Howdy Friends, Family, Seekers of Truth, and all you Dreamers out there,
“Live One” is live now, just live in the now, love one another, and stay a “Live One.”
Listen on your favorite streaming app, and check out the music video I made from my trip to Iceland.
“Live One,” is a new single from our coming album, “Life on Mars” that was writtenon a journey through Iceland.
“Life on Mars” represents our collective ability to create a better world filled with Love and Empathy, asking the question, “If we were to go to Mars, what would we want to do differently?”
Riley Hodges – Vocals, Lyrics, Guitar, Hammond B3 Tim Bullock – Bass Guitar Eric Hirschhorn – Saxophone Antoine Arvizu – Producer, Drums, Engineer
FULL LYRICS for “Live One”
I’ve been waiting for a sign that I should’ve seen 10 days ago. Staring at a blue sky swirling into red again. Like a vibrational high, I contemplate that I’m not fading. Just purify your mind. We’ll tear apart a magnet, baby. The rolling winds bring life when they whisper bursts of nothingness. I wonder if it’s known that we can be the nothingness. Like a thousand year stone and they call upon the night, “A Live One! A Live One!”
Capture moments that are still and wish we were forever now. The mother of this world uttering divine to men. If One is a gift to the many, God is manifest in contemplating. Within this or that are those that seek naught in the shackles breaking. Stillness in your mind, and it feels just like a loving kiss. Pouring rain in this life will bring returns of genesis. What’s it like to be a stone that’s shot into magma bursting out? I’ve been waiting for a sign and they call upon the night, “A Live One! A Live One!”
Riley Hodges is a musician from Long Beach, CA, and is the lead singer and songwriter for the Cosmic Cowboys. The music has roots in Americana with each song distinctly all its own.
“Street Walker” is the opening track of “Life on Mars” that recites the exclaims of pedestrian life through bouncy beats, clean guitar riffs and a padded saxophone, while “Maybelline,” a dreamer wanting to sleep among the stars, follows a laid-back funk-rhythm that is supported by uplifting vocals and a Hammond B3.
Riley grew up in his families bar business in Long Beach, CA and credits his parents for introducing him to good music. His mom had the hippest collection of music among his friends, and Riley’s uncle Roland, lead singer and keyboardist from the Elm Street Band, would play backyard parties at their house and events in the neighborhood while Riley was growing up. Riley began piano lessons at a young age, eventually switching to drums for a few years, then as a teenager picked up a guitar and learned to sing. Fast forward to adulthood, Riley operates Shannon’s bars, restaurant, and entertainment venue with his family, and as those businesses have grown, Riley intends to focus more on writing, recording, and playing live music. Over the past several years, Riley has written and recorded 20 original songs with growing commercial success. Listeners describe his music as catchy, upbeat, thoughtful and enjoyable.
Before the Cosmic Cowboys, Riley met and formed Taste of Red with his friends, John Capito and Tim Bullock, and they were fortunate to play their biggest venue to date at The Observatory in Orange County, CA. Fast forward several years later and John is now the lead guitar player for the Cosmic Cowboys, and their next biggest performance is scheduled for March 14, 2020 where the Cosmic Cowboys are ready to play to a large crowd of festival attendees for St. Pat’s Party on Pine hosted by Shannon’s Corner in Long Beach, CA.
Thanks again for reading! We appreciate your support, and we hope you enjoy the release of “Live One.”
P.s. If you haven’t seen our Kickstarter teaser, check it out here and consider making a pledge when we launch our Kickstarter on 3.20.20 for a cause that stands for Love and Empathy! Our goal is to raise $10,0000 so we can release “Life on Mars” on “vinyllll, vinyllll, vinylll!” in the Fall of 2020. With a little courage you too can experience this inspired vision through a beautifully produced Americana music album by hardworking humans just like you! Together, we can change the world through positive vibrations 🙂
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.
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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.
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.
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.
Saturday the 14th @ Dipiazzas
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.
Having grown up in the bar business, Riley operates Shannon’s bars, restaurant and entertainment venue with his family.
Over the past few years as the Shannon’s businesses have grown, Riley has endeavored to focus more on creating and playing music. His latest project is Life on Mars.
Life on Mars is an alt-rock album with eclectic elements that was inspired by a journey through Iceland in 2016. The song Live One writes about this experience, asking, “What’s it like to be a stone shot into magma bursting out?” From there the album took shape as a metaphor for life on Earth, what we’ve done here, how we’ve grown, our follies… and if we went to Mars, what would we want to bring and do differently?
LIFE ON MARS ALBUM ARTWORK BY ERIC STONER – ERICSTONERMIXEDMEDIA.COM
The album conjures a utopian dream where virtues like Empathy and Courage are held in high regard. The songs chat an earthly tone with the opening track, Street Walker, reciting the exclaims of pedestrian life through bouncy beats, clean guitar riffs and a padded saxophone, while Maybelline, a dreamer for equal rights wanting to sleep among the stars, follows a laid-back funk-rhythm that is supported by uplifting vocals and a Hammond B3.
Perspective In Sound 