Travis Valentine & Bryce Berry - Falling

This is a video of my friend Bryce and I performing a song that I wrote in High School. I tweaked it a little and added a new verse for Loren and I's third wedding anniversary and put this on a DVD compilation that I put together for her as part of her gift (full details of massive gift in an earlier entry) This is the first song that I ever wrote about her after we started dating.

I am by leaps and bounds NOT the greatest vocalist in the world but I try very hard and I like to think that what little I can do, comes from a very sincere place.

Destroy Nate Allen "Take It Easy"

Sometimes in life you make a friend that enters and leaves your life with little fanfare but that ephemeral visit leaves a mark so profound that you know you’ll never forget them. To me that friend is Nate Allen. A few months ago, Allen was in the midst of his six-month tour of the United States. He stopped by Flint, Michigan, where I was living at the time, to play some shows with a friend and mentor of mine, Jason Guitarstring. I had the privilege of playing a show with Allen and seeing him play live twice. Both shows were light-years beyond any live performance I’d ever seen.

The way that Allen performs his music is so visceral and honest that it completely disarms the listener. You watch him sing from a place in his gut that seems to produce the perfect solution of passion and candor and you can’t help but soak in every word he sings. Allen tells stories in his songs and he makes them not only his own but everyone in the room’s whether it’s him singing them in person or his voice filtering out of your stereo speakers.

When he was in Michigan, Allen told the story about how his newest album, “Take It Easy” came to fruition. After a show he played in Indiana, not to long before he arrived in Michigan, a gentleman approached Allen and offered to record him that night. Allen explained that it was midnight and he was already running on an unhealthy shortage of sleep, but something made him agree to the gentleman’s offer. In his words “I thought it would be an opportunity to make a new friend and a new memory.” He went on to describe the sessions as being almost miraculous. The outcome, “Take It Easy”, is 11 tracks of music in its purest form. Allen blends elements of folk, rock, punk, and gospel to form his own unique sound. His gritty, melodic low tenor guides you through the tracks like the chapters of a book, each one revealing more about the protagonist as the story progresses.

Certain tracks stand out, like the brilliantly written “Arizona”, an apparent opus to the road. Other stand outs are “Glad Tidings” and “Stand By Me” both of which are double time numbers that have a distinctive feel to them that makes them addictively catchy. The tracks that really leave their mark, though, are ones like “Ambulance”, “On With the Show”, and “Let’s Get Together” that are slow burning folk songs that have a very soulful quality. They’re very profound and delivered in a fassion that drips with emotion but still with an incredible pop sensibility.

Nate Allen is an artist’s artist. He is the purest form of musicianship I’ve ever seen and I truly believe that his music is that of a lyrical intellect beyond his years. His album is free for download on him website, http://www.destroynateallen.com and I recommend getting it.

Eric Quimby

Soul in the Suburbs

When you grow up in a town that’s biggest claim to fame is that Michael Moore went to High School there, it’s difficult to carve out a musical niche. It’s equally as difficult to fall into a geographic, musical cliché. This is true of Davison’s Eric Quimby. It isn’t Florida where everyone expects musicians to be fast, radio clean pop rock, and it isn’t the New York underground where you have to be a noisy hardcore band. There’s no musical status quo, giving Quimby the chance to create his own sound, and be the musician he wants to be.

Talking to Eric Quimby isn’t quite what you’d expect of someone with the voice and presence that he exhibits in front of a microphone. He’s friendly, goofy, and to be honest, sometimes awkward. He never knows exactly what to say, and he seems embarrassed by compliments. Humble is an understatement when thinking of his general attitude toward the whole thing. Quimby manages the perfect balance of knowing he’s talented, giving him the confidence to sell himself, and being modest so that he’s likable. A testimony to his humble nature is the fact that he claims that the biggest compliment he’s ever received was when a group of girls recognized him at a gas station in Grand Blanc.

The same geographic blank slate Quimby gets from growing up in the suburbs of Mid-Michigan works to his advantage when drawing his influences. Being the tender age of 18, he’s a child of the 1990’s so that’s where he pulls the majority of his musical references from. He says that his greatest personal influence is probably Matchbox Twenty’s Rob Thomas because he’s endured the kind of success he’d like to attain while still making a unique style. When you hear him, you get a refreshing drink of that mid nineties pop-rock that is rare in the current era of hyper active studio production and repetitive nothingness that makes up today’s radio pop. The soulful, world weary call of John Rzeznik of the Goo Goo Dolls melts effortlessly into the crisp, dark baritone of Diswalla’s J.R. Richards. Quimby’s vocals and musicianship are beyond his years, combining both a natural ear for music and a finely honed craft.

With a heart of gold, a pocketful of dreams, and a handful of other clichés Eric Quimby embodies something that everyone experiences. Dreams. Hopes. Some of us lose them along the way but Eric has the courage to fight for what he wants. Keep your eye on that boy… he’s going places.

http://www.myspace.com/ericquimby

Jeff Tessler

An interesting conundrum exists in today's contemporary music society. With the advent of massive studio production and mega-budget records that utilize every studio trick from Pro-Tools to AutoTune, people are losing faith in pop music. It’s gotten to a point where new musicians are being automatically dismissed for being too poppy, simply because people have gone to other extremes to, at the very least, find authenticity and sincerity in the performance and the production.

I prefer not to dismiss anything until I’ve heard it. I even listened to all of Justin Timberlake’s “Futuresex/LoveSounds” before I made the conclusion that it has one song on it that’s even listenable. I believe pop music has a much higher place of societal relevance than most musically educated critics believe and would have you believe.

Enter Jeff Tessler, a genuine pop musician hailing from California via Detroit. Jeff is a true musician with honest lyrics, and because he sings them melodiously in a pleasant tenor, a lot of critics and observers would have you believe that his sound is somehow of less significance than other underground musicians who disregard melody. I don’t want to be the one who bursts anyone’s bubble, but not all music played angrily and fast is done right.

Jeff’s songs are sweeping and catchy as anything. All of the songs on his debut EP (available on iTunes for five bucks) are beautifully penned and produced to accentuate his God given talent as a songwriter. The first track “What Did I Do” is an unfathomably catchy song that tells a story that pulls you right into it. The opening verse is played with acoustics and accenting piano, which bulilds into electric guitar, drums, and piano, and finally releases with the liftoff of the chorus. You can’t help but sing along with it’s infectious chorus “as I stare into your eyes, it made me think twice, what did I do, what did I do…”. The buildup and liftoff are characteristics of a true musician, they’re things you can find in songs by seasoned veterans like Train or Coldplay.

I could go on to describe what there is to love about every single track on his album but it would take pages and pages because there isn’t a single song that doesn’t meet up to the standards of pop rock perfection he’s set out to accomplish.

Other musicians that function in a similar vein as Tessler, would be, John Mayer (pre-blues), Ryan Cabrera, and Ashley Parker Angel. If any of those artists strike your fancy there’s really no reason not to like Jeff Tessler. Long live pop music!

http://www.myspace.com/jefftessler