Edition 10
TENTH EDITION!!
Aaron Starkey Music Newsletter
FRIENDS....this is the TENTH (10!) Aaron Starkey Music Newsletter!
If you are getting this for the first time..it's because i'm still learning to send email. If you are sad to get an email from me....please respond back with "no thanks!" and i'll gladly remove you from all future missives!
ok..lets chat:
first off...here we are. there you are. context is key and as such...i'm writring to you from "downtown" seattle as the seahawks parade is beginning to wind up. The building I'm in straddles 3rd and 4th ave along Virgina and i'm watching, through large plate glass windows, the fans ramble down fourth, and pondering the passion people have for the things they love.
I love a lot of things too and i say things, but people aren't things, but i also love a lot of people too. Not too many, probably just the right amount. Some (a lot?) of you receiving this email are people that i love! In the realm of things that aren't people (or pets) there's a lot of wiggle room and so I won't dissect all the finer divisions between those concepts. I do love the playing of music, the watching of music, and the listening of music. And to echo john richards, i do believe music heals. Maybe it doesn't heal a back pain per se, but it can make the rough spots a bit smoother.
The last month of shows was suprisingly satisfying because i was, well, surprised by how much fun they were to play and how receptive the audience was to my jumbled up way of interupting songs and my love of volume. it's a good blend when it works. And it got me to thinking about how much happier I am when i play, when i play with friends, when i play with friends with people that want to hear it, and to top it off, when all of those things happen, the performance is actually good. like when my fingers feel nimble and sure, an my voice feels its full height and controlled rumble...and if i can remember most of the lyrics. god help me with remembering lyrics. in my next life, i'll remember all of the words, but not this one.
anyways, that's my current ponder: how to get more of the thing I love (music+friends+people+venue+performance) in my life? the honest answer is that it usually involves sending emails. lots of emails. sad hard truth. if you don't reach out, nothing happens!
anyways, i think i've gone on long enough!
The annual dec/jan month of tribute shows has come to its end (Although i'm pondering a bob seger evening this spring....) and I have but one show coming up that i can mention at the moment:
Sunday -> Feb 15th - The Rabbit Box with: Nonmodern and..ME!
...Solo - acoustic and electric (maybe) - gonna be weird and the endings won't feel complete, but i want to try some new songs out and enjoy the scarey vunlerability of not hiding behind a drummer
buy a ticket and come to a neat show damnit!
and that's all for now!
And i'd be remiss and a bad band leader if I didn't mention that you can still pick up a cassette in person at SONIC BOOM RECORDS in ballard or via the Den Tapes Label bandcamp ->. get it here: https://dentapes.bandcamp.com/album/cold-atlantic
If you've read this far...I invite you to write me a question and I'll try and answer it in my next email! I like questions!
...most recent questions:
RyanE asked "how many coffee makers have you bought in your life"?
Well Ryan, i had to stop and think about that one. the first coffee maker i ever had was a moka pota i bought second hand in college. i had no idea what i was doing with it...pretty sure i used foldgers coffee? it was never good and sometimes dangerously close to exploding. I didn't even know you were supposed (or could) add hot water to the expresso. i've grown a lot since then.
After that, i wasn't really a coffee drinker..i don't think i owned one until maybe 97 when i was in chicago..and Jeannie might have been the one to use it. I know it didn't make the move to seattle..at which point french press entered my life. so lets say by 2001, i'd owned..3 coffee making machines? Then, over the seattle years (which i'm still in btw) there was the La Pavoni (which was gifted to us and we used on and off) and then there was the every 5 year idea that..well, maybe we need an automated coffee maker so it's fresh in the morning. and there have been 3 of those and we stopped using them after a few months because...french press. This gets us up to 7 coffee makers? Now...enter 2024 and our family trip to france wherein we encountered the hotel room staple: The Nespresso, Many of you will shake your head at (for many valid reasons) that, but we've come to...love it for the ability to have some almost decent expresso within minutes of waking. it's been a...gift. the teen can make decalf icedlattes, i can make oat milk macciatos...it's frigging great. and that's where we stand...8 or 9 (i think i forgot one somewhere around 1999) coffe makers!
Aaron
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You are getting this email because we have played music together...or you've come to a show...or we've done music business type before...or we're buddies...or you have expressed a deep, longing desire to stay connected to what I'm up to musically. #desire
if you don't want it...please reply back and you'll never get it again!