Tilby's Top Ten Things (2009) (in no particular order) (subject to change)

Tilby's Top Ten Things (2009) (in no particular order) (subject to change)

1.  Favorite new food:  Onion rings.  Has the world forgotten?  Has the potato finally edged out the onion once and for all?  I protest.  Please, reconsider the onion ring.

2.  Favorite Mexican Place:  Jimmy Johns.  Man, that's a good torta.

3.  Favorite way to find music:  Pandora.  Sometimes, I feel like nobody knows me like Pandora, my dear friend.  I told you never to call me here!  What's that?  I love you too. No, she can never know...

4.  Favorite place to record:  My spare bedroom.  I know, I know - what gear?  What vibe?  What acoustic treatment?  Well, consider this:  playing in your underwear.  Top that.

5.  Favorite instrument:  Givens Mandolin.  This is its seventeenth year with me, and I think we are finally getting each other.  It likes light notes, big intervals, and we finally agree on a pick.

6.  Favorite band:  Karate ('Unsolved' is a good album to start with).  Something to say, a cool way to say it, a trio (bonus points in my book), and Geoff is a helluva guitar player to boot.

7.  Favorite band:  The Bad Plus ('For All I Care [with Wendy Lewis]' is a good album to start with.  Amazing feel, interpretation, killer ideas, and Reid Anderson is a helluva bassist to boot.

8.  Favorite Podcast:  Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me.  One of the few things in life that just makes me laugh out loud, now that W. is out of the lime-light.

9.  Favorite New Gear:  D.R. "Jonas Hellborg" signature piano-wound bass strings.  Kinda tough on the fingers, but they sound killer and the tension is perfect on a short-scale bass.  Plus, his name is Hellborg.

10.  Aspirations for 2010:  The photo accompanying this entry is pretty much the happiest thing I could think of.  I think the world will most likely look like this by the end of 2010.

Things I Assume about People

I decided when I was young that people are basically good, and to operate on that assumption unless I had a pretty good reason not to.  With very few exceptions, that has been the right way to go.

Unfortunately, one of those exceptions was just recently, an instance which has no real relevance to this journal entry other than this:  It made me sit and think for a while about what I assume about people, and whether or not I should keep assuming it.

First, there’s the whole “people are basically good” assumption.  I’m sticking to it, in spite of the fact that there appear to be people in the world who are basically bad.  Those people are the smallest possible minority, and unfortunately receive a large portion of the lime-light, based, I believe, on the fact that the “basically good” people have a strange fascination with the “basically bad” and reward them with inordinate amounts of attention (cough, cough, main-stream-media-cough).

The second thing I regularly assume about people, often to my detriment, is that they know what they’re talking about.  I’m starting to believe that less and less as I get older, and don’t ask me to put a percentage to it, but I’m working on a rough ratio:  The more someone insists they know what they’re talking about, the less they probably do.  In my experience, the people who know the most about whatever it is they are talking about, say the least.  I like that “take-it-or-leave-it” approach, and if it’s not a big thing, I like people who say their piece and then let me work it out for myself.  It seems I prefer to learn most things for myself anyway (i.e. the hard way).

On a related assumption, I often assume that other people want to know what I think, and based on how much of what other people tell me is of interest to me, I’m gonna have to say that I probably talk too much.  I’m working on that. Well, not so much that I’m not writing this journal entry, but working on it nonetheless.

Another common assumption seems to be that the louder someone’s opinion is, the more correct it must be.  Without pointing fingers at “conservative” “talk” show “personalities”, I’ll say this:  Being louder does not make you right. I’m not saying you’re wrong, by any means, I’m just saying your wrong-or-right-ness is independent of your volume.  Incidentally, I believe it’s the listeners duty to fact-check what you hear.  You wouldn’t believe what people will say, and what the rest will believe.

One of my biggest heroes is best known for His peaceful, understanding, quiet approach to instruction, and I’m a big fan of that.  Maybe that’s just me.

Let’s see, what other awkward things can I say…

 I assume that if other people were educated on the things I like, they would like them too.  That holds mostly true for music, which is why I’m always suggesting listening material to my friends.

The trick seems to be this: other people liking or not liking, agreeing or not agreeing, heeding or not heeding, is all independent of whether or not we can get along and be friends.  The magic seems to lie in being a good person, and doing your best to help your fellow man, because odds are, they are basically good.   Or at least so I assume.

Provosims

Where I choose to live, as with most places I’ve ever chosen to live, we have our own fair share of eccentricities.  Cultural, political, religious – I fully embrace all of them, and think that to a large degree our “imperfections” are what make us interesting, engaging, and human.  But language is my favorite local oddity, especially because of how varied it has been from town to town. 

Here I have compiled a list of local words, gleaned from actual conversations, of words I hear (or use) on a regular basis that I think are funny.  (The “usage” sentences are altered to protect the innocent.)

•  “arready”: (already)  Usage:  “Dang, BYU arready lost seven games!” 

• “mmmm-bye!”:  (goodbye)  The “mmm” varies in length, depending on social status and the degree of insincerity involved in the farewell.  Usage:  “Uh-huh… O.K.!... Mmmmmmmmmm-Bye!” 
• "ecpecially” or “ek-specially”: (especially)  Usage:  “I like all there players, ecspecially Bronco Rugercolt!”
• “pichure”: (picture)  Usage:  “I got a pichure of Bronco on my wall at home!”“tempachure”:  (temperature)  Usage:  “She’s got a tempachure, so I gave her some Coke.”  
• “melk”: (milk)  Usage:  “The Coke didn’t help, so I gave her some melk."
•  “maaanaise” (mayonnaise)  Usage:  “Slather a sum’more maaanaise on there, will ya?  More.  More.  A little more.  That’s good.” 
• “pellow”:  (pillow)  Usage:  “My pellow got Coke spilled on it; I’m headed to Cos’co for a new one.”
•  “sell”:  (sale)  Usage:  “You like that?  Picked that puppy up at a garage sell down the street!” 
• “acrosst”: (across)  Usage:  “No, not that garage sell.  Acrosst the street.” 
• “dill”:  (deal)  Usage:  “They’re out? What’s the dill?” 
• “probly”  or “provly”:  (probably)  Usage:  “They’re probly gonna run it a lot, Utah has a heck of a defense this year.” 
• “fal”:  (foul)  Usage:  “This maaanaise must be expired.  It’s totally fal.” 
• “moun’ins”:  (mountains, or any word with an “nt” combination in it)  Usage:  “I live in the shadow of the moun’ins in the valley of the everlasting hills!” 
• “Evingston”:  (Evanston)  Usage:  “Yeah, gonna run up to Evingston to buy parts for my Pontiac.” 
• “whole nother”:  (another)  Usage:  “Oh, you’re talking about their 2007 season?  That’s a whole nother dill.”
•  “supposively”:  (supposedly)  Usage:  “Yeah, supposively these three huge guys just appeared out of nowhere and cleaned, butchered and jerked the whole deer!” 
• “bolth”:  (both)  Usage:  “Black or Pinto beans?… I’ll just have bolth.”
•  “Is what we’re gonna do is…”:  (What we’re going to do is…)  Usage:  “Is what we’re gonna do is stop at Old Navy and buy thirty-seven matching blue t-shirts!” 
• “figger”: (figure)  Usage:  “Dag-nab it!  Lost to Florida? How do you figger that happened?”
•  “mel”: (meal)  Usage:  “Welcome to Café Rio! Enjoy your mel!”
•  “olny”: (only)  Usage:  “What the crap?  They olny gave me one thing of salad dressing!” 
• “trells”: (trails)  Usage:  “Oooh, take your moun’in bike.  St. George has some awesome trells.”
• “then”: (than)  Usage:  “No way, BYU totally has a better English program then Utah State.”
•  “lussin”: (listen)  Usage:  “Lussin, you don’t even know what your saying!” 
• “offen” or “offenthenot”: (often)  Usage:  “Shur, I shop Cos’co pretty offen!” alt: “…more offenthenot!” 
• “shur”: (sure)  Usage:  “Hand out free BYU mini-footballs?  Shur thing!”
• “eltz”: (else)  Usage:  “Me, wearing a red shirt?  Must have been somebody eltz.”

Honorable mentions:  Enyways (anyway), pacifically (specifically), excape/ekscape (escape), nutten (nothing), supposably (supposedly), all most (almost), and zak-ely (exactly).

Two Kinds of People

The temptation to lump people into categories in an attempt to better understand them is too great for me to withstand. Historically, I am not alone in this. From the beginning of time there has been the Believers and the Non-Believers, the Have’s and the Have-Nots, the Natives and the Aliens, Royalty and Peasantry, the Conservatives and the Liberals, the Starred and the Non-Star-Bellied Sneetches, and so on.
For years I found the most useful way of categorizing people in a way that helped me to better understand them was to make two groups – those who “got” Gary Larson’s Far Side comics and those that didn’t (sub-category: those who pretend to get it but don’t).
Now I have arrived at a new level of judgementalism, one with such far-reaching connotations that it’s hard to believe the accuracy with which I can assess any individual and their inner-most feelings after but witnessing one solitary act:
Clapping along to a song.
There are two types of people in the world: One-And-Three-ers and Two-And-Four-ers. The names, for the less musically inclined, are derived from a typical song which is counted in 4/4, which means the musicians keep time by counting to four over and over again. Typically, emphasis is given to certain of these four beats, which provides feel, groove, rhythm, and awesomeness. Nothing detracts from said awesomeness, however, like an audience member who misinterprets the emphasis and begins to clap along to their own alternate-reality-version of the song.
One-And-Three-ers clap on beats one and three, using two and four to prepare for the next clap. Two-And-Four-ers, in a similar fashion. They each have their place. But if you want to see the true nature of a person, a veritable window to their soul, a litmus test of hipness test, play a song, and have them clap.

Example:

Bingo:
There (1)WAS a (2)FARMer (3)HAD a (4)DOG and (1)BINgo (2)WAS his (3)NAME-(4)OH

Practice singing this while clapping only on beats 1 and 3. If this feels natural to you, you are a One-And-Three-er. Perfectly acceptable.
Now sing it again while clapping only on beats 2 and 4. Does this just make you feel awesome inside? Do you feel like you are in harmony with nature and the cosmos, and everything is going to go your way? Congratulations, you are a Two-And-Four-er.
Both types of people are welcome at a concert of mine. But to those who are born with 1&3 tendencies, here are some pointers to help you fit in at concerts that involve groove:
1. Watch the drummer. When he hits his snare (the loud one right on front of him), clap. Incidentally, I don’t know any drummers who are One-And-Three-ers.
2. If you’re aware of a 1&3 pre-disposition, watch for hip-looking people in the crowd, and wait to clap until you’ve ascertained that you are in sync with them.
3. If you’ve been diagnosed with a pre-existing 1&3 condition and have been unable to obtain treatment, you can always just sit in the back.
4. Limit your concert attending to musicals, children’s plays, cowboy poetry, traditional bluegrass, and polka-thons.
5. Before attending your next concert, buy yourself a Stevie Wonder CD and practice in the comfort and privacy of your own condo, or while driving your Corolla.

Being the dad.

Nobody wants to be the “dad”. You know, the guy who makes you finish your chores first, turns the car around, and reminds you that you should have thought of something before you left. The guy who reminds you of the responsibilities, the obligations, the commitments, and the fact that money doesn’t grow on trees.
When I was a boy, my dad had mastered the art of riding the line between friendship and leadership. Somehow, he just managed to instill just enough fear to keep me on the straight and narrow, while still being the best friend a boy could hope for.
Then came grown-up-ness.
It’s kind of lame, sometimes, to think of what I should be doing when I’m doing something I’d rather be doing. It’s even more lame to realize that I may be the only one in the group to be driven by such guilt and obligation.
Being in a band is like building a fort with all your friends; a foray into big-people things with big-people tools, but without any adult supervision. Now, sometimes we realize that we have no adult supervision because ARE adults, and other adults are off worrying about their own livelihood, and they think we are best left to our own devices anyway. That’s all well and good, until you’re building your fort with your friends and they’re putting in this awesome water-balloon launcher and it’s gonna be so sweet and totally take out anybody that tries to raid the fort and you realize, wait – this fort is built in a ravine, it’s going to rain, and oh yeah, the fort is supposed to buy us all food for our families and pay our mortgages.
Then, as much fun as it is to launch water-balloons, somebody has got to be the dad.
Like I said – lame.
A wise band once said that music was their aeroplane. Well, music is my fort. And we’re way beyond couch cushions and rope-pulleys. I became a professional fort-builder, and it’s my job now to build awesome forts that look totally sweet and have killer water-balloon launchers and are surrounded by traps and camouflage, but also serious forts that aren’t built in ravines and can provide income, longevity, security, and stability.

Come to think of it, my dad always helped me build the most awesomest forts anyway. Being the dad is cool.

Being spat-on and liking it.

I have the distinct pleasure of both being a fan of many bands, and being in a band with many fans. Fans are the best. We can obsess, stalk, taunt, heckle, criticize, swoon, fantasize - and we love it.
I once saw Godsmack open for Metallica (awesome show) and was appalled to see Sully Erna (lead singer) dash to the edge of the stage and send a massive wad of spittle soaring out over the crowd. But the shocker was this: a wave of people rushed not away from, but towards the flying phlegm. That happened a couple of times.
That got me pondering the fan/celebrity relationship a little. What power. What devotion. Celebrity is a weird thing (have I already blogged about Michael Jackson? Probably).
But I stand by this philosophy: Art transcends the artist.
I'm a fan of all sorts of art created by artists who are simply human. That's what I love about art. It's insight. Revelation. Creation.
So, fans, let's keep being awesome fans. Maybe someday we can take turns spitting on each other.

What is Hip? My take on Patriotism.

My little boy is three years old. He doesn't yet appreciate what it means to have three great-grandfathers still living, not to mention the one great-great grandfather we don't get up to visit near often enough.
He has even less appreciation (he's three, alright?) of the fact that all three of the living and one of the deceased great-grandfathers served in the military, all traveling the world, wielding weapons, and earning medals. Try explaining to a toddler why it's OK to fight sometimes and not other times. Seems simple, right? I tried it. It's not.
And just when I think my toddler is unappreciative, I realized how little I knew myself about my heroic grandfathers. One was in charge of firing those guns on huge boats that look like the four-barreled-blasters off the Millenium Falcon. Another was the tail-gunner in a B-17 bomber - shot down over Nazi Germany. One maintained the engines of giant Boeing Tankers - while they were flying - on trans-Atlantic flights. One sat in the back of Air-Force planes over England and threw metal ribbons out the back - old-school anti-radar measures.
How did I miss all this? I mean, the guy has a Purple Heart and I think he's an ornery cuss? This guy dodged grenades from low-flying Korean planes and I worry about him driving? I've never been so far off.
And yet they don't really talk about it. They come from a generation where patriotism and bravery were included stock in all models, right at the factory. Now these traits are options - features people don't seem to value as much anymore. Even the 9/11 goings-on seemed to have had more impact on the "shake-to-recharge" flashlight industry than the number of my friends signing up to defend our nation. (As a side note - if you hate the French that much, start a petition to return the Statue of Liberty to where it came from.)
But I digress. What I mean to say is THANK YOU, to all those who have lived for decades without anyone asking them about, or thanking them for, the service they gave. And when I say decades, I mean almost 30 years, and when I say "they", I mean my very own Grandpa's. It's because of them I'm enjoying every aspect of being American, right down to my freedom of speech.

The More You Know (the less you wish you did)

There are several instances I can think of where being educated is waaaaay over-rated. I subscribe to the “ignorance-is-bliss” methodology in most aspects of my life, including:
• How Spam is made.
• Anything to do with Brad Pitt.
• What goes on behind the scenes at Disneyland.
• How to write HTML.
• Where the suds in a hot-tub come from.
• The melting point of Gummy Peach Rings. (no, I think I’d like to know that…)
And most importantly,
• Learning about the personal lives of my favorite musicians.

I have my brother-in-law Nic to thank for this last one. Nic knows more about bands you’ve never heard of than you know about your grandma. He not only knows the part of every instrument of every song from the 60’s and 70’s, but he knows who wrote it, where, when, why, and what they were on while they did. Then, when you mention that you love a certain song, he’ll tell you something about it that makes it so it just can’t be your favorite song anymore. For me it was Zep’s “Whole Lotta Love” with the awesome drum solo in the middle, followed by the even awesomer guitar solo. I said, “I love this song” and Nic said, “Did you know that…”
I won’t wreck it for you.
I get really in to some peoples music, and I like reading liner notes from CD’s. But the days of Album Art are all but gone, and when I’m left with a question about a record or an artist, I turn to the internet – and that’s where the problems start.
I find out my favorite guitarist is not quite the family man I had hoped.
I find out my favorite bass player is in to pills you can’t buy at Walgreens.
I find out my favorite lyric isn’t saying what I thought it was saying at all.
I find out my favorite band has an inverted view of deity to my own.

You get the idea.
So, on to my point. Do the personal fallacies and shortcomings of artists make their art less valuable? Less worthy of my attention? Is a love song less of a love song when sung by a love-challenged singer? If I enjoy a song recorded by a band who was enjoying some plants I don’t choose to enjoy, am I vicariously enjoying things I don’t enjoy?
Which led me to this: When I get something from some music, when I find something I like, I take what I can get. Listening to music brings me joy, and creating music brings me joy, and if I can share that joy with other fans and other artists, all the better. I’ll let the music speak for itself.
And as for you, maybe you shouldn’t read too many of my journal entries. You might learn something that wrecks it all.

Underappreciated.

This entry is inspired by a some time I spent with my 16 year-old sister, who in a week of driving has collided with more stationary objects than a blindfolded toddler on Pixie-Stix. And to hear her side of the story, it was really quite out of her control.
It made me think through all the things I didn't appreciate at the time, like, for example, not being a girl. Not to say that boys are better drivers than girls, but... wait, yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.

Here are a few things that come to mind:

My Dad suggesting I not get too involved with that girl from Texas.

Rudimentary sewing skills.

Being the skinniest boy amongst my peers.

More common sense than some.

More sense of humor than some.

My first car being a manual transmission.

Being prodded to practice the banjo.

Not having a Nintendo.

Knowing how to splice tape.

A short list, I know, but it's all that comes to mind at the moment.

The intrinsic link between age and perspective is my favorite part about growing up. If you ever want to know more about that, go have a long talk with a 16 year-old.
But now while she's driving.

The dissasembly and reassembly of stuff in the name of feeling productive.

Let me tell you the story of a bass:
There once was a bass - a decent little bass, made in America by a reputable but not highly-esteemed maker, sold to me by a friend for $25. In the name of "making it my own", I immediately stripped all the paint off, swapped out the pickups, drilled a giant hole in the back for batteries, hacked on the pick-guard a little bit, and (last but not least) ripped the frets out with pliers.
Voila.
My first fretless bass.
But make a bass fretless is apparently a little more complicated that the removal of frets. The bass went from sounding bad, playing OK, and looking good to sounding great, looking weird, and playing really badly. I used it on a handful of recordings and made a careful map of the fingerboard in my head of the parts of the neck that made bass-sounds and the parts that made buzz-sounds.
Until I got bored. What else is the off-season for? So (with a little help from Craig) I planed off the old fretboard, glued a new one on, sanded and reshaped the neck a little, and arranged to have the bass painted silver-sparkle. All that's left is to put in the frets that I should have left in in the first place.

And last but not least, I have just finished up an album of hymns on solo guitar. It's called "Guitar Hymns" and you can check out the album here or on iTunes.

My Better Way Is Better Than Your Better Way

Lately I've been given lots of opportunities to be opinionated, without really having to do much in the way of defending them. Now, when other people express their opinions to me, I'm usually pretty good at hearing them out, then in my mind (usually) categorizing their opinion as "wrong" and substituting their truth with my own.
Until, that is, I got into a discussion about music. It was really easy for me to see why other people liked what they liked, and easy for me to say "that's great - my tastes are a little different, but so what?" It suddenly dawned on me that music had taught me another life-lesson: there is very seldom a black-and-white-right-and-wrong-no-exceptions situation where one person is dead-wrong and the other unequivocally right.
Now, I’m not saying there’s no right or wrong. Far from it. But more often than not, in day-to-day life, there’s just better and worse, and “better” is pretty darn subjective.
Like in music.
So I’ve been watching myself, and the world, to see when things get presented as “wrong” when they’re just different. And I’ve found myself a lot more tolerant, which is good. If you’re Christian, which I am, loving all people all the time is kind of a good thing. When people tell me their political opinions, I think to myself “they like the such-and-such party kind of like they like rap music and Fruit Loops. That works great for them. I like the other party, jazz and Marshmallow Mateys. We’re good friends.”
Forgive my bold comparisons; the whole world right now is proof that religion, culture, and politics are much more serious issues with much more life-impact than music, but I’m sayin’ this: No matter what you think, feel, believe, preach, play, or listen to – let’s all be tolerant and loving. For me, that’s what music is for. For saying “hey, we’re all just people – let’s get together and feel alright!”

Music Education

I just spent two days surrounded by Music Educators, and here's a thought: "Music Education" is the broadest, most vague job description I've ever heard.
I've spent two decades around music - practicing it, performing it, studying it, learning its history, writing it, arranging it, recording it, teaching it, doing the math on it, building instruments for it, etc – I’ve made a formal study of nine different instruments - and I don’t think I know more than a fraction of what there is to know about music.
Now I’ll say that although I think teachers are outgunned at every turn when it comes to doing their job the way I think it ought to be done, I will say that I’ve had some amazing teachers (mostly private) that I feel have been specially qualified to teach me some aspect of music I couldn’t have learned as well from anyone else. Thank you Mike, Dennis, Matt, Lisle, Victor, and the RubberBand (who I’ve stolen the most from!). But it took all of them, plus me, to get me to where I feel like I can call myself a musician. And that’s a vague term in-and-of itself…
Music is a living, breathing energy; an experience, a form of expression, give-and-take with the Universe. It is technique, feel, knowledge, circumstance, craftsmanship – a seldom-used channel that runs directly between your spirit and your body, that doesn’t require much thought at all, once all the framework is in place.
And we’re asking our Music Educators to do this with limited resources, mediocre pay, and combined programs. (My high-school guitar class teacher gave me an A and told me not to come anymore. He was, at best, one or two days ahead of his students on learning the guitar.)
So let’s do this – let’s get our kids out to shows. Let’s get our educators out to shows! Let’s LISTEN to music (it doesn’t happen in the background!), and talk about music. Let’s get our educators talking to the working performers, composers, conductors, engineers, and teach applicable skills! Let’s get our kids involved in music programs! Let’s put money into the programs! Let’s support the existing ones! You don’t have to have a kid in a concert to make it a good concert! Give your kids, yourself, lessons! Don’t like the piano? Buy a banjo! Don’t like the banjo? (C’mon, who doesn’t like the banjo?) Buy a flute! A recorder! I keep a Peruvian flute in my glove box. Music can be anywhere. In my opinion, it already is. But that leads me to whacky vibration talk that spooks folks, so back to the point at hand:
“Music Education” is an overwhelming task, and God bless those who undertake it. May we all do our best to support, contribute, and educate all who desire it, and may we all do our best to instill that desire in everyone we can.

A New Age (for accordians)

I feel singularly qualified to write about geeks and geeky things, as I have devoted the greater part of my life to being one. With that in mind, I feel it is my duty to announce to the world that there is a digital accordion.
End of statement.
I was in downtown Salt Lake City last night, and passed a throng of people spellbound by the strains of Blue Danube - but I could hear an orchestra, piano, flute, you name it - all coming from, it turns out, an accordion. But this was not Rogers moms accordion: this puppy took 120v a/c, had foot pedals, and output through left and right speakers with a dedicated subwoofer. I heard a version of Beer-Barrel-Polka that nearly made me soil myself. It was incredible.
Well, incredible if you're the kind of guy who already owns a metallic-orange electric banjo. Which I do.