2025 Thankful & Wrap-Up

Thankful for so many things in 2025!

Agatha & me in Nashville

Lots of ups and downs....

On the personal front we saw some kid drama, health scares with parents, & more, but everything wraps in 2025 on an up note: Parents both doing well, kids & grandkids are good, siblings are out there rockin' it! And, as many of you know, Agatha and I have been together a year come January!

On the professional front, we're making a LOT of changes to music education (group vs private lessons and more), I've stepped down as executive director of the Lexi Music Awards to hand the torch to the VERY capable Angelee Feltner while I work on satellite projects (like two educational scholarships, UKY &/or EKU projects, "Walk of Fame", etc), and finally getting my focus on several album projects for 2026. Story on the official Lexi Music Awards blog.

You might also wanna check out the new Skinny Devil Music Lab website!

My Favorite B-Sides!

Readers of a certain age will have no idea what I'm talking about when I say "B-sides", but we'll dive in anyway - hahaha!

Jimi Hendrix

I live in Lexington, KY, and my buddy "Beerman" (he's a DJ on Classic Rock 92One) has a show called "Beerman's B-sides", which spurred a conversation between me and several others. So, I'm going to keep the list to a mere Baker's Dozen just to make it manageable, but I'd LOVE to hear YOUR favorites in the comment section!

Now, there are some very famous examples of B-sides that became hits and/or fan favorites, like "Beth" by Kiss (flip side of "Detroit Rock City") and "Good Riddance" by Green Day (A-side was "Brain Stew"), "Hound Dog" by Elvis Presley ("Don't be Cruel") and "Revolution" by the Beatles ("Hey Jude"), and many more by CCR, Doobie Brothers, Rolling Stones, Pearl Jam, and on and on....but I'm running with my personal favorites. Usually something that grabbed me in an unexpected way or a song I liked better than the A-side.

In writing this, I did have several surprises....like "Carry On My Wayward Son" was actually the A-side (I always thought it backed "Questions of My Childhood").

I'm going to mostly hit songs from my youth (I'm old, so enjoy the trip to the land of dinosaurs haha!) because that's when I was buying singles, but I'll probably have a few from the last days of the 45rpm!

So.....in chronological order, my baker's dozen (though I could easily list a dozen more):

Happy 61

Kenneth shredding on "Ain't No Sunshine", birthday jam!

“There are two great days in a person's life: the day we are born and the day we discover why." -- William Barclay

My annual birthday post often begins with a quote. The Barclay quote makes me think of another. So if you'll indulge me two this year:

“It is never too late to be what you might have been." -- George Eliot

And if you'll indulge me once more, let's stop, together, in this moment right now....and ponder both of those quotes. 

Hmmm....

From "Undermain" Arts Magazine

HUGE thanx to David T. Miller for the very flattering interview!

From the piece:

“There’s such a concentration of musical talent here. I honestly think it's comparable to Memphis and Nashville and L.A. and Atlanta. I think there’s a higher concentration of musical talent [here] than in those places, to be honest.” -- David McLean

Skinny Devil Music Labs: 25 Years of Making and Teaching Music

Miller: What’s your earliest musical memory?

McLean: I think it was “Peter and the Wolf”, which I'm guessing was the Leonard Bernstein recording. The first time I think I saw anything like rock music was sitting with my grandparents at five or six years old and David Bowie came on the television doing his song “Space Oddity.” This was, I think, 1969. They were horrified but I was hooked!

Read the entire piece HERE.

OCT 5: International James Bond Day!

In celebration of the very first Bond movie, October 5 (the day "Dr No" was released way back in 1962) has been dubbed "James Bond Day" and is celebrated globally.

Ian Fleming created Bond in 1953 with the release of the first book, "Casino Royale". Fleming went on to write nine short stories and a total of 12 novels before his death in 1964, and the first Bond movie starred Sean Connery and, as stated above, was released in October 5, 1962.

Many more books were written by others following Fleming's death (sadly, he died of a heart attack at only 56 years of age) and 25 films, the last (as of this writing) was "No Time to Die" starring Daniel Craig.

My focus has primarily been on the music of James Bond, which, in fusing big band, surf rock, orchestral, and shots of "world musics", has become almost a genre of its own!

See my lesson article (complete with info and song charts) HERE.