The journey Begins

The beginning of this musical journey launched forth from beautiful Kauai, where I had traveled after completing Sundog to reconnect with soul family, bask in the blessed Aloha manna, and celebrate the 2012 winter solstice. In retrospect, it marks a personal cycle of completion because kauai was where I had seeded the vision for the record around nine months prior. Now, the CD was finished and on its way to becoming availble both in hardcopy form and through digital download, which were essential goals for the project stated in my 2012 LIPD. After the first harcopies were printed, I handed them out like fresh fruit ripe for the picking to my entire kauai family. Peoples' response to the record was almost immediate and I felt abounding gratitude for how well it was being received. As the record began to gain momentum, through facebook promotion and hardcopy hand-outs, I felt the next logical step was to bring the music to the stage and essemble a group to play live and carry the vision of SunDog foreward.

After the solstice, personal self-reflection, and a deepening of my relationship with the Cacao plant, I felt a clear message and loving urge to return to Turtle Island (Mainland USA) as I felt ready to ground myself and establish the next logical steps for assembleing a band. I gave one last chance at forming the project on Kauai by posting on a community forum but gradually realized that being an 'island band' was not one of my goals. I was aiming high and saw that reaching a larger audience for the music would be much more possible near Los Angeles and San Francisco than on the beach in Hawaii. The only email response I recieved from the post during that time was a prank from my friend pretending to be a hard-headed local who typed in pigeon. So, with optimism and inspiration, I gratefully booked a flight back to Southern California. I packed my bags, left a box of my CDs for friends to spread around the island, enjoyed a beautiful farewell song celebration, and was gracefully escorted to the airport. 

Brief Side Note on Cacao:

During this time I began consistently working with the cacao plant by blending essential ingredients into a vitamix and adding hot water, creating a potent elixer which amplifies my senses and consistently propells me to spontaneously create music. Though I cover more of this relationship in OP5, it ties into the current story througout, as it has been a major theme of ceremony and inspiration for me over the time covered in this OP.

After returning from Kauai at the end of January 2013, I dedicated my focus to distributing SunDog, writing new maertial, and teaching the songs to my dear friend and sonic commrad, Oliver Hart. I first shipped SunDog to friends, associates, and projects whom I had been personally impacted by over the past few years, spreading over 25 stacks of CDs upon the floor in my bedroom, each pasted with a sticky note to whom and where they were to be shipped. I brought stacks of CDs to stores that I admired around Laguna and brought them with me to gift at local events.

During that time I had been invited to play at a local restaurant lounge called 'the gypsy den', so Oliver and I teamed up to form the first live incarnation of SunDog, focusing primarily on vocal harmonies and octavised acoustic guitars. What I mean by 'Octavised' is, that I would play the song how it was originally written on guitar while Oliver would capo his strings at a higher fret, playing the same cords but at a higher ocatve.This created a more dynamic feel between our guitars, almost like two different string instruments being played. Here I experienced a deepening of the powerful simplicity and grace of only two voices and two guitars, harmonizing as one song. We practiced by busking in downtown Laguna and when it came time to play at the gypsy den, we felt well equiped and the show went really well. That night we met Blake, who humbely filmed parts of our set and unknown to us at the time, would later become a central member of our band. More on that later.

The same friends who had invited us to play the gypsy den had also invited me to host a space at their upcoming music & yoga event called, 'Love Takes Flight'. The musical acts were all booked so I planned to serve my Cacao elixer and hold a space for people to gather and connect at the festival. I coudn't arrive at the festival until the last day as I had previous commitments to another event called 'Djedi Generation' where I was also serving cacao. I left a huge stack of CDs before departing from the event and was shortly after gifted abundant praise and encouragement for the album from the community. This instilled within me a greater sense of confidence, motivation, and purpose to pursue my art and share it with the world. Onward to Love Takes Flight...

I arrived early to 'LTF' and was granted a small tent structure to hold space for my cacao creations. As the chocolate was served, music played, and connections made, I was flying and the event had far exceeded my expectations. My booth become a bustling hub of musical sharing, spontaneous creativity, and love. Everyone felt like family as we nestled together, shared the sacred hot chocolate, and sang our heart songs. I handed out CDs to almost everyone and had hastily and without hesitation invited 4 new members into the 'Ecstatic Union Collective' (the band monicer for sundog). These beautiful souls included Blake, Brock, Ashlyn, and Ali. 

Though my musically chocolate drenched soul was on high after this experience, yet another long awaited journey was just on the horizon. Just before 'LTF' a synchronistic opportunity opened up for my long time dear musical brother, Thomas and myself to embark on a month long adventure through the glorious land of Aotearoa aka New Zealand. This was something we had been envisioning together since age 17 and was now about to come to fruition through the month of March. It was challenging to experience the highs of musical celebration with all of these amazing potential band members, while at the same time preparing to enter the unknown in an entirley new country, with no real intentions of returning to the US any time soon. I embraced my choice to journey forth to New Zealand and trusted spirit that all would ensue with the band in its proper time and function. Packing my guitar, clothing, recording gear and SunDog CDs, Thomas and I flew forth to land of pure waters, moari mana, pristine nature, and middle earth.