really felt truly in my element. But, here I am a year fucking later sitting here typing this love/hate letter to among others, the members of the spokane music scene and I'm on the outside looking in, no closer to getting in on this shit. Whats up spokane? lets do this shit! I got the gear I got the drive I got the passion to fuck this town up but one thing I don't have is you spokane and I can't do it alone. So welcome, welcome to Spineshaker lets make some music.