“We’re living, we’re on this planet, find a good song on the radio and jam it”.
It took a while for me to get this one up to my normal levels of jamtronic standards. I was leaning heavily towards wind instruments (flute, french horn and oboe) as I like to do. But it took the addition of the lead guitar to get it to come around. Chris Singleton put some tasty bass on it to get it going as well.
“Philosophy would go right out the window, if we would only be this happy all the time”. Thanks for listening!
Let’s kick the weekend off with a jam! Pump this one up and sing it loud.
“Skyscrapers” is inspired by the #EckhartTolle book A New Earth, which I’ve read (to my newborn kids) or listened to at least five times. The music is inspired by #ManuChao, another favorite who really doesn’t release enough music these days.
I’m on all the instruments except for the killer bass by Chris Singleton. There’s also some cool backing vocals from Kerry Jones, Jeramy Lamanno, John Kell and Adair Cates.
The third song from “My Old Soul” has the classic four on the floor kick drum beat that makes booty shaking a must. Add in some synths, guitars, strings and lyrics questioning life’s struggles and how to sift through them and you’ve got a jam.
“I’ll always be dreaming, if I’m breathing I’m dreaming and one won’t stop before the other”. Thanks for listening!
As I sit here grinding it out at the job again, I can’t help but reflect back on my 20’s when I was a struggling touring musician. Those were good times (or were they). That’s the catch 22 of life and whatever professional route we take ourselves in the pursuit of making a living, are we totally content? I am not blessed with contentment undoubtedly. I need to make that mind shift. Or do I just need to solely be a recording artist with a golf bug which is my ultimate goal. Would I be content then?
#worklifebalance
“They tell me You’ve Got to get a real job and stop living like a slob”
Today marks the beginning of several re-issues from my long musical history. I can’t believe it’s been 10 years since I released ‘Getaway Plans’ on the eve of my departure from Athens, Georgia. In celebration of it’s ten year anniversary, I have remastered and re-imagined the album, changing the song order and adding four new songs that were recorded during the same era.
The album features the fantastic Parakeet Nelson touring band of 2001 – 2004 featuring John Wayne Tuggle, Dwayne Wallace, Dave Brockway and John Kell with special guest Andrej Kurti tearing it up on violin on several songs. The infamous Mike Lowdermilk also makes an appearance on a few of the new added songs.
Umbrella is one of my most enduring songs about turning things around, staying positive and being there for each other. I have sung it at many charity and spiritual events, not to mention many bars too for that matter. Ha! Thanks for listening!
I’m in the middle of a very productive year musically, releasing lots of independent albums, but that doesn’t mean I don’t put in 40-60 hours a week with my “real job” developing solar farms. I live in Atlanta where you gotta make some dough to feed the oven, so a “real” job is quite a necessity. Although I’m working hard with my record company and PR to turn that table, this old song of mine seems even more ironic to me today (now that I have a “real” job and am not a full time musician anymore). Thanks for listening and supporting independent music!
“Are you crazy, crazy, crazy in love or are you just crazy?” #8 changes styles again and picks the pace back up with a little southern rock guitar thrown in.
I finished this song in a job trailer in Nashville, Georgia (wishing I was in Nashville, TN) while building a six acre, one megawatt solar farm. I put some pics of the job trailer below to show how hardcore it was. Usually I’ll get a pretty nice one, but when you are in an extreme rural area, sometimes you gotta take what they give you. Recording in this thing at night in the middle of nowhere can actually get a little scary, especially when it’s raining and you’re not sure your truck can make it down the half mile mud pit between you and the highway. Needless to say, I made it out (with this song in tow).
I also figured I’d put another pic of Joy since the baby pics seem to increase my blog traffic times three. Thanks for listening!
Still posting from my Risky Biscuits album. This one is crazy, funny and awesome. Mainly because of the incredible band I assembled to play it live in the studio. It’s the same line up as “U Don’t Believe My Traction” except with Jesse Cole on bass and Daniel Marler on guitar lead #2. All of the solos on this are incredible. We stretched it out to over 10 minutes letting everyone shine as bright and long as they wanted. Daniel’s guitar solo is especially great on this one.
The lyrics are quite funny and were inspired by making fun of the X-Files one morning in bed.
Back to posting ‘Risky Biscuits’ songs. This one is a super jammer. A little bit reggae a lot rock. We recorded this live with an eight piece band in Wes McDonald’s studio (a fine musician and artist himself look him up https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/wes-mcdonald/id6432590).
Anyway, this song is a declaration of love with a little innuendo and a great great band!! John Kell, Chris Costigan and Gary Hartle’s saxes are on fire on this one and John Wayne Tuggle plays a tasty guitar solo. I had a broken hand and a ruptured radial nerve but I still managed to hold down the rhythm guitar. Incredible drummer Seth Hendershot and legendary bassist AJ Adams round it out! Thanks for listening!
Welcome to Chris Cates.com. I'm an old school independent artist with lots of albums, songs, solar panels etc. This site tries to encapsulate what it is I've been doing since I played my first professional gig at 13. I post a song of the day occasionally from my somewhat excessive original song catalogue and I'm constantly recording new material when I'm not building solar farms, trying to play golf or tennis or taking care of my new twin girls.
