Archive for July, 2009

Jul 21 2009

Always & Everywhere

Published by Doug Veeder under Friends, Music

A couple of months ago, I caught up with a friend of mine from my old college radio days. We talked about a lot of things but mostly, we reminisced about our days on air at the old college station. And as always, our conversation eventually drifted to comparisons of the musical styles of the past thirty or forty years. His main point was that modern music is missing the storytellers, the great musicians who can write a lyric that tells a story and combine it with a quality piece of music that leaves the listener yearning for more. And although I didn’t fully agree with his assumptions and I could point to some bona fide exceptions, I realized that they were the exceptions to the rule and not the rule itself.

Last Tuesday, P.J. Pacifico released his second record Always & Everywhere and within moments of listening to the album on my IPod, I knew that I was listening to the next great storyteller. With a soulful and inviting vocal range, P.J. has created an album full of great stories and phenomenal melodies that are based on the past four years of his life as he has traveled around the country in support of his first CD. And the more I listened to his songs, the more mesmerized I became.

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Jul 01 2009

Playing Santa Claus

Published by Doug Veeder under Children, Family, Parenting, Stories

“Chloe, want to play Santa Claus?” I asked the other day as I was getting ready to shave.

“Yes!” Chloe responded as she ran to get her stool so she would have something to stand upon.

“Alright, I’ll meet you in there,” I said as I headed into the bathroom, took out my shaving stuff and started to run the hot water.

“Never mind, Dad,” she yelled at me as she waltzed past the bathroom a few minutes later and headed for the back door. “Josh and I are going to play in the backyard! See you later.”

The Santa Claus game started a couple of years ago when Chloe followed me into the bathroom one day and she watched me put shaving cream on my face. “You look like Santa Claus,” she said to me and as I looked at myself in the mirror, I had to agree with her. The shaving cream looked like the white, billowy beard of Father Christmas and before I knew what I was doing, I broke into my best impression of Saint Nick and had a conversation with Chloe as if I was the jolly old elf himself.

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