Reversal: A Traveling Musician Provides the Respite

I am excited to prepare for a reversal today.

As the traveler who plies the pathways of our nation and beyond to bring handmade music to listeners far and near,  when I look at a map I see a whole host of locations across the USA and Canada which are not just unknown names and locations.   They are the homes and worlds of my friends.

As we approach our birthdays, I was having a conversation about this with my fellow musician and friend, Joe Jencks, this week.

We were reflecting on the fact that often we have few close friends that live where we live, but in no way are we bereft of the warmth, support and challenge of friendship.

Quite on the contrary, we are blessed with the richness of friends.

But now, as I prepare my home to host one of my earliest friends, I find myself on the giving end of the hospitality and the anticipation of opening our home to give what has so generously been given to me.  And I am excited to share in the way that I have been received, hoping to provide that kind of welcome and respite for the traveling one.

Still, what makes this visit special is that the awaited one is a friend who I've known since I was 3 or 4 years old!  That is over a half-century of friendship!

In our mobile society, that kind of friend is a rare treasure.  One of our mutual friends calls this a "reconnected" friendship.  And for all that we disdain about social media, Facebook has played an important role as a tool in these reconnections for many of us from my Ohio hometown.

So I'm just going to be grateful and celebrate gratitude....

....that and we'll take her to the ocean!

25th Anniversary Year

When I was a child and my parent's friends celebrated a 25th wedding anniversary, that amount of time was simply unfathomable.  It was often three times my own age.

Now, 25 years ago was the birth of my eldest child, and it was the beginning of Owl Mountain Music.

At the time I was working as an innercity pastor of a cross-cultural, store-front ministry on the eastside of Kansas City.  As we gathered and nurtured a community of faith and hope, music was a prime organizing tool.

Each year I would re-read my journaled writings of the previous year and each year a single theme always arose.

"What am I going to do about this music thing?"

I had been called to serve as pastor of this community.  It was an amazing community!  And... I kept being drawn deeper into music.  I was composing music for use in our worship, to support our educational programs.  I was composing and arranging music for synod-wide youth events, and tapping the cultural power of music to help envision a church that did not abide racism, and nurtured resistance to everything that would bring death to the most vulnerable members of our society.

I was co-coordinator of the Religion and Labor Dialogue in Kansas City, which brought and interfaith group of religious and labor leaders together to bring deeper understanding and mutual support on a monthly basis.

Our congregation was involved in church-based community organizing, actively meeting our neighbors, forging relationships of trust with those in other faith communities as well as those with no faith community, to bring pressure on municipal structures to provide basic services for our under-served and over-looked neighborhood, which I later learned was red-lined (few real estate loans, or at exorbitant rates), and our zip code was considered the most violent in the whole metropolitan area.

This was the crucible in which my young children and our young family was being nurtured, in the midst of some pretty amazing (and eccentric!) neighbors.  This was the battlefield of the War on the Poor, the field of frustration after the acquittal of the officers who so publicly brutalized Rodney King, it was the vineyard in which music found ways to help neighbors grieve the loss of children to drive-by shootings, to hold hands in hope as city officials closed and boarded up drug houses.  These were the porches on which people gaped in amazement as city street sweepers appeared for the first time in long-memory to clean our avenues, just like in the rich part of town!

It was here that, while working on a project for the church my knee was damaged and I learned of the wonders of Workers Compensation and the strange award of money for the partial loss of mobility.

That money is what I used to start Owl Mountain Music and produce my first recording on this freshly hatched Indie Label, not even knowing what an indie label was.

Nor could I envision that in 25 years I would produce, co-produce and record 17 recordings, publish 12 books, another dozen Dulcimer Orchestra Arrangments, compose 5 different liturgical settings for worship, in addition to several choral and instrumental arrangements.

It has been a fantastic ride, and I am eager to see what the next 25 years bring!

If you'd like to be a part of that adventure, check out my Patreon Campaign here.

(And, if you want to check back, I'll be offering some retrospectives here as well throughout the coming year.)

Support Your Local Artist-Happy 25th Anniversary!

The title of this post is a parody of  the title of a series of westerns that featured James Garner (Support Your Local Sheriff) and (Support Your Local Gunfighter).

I remember these movies because my mother was a fan of James Garner and proudly announced that fact whenever these (or others) of his movies and TV shows would appear on the TV set.

As I recall the general theme of the movies is that Garner is put in impossible situations where confusion about who he is and what he is there for is the stage, behind which Garner's character is using wits to win the day, rather than force or brawn.

Maybe that is what Mom liked about Garner. Well, that and he was easy on her eyes.

Artists of all stripes use all of our wits to be successful in what sometimes seem like impossible situations today.  And just when we figure something out, it changes.

(Most likely his is really no different than any other time in history, although I've only known this particular time, so I can't really tell for sure, but things DO seem to change pretty quickly these days.)

Happy Anniversary to Owl Mountain Music!

2015 marks the 25th year that I've been working at James Garner's way of using all my wits in the field of music to thrive.

It was in my upstairs home office on Kensington Street in Kansas City that I began to formalize the work that I had already been doing most of my life in creating, performing, recording and publishing music.

Today, three addresses and two states and 25 years later, I am still working in this vineyard and you know, I wouldn't trade it for the world!

So, to honor this occasion, I've launched a new Venture:



You can check out the details of the campaign here:  http://www.patreon.com/steveeulberg

Support Your Local Artist

The purpose of this campaign is to help keep me focused on creating new music, archiving and documenting it so it can be shared.

To do this I've chosen Patreon, a crowd-sourcing platform that aims to support artists to fund their on-going work.

I first learned about this from my friend, Bing Futch, whose campaign began last Summer and which is helping him to record and finish his first all-blues recording!  (Click on his name to check out and support his campaign.)

But what IS Patreon?   Begun in San Francisco in 2013, here are two videos that explain how it works and how it came to be.

Here's a video that Patreon uses to describe the model using funding per project:



Because the support I need for my ongoing work is less-project driven, but which will result in more projects and products, I have chosen the monthly subscription model.  

(It would be more than way cool if you could support the project, and invite your friends to do so as well, but if you can't, that's just fine.  I'll still keeping creating and be sharing joyfully!)

In this video, Jack Conte, Patreon Founder, describes how the whole idea and model came into existence:



13:30 is where Jack describes his realization as a songwriter, performer and video artist of what the other half of his job is.

It seems to me that this model is very similar to how I recall James Garner's characters foiled his adversaries, saved the town and got the girl in those movies.

So, that's how I got the title of this post:  Support Your Local Artist!

Surprises of California: Birds of Paradise

Moving to a new climate always brings surprises and delights.

Having this bird of paradise plant on the next block from our home, along our daily dog-walking trail, is one of them!

When I first arrived last March, this was in full bloom, and it remained so until the heat and drought of summer.

Then, with the coming of fall and the falling of the deciduous leaves--who knew that those trees' leaves would change color and drop here also?--this bush began to bloom again!

It looked to me like two blooming seasons in one calendar year...but the longer I think about it, I think it is just one blooming season that begins in Nov-Dec and continues until the heat and dry of summer.

But the Jan-Dec calendar bisects that season, making it appear to be two.

(Whohoo!  I got to use a math word today!)

But isn't that often true?

We draw conclusions from all of the evidence we can gather...but it is our point of view, or our framework that outlines the boundaries of our conclusions...and our conclusions are often misleading, or worse...simply false.

So, I stand corrected.

And I am grateful that I can make this confession and move on...wondering what else I am going to unlearn today?

Whale Watching

Since hearing John McCutcheon's Leviathan years ago, written after his first whale watching experience, the desire to see them for myself was planted.

This summer, after finishing my two month cross-country music tour, my spouse and I signed up for a whale watching tour off the coast of Monterey Bay because the humpback whales were feeding.  The night before we packed and headed south for our day trip, I sat down at my hammered dulcimer and did my best to play some of the themes that McCutcheon had written, to get into the mood.

Driving down highway 1 from Half Moon Bay to Santa Cruz, we had our first sighting--right from the coast!  A big plume of mist from the exhalation of the creature's blowhole, followed by its large flukes before it dove.  Because I was driving, Connie saw more clearly than I but both of us were excited and fulfilled, even if that would have been all of the whales we had seen for the day.

But, were we in for an amazing experience!

Once we got out of the harbor and the bay, just off the point of Pacific Grove, we saw some other boats and as we drew hearer, all of a sudden the gulls started gathering and wheeling and diving.  Then the water began to foam with writhing bodies of sea lions, then!  the curving dark backs of the whales began to appear, with fountains of misted air, then the uniquely colored and notched flukes of their large tails gracefully curved up out of the water and then disappeared beneath the waves as they dove and the surface became relatively calm again.

Video from our Whale Watching Tour

The naturalist on board the ship was very impressed and with each new appearance of this pod, she took note of the mother and calf who seemed to arrive on their own, but then the group seemed to have 12-15 whales, who were all cooperating in this uncharacteristic group hunt.  (At least, uncharacteristic in terms of human observation!)  They began to use the boat as part of their hunting scheme.  The naturalist described the symbiosis of the whales, sea lions and gulls and the feeding on the fish that would keep them throughout the winter before they headed out for their breeding grounds.

Before we headed back in to the harbor, the whales began swimming right along side and beneath our craft, to our delight and sense of anxiety--these beasts are HUGE!  But, thankfully, they were gentle with us.

I was and continue to be in awe of Leviathan, the creature of the deep, who, according to the Psalmist, was made by the creator, "for the sport of it!"

(Watch and listen to John's composition below:  let me tell you...his composition, and rendition, certainly echo my experience!)

Learn to Play Guitar for the best possible rate!

I've been teaching guitar in my private studio for many years.

     In 2006 I was approached by JamPlay to become their first guitar instructor for a new way of teaching guitar: on the internet! I know, this is crazy, but it actually works!

     At first we just filmed lessons and people watched them at their convenience, with the ability to pause and replay, and print out supplemental material, to progress at their own rate. Then, Jeff and Kevin and Chris at JamPlay decided to try an interactive chatroom, which was hosted by the instructors, to give student/subscribers a chance to ask their questions of the teachers in real-time. The teacher was able to answer and demonstrate. However, the students often had a difficult time describing their issue.

My friend & fellow-instructor, Jim Deeming,
teaching Chet Atkins' "Windy and Warm"

     So JamPlay decided to upgrade the functionality of the chat and made it possible for students to use their own webcam and microphone to demonstrate to the teacher (and the rest of the chatroom) what they were wrestling with, or demonstrate how they had mastered that skill or song.

     The result is a powerful, interactive and supportive community of instructors with student-learners/teachers which is active most of the hours of every week.

     Since the chat has begun I've been a part of the roster of live instructors. At one time, I hosted 5 (3)-hour sessions every morning, which helped me to leave my fruitless attempts to teach music full-time in the public school system, in favor of working daily with people who were finally being successful at developing their musical skills in playing guitar.

     Now here is the reason I'm writing today.  The current annual price for an all-access subscription is $139.95  (38¢ a day, or $2.69 a week).

     After  December 28, 2014, the price is going up to $179.95, which is still reasonable, considering that there are more than 75 teachers with more than 4,500 lessons in High Definition video, available when you need it.

     Here's a link to one of my free beginner lessons, and one of my fingerstyle lessons, one of my bluegrass lessons, one of my celtic lessons, and one of my gospel lessons.

But here is the kicker:  JamPlay is offering a sale, starting TODAY with a full-year for less than $100!  

Yep, for only $99.95, you can have access to everything I teach, but even better, everything that everybody else teaches as well!  I don't want you to miss this opportunity before the price goes up.  

Click here to sign up now.

You'll be glad you did!

If this isn't your kettle of fish, but you still want to learn to play, or just have some support while you teach yourself (which is how I learned, by the way), contact me about setting up live, one-to-one lessons via SKYPE.  Or visit this link on my website for more details.


[If you want to watch my introductory video, you can do that here]

Tension: the New vs. the Familiar

I’ve heard it at CD tables, after (and during!) live music concerts, at festivals and weeklong music educational events.

People pick up a CD and say, “I don’t know any of these songs.”  

They pick up another one and say, “I know these songs, but I already have 10 recordings of those songs.  Why do I need this one?”

One concert attender leans over to another and gives a review:  “these are just the same songs they always play!”  

Or they opine, “I wanted to hear the stuff I know (which I like!) and all they played was their new stuff.  It was unfamiliar.  I didn’t like it.”

They take a class and complain:  “The instructor only taught us things that I didn’t know.”  

Or they return from another workshop and report, “it was all the same old stuff everybody does.”

Humans are an interesting, loyal and simultaneously fickle lot.  “Familiarity breeds contempt,” the adage acknowledges.  “You can’t get too much of a good thing,” we stomp and declare just before we feel the inevitable discomfort from eating too many potato chips or ice cream, illustrating the economic principle of diminishing marginal utility.

At war within us are the poles between the novel and the threadbare; the strange and the comfortable; the unique and the familiar.  And bouncing between these poles like iron filings between the poles of an electro-magnet is our attention and our loyalty.

When we are tired of the commonplace, we crave newness.  When our lives are destabilized, we latch on to the comfort of the familiar.

There is nothing groundbreaking here.  We can observe this several times a day in ourselves and in others.  

What can get us stuck is assigning ultimate value to either pole by seeking to resolve the inherent tension into the good of either one.

And we artists?  We seek to give voice and witness to the whole of life, but in specific and concrete ways that help us both to notice and enhance the tension, then offering resolution, only to set up more tension that leads to more resolution.  

Thus, the dance of life continues in its eternal way.

(And it would be nice if folks would buy the CD, enjoy the concert, learn in the class no matter what!)

©2014 Steven B. Eulberg