Sun & Street Walker
Dimensions of Maybelline
The Sea & C’est La Vie
Wildlife is Coming Home
In the end, we are all a Live One
Listen to the Wind Go
The Seasons change, Nature endures in a Long Couple of Days
Fiery Earth of magmatic Highs & and cratered Lows
Visit instagram.com/RileyHodgesMusic at 7:00 PM to tune-in to our Listening Party!
I will be engaging with fans and inviting you to associate words or feelings with the music of Life On Mars!
You will hear the music of Life On Mars on a Vinyl Record Test Pressing!
Pre-order your copy here on Vinyl and here as a Digital Download (release date: 1/22/21)
Support Independent Artists!
Thank you!
Cheers,
Riley
“Life On Mars” is an Americana Music Album.
Life On Mars is all about dreaming of a better place filled with love and empathy.
When I set out on this journey 4 years ago to the day, or thereabouts…
Entering 2017 was a time of great change during our nation’s inauguration.
Previously, I had been inspired on a journey through Iceland in September and October of 2016.
When I returned home I felt compelled to write, and to speak my mind…
So here we are again, and we have righted the ship, but not without sustained damages.
Today I am making a BIG ANNOUNCEMENT:
You can purchase the album now for $5.99 at my Cosmic Store.
You can Pre-Order the Vinyl Record here for $34.99. PREORDER IN ADVANCE & RECEIVE A SPECIAL PRIZE.
With that said, I’m excited to tell you that I’m finally committed to a release schedule that makes sense and I think you will enjoy!
TODAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF MY OFFICIAL LAUNCH SEQUENCE WHERE I WILL BE HIGHLIGHTING THE MUSIC OF “LIFE ON MARS“
The Launch sequence begins with a Listening Party on Thursday, 1/21/21 at 7PM where I will ask fans to engage with me on my ‘gram account @RileyHodgesMusic 🙂
I will be asking fans to comment words or feelings that come to mind that I will then use to inform my release schedule and I will create an interactive game for fans to play along with me and help write the “Story of Life On Mars” – check out #OURSTORY_LOM on the ‘gram.
From there I will be highlighting each song on the album in order of appearance, including:
Recently, I’ve been working on a TV show that I created called Cosmic Cocktails where I announced the date of my Life On Mars album release for Friday 1/22/21.
Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, there are still some delays for the Vinyl Record that I cannot account for – most importantly, the Vinyl Record I have been working on is taking longer than expected (I do have test pressings completed and you can check them out during my Listening Party on Thursday, 1/21/21).
You can Pre-order the Vinyl Record for “Life On Mars” by visiting my website here.
Fans want something and I’d like to know what that is…
What do y’all want to do?
Why y’all here?
How much do you read?
How much do you listen to music?
What kinds of things are interesting to you?
A / S / L ?
Are / You / Up?
What style of music do you like most?
How do you listen to your music?
How much of the behind the scenes do you like to see?
Do you like magic?
What’s your favorite kind of burrito?
What about ice cream?
Pizza? Duh…
How about nachos vs. chicken wings?
What’s your favorite song of all time?
Comment a word and I’ll use it on my next blog post and tag you on tha ‘gram.
An album of loud purple sounds. Someone popped their eggnog on a fruitcicle and created a new dessert.
When you go looking for an album of magnificence in groove and the possibility of a meow style, you pick downtown for the bass line and uptown for the tempo.
All the guitars work together like a saddle fits on a horse. Everybody finds their way.
Of course the drums do all the talking when they say n”sp “sp “sp “tat “tat and that bass is walking like it don’t care none except right here.
When people say things about me, I’m the baddest mountain. Like a thunder rolled in and said “hey!” Where all my dancers at?
Track One starts out clean and keeps riding till it’s over, no stops, just a belly up slouching cruise with a clear wind carrying the salty coastal air.
Track Two begins calm, but then finds an off ramp and gets subdued when it seems to find a clearing toward the beach.
Track Three is like a reflection of your grandmother’s memoirs that jot down everything from cookies to coastal swims. Beach days are fun, and everyone gets along just fine.
Track Four is a little more calm except when it tends to escalate for a minute as if to say, “hey, I’m here.”
Track Five continues onward like a boat on an anchor, swaying in the sea. The world can’t help but to bring rain. It’s just life.
Track Six reminds us of our mothers and fathers of the world. Those who lift us up.
Track Seven reads like “a Day in the Life,” and sings like “Bitches Brew.”
Track Eight tells us when to be happy and it’s all the time. “Could you be loved?”
Track Nine has more to say. And it’s that “we want more wine, and whiskey, and a good night’s sleep as much as possible. Someone needs to remind us of this more often, and that’s what this song is all about. Funk layered with harmonies and horns and a laid back approach to life in general. Just finding connection and being willing to embrace it for what it is and to do good wherever possible.
Track Ten someone told me to write them a song and here it is. I’m here for you.
Track Eleven slow grooves and a soft voice with some percussive style, congas and hand drums. Where a groove gets locked in. We are here.
Track Twelve bring rain and birds. In no particular order, someone lights a fire in the sky. With no warning, a siren calls and tempts.
Track Thirteen there is always morning to freshen the mood. The warm sun brings a calm. It feels good to soak it in and feel whole. Cosmic guitars bring a groovy vibe.
Track Fourteen we live in a musical space. Sound is our friend. We know it when we heart it. Soothing, vibey, a tip of the hat. A step in my walk. It’s all the same. Just groove with it.
~ Just Groove With It
All Rights Reserved 2021
Release Date 1/21/21
The Road Ahead envisions the world as a better place. This better place, like all human constructs, is only as real as you make it.
The song, Long Couple of Days, is about finding your groove. This, and other new songs, will be released as the Cosmic Cowboys.
The Road Ahead is like finding your way home. Coming Home.
See tags
The past is future
Positivity in motion
Cosmic cowboys ?
I can feel it in my teeth. The tingles gives one a feeling of both numbness and pressure. The rolling waves crushed me to the bones, but I was not afraid. From hammer to stone, it is my only feeling.
“Where will we go?” she asked as the canyons echoed.
Just then the phone rang…
Referring to these wall posts of late, scroll down the feed and make your date:
Poll feelings and followers and those in need
My wall is open for those to seed
But in the end there’s always you
My wall grows so continuously too
To top and shallow for weak and hollow
For strong and old and bored and bold
For young and hound n’ passion’s loud
For any other of many sold
For most of all a creative crew that sees me wallow in this stew
A poll will show results of many
My ideas flow in words a’plenty
Your words I write and think and brew
Your word inspires a creative mood
Stay tuned for more “wall posts”
When I dubbed this gig “Unplugged” I did not know that I would actually need to be completely “Unplugged.” I should’ve sensed that something was up when my home PA malfunctioned by making a repeating, alarming, sweeping, ascending tonal sound… like what you might hear during an apocalyptic scenario. What the fuck?
I’ve been singing about going High or Low in a yet-to-be-released track, and as I’m writing this paragraph I am laughing out loud at the idea of a malfunctioning low to high ascending tone.
What the actual fuck? Like I say in C’est La Vie, “Ain’t it funny in hindsight. Shake it off, such is life is life.”
Okay, whatever. We all find parallels in daily life if we are willing to look, and pay attention. Mindfulness helps, and even when we’re not paying attention shit tends to slap you in the face when you least expect it. Of course, even though I search for good and pleasant inspirational parallels, I don’t always pay attention, mindfully, because of the nature of 21st Century life and the human condition in general. Technological distractions, malfunctions, ramming, prodding, vying for space. I just glanced at my phone and read another scary, nearly apocalyptic, headline involving a “brain eating amoeba” What the…
Apart from scary headlines, fear-based news in general, and other distractions, what else is up with mindfulness and better ways to delve into creative communication, sort of the point of this blog, Perspective In Sound?
I heard my song “Maybelline” on the radio earlier. Fuck yeah!
Broadcasting Live from Shannon’s Corner on Pine. KLBP 99.1 FM Long Beach, CA!
Also, I heard Alyssa Nighswonger, friend and multi-talented artist, on KLBP 99.1 FM Long Beach, CA while writing… She asked, “What’s the point?” which is what drew me to say what the point of this blog was above.
This is how my brain works. Don’t eat me, amoebas! Please preserve my twisting, interconnected, multiple-outcome reality as blood pumps through my trillions of synapses to form growing positive connections!
What else? Well, making sense of all this in 2019 requires a high-speed broadband Internet connection and well-functioning CPU. My 2012 iMac has not been cutting it lately, but it’s not Mac’s fault… It is I, the master of my CPU, that is holding on to too much content. Lately, I’ve been sorting through old content since I started taking pictures of mostly nonsense from about 2000 (y2k, baby!) up until I moved to Barcelona, Spain in 2007 where I got a chance to photograph more creatively. Just before I left for Spain, I bought the re-popularized Holga toy camera made out of cheap components to give the user a flawed photographic experience that over-accentuates the natural beauty of the Universe. Colors, light leaks, overexposure, etc. all adds to what has now been replaced by your Instagram filter, or countless other ways in which you can manipulate the world around you to suit your liking.
When I was much younger, barely a teenager, I made a few time-lapse videos using legos, fire, a Santa Claus doll, whatever I could conveniently get my hands on. Later on, my sisters and I made a film, Killer In the House, Part 1 and Part 2…
The goal is to make it entertaining. For better or for worse, at the moment…
So as I’m cleaning up my Hard Drive, thereby improving my CPU, I am working on how to stay centered, mindful and patient…
Back to the gig on Saturday, the 14th after our Friday the 13th Full Harvest Moon Adventure into the Wasteland. I started noticing the pull of this rare full moon the night beforehand on Thursday the 12th as my PA was malfunctioning… then during our Wasteland Adventure, and up until the gig on Saturday I was still feeling as prickly as a Night Blooming Cactus. Of course, as I got on stage my guitar pickup malfunctioned… so we mic’d my acoustic guitar, Unplugged. It’s weird how the Universe does that to you.
Keeping It Honest is all about the stuff that is out of your control and you shall not fight, it is embracing the chaos around you so much so that you become the chaos, figuratively speaking, just so that you can see things from a different perspective, also known as Empathy. Courage helps…
It’s been a ‘fun’ summer, learning these lessons, and I’m ready for Fall, falling into my next release series, including new music later this month, Live One!
Update 1 of 2: it turns out that the reason my guitar didn’t work at the gig was because the backup battery I had on hand was indeed also dead like the one in my guitar when I first found out the pickup wasn’t working. So either there are powers conspiring against me (and also for me in terms of the creative potential that it creates through its resistance) OR I did this to myself. Both can be true, but also just one of these options can be true, alternatively. I love alternative music, too.
Update 2 of 2: Live One was eventually released on March 10, 2020, just days before the world shut down due to COVID-19. Again, either there are powers conspiring against me (and also for me in terms of the creative potential that it creates through its resistance) OR I did this to myself (I did in fact have a clairvoyant moment the week before ‘the shutdown’). Both can be true, but also just one of these options can be true, alternatively. I love alternative music, too. But not death metal typically.
A story about coming home
A character born in the abyss and raised by the sands of time
Moving into nothingness
A cosmic cowboy
Deep interstellar space is a place where I’d like to be. Apart from all the suffering of our own biology, and where we once came from in another form of matter. I’d like to be with you before I go splatter. The you here is we, and we are debris, from a regenerative force that continues to be… but where does it end and why does it matter? We’ll know sure enough when we go splatter…
A shadowy figure enters the doorway as my eyes lay claim to the rounded silhouette. I wonder if it’s him, the ragged drifter I’ve heard so much about around these parts. He walks with a limp from a shootout that nearly took his leg if it weren’t for the townspeople helping him. They were caring and providing for his well being throughout his recovery. I think we all should strive for the same fastidious presentation of purpose and community, especially when you’ve got an injured cowboy on your hands…
The next thing that happens brings a crowd to gather as he slowly approaches the bar… “a shot of root and bottle of your finest whiskey…” You see, cowboy here had a knack for the high life, what with his conquering riches amongst a competing vision of the land. He took what was in plain sight for the taking, while others sought to organize welfare systematically as a sliding scale of victory over the defeated.
I once saw a vision of the future in which all people were bubbling from a seemingly permeable force of love and understanding. I want to understand this further and I Think this is what should be the most important thing for humans…
Cowboy leaves the bar and heads out the door…
Arriving in España reminded me of the time I spent here while studying abroad in Barcelona. We visited Sevilla at that time yet I could not really appreciate the city then the way that I do now.
For starters, our Airbnb was a great choice, and it’s exciting to be here for our friend Maria and Alex’s wedding!
Sevilla is beautiful, romantic, and cultured with a rich history of traditions like Flamenco and food like Paella and Iberian Ham. There are also stories of conquest, exploration of the Americas and stunning architectural design.
As we venture out into the city I am finding there are many parallels to explore as I am releasing my new single, C’est La Vie!
Sitting on our balcony with La Giralda in my view reminds me another time and place. Have you been to space?
Life on Mars is about expressing our best self while practicing empathy, courage and love.
Family is so important and I feel blessed to be able to spend time with them on this lovely vacation!
I’m excited to release C’est La Vie next Friday, June 28th! We are playing a release show at the Prospector the night before, Thursday at 10pm. Come say “hola” as I bring the Spanish vibes home with me to share in the LBC.
Upcoming notes:
it’s amazing you can perceive emotions so subtly on a living face. a face that’s alive, however far away or near you feel to it, can be detected by the viewer and in relation makes them feel alive, however far away or near you feel to it.
//
Rose petals are divine
Ancient
Eternal
Divine
//
Flamenco
Rumba
//
When the sangria and gazpacho becomes confused, it’s a good thing…
Perspective In Sound 