#newname

Officially today, things have changed for me. As my new name indicates, I am now the simblr FORMERLY KNOWN AS the gay bachelor.

Yes, someone was crazy enough to take the risk and we are starting 2021 as a couple!!

Nothing changes, but the name. as the stories will still be here and yes, I am planning the gay bachelor challenge 2021 sometime in the late spring!!!

Some stuff has happened. I’m not doing great.

BUT

I have a full name now!!

I would like to introduce...

Wow, gar nicht so leicht, das zu schreiben und noch weniger leicht, es auszusprechen. Dabei ist daran wirklich nichts Falsches oder Unlogisches. Vielleicht ist es etwas ungewohnt, aber das war es dann auch schon.

Am Wochenende waren meine Frau und ich auf dem ersten Treffen eines Mittelaltervereins, dem wir Ende letztes Jahr beigetreten sind. Dort mussten wir uns auf Listen eintragen. Es gab auch eine Spalte mit „Spitznamen“, die von vielen dort genutzt wurde. Meine Frau fragte mich, ob sie dort Liam für mich eintragen sollte und ich war hin und weg. Völlig unvorbereitet hatte ich nicht mit dieser Chance gerechnet. Also musste ich schnell entscheiden. Und ich freue mich, dass jetzt Liam dort steht!

Als wir später noch eine Mail von unserem Vorsitzendem bekamen, musste ich doch sehr schmunzeln. Er bat darum, dass sich alle Teilnehmer für das erste Feldlager bei ihm melden sollten „falls er/sie/es, m/w/d* noch nicht auf der Liste steht“. Meine Frau kennt den guten Mann schon länger und ist sich sicher, dass er extra wegen meiner nicht eindeutigen Angabe auf der Teilnehmerliste seine Sprache angepasst hat. Ich bin mächtig stolz und dankbar!

    Very few people know this but Tuesday has been kind of an inside joke (...hence why very few people know this...) amongst the revolving door of Rosedale team members. "Wait until Tuesday, They'll probably reply on Tuesday...Follow up on Tuesday...ask them on Tuesday...hit'em up! For it is Tuesday" etc.

     I don't mean for this to come across as cynical, but Tuesday has kind of become the day where everyone is more likely to get things done. Based on nothing but statisticless experience, people are more likely to say "yes" on Tuesday for whatever reason. Humans are more willing to ignore all distractions and Crush It on Tuesday.

      Come to think of it, this is probably the same reason why there's $1 bowling on Tuesday. And movies are half price on Tuesday. And EVERYONE knows about Taco Tuesday! A little closer to home, In Canada, I remember a bunch of fast food places had "Toony Tuesday" advertised on their windows (a Toony is a $2 coin). These leisure-y businesses probably recognized drastic dips in sales on Tuesdays because everyone was too busy Crushing It to go bowling, watch movies, eat tacos etc. So they made Tuesday specials.

     I still haven't totally figured out why a day of the week has such significance as to why we perk up and Get Shit Done. But the most reasonable explanation would probably come from our counter-motivation to the general perception of weekends. Here's what I invision: Friday night is social/party night (ie.Tacos and Movies), Saturday maybe you'll beach/golf/mimosa (.../more tacos) or maybe you’ll get stuff done around the house during the day then more social events (like bowling...and tacos) at night, then Sunday is so chill that Chick-Fil-A is straight up closed (I know about religion, don't worry).

      But then why not Mondays, right? Well Monday becomes most people's time to just get back into the groove; they'll get some stuff done, ie. reply to some of the workaholics who filled their inbox over the weekend. I'd guesstimate that the average normy gets 20% of the amount of work done on Mondays than they do on Tuesdays. Maybe it's also because on Monday we're all simultaneously subconsciously thinking "I can watch that viral thing that Mr.Normy was talking about at the water cooler...I've got the rest of this week to get the thing done".

    Anyway, that's what generalization looks like from the guy who once assumed all dogs are male and all cats are female. So now that you're all in on my Tuesday theory (and know what a Toony is) I guess I'll try to finish out this here blog and give you some updates:

      Rosedale is still in the re-branding stage. I've been tossing ideas around with friends. Some like/hate certain names, other friends are on completely different pages (hating/liking what was liked/hated...if that makes sense.) But overall I'm still just trying to figure out what to do from a branding standpoint in general! Do I assemble a band finally? Keep the one man show going but give it a clever name? Have a couple different projects with different names (one with a band, one solo with video screens, maybe even one more chilled out piano/acoustic??) I feel like the name’s will be narrowed down if I can organize the overall brand plan first.

      I guess I've been more focused on writing songs (and parts for those songs) than anything. I've got about 30ish songs that I'm happy enough to keep working on. Many others have been scrapped but might make their way back somehow. So that has me juggling a lot of computer files and lyrics messaged to myself randomly throughout my days. It has been nice to focus on creating songs and recording demos as opposed to spending hours grinding away as a small time booking agent for a project whose name is nearly unsearchable.

      But yes, it is really time to buckle down and figure out what to do with these songs/project/name/podcast/YouTube ideas. So if anyone has any suggestions feel free to send them my way and I'll put them in the ever-growing vault of ideas. And I promise to start making some moves soon.

      Speaking of moves, I recently moved to San Diego and am currently living out of my trailer and a rehearsal studio in El Cajon. That has been a throbbing idea of mine since around the time I spent Christmas 2015 in Time & Distance's rehearsal room in Charleston, WV and edited the entire video for Written By The Artist. I've always wanted to live in SoCal since I started skateboarding at 12 years old. Now I'm 30 and I still love this scene so I finally just did it in the most cost efficient way possible and I’m glad I did. Big thanks to Vocal Eze for helping me make ends meet with getting down here for NAMM (namm is a big music trade show). It has been really fun working as an artist ambassador for that amazing throat spray and I’ve been learning a lot. Check out some of the #ShareYourVoice vids I make too!

      In the midst of all of that I got very show deprived from going to see the many great bands down here so I picked up some acoustic shows thanks to Nick from Mainsail. We've been accompanying each other's songs along with some covers - half-jokingly calling it "MainDale". I also started filling in on bass for Mainsail. Check them out asap they're great and super good dudes. A lot of big things to come for that band for sure.

     Then I randomly took a gig for Rosedale this Friday April 5th at Himmelberg's in San Diego (cus why not) so if anyone wants to see that it starts at 8pm PST this Friday April 5th. Rosedale is on last at 11pm so please stick around, tell some friends it'll be worth the late night. Here's the flyer:

     Mainsail has a show at Blonde Bar on April 8th which is also a headlining set. From there I'm driving 38 hours back to Toronto to re-import all my gear back into Canada and renew my work permit (as both my bond and permit expire April 12th). Not gonna be fun, but has to be done. I'm technically not aloud to work or bring my gear into the United States until my new permit starts (May 3rd). But Mainsail has some more SoCal shows in April that I might fly back for... or just help make BassDale tracks for. We're not sure what we're doing about that yet. I really need to figure out dual citizenship though. 

     Most of this + more was already covered in the @Palapalooza podcast I did on my bday. Here's the link for that. 

actually here it is:

     Shout out to Troy from Ready Set Survive for spreading his passion for music/new bands and having me and Mainsail Nick on that.

     One last update; I was working on video edits and mixing for a live hometown Rosedale show that I multi-tracked with Zedpromedia on my last tour and I was working off my 2T hard drive (because the files were so massive) and it crashed the other day while transferring that Palapalooza video onto it. I had so much on that hard drive (old videos, shows, pictures etc) and I've been trying to recover the files but it has not been very successful. I got most of them back with a $90 app but they're all re-organized and renamed or Corrupt and the sessions won't even open. The drive is still sitting about 90% full of files but I worry there's no way of getting any use out of it. Unless I bring it somewhere and pay a bunch of money for someone (that knows something I don't) to do their thing. Which I'm thinking I should probably do.

     I guess that's all the updates for now. What have you all have been up to? I really miss seeing friends at shows and hearing about what they have going on in their lives. So feel free to reply here or message me anytime even if you feel like you have NOTHING going on (we all feel that way sometimes). Any new music/Podcasts you've been listening to? Blogs or vids I should check out? And of course, the perfect band name for me?? Let me know! 

Thanks again to Vocal Eze and Westone and Ernie Ball for helping me out so much over this re-brand transition! I'm extremely lucky to have such great support from these awesome companies.

     I also wanna give one last special shoutout to an awesome fan/friend who has really inspired me to get back to writing these blabbering blogs. Mellyssa Woodward recently started a blog that exposes new bands via very interesting interviews. She was hesitant to do it because she wasn't sure if anyone would care. Then she just decided to do it for herself and I assure you that they are so good because she is right in her element with these! I think we can all relate to that on so many levels with the many ideas floating around in our heads. Just go do it for yourself however you would like it to be done! That's what Mel (@AssyllemNaej on insta and twitter) did and here's a prime example of how it can only do good for yourself and the world...and of course my favorite Georgia band, LIKE MIKE: https://notesonnotes.tumblr.com/post/183814739906/notes-on-like-mike

Thanks for reading! Hope to see you in San Diego this Friday night or sometime soon :)