July 23, 2018
The Value of Going Camping.
I am not really an avid outdoors person, but I do value Nature in its many forms: the human contoured backyard gardens that my wife and I have created for our own daily enjoyment, the common spaces further afield such as Provincial Parks where we can all have access to places and geography that are not in our own backyards, and the great spaces set aside by Federal governments for the enjoyment and good of us all on grander scales preserved by visionaries who also appreciated what Nature can bring to the health and enjoyment of all of us.
Although we have daily access to the space we have in our own backyard, and it is a space of calm and beauty for our spirits and minds, there is something worthwhile in the process of planning and managing a camping excursion. Each summer we have planned and enjoyed several excursions to our Provincial Parks in Ontario. Our first forays were to pretty civilized campgrounds with a lot of amenities. It was a good start for us as we learned what we needed to manage a few days away from the comforts of home. We became a little bolder last year and went to a site that was a little more off the beaten path of mainstream campers. We even tried a trek into the wilderness, to see what it might be like to venture even farther into Nature. This year, we returned to a Park with more amenities ;)
July 23, 2018
The Value of Going Camping.
I am not really an avid outdoors person, but I do value Nature in its many forms: the human contoured backyard gardens that my wife and I have created for our own daily enjoyment, the common spaces further afield such as Provincial Parks where we can all have access to places and geography that are not in our own backyards, and the great spaces set aside by Federal governments for the enjoyment and good of us all on grander scales preserved by visionaries who also appreciated what Nature can bring to the health and enjoyment of all of us.
Although we have daily access to the space we have in our own backyard, and it is a space of calm and beauty for our spirits and minds, there is something worthwhile in the process of planning and managing a camping excursion. Each summer we have planned and enjoyed several excursions to our Provincial Parks in Ontario. Our first forays were to pretty civilized campgrounds with a lot of amenities. It was a good start for us as we learned what we needed to manage a few days away from the comforts of home. We became a little bolder last year and went to a site that was a little more off the beaten path of mainstream campers. We even tried a trek into the wilderness, to see what it might be like to venture even farther into Nature. This year, we returned to a Park with more amenities ;)
July 23, 2018
The Value of Going Camping.
I am not really an avid outdoors person, but I do value Nature in its many forms: the human contoured backyard gardens that my wife and I have created for our own daily enjoyment, the common spaces further afield such as Provincial Parks where we can all have access to places and geography that are not in our own backyards, and the great spaces set aside by Federal governments for the enjoyment and good of us all on grander scales preserved by visionaries who also appreciated what Nature can bring to the health and enjoyment of all of us.
Although we have daily access to the space we have in our own backyard, and it is a space of calm and beauty for our spirits and minds, there is something worthwhile in the process of planning and managing a camping excursion. Each summer we have planned and enjoyed several excursions to our Provincial Parks in Ontario. Our first forays were to pretty civilized campgrounds with a lot of amenities. It was a good start for us as we learned what we needed to manage a few days away from the comforts of home. We became a little bolder last year and went to a site that was a little more off the beaten path of mainstream campers. We even tried a trek into the wilderness, to see what it might be like to venture even farther into Nature. This year, we returned to a Park with more amenities ;)
"New Thinking
For A New Year" Audio Messages
One of the supreme joys in joining internet music communities is getting to know other musicians, spending hours listening to their music and lyrics, and getting to know them as real people who create sounds that I enjoy hearing.
It is my belief that people can sense kindred spirits in among the thousands or hundreds of thousands of "users" on any given website, and the global distances do not affect that sense. Somehow, the Law of Attraction seems to bear out, at least from my experience in music communities.
So, how is it that three musicians have not only formed an internet-based virtual band, but have a seemingly endless supply of musical creativity and such a determination and desire to write and record music resulting in over a hundred tunes uploaded to the internet in the course of more than a dozen years?
That is a tough one to analyze, but perhaps the very geographical distances involved (Canada, the Northeast England and Wales), have actually worked out for us. We have never met, but we have exchanged thousands of e-mails over the years, and thousands of mp3 / WAV files, and even postcards, photos and all the regular stuff of friendships. Distance, the thing that separates us, may actually be the thing that glues us together because we do not take each other for granted (or granite in the case of the Canadian Shield). It takes determination to agree to work on music together, to accept the ideas of others (though we may not fully share confidence in those ideas), and to trust that if we just forge on, good will come of it all.
To celebrate all of these years of musical-collaboration, I have decided to create a space on my Wix website for the fellas and their musical genius which has become a huge part of my own creative endeavours, These last few years with Wigmore Allen Gibbons (formerly known as Kallen, Kallen WAG or a few other names on mp3u.com) have been instrumental and invaluable to my own growth as a musician, songwriter and producer, and as someone who is learning the value of working with others through the use of communication and music technologies.
FUN is at the front and the back of all we attempt to create. Perhaps that is also why we are still making music together? Or perhaps it is also that we don't take ourselves too seriously. We are...er...old(er) musicians with nothing to lose and everything to gain by working together. Individually, we have our own strengths and skills, but together - well, that is something magical, where the whole is many times greater than the sum of the modest parts. But that is just my opinion.
The first album is Terry's Picks - choosing some of the best of what I think we've done over the years. The second album is Keith's picks. The third album is Kevin's selection, and we have added a fourth collection which is a biography in song of Keith's life experiences, all shaped around streets he has encountered in his life to this point, and may yet experience. * the other collections have been gathered as they have been written, recorded and produced. As of 2024, we have over 10 albums and have been enjoying some local BBC exposure. We are still largely unknown but to a few family and friends and within the online music-hosting communities.
TW
*The photo for the first collection of songs is one I took on a walk-about at Wasaga Beach, Ontario, while visiting my brother and his wife. The WAG was scrawled with a piece of driftwood while my wife and daughter called for me to stop lolly-gagging and keep up. At this point in Life, what's the hurry, I thought, and took the photo not knowing what I would use it for. Now I know. Life is like that: just go on doing and figure it out later.
** The photo for Keith's collection is one of my backyard with a 3-person bench, that I hope will one day be filled with Keith, Kevin, and me, musing about life and music, and sharing a Moosehead lager.
***The Photo for Middle Street is of Keith's Street in England
