22 Sep 2021

Tide Is Rising

by | posted in: Music Releases, Musical Influences | 0

https://seamasmanly.bandcamp.com/track/tide-is-rising The Young Fool was frustrated and jealous.  He’d written a few songs that he liked.  However, his partner wrote with ease and spontaneity! Where was his unique voice?  She helped him to understand his “emotional guidance system”.  As he understood that emotions can be safe, that all emotions can move into love, he found safety and release.  The dam broke, and song poured out! This is my answer to Peter Gabriel’s song “Here Comes The Flood”. Tide is rising … Read More
17 Jan 2021

A joke about a joke?

by | posted in: Attempted Humor, Culture Notes, Music Releases, Musical Development, Musical Influences | 0

The young fool rebelled against rebellion.  A non-conformist amongst non-conformists, chaotically angry, feeling dispossessed, he asked:  “If peace is a ‘thing’, Where?  When?  How?   Mistaking the map for the territory, he ate the menu!  “Who, me?” “Stole part of one song, put it in another.  Now I forgot, what was that line?  Am I condemned to plagiarize my own existence?” We are all standing on the shoulders of giants, in a universe swimming with information.  How can we own … Read More
9 Nov 2017

Seamas FAQ

by | posted in: Culture Notes, Humor, Musical Development, Musical Influences, Nerd Notes | 0

Can you describe your music? I take different musical influences, combine them, mutate them into something different.  Sometimes true to the original form, at other times altered to suit the mood.  Influenced by free innovation of Frank Zappa, and groups like the Grateful Dead.   Sometimes sci-fi folk, other times classical guitar, jazz, celtic, blues, rock’n’roll, maybe within the same song.   And your lyrics? Words of personal and planetary transformation:  Born of childlike wonder, pain, angst and rage, self-honesty, humor, and utopian … Read More
8 Nov 2017

The British Folk Invade My Teenage Daydream

by | posted in: Musical Development, Musical Influences | 0

I’m a dreamer;  I always have been. To me, dreaming is a practical activity that enables new possibilities in my life.  I just heard an indigenous woman, Melanie Goodchild of Bilgitigong Nishnaabeg First Nation, say that in their tradition, dreams were considered as “empirical evidence”, and that important life decisions would be made, based on dreams.  I live my life that way as well! In my early teens, I spent a year or two immersed in “The Lord of the … Read More
27 Oct 2017

All Music Is Folk Music, ‘Cause It’s Played By Folks

by | posted in: Musical Development, Musical Influences | 0

I once bumped into a bass player at a jazz club. Because he had seen me playing what is called, in Chinese, a “ballad guitar” (民謠吉他, steel stringed acoustic), he said “You play folk music, don’t you?”.  I replied “Not exactly, eh!”. My answer was somewhat inaccurate. I am a folk musician. I grew up in the 1960s, in a household where all kinds of music was heard, including generations of protest songs, and traditional music from around the world.  At … Read More
1 Aug 2017

Harry Chapin: Live Like Him!

by | posted in: Musical Influences | 0

One of my favorite activities is watching documentaries or biopics about my favorite musicians. This pastime is occasionally broadened to include study of other influential public figures. I do this because I am interested in the workings of people’s minds and emotions, the nature of creativity and the creative process, of fame and adulation, the burden of other people’s emotional projections, which is suffered by many great artists, the workings of media and technology, and so on! The biggest reason, … Read More