My sincerest apologies to those of you who have been waiting for a new post from me, the last one having been written over three months ago.  As I alluded to awhile back, I’ve been working hard to address a few chronic ailments that were getting worse and worse with time and which had nearly sapped the life out of me.  For this reason, and a few others that I’ll touch upon shortly, the very least of my focus has been on recording new videos or regularly updating this site.  The good news is that I’ve actually been quite busy, with the added bonus that I’m feeling better and better these days, having implemented even more lifestyle changes that are allowing for what I’ll call a system reboot.   These implementations, all more or less related to nutrition and comprehensive well-being, have required a lot of time and dedication.  Old habits, as they say, die hard.  That said, to even remotely turn so many aspects of my life around in such a short time has been a surprise to myself and those around me.  The majority of my aches and pains are gone, my mood and energy levels have stabilized, my scalp condition has cleared up and, coincidentally, I now have defined abdominal muscles.

To make a long story short, I stopped eating grains, legumes, processed dairy and sugar products with an aim to no longer suppress my immune system or encourage systemic inflammation.  In their place, I’ve started eating lots and lots of leafy greens, avocados, low glycemic-index fruits, roasted almonds, chia seeds, raw cacao nibs, coconut products (unsweetened), sardines and pumpkin seeds, along with local/organic eggs, beef, bee pollen and a fair share of yerba mate as my beverage of choice.  The idea is to consume an abundance of nutrients (vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, healthy fat, protein, etc…) while making a concerted effort to avoid toxins, ineffecient/quick-burning energy sources and foods with minimal/sub-optimal nutrient content.  In so doing, I have switched my metabolism around to depend on healthy fats for energy (long-lasting, stable energy in lieu of the simple carbohydrate rushes) and have quite clearly turned certain undesirable genes off while turning other quite desirable genes on!   This dietary philosophy has many names, from paleolithic to caveman, and is based on the evidence found by evolutionary biologists/paleontologists that we were much more comprehensively healthy and without the illnesses we now consider commonplace before the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago.  Before you say it, no, people did not only make it to age 30.  That is a median age based on higher infant mortality and childbirth-related deaths.  You were also much more likely to die if you were, say, fatally injured.  But our ancestors frequently lived into their 80s, sometimes even their 90s, so long as they didn’t die from one of the aforementioned reasons.  The other half of this lifestyle entails a comprehensive fitness plan based on the notion and goal of functional and versatile fitness in lieu of mass or psycho-endurance.  If you’re at all curious, since this has more or less saved my life and has profound implications for anybody suffering from just about anything, head to Mark’s Daily Apple.  It’s a great resource and Mark Sisson truly wants us all to be well.  He considers this lifestyle an approximation of our primal ancestors’ nutritional and physical tendencies.

In other news, I recorded the last two years of Redbird shows here at Cafe Carpe and have since mixed them down.  If you’re unfamiliar with Redbird, they’re a group of friends/songwriters that get together every once in awhile to share songs and be merry.  The group is comprised of songwriters/musicians Peter Mulvey, Jeffrey Foucault, Kris Delmhorst and David Goodrich.  With any luck, they’ll be putting out another record after sorting through the recordings and collectively choosing the cream of the crop.  This is exciting to me for a couple of reasons: One, there’s some really great stuff in there that people need to hear and vibe on.  Two, I’ll have an engineering credit on a proper release with broad appeal!  Hallelujah!  If you’re itching for a taste of what you’re in store for, I provided the sound for a video produced by Mindpool Live, which was filmed and recorded at Cafe Carpe the afternoon before one of December’s shows.  Check it out!

Lastly, I’ve been playing bass and providing my limited (but potentially useful?) wisdom in a local band called So So Radio.  A nice, young couple had been coming into the Carpe for coffee on a regular basis and we eventually got around to talking music.  Turns out Sam (of Sam and Tami) is a drummer.  His band was going through a lineup change and we thought it’d be fun to play a few tunes some night and see what happens.  I was also secretly interested in seeing if Sam might be a good fit for some of my recording endeavours.  I went out to his house one night, met Ryan and strapped on my recently tuned-up viola bass.  Things went well and I decided to help them make the record they wanted to make.  We’ve mostly finished the bass/drum tracks and are now ready to start tracking everything else.  I’ll be engineering from here on and out and we’re going to try and mix what we can with my rig before heading back to the studio for final mixing/mastering touches.  It’s nice to have an excuse to play my bass a little more regularly, and it’s also quite nice to play with dedicated and upstanding chaps.

That’s my story.  I promise I’ll get back to work on my own deal again soon and appreciate your patience (if I haven’t worn it all out yet).  It was getting to the point where I just didn’t have the energy or focus to record.  But that’s all changing.  Seriously!  Satchel out.

The woodpile is buried in snow.  So is everything else, for that matter.  But the wood is important.  It heats the house and the water.  I should probably clear that snow off before it freezes tonight and makes grabbing a log ten times harder, but my back is already killing me from this morning’s shoveling extravaganza.  I ran out into a field just before dark last night, when there were still only a few inches on the ground.  The land down here is rolling and untouched by glaciers, like in southwestern Wisconsin.  It was tranquilizing to look out over the empty fields, with tractor treads winding their way up hillsides and tree skeletons lining my periphery, silence broken only by the sound of a train passing through.  I belted out “Winter Wonderland” all the way home.

I awoke this morning to an even more dazzling sight, with the tree limbs of the woods that surround me all iced with a good inch or two of wet, sticky snow.  This is one of my favorite winter scenes of all and usually happens only once or twice in a season.  It puts me in the mood for a warm beverage and some warm tones, like those of my friend David Goodrich’s song “Snowed In”, which is a fitting piece on a day like this, for obvious reasons.  If you have a moment, I posted a version of Bob Dylan’s “I Threw It All Away” on my youtube channel yesterday.  Be sure to turn the sound on the player down a bit to avoid the digital distortion I somehow missed.  It’s pretty good, otherwise.  Well, I’m off to brew something up for myself.  All the best to anyone who might be reading this, and be careful out there, midwesterners!

SNOWED IN

Hey, all! I’m just getting settled down in northwestern Illinois for a week-long housesitting stint. Lucky for me (and perhaps even you, if you’re a fan), the place I’m looking after is somewhat of an artist’s retreat (for those of us who don’t normally reside in such tranquil and beautiful places). This being the case, I brought along all of my recording equipment with the intention of creating and posting some new live videos while I’m down here. Stay tuned!

GOODBYE, SUN

Hey, all!  Like I said in the last post, the least I can do is post some live video recordings of both songs I’ve written and songs I love to play.  I’ve posted a take of A Heart Grown Old in the visual page, and plan to keep posting more and more.  They’ll all be embedded youtube files from my youtube channel, which can be found at www.youtube.com/satchelpaigemusic.  There, you will find additional live video recordings of songs I did not write and therefore should not have embedded into my site, since I plan to activate a donations page soon enough and want to be sure I can argue in court that there’s no way for a label to claim I received a donation based on a video of somebody else’s song that I embedded into my own site.  Just playing it safe, folks…  I hope you’re liking the video concept so far!  Also, the talkboard is now up and running, so please leave me with your thoughts on the music, if you’re feeling inspired to do so.  An RSS feed/site subscription concept is still in the works, as well, so that you can comment freely without waiting for my approval and can receive any site news automatically.  I’m off to work!  Cheers!

Admittedly, allowing three months to pass between blog updates is not a promising approach to building repeat traffic.  I’m sorry to have let you down- yes, all four of you.  In the months since my last entry, I have been busy working to improve my life-my physical and psychological health both.  Though I seem to succeed at putting on faces, I have not been particularly well- no energy; chronic aches, pains and sadness all feeding off of one another.  Perhaps with a few thousand dollars, I could have been diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or something.

And then what?  Like millions of Americans, I have no insurance.  On top of that, I have a pre-exisiting condition that most insurance policies won’t cover, meaning  insurance could potentially be useful in covering the  expense of  some unforeseen disaster (if they didn’t cop out using one of their many loopholes), but would pay not a dime towards my pursuit of addressing the problems I already have.  Gee… that’s not such a good deal!    I also missed the boat on Wisconsin’s Badger Care, which I had trouble signing up for when I tried via the web and was too stubborn to wait an hour and a half to do by phone.  Absolutely my fault in the end, but as it wouldn’t have covered much of what I need it most for, I’m not particularly devastated.

Between a cyst in my bladder wall which survived two surgical attempts at its draining, a chronically inflamed and varyingly painful to excruciating epididymis which has plagued me, my back and, most importantly, my nuts for twelve years now, along with a rough, disheartening stretch of many years in my non-existant love life, I have not been well.  I did my best to cope with these ailments, but they slowly, yet ceaselessly and systematically destroyed my overall health and vitality over the last decade.  With no insurance, urologists mystified about the origin of my condition and stumped on how to address it and blood tests that cause no alarm (at least, not if read only on the basis of whether or not you’re in “normal range”, which leaves room for all kinds of problems and merely rules out the worst of possibilities), I knew that I needed to seek out alternative, self-empowered methods and treatments that could dramatically improve the health of my organism and its systems.  In the last two months, I have changed my walking gait, become an avid barefoot runner, altered my posture, improved my diet immensely by eating more greens, nuts, legumes and fruit, along with lots of chia seed and fermented cod liver oil (mostly for a good source of vitamin D, aimed at my sadness, stress and dermatitis)… and started a quantum medicine treatment with NutriEnergetics, which aims to fix the control systems which regulate (or, if sick, clearly fail to regulate) healthy biochemical processes in our bodies.  This treatment is responsible for the newfound sense of vitality that has given me the hope I can actually get better.  And as a I get better both emotionally and physically, my musical focus and stamina improve as well…

Speaking of which, there have been recent developments that may land me in a proper studio, which is very exciting.  In the meantime, I owe y’all some videos of the songs I’m working on.  It’s the least I can do, considering there are only two songs on this site right now.  I’m sorry.

I played an opening set for John Sieger (& the sub-continentals) here at the Carpe last night.  It’s really difficult to shake the feelings of ambivalence towards performing in my own home… which is too bad, considering how exceptional the back room is for a show.  I enjoy myself more here when I’m playing with others.  It allows me to more easily forget where I am and treat what I’m doing like it matters.

All of this aside, the sub-continentals kicked some major ass last night and sounded great in our room!  I asked John if he knew of anyone who could help me out with some new recordings on the cheap and he told me that he’d be happy to do it.  Just like that!  Sieger has been a strong supporter of mine for a long time now, despite my unconventional “career tactics”, and I can’t seem to knock the sense back into him.  What is he thinking, getting behind a fool like me?!  In all seriouness, from what I’ve gathered in my conversations with him, we’re quite like-minded when it comes to music and songwriting.  We don’t write similar songs, but we treat them with the same care.  As such, I can’t imagine this experiment failing to yield positive results.  This means new songs, people!  I’m actually going to get some of these little bastards out of my head and, with any luck, into yours!  Cheers, y’all (clink)!  I’m off to knead a sore shoulder.

So, I confirmed my suspicions of a theft committed by a “friend” long ago today.  Do you recall trying to sell a delay pedal that didn’t belong to you, Mr. Anonymous?  How about the P-Bass that went missing?  What ever came of it, fine sir?  What a schmuck you are, you!  I always knew it was somebody familiar and not a random thief happening upon a spooky, abandoned building in the middle of the night.

In other news, I’m going to be helping my good pal Jeremy Pinc in the recording of a new batch of songs, starting this weekend.  While he is first and foremost a visual artist, he has been dabbling in the writing of songs for many a year now.  This should be fun.

Again, many thanks to Steve Tesmer for helping me make this the site I want it to be.  He and I have lots of good ideas to improve it further.  To anyone reading this admittedly dull verbage, thank you for stopping by, and may your evening be merry.  Cheers!

With the help of my good friend Steve (TallGuy Productions) and the many people involved with WordPress,  I now have a proper blog with self-organizing capabilities to keep things from spiraling out of control.  Having recently addressed a long-term musculoskeletal misalignment, my overall comfort level has vastly improved and, as a result, so has my playing.  I’m quite confident now in my ability to lay down tasty rhythm, lead and upright bass parts for recordings.  However, finding it next to impossible to constantly switch between being my own producer and engineer while also being the performer, I contacted Willy Porter last week about a previously discussed possibility of recording at his studio.  With any luck, we’ll work something out in the next couple of months and I’ll be able to go into a studio again and concentrate on good performances and not on organizing takes and dialing in sounds all by myself.  Then, I’ll put those songs up for download here in mp3 and WAV formats and activate my donations page, which will allow all y’all to help a brother out in continuing to make music for you.  No labels, booking agents, managers or publishing houses involved.  If you make a donation, the money will actually get to me!  Novel concept, eh?  But you’ll be able to download music without any forms or transactions and decide for yourself if I’m making music worth supporting.  Yes, like Radiohead.  No, it’s not where the idea came from.