Once again, I find my writing lagging way behind life’s constant ebb and flow. Let me attempt to provide an update.

Sometime shortly after my February 2017 update, I began to realize that there was an open band slot at this year’s CarmelFest that was going to go to waste if Brooke didn’t want to pursue it. As time progressed through March and April, it became evident that forming another band with her to fill that slot wasn’t a reality. So, at the end of May, after finishing up some of his solo material and playing some of it live at The Melody Inn, Tim Neuman and I decided to use the CarmelFest opening as an excuse to form a new cover band project. We set out to create the best band we could put together, name it something catchy and appropriate to its purpose, market the heck out of it, and use the CarmelFest debut as the launching pad for a top shelf project that would continue to build, improve, and book itself well into the future. In the course of precisely two months, we formed Station to Station, an amazingly diverse band that is composed of Tom Padgett on guitar, Sarah Reitmeier on vocals, Roger Logan on bass, Tim Neuman on guitar/vocals, me on drums, with Gary John Higgins on keys for the debut show. Once we had all the players nailed down, things began to move very quickly and we put on a stellar show at the festival. We are currently building the rest of our show and booking future dates. This was an incredibly proud achievement for us all, and I look forward to posting more about it soon.

Meanwhile, TORO finished up two new studio tracks and released them. We just started collaborating as a full band, and almost have our first song done as a foursome. We are also beginning to experiment with a web platform/app called BandLab for collaborating remotely. Our first experiment is promising. Hopefully, I will have great things to say about BandLab in the future.

Last, but not least, a new opportunity just landed in my lap last week. Apparently, I have been leaving a good impression on people as I have been building up my drumming career again. John King called me up recently and asked me if I’d be interested in drumming for a special tribute project he’s putting together. Tom Padgett is involved with this project as well, and apparently recommended me. In fact, John said that my name keeps “popping up all over the place” and he’s heard good things about me from multiple sources. Words will never express how grateful and humbled I am by those words. Obviously, I have been working my tail off to earn such a reputation, but I didn’t realize that I had already obtained such a network of trust, given that I’ve only been back in the music “game” heavily for the past few years. I gotta say, in addition to the honor of working with Tom, I have also had the immense honor to play with some other respectable names in this town. It’s been a trip getting to know all these people, broadening my musical network, while finally feeling like I’ve “broken into” the Indianapolis music scene that I’ve been on the periphery of all these years.

I’ve also been delving into my own music writing and production in the past few months. I recently completed a song called “Banshee” that I’ve released on SoundCloud and ReverbNation. I’m in the process of publishing it to Spotify and iTunes right now. I’ll be writing a special post about that as soon as the release is officially accepted by those services. Meanwhile, I need to take off and get out to the Dog House in Brownsburg to do a fill-in show with “The Party.” So, look for another update soon!