Ellen Epstein

I hope you are well as you read this blog post!

Today I have been inspired by the aphorism “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

You may have seen it on posters, coffee mugs, etc. — attributed to Albert Einstein.

But according to an online search, there is little evidence that Einstein ever said it.

Instead I learned that a writer — Rita Mae Brown — created this quotation and attributed it to a fictional character in her 1983 book Sudden Death.

Thank you, Ms. Brown!

I think about this aphorism when I am reminded that one is supposed to budget an equal amount of money to market/promote/advertise one’s product as one has spent creating it in the first place.

Yikes!

I have never done this.

Other than maintaining my website, pitching a few songs to music bloggers, and writing this blog, I have spent very little money to promote my music.

However, this particular piece of marketing advice comes up fairly often when I am reading books/articles and watching videos about how to navigate the business of making music in the 21st century.

Now I must pause for a moment for a digression…

Over the past thirty years, I have observed that the music business — like life itself — is always changing and evolving.

So it is virtually impossible to do the same thing over and over again for more than a year or two.

And as a result of personal computers entering our daily lives, we have to keep endlessly learning the latest versions of many different programs/applications — as well as updating our hardware and software.

So as much as I would love to be able to do the same thing over and over again — while drafting new songs using Apple’s GarageBand or making videos using Apple’s iMovie, for example — I am forced to learn the latest updates (and alleged improvements) in order to continue making music.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

This has always seemed to me to be a huge waste of time AND money in order to make a few tech company owners, tech company employees and tech company stockholders rich.

I keep hoping to find a research study which would document the billions of hours which we human beings have wasted in the process of learning — and re-learning…and learning yet again — how to use various computer programs.

I would also like to find studies which explore the cumulative toll on our mental health due to the Sisyphean frustration of having to update and re-learn so many basic tasks/skills on an ongoing basis.

Another deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

So I am happy to report that my friends Molly Ruggles, Ellen Epstein, Michael Cicone and I went in a pre-industrial — and some might even say late-Paleolithic — direction with our most recent song release which we recorded a cappella.

You may remember an earlier version of “My Sweet Honeydew” (recorded with pianist Doug Hammer) which I featured in a blog post from January 8, 2022.

You are welcome to click here and visit — or re-visit — that blog post if you are so inclined.

A couple of years ago singer/songwriter/pianist Molly Ruggles took my original version, added an entirely new section of music + lyrics, and then arranged it for four voices to perform a cappella.

Our new version is in the player at the beginning of this blog post.

You may recognize Molly as a vital part of my trio recordings with Carole Bundy.

Molly, Ellen, Will & Michael (Photo by Doug Hammer)

I have known the other two singers on this recording — Ellen and Michael — for decades.

If you are a fan of contemporary folk music, you may be familiar with them as part of a musical trio with singer/songwriter/guitarist Cindy Kallet for forty-five years.

Ellen and Michael have released three beloved CDs of music with Cindy as well as appearing on many of her solo recording projects.

So I feel very honored and excited that they agreed to be part of this recording!

Now I will circle back to the aphorism that “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Molly and I are doing something new with this recording.

We have hired a fellow singer-songwriter, Erik Balkey, to help us promote it to folk radio programs/stations around the USA.

Erik puts together compilation CDs of new recordings every two months and sends them to a couple hundred folk DJs and program directors.

We were surprised — and pleased — to learn that he chose “My Sweet Honeydew (A Cappella)” to lead off the second CD in his July/August promotional compilation.

If you happen to listen to a folk program in your neighborhood — or maybe far away from your neighborhood via an internet radio station — please let me know.

Then I will check and see if Erik sent his July/August promotional CDs — including “My Sweet Honeydew (A Cappella)” — to your favorite station/program.

It will be interesting to see what does — or doesn’t — unfold regarding airplay for our song this summer…

Another deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

Thank you to Erik Balkey for his radio outreach.

Thank you to Doug Hammer for his collaborative production skills (and spontaneous photographic impulses).

Thank you to Stephen C. Fischer for his graphic design gifts.

Thank you to Molly Ruggles for creating this new version of my song.

Thank you to Molly and Michael and Ellen for learning, performing and then recording it.

And thank YOU for reading and listening to yet another blog post from/by me.

One final deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

P.S. You are welcome to stream “My Sweet Honeydew (A Cappella)“ on your favorite digital music platform by clicking here.

Summer lily

I first heard Peter Mayer’s song “Holy Now” on a recording by the delicious trio of Ellen Epstein, Michael Cicone and Cindy Kallet.

It’s what I call a “gets me out of bed in the morning” song.

Inspiring.

Thought-provoking.

The sort of song I love to perform — and aspire to write.

I listened to it over and over again — and then went to Doug Hammer’s recording studio, where we recorded a few takes (the second one of which you can hear in the player at the top of this post…)

Every now and then I remember to bring a camera and take photos while I am traveling. Sometimes I even manage to upload them onto my laptop. And on very rare occasions I find the time to look at some of them.

The images in this post are from the summer of 2011 — and feel like they match the sprit of Peter Mayer’s song.

Chicory

Chicory is a wonderful plant which grows all over the place — from farm fields to urban roadways. I love the flowers’ shade of blue, which reminds me of a clear summer sky.

I am also deeply reassured by the way it is able to take root, survive, and even bloom in what appear to be extremely inhospitable locations — with very little soil or access to water.

Hurrah for the resourcefulness of weeds!

Ryder & Toad

Here is one of my nephews interacting with a toad next to Cayuga Lake in upstate New York. Ryder lives in southern California and will happily sing the entire song “Uptown Funk” (by Mick Ronson featuring Bruno Mars) if you ask him to.

This is my other nephew and my niece with my older sister (their mother) in the background by their garden in upstate New York.

They love each other very much.

Although originally from Detroit, MI, they have grown up on a farm.

I feel inordinately blessed to be the uncle of three such delightful human beings.

These are peaches growing on a little tree my mother and step father planted in Connecticut. I am astounded at how much fruit even a small tree can create — seemingly out of thin air!

Trees amaze me in so many ways.

I was looking at photos of the thousand year-old redwoods in California recently, trying to imagine what their sense of time might feel like…

I am impressed by how much patience and trust a plant has to have — that it will get enough rain, for example — since it cannot get up and move around the way we animals do.

And how generous they are to feed us with their fruit, their nuts, their berries — although it is hard to know whether they are generous because they want to be or because they have no other option…

Isn’t this Asian pear beautiful? How does the tree grow it?!

And let’s not forget our invaluable allies — the bees, bats and birds who pollinate different plants and — according to recent statistics I read in an article about bee health — are responsible for the cultivation of a third of the food we humans eat…

What an amazing system: beautiful flowers which delight our human eyes and attract (and perhaps also delight) billions of extremely hard-working and diligent pollinators whose diligent work leads to delicious, nutritious food for so many beings — many of them human — to eat.

And it’s powered by photons traveling through space from a nearby star.

And it’s assisted by water which falls from the sky, is sucked up by the plants’ roots, is incorporated into leaves and flowers and fruits and berries, and eventually evaporates back into the sky — only to begin the cycle again.

What a planet!

As Peter writes in his song, “The challenging thing becomes not to look for miracles — but finding where there isn’t one…”

Thank you for reading and listening to yet another blog post.

amusicalifeonplanetearth

Music and the Thoughts It Can Inspire

My Sweet Honeydew (A Cappella)

Everything Is Holy Now