A busy and exciting week

Happy Monday! Actually, if you're reading this on Facebook, it's "Happy whatever day this post appeared on Facebook even though Zak wrote and posted it to his blog on Monday!", but that doesn't sound nearly as snappy.

In any case, it's a busy week, and I thought that since I might not have too may opportunities to be blogging away over the next seven days, so here's a little preview of what's likely to happen.

Monday May 10
Er... well, it's not the highlight of the week. It's Monday, and most of my day is going to be filled with work-related activities. If you're really curious, that would involve writing content, updating web sites and social nets for my clients, and various things and stuff I do to earn a living. But since all work and no play makes Zak a dull boy, I also updated the Zak Claxton site to highlight the big festivities for this coming Saturday (see below for details).

Tuesday May 11
We'll get this day rolling with a 9am roundtable discussion with Linden Lab about the Second Life live music community. Should be interesting, and hopefully productive. Later on, speaking of Live Music in SL, I'll be performing at Illusion at 2PM SLT. Here's your SLurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Gravity/193/96/701.

Wednesday May 12
I'm returning to the Pond at 4PM to do a full hour of all-original music. Why all original? Because the show is being simulcast on FCMC Radio. Your SLurl... http://slurl.com/secondlife/Sakura%20Cove/219/191/22. if you can't attend the show, you can still listen in at FCMC's live stream: http://thestreamteam1.serverroom.us:4176/.

Thursday May 13
Ah, a day of getting work stuff done and general preparation for the weekend. I'll do a post later this week that explains how one prepares for a recording session. It's not as magical or mystical as some might think.

Friday May 14
I have this accidental tradition where I end up playing a live show the day before a recording session. Like, almost every single time. And I never TRY to book a show on that random day; it just happens like magic. Trip out on this...

Fri March 28 2008: I had a previously scheduled show at our COYOTE club.
Sat March 29 2008: First session for the first ZC album ("This Afternoon", "Falling Down").

Fri June 27 2008: I perform at SL5B... twice.
Sat Jun 28 2008: Second session for the ZC album ("You're LIke a Cloud", "Thanks Anyway").

Fri March 20, 2009: Live at the Vibe HQ.
Sat March 21, 2009: Fourth session for the ZC album ("Waxing Gibbous", "Lines on your Eyes", "Come Around").

That's just a few examples. There are more. In each case, I hadn't at all planned on doing a show the day before my session, but it's a good way to warm up, and all sessions where this happen to work out went very well. Why screw with a good thing? That having been said, I got randomly booked to play at Dubai at 1:30PM on Friday 5/14, and play I shall!

Saturday May 15
The REALLY big day. As mentioned earlier, I'm going to the studio to start work on the next album. We're doing two tunes: "Shine" and "Time Never Waits for You". Also, you'll be able to watch the entire recording session with a fly-on-the-wall perspective, since we're streaming the entire day on Ustream. The easiest way to see what we're doing and drop us a line in chat: on Saturday at 12:30PM PDT, just head to http://www.zakclaxton.com/ and jump right in.

Sunday May 16
By Sunday, I will have used every ounce of energy in my body and mind, and will be using whatever is left to a) drive home from the studio and b) prep and upload stuff for you to see from the previous day's sessions.

Happy Birthday to the Moop!

This is the Moop, and he's now an adult... in human years.

Yep, the Moop is 18 years old, born at the beginning of May 1992. His actual name is Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Federation Starship Enterprise, or Captain for short. But I call him the Moop, because for most of those 18 years of his life, he's only done two things consistently: moping and pooping.

Here's how I got the Moop: my mom's friend owned a boutique in the Long Beach area, and apparently found the Moop as a tiny kitten who'd been abandoned by his feral mother. She was kind enough to not leave him out there, but not quite kind enough to want to keep him. So she gave him to my mother. A few days later, my then-girlfriend (now known as my ex-wife) and I were visiting Mom's, and Mom made some incredibly full-of-shit speech about how sad it was that she was going to have to take the cat to the shelter, probably to be put to sleep. Well, my former girlfriend/future ex-wife ate that up, and despite the fact that we were living in a tiny one-bedroom apartment at the time and already had a perfectly good cat, she insisted that we take the Moop home. I caved; we now had a second cat.

But this one was weird. He didn't like to do cuddly cat-like things. In fact, he liked to stay on his own completely. Didn't want to socialize with people, or other animals. He mostly stayed under the bed, coming out only to eat or use the litter box. We figured he'd warm up after awhile, but that didn't happen.

Years passed. We moved to a bigger place. Had other cats. Had cats die on us. Had a kid. Changed jobs. Got divorced. And yet, through all the turmoil, the Moop remained steady as a rock. Steadily weird, anyway. But I have to give Moopy some credit; as my son got older, and Moop ended up being the only animal in the house, he gradually mellowed out over the years. He's actually a semi-normal cat at this point, and it only took him until age 88 (in relative human years) to get there.

Despite his advanced age, he still seems pretty healthy, and generally seems happier than he ever did. Hopefully this is due to some long-awaited kitty contentment that he's found, as opposed to cat senility. Regardless, while there are no guarantees when you're a cat old enough to vote, I find that I'm happy that the Moop is still around. Hats off to the Moop Man!

What's happening?

It's a good question. What is happening? What's going on? What the hell is there to do, and why aren't we doing it?

Since this blog more or less focuses on my music -- live shows, recording sessions, songwriting and so on -- you have to understand that not every day is a "music day". Not to be all depressing, but it's been said that people who focus exclusively on one thing are bound for failure. Kurt Cobain was a brilliant songwriter and performer, but when he mistakenly felt his creative fire was extinguished, his solution was to eat the wrong end of a shotgun. Bad idea, Kurt. That stuff would have come back around.

As you know, I did the seventh episode of my Zak Claxton Happy Fun Show on Saturday, a couple of days ago. It was happy and fun, as planned. But I'm not currently scheduled to play again until May 11, over a week from now. I'm taking this short break purposefully; the idea is to hold back on the music for a bit until it builds up like pressure in a soda bottle. Then I play a series of shows on May 11, 12, and 14, all as a warmup for my first session back in the studio on Saturday May 15. In the meantime, I thought I'd fill you in on some possibly mundane events of the non-musical variety.

New Shades


When you live in Southern California and are already rather light sensitive (they say we green-eyed people have it the worst for some reason), sunglasses aren't just a fashion statement; they're a necessity. Here's a little Zak Fact that you may not know; in my plethora of jobs I held as a young man putting myself through college, one of them was managing a Sunglass Hut in a mall. I became a bit of a sunglass snob as a result, and pretty much refuse to buy/wear the crappy $9 shades you see at grocery stores and gas stations. That having been said, I've been doing exactly that for the last year or so. My last pair of Ray-Bans finally broke, and I bought a cheap pair (cue ZZ Top song here) to hold me over until I got some better ones. Well, that ended up being all of 2009. I kind of liked the look of my cheap sunglasses, but they were beginning to fall apart, so it was time for some new shades, baby.

This weekend, I went to the mall with Kat and my son, and swung by my old place of employment (from 20+ years ago, egad). Tried on roughly 739 pairs of shades, and it boiled down to a few pairs I liked. The winner ended up being the ones I'm sexily modeling above, some Italian-made shades from Polo by Ralph Lauren. It's been awhile since I wore an amber lens, and I forgot that I really liked it. So, the sunglass issue has been solved.

My Really Hideous Beard


Males, when they find themselves bored with the same face that stares back at them in the mirror every day, don't have the vast selection of choices that women do to make changes. I've tended to have various forms of facial hair since I found myself able to cultivate it around age 16. It started with a really cheesy mustache, and in my 20s was a full goatee for awhile. I then went clean shaven for my later 20s, but starting in my early 30s grew a small covering on my chin which has remained for most of the time since.

Well, a few weeks back, at the start of the playoff seasons for both the NBA and NHL, I found a perfectly acceptable excuse to grow more facial hair. The playoff beard is a hockey tradition, and I vowed to not shave my cheeks until both of my teams -- the L.A. Kings and the L.A. Lakers -- had either won championships or had been eliminated from the playoffs. It's a weak excuse at best, but I'll take what I can get.

The problem is that I've never been able to grow a really cool beard. I don't know why I thought that might have changed over the course of time; you only get one shot at puberty, and mine did not endow me with a rugged, manly outcropping of hair on most of my face. And yet, that hasn't stopped me from once again attempting to once again become the bearded dude that I imagine I can be. A side note: whenever I grow hair on my upper lip, I look like a huge freaking dork who wants to get his ass kicked. You have to draw a line somewhere in looking like crap, and that's mine.

So, for the time being, I'm continuing to not shave anywhere but my neck, upper cheeks, and lip, and you can see the awesome result above. It's patchy, peach-fuzzy, graying, and everything you generally don't want in a beard. But while the Kings dropped out of the NHL playoffs in the first round, the Lakers appear to be going strong, so my beard shall remain until I've run out of pseudo-legitimate reasons why it shouldn't. Well, reasons other than that I look like crap. I find myself less concerned with what other people think about me in my old age.

My Son, the Medalist


Give a proud papa a chance to brag a little. My son was voted by his class as being the "Most Fair Person" of the 2009-2010 school year, and was awarded an actual medal in front of the whole school last week. I don't talk much about my son here for privacy reasons, but suffice it to say that he's an amazing kid, with a great personality and is the light of my life. I'm always proud of him, regardless of the recognition he gets, but it's great to see him be rewarded for being fair... a highly important quality in any decent human.

Feeling Springy

Here in Redondo Beach, CA on this lovely Monday May 3rd, the weather is about as nice as weather gets, anywhere, ever. Granted, I tend to enjoy when it gets a wee bit warmer, but in my lovely suburb of Los Angeles, it stays between 55º and 70º for the grand majority of the year. Even when it's a sweltering 105º during mid-summer in the Valley, it'll be in the pleasant mid-80s here. Currently, it's 65º and not a cloud in the sky, with a high of 73º expected. I'll be spending most of this gorgeous day inside my home office as usual, but still, it's nice to know it's out there if I want to participate in its loveliness.

That's all for now. More irrelevant stuff later this week, I'm sure.

ZCHFS #7 Report (05.01.10)

VIDEO LINK

We had a lovely time at today's Zak Claxton Happy Fun Show. As I tend to do, I didn't really promote the show all that well, so we had a small crowd but they were all fun and cool people. I thought I played/sang well, and we picked some good tunes -- originals and covers -- to perform. In fact, the only negative of the whole day... being the bonehead that I can be from time to time, I forgot to set the audio source as being through my nice microphones, so instead it was being picked up by my crappy built-in laptop mic, gah. Next time I'll take the three seconds it would have taken to set this up correctly.

Regardless of that, it was a really fun show, and I think everyone there had a blast. I certainly did. Keep in mind, for the next ZCHFS, we'll be streaming live video and audio from the recording studio, assuming it actually functions. Keep your fingers crossed and tune in on 5/15!

ZCHFS #7 Setlist...
Triana (Zak Claxton)
Thanks Anyway (Zak Claxton)
Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd)
Summer Breeze (Seals & Crofts)
Big Yellow Taxi (Joni Mitchell)
Falling Down (Zak Claxton)
Shine (Zak Claxton)
Thank U (Alanis Morissette)
Time Never Waits For You (Zak Claxton)
Tea in the Sahara (The Police)
This Afternoon (Zak Claxton)
California (Joni Mitchell)

Thanks to the people who stopped by for the ZCHFS!

Zak's Kitchen: Dill Shrimp Salad

Here's a delightful dish you can make in minutes. Perfect as the weather gets warmer.

Zak's Dill Shrimp Salad
Serves 4-6

1-1/2 pounds of small cooked shrimp (cleaned, no tails)
3 green onions (chopped)
1 large celery stalk (chopped)
1/2 cucumber (chopped)
1/4 cup mayonaisse
1/4 cup sour cream
2 Tbsp. fresh dill (chopped)
2 lemons; juiced
1 lime; juiced

Mix together all ingredients in a large bowl. Chill for 30 minutes. Serve by itself on crisp lettuce leaves, or on top of toast corners or pumpernickel rounds as hors d'oeuvres.

Sat May 15: All Day Live Video from the Studio

On Saturday May 15, I'm going back into the studio for the first time since we wrapped up the debut Zak Claxton album, and I though you might like to come too.

While I can't have a studio full of crazy people while I'm trying to record new music, and you probably won't be running out to Sound Sanctuary Studios in Riverside, CA just to hang out for the day, we're going to try something that will be a good compromise: we're going to set up a web cam and stream live audio and video from the studio for 12 straight hours!

Having never done this before, we have no idea how well it will work, or even if it will work at all. But that's not going to stop us from trying, of course. The basic idea is this: starting at about noon on 5/15/10, we'll arrive at the studio and set up a laptop in some unobtrusive spot in the control room. Then, we'll connect to my Ustream channel, and whatever happens while we create new music, you'll be able to tune in and check out what we're doing!

A typical session for us runs at least 12 hours, while we try and capture two complete songs start to finish. Do I expect anyone will want to peer into a dark recording studio for 12 straight hours? No, of course not. However, it might be fun from time to time to drop by and see what we're up to. Also, since Ustream has chat tools, you can feel free to drop comments at us and when we're in between recording, we can say hi back at ya. Sounds fun, huh?

The songs we'll be working on are "Shine" and "Time Never Waits for You", and if this all works out, you'll get a real insider's view of what it's like to record in a serious studio, with silly and fun people including my co-producer Phil O'Keefe, multi-instrumentalists Bunny Knutson and Ken Lee, and my darling Kat Claxton, who will be there to document the entire process and provide moral support.

So mark your calendars now and keep the link below handy...

Saturday 5/15/10, 12:30PM - 12:30AM
Zak Claxton Recording Session - Live from the Studio
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/zakclaxton

In case you'd like a little preview of what a day in the studio with Zak Claxton is like, here's a video from a session last summer.

Notes Shack (04.25.10)

We ended up having a good time today at the Notes Shack, even though I started out pissing and moaning about the light attendance. However, we gathered a decent crowd toward the end, and people seemed to be having fun. More importantly, I began having fun, and that's why I do this stuff, right?

Notes Shack Set List...
Shine (Zak Claxton)
Time Never Waits for You (Zak Claxton)
*Thank U (Alanis Morissette)
Thanks Anyway (Zak Claxton)
You're Like a Cloud (Zak Claxton)
Nobody Home (Pink Floyd)
Fire & Rain (James Taylor)
This Afternoon (Zak Claxton)
Ziggy Stardust (David Bowie)
Falling Down (Zak Claxton)
Always Tomorrow (Zak Claxton)
Behind Blue Eyes (The Who)
†Furry Sings the Blues (Joni Mitchell)

*Indicates the first time I've performed this song in SL
†Last performance of "Furry Sings the Blues": January 30, 2009, the only other time I've played it.

Thanks to everyone who supported my show today at the Notes Shack!