During this time we invented a company, Watchfire Music, to sell our product and to be the machinery behind all of our musical efforts.  It has been just that for us, and so we continue to try to make it all work during these historically toughest of times.

My approach has been to try new things to see if they would work, to stay creative and turn out good and great product and to sometimes pause and simply watch where the world, and especially our industry, is going next.

If we were a rich organization, if there were an endless financial stream of support, we could be leaders in the industry – we certainly know and understand the technology and keep up to date on the evolution of music and the Internet – but we don’t have that deep well of cash.

Many companies have tried to lead and gone down trying.  We have survived because we have stayed small and nimble, watching for the technology to evolve to a point where the industry would settle into a music delivery system that would make sense during this collapse and ever-changing time.

To a certain extent, it has worked.  We’ve not spent millions of investor money.  We have a powerful and well-developed ecommerce website that is pretty automated, easy to manage and graceful to change.  And we have gone from a start-up company to more than a breakeven company in these 5 years of both success and failure.

Have we failed?  You bet.  I could name 20 great ideas that have come and gone and now only exist in the depths of one of my hard drives.  Have we had our share of successes?  Another “You bet”.  After all, we’re still here.

Will we change things again?  A third YOU BET.

It seems now that with the success of Spotify and Pandora, music is now a streaming medium.  For the average Joe with their smart phones and iPods and iPads and whatever new fandangled thing is just over the next horizon, music is available to be searched and found, listened to at any time and collected in organized fashion – all for free.

This puts a serious dent in the ability to maintain a company that sells recorded music.  Oh yes, I know, there are still people who want to actually own their favorite music, still people who want to play their music on their CD players and hear the music at its quality best, but unfortunately they are a rapidly dwindling few.

Case in point:  We have one lovely man and wife set of “customers” who absolutely love WFM Radio and are often found writing us and suggesting new programming, updating of our channels and new ideas for better radio.  They are devoted listeners to our free radio.  They have never bought a single download.  They’re happy with what we give them, but do not buy.

I look at all this and wonder…

Where do we go from here?

Over the next months we will continue to watch, listen, work and pray.

This Christmas I have a new CD, Goin’ Home, coming out that is presently the hope of our company.  We’re going to do new things in new ways that we’ve never done before.  We’re going to try to do everything in our power and imagination to reach people with this life-changing and life-supporting idea.  We’re going to spend more money than ever before on promotion and packaging and quality.

My favorite quote from music blogger Bob Lefsetz sits before me here on my desk.  “But can you build something so good people will be drawn to you?” It’s all I think about these days.  I will tell you this:

We’re gonna give it a shot.

Even More Inspiration

• Spiritual Scientist
• By The Numbers?
• Phoenix Rising
• Gabriel, Come Blow Your Horn
• Light At The End Of The Tunnel
• Even Now

Note: The following is a compilation of several posts and some new updates intended for newer readers of this blog.  Much has been written about our new project, Goin’ Home.  If you’ve been following all along, you may find some redundancies here; however, if you’re somewhat new to the project, you’ll find here a summary of events and thoughts that will bring you somewhat up to date.

What if today you could go over to your neighborhood grocery, grab that cart and shop for anything your little ol’ heart desired, then, instead of getting into the checkout line, skip that and just head home with your groceries – steak, shrimp, Haagen Daz, throw in a little Kobe Beef, some chocolate truffles and perchance a tin or two of Almas Caviar.

When you got outside with your overflowing shopping cart, the police would be there, but would just look the other way as you passed by chuckling gleefully, licking your chops.

What a great idea!  Why don’t we do this?  Food should be free!  I think most of us would agree that life would be a lot easier if food were free.

Trouble is, after very little time, maybe the next time we went back to the supermarket, the aisles would be empty, the shelves bare.  “Hey, all the food is gone!” you might cry.  “Well, let’s go back to the farmers and get more,” the store manager would say.

So we’d go to the farmers and say, “Hey farmers, make more food!”  They would respond like this:  “Without getting paid, it’s just too hard.  Sorry, but there’s just no more food.  We’re gonna go do something else.”

Well, essentially that’s what just happened to the music business – except for one problem.  Of course the farmers equal the artists in this little analogy and the artists, who love to make music, are still saying, “Oh cool, you like my music? You actually want to listen to my music?  OK, I’ll give it to you for free!”

So it’s gonna take a little time before this situation is righted.  Give the starving artists a chance to really starve.   Then they won’t be able to make any more music no matter how much they love to do it.  Cuz we all gotta eat!

We are, today, living in that era of empty aisles and starving artists.  The music business has collapsed under the weight of horrible leadership. (The four majors ignored the power of the Internet for so long that now they’ve missed the boat.) File sharing and outright stealing have become the norm for millions of young people.

The unfair treatment of artists by the companies has long been legendary (the companies themselves would always make back all their investment before the artists ever saw a cent of their royalties), and now development money has completely dried up as both the major record labels and the indies struggle for survival.  Where would the pharmaceutical industry be without research and development?  Nowhere.

That’s the old record business.

But all is not lost.  Never before in the history of the world has music been more proliferate.  Everywhere we turn, there is music.  “The day the music died” is a virtual impossibility.  Music is simply that much a part of the human consciousness.

So, as part of the natural order of things, a new world emerges.  Out of the ashes of the old one rise new ideas, a more fair treatment of the artists by now paying royalties on first dollar earned, and a cutting edge approach to new ways of approaching fans and customers.

It is a renaissance time in which the artist is now asked to be both business person and artist.  Not only must he be able to play his guitar, but he must also be able to understand the constantly changing evolution of the Internet and its powers.

In most cases today, the artist must be his or her own investor, marketing department, graphics designer, videographer, accounting department and retail store.  Selling from their own websites, many artists have almost been able to accomplish the near impossible.  Where most fail is on the all-important level of promotion.  By the time the new music is finished, mastered and manufactured, there usually just isn’t enough money left to promote the product.

So the music sells to a few friends and family and sits quietly on a website among millions of other sites that perhaps receives a hundred hits a month, if they’re lucky.  And the music languishes on a virtual shelf.

One thing we know for sure: Acts who tour, sell.  Acts who don’t, don’t.  So we must tour.  Touring is expensive, however, and the money is gone.  Often, many artists don’t even get to this point, running out of money before the CD is actually completed.  It’s a frustrating scenario.

However, now there is the hope of companies like Kickstarter.com and Indiegogo.com, on-line companies where artists and entrepreneurs with creative projects can raise money through crowd-funding from leagues of possible friends and supporters from around the world.

We are exploring this very real possibility right now with a new CD, Goin’ Home – On Heaven and Beyond to be released in November of 2011 and promises to be an in-depth look at a subject that many of us spend most of our lives avoiding.  Here is a joyful, sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, exploration of the transition from this world to the next.  It’s really a celebration of eternal life.

The CD’s purpose is to open our eyes to the timelessness of our future.  The vision is to take an open-eyed look at an eventuality we all will face one day and face it head on.

The music is drawn from both original compositions, and also from the rich tradition of beloved Spiritual songs and Gospel lyrics from the past hundred years of the American songbook.

Great traditional songs like In Dat Great Gittin’ Up Mornin’, When The Saints Go Marchin In, the title song, Goin’ Home, with Antonín Dvo?ák’s timeless melody, and even Spiritual classics, I Ain’t Gonna Grieve My Lord No More and I Got A Robe all receive new fresh approaches and orchestrations and tremendous performances by a powerful cast of New York session vocalists and guest artists.

The choir alone is worth the price of purchase.  Led by double gold album R&B/Gospel vocalist, Jenny Burton, it’s performers comprise an ‘A’ list of world-class back-up singers who have sung with just about every major star in the music business – from Celine Dion to Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Sting, Bobby McFerrin and even Luciano Pavarotti.  The list goes on and on.

They are flawlessly organized by vocal arranger, Margaret Dorn, (Bette Midler, Jennifer Lopez, Carly Simon, Michael McDonald, Garth Brooks, Diana Ross) and together create a sound that blends with both a rich meticulous warmth and also can get up and shout down the rafters when needed.  They are: Angela Clemmons, Keith Fluitt, John James, Kevin Osborne, Catherine Russell, Vaneese Thomas and Darryl Tookes.

Guest artists joining this gathering of superb talent include: Julia Wade, who with seven Inspirational solo CDs under her belt is Watchfire Music’s best-selling recording artist, Tom Tipton, who served for 29 years as a soloist at Reverend Robert H. Schuler’s internationally famous Crystal Cathedral and has sung for four U.S. Presidents, Barry Danielian, one of New York City’s most in-demand session players recording with such pop notables as Celine Dion, Paul Simon, Bon Jovi, Ricky Martin, and James Taylor, and AHMIR, the #1 most popular R&B group on YouTube with over 50 million views.

We also close the CD with a new song recently penned by Grammy award winning songwriter, Julie Gold, best known for Bette Midler’s version of her song From A Distance which won the Grammy for Song of the Year in 1991.  Come To Me As A Bird is a heartbreakingly beautiful new song that is sure to capture the imagination of millions.

Watchfire Music, www.watchfiremusic.com , an Inspirational music company and on-line store, will release this CD and be the machinery behind the product.  Without the machinery, it’s pretty much a dead end road no matter how talented you are.  That machinery is almost in place.  The company is now in the black and running off earnings and no longer investor monies.

However, we’re not a rich organization.  We have to find special funding for special projects.  This new Kickstarter concept is most interesting to us because we have such a loyal and appreciative customer base.  We receive letters every day from people around the world expressing their gratitude.

With the projected Kickstarter money we will hire an Internet publicist, who knows these new and far less expensive ropes very well.  We have little overhead.  We run our company from virtual offices in four cities across the country over Skype, the Internet and email with a little telephone thrown in.”

It’s a different world, but I truly believe we’re on the cutting edge of it.  The Internet is the new way and we’re using it and understanding it.  It’s an exciting new Phoenix rising that fascinates me every day.”

So, once again we mount another CD, another show, but with a stronger machinery behind us.  With the success of Watchfire Music over these past 6 years during the roughest period in the history of the music business, we have been able to put together a strong on-line presence, a smoothly working delivery system to tens of thousands of loyal customers and have an Inspirational record company and on-line store to back this project.

Let’s be honest here, however.  The future of the music business, with all the file sharing and “free music” concepts, is a very tough road ahead.  The Internet is the new Tower Records and the hope is that this new and challenging world will provide a new start and a better way.

We’re small, but nimble – perhaps not yet a supermarket, but rather an elegant deli finding it’s way through this new world.

A three-city tour and subsequent Internet webcasts of the live performances are in the planning stages for 2012.

To find out more go to:

http://kck.st/o9vUvR

Even More Inspiration

• Light At The End Of The Tunnel
• Spiritual Scientist
• Love Is The Reason For Living
• Looking Back on 2010
• I Stood In The Wings… Part 4
• The Changing Scene

This is our growing community. These are our Facebook friends, our tweeting family, our hands across the world.  The come from Africa, from Europe and South America, from Down Under and all across the U.S.  They are a world uniting to make a better world.

Sounds like a pretty high-falutin’ idea, but, in fact, it’s a reality.  It is organizing and it presently exists through social media, through mutual music appreciation, through spiritual seeking, through friends of Watchfire Music and even through a new CD project called Goin’ Home – On Heaven and Beyond.

It’s an idea that has created itself – not anything that anybody set out to create, but an idea that sprang up from necessity and natural evolution.  I see it coming and I simply try to open the road ahead to let it gain its own momentum in its own natural way.  This community has no leaders and no followers.  It’s a gathering of individuals, of originals, supporting one another with whatever it takes at a time when man really needs to reach out to his fellow man to survive.

I am eternally grateful for this community.  I am a member and I feel its value, its support and its bonding every day.  I watch it grow.  I fan the flames.  I sing its praises!

Even More Inspiration

• Spiritual Scientist
• How To Handle A Liar
• The Changing Scene
• Words Of Wisdom
• Light At The End Of The Tunnel
• Straight ‘A’s

Consequently we have begun a 30 day Kickstarter.com campaign to raise money to complete and promote a CD project that I’ve been working on now for over a year and a half.

It’s the making of new CD called “Goin’ Home” and a subsequent National Tour around this CD.  It involves an inspiring blend of great tradition and cutting-edge new music and deals with a very important aspect of each of our lives.

It deals with the experience at the end of our lives that we each face eventually that I like to call “transition”.

In the words of Jenny Burton, one of the project’s stars, “It’s a subject that, at first, we walk away from, but will walk towards one day, so why not walk towards it informed and without fear.”

I, personally, would like to go through that experience, when it comes, fully aware and alert, expectant joyful, and filled with spiritual curiosity.  When it comes to that transition, we Americans tend to look the other way and pretend that it doesn’t exist.  I don’t want to be like that.

What better way to prepare than to write about it.

So Goin’ Home is about Heaven and beyond.  I’ve thought from childhood that the much of the world’s perception of Heaven, though certainly idyllic, was really rather like a fairy tale or a Santa Claus story.  In a song entitled Heaven on the CD I write the following:

I don’t believe in Heaven
As a place up in the sky
A place where all the angels sit
As the clouds go passin by

I don’t believe in Heaven
Dressed in white and gold
A city in a world upstairs
Where all of our wings unfold
And a God sits upon his throne

I see it more as a state of mind
Since my body gets left behind
I see it more
As an open door
To a life of another kind

I don’t believe in Heaven
As a place this side of Hell
A place where all the good folks go
A place where the spirits dwell
An’ ol’ Peter a-rings dem bells

I see it more as a holy space
A place to pause
A spiritual base
I see it more as an open door
To a kind of a quiet grace

And when all is said and done
I think that Heaven
Like earth
Is what we make it
It’s a moment in the sun
It’s a cleansing time
In a state of grace
It’s a place where laughter reigns

Oh it’s Heaven
Heaven
It’s Heaven
Oh it’s Heaven

So this CD and eventual concert tour explores the eventuality that we all face at one time or another.

But it’s also an experience about music and great songs, and uplifting and joyful singing.  It’s fun, it’s funny, it’s rich in its depth and it definitely rocks the house.

Goin’ Home is written as a Gospel Cantata.  A cantata is simply short for “a musical composition for voices and orchestra based on a spiritual text.”

It’s performed by a mostly African American cast of top New York Session singers – great friends that I’ve worked with many years now.  In future posts I’ll tell you much more about this amazingly talented group of artists.

“So what is Kickstarter.com” you must ask.

Kickstarter is the largest funding platform for creative projects in the world. Every week, tens of thousands of amazing people pledge millions of dollars to projects from the worlds of music, film, art, technology, design, food, publishing and other creative fields.

A new form of commerce and patronage. This is not about investment or lending. Project creators keep 100% ownership and control over their work. Instead, they offer products and experiences that are unique to each project.

All or nothing funding. On Kickstarter, a project must reach its funding goal before time runs out or no money changes hands. Why? It protects everyone involved. Creators aren’t expected to develop their project without necessary funds, and it allows anyone to test concepts without risk.

We’re giving ourselves 30 days to raise the necessary $9500 of funding.  Those 30 days started October 3, 2011 and will end November 2, 2011.  I urge you to participate in this drive to not only support Inspirational music, but also Watchfire Music, the CD’s record company and on-line place of purchase.  Most of all, I ask you to support the uplifting idea behind the project.  Its purpose is to open our eyes to the timelessness of our future.

Your contribution, whether large or small, is critically important to the success of this endeavor.  Every dollar counts.  If each person on our mailing list just gave one dollar, we’d get there and beyond.

We’d love you to be a part of this very special event.

To learn much more about this endeavor please go to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/174116135/peter-link-goin-home-cd-and-concert-tour

Even More Inspiration

• Even Now
• My Body
• WFM Listening Room — Series II Opener
• What Is A Cantata?
• Gabriel, Come Blow Your Horn
• Light At The End Of The Tunnel

Check out our Home Page for the new player and our WFM Featured Video selection.  These specialized programs will be rotated and updated weekly and will feature some of the best we have to offer.  Soon you’ll also find the new player on the DSM Home Page as well.

And if you want to dig deeper, simply go to the Nav Bar and pull down the Video window and visit either The Best Of The Web or WFM Artists video libraries of our ever-growing collection of Inspirational music and video.

Many of us receive sometimes daily, sometimes weekly video links to the wonderful funny, touching and musical videos posted on YouTube.  If you’re like me, you watch them, oft times share them with friends and family and then throw them away because you have no place to keep them.

Well now you do.

When you see something special that you might want to watch again somewhere down the line, or share with a new friend months from now, just go to the WFM Video library and re-experience the laughs, the tears – the Inspiration.

How do you use this service?  We’ve worked hard to organize and make easy this simple process.

Here’s how:

1. Grab the link.

2. Click here and send to us.

3. We’ll do the rest.

Next time you have a free 10 minutes give our new Video Library a try.  Guaranteed to brighten your day and enliven your soul.

Even More Inspiration

• The Changing Scene
• It’s A Small World And Gettin’ Smaller n’ Smaller
• Progress Afoot
• Phoenix Rising
• Dream Realized
• Goals And Motives

Many of our ideas were cast aside as too expensive, not timely, too small staff consuming, beyond our pay grade or simply not working.  But as we first survived, then broke even, then became a successful enterprise and finally moved from being a small start-up to just being a working company we found the balance between what we could do, what we should do and what we would do.

What we would do then evolved to what we are now and that, of course, is still evolving.  One of the grand ideas that we originally had was laid aside as too expensive, too understaffed and simply not the priority of the day.  But this was an idea the clearly needed to be a part of Watchfire Music, so we limped along with a “taster” for years.

This “taster” became an embarrassment to me because I want our site to be full of new stuff and up to date every week if not every day.

By now some of you long-time faithful have probably guessed that I’m talking about Video.  We’ve had a video player and some WFM artist videos on the Home Page and a Video Page where you can go watch a small collection of Inspirational videos, but the same stuff has been up there and available for several years now.

Now that’s gonna change – Big Time!  Next week, we’re proud to announce, that WFM is going Video!  We’ve always dreamed of being the place to be for Inspirational Videos on the web.  We started it, but it got a bit postponed in the process.  Now the dream comes true!

The Best Of The Web
It is called simply, The Best Of The Web because that’s what it is.  Now we’re building it and we’re committed to making it a terrific world-wide library for Inspirational video – clean and uplifting.  That includes great stories, beautiful pictures, powerful performances and lotsa music.

WFM Artists
Also now we’re committed to rounding out the huge library of our own artists and are in the process of collecting videos from each of them so that you might get to know them and their music on a deeper level.

WFM Featured Videos
We’ll organize all this and bring it to you on a simple level by featuring each week a new list of a staff selected best from The Best Of The Web and from WFM Artists.  Watch for WFM Featured Videos on the home page.  The other two libraries you’ll find on the Video Page.  [See: The Nav Bar on any page of the site]

We’re launching all this next week and are in beta presently and working out the flow so that you might have an inspired experience watching Inspirational videos from all over the world.

Here’s where you can help: When you see a video that someone sends to you (we all get them nearly every day) that makes you laugh, brings a tear to your eye, touches your heart, lifts your spirit or thrills your soul, just grab the link and send it to us and we’ll do the rest and get it up for everyone else to see.  We only ask that it be clean, fits our professional standard and truly inspirational on one level or another.  Also, it needs to be a YouTube video.

Here’s how ya’ do it: Easy as 1, 2, 3.

1. Grab the link.

2. Paste link into email and type “Video Submisson” into Subject line.

3. Send email to: videos@watchfiremusic.com

Please consider this your own library and take part in the collection.  Most of us see something we like, then don’t know where to put it and so cut it.  Now there’s a place to store it share it and find many others.

Be a part of it!

Even More Inspiration

• The Changing Scene
• Phoenix Rising
• It’s A Small World And Gettin’ Smaller n’ Smaller
• Goin’ Home – Digi-Book
• Here We Go – Video
• Light At The End Of The Tunnel

Said another way, it’s time to get organized – not just to get your stock in order, but more importantly, time to get your mind in order.  I’m probably advising and reminding myself here more than I’m speaking to y’all out there, but September 1 is always a good time to stop and take mental and physical stock.

Goals and motives – it’s a practice my parents taught me, and one that I’ve tried to pass on to as many as possible in my life.  Why?  Simply because it really works – big time.

Taking an hour or three and sitting down with your self, your spouse, your team, your partners, whatever, and drawing up a ten point plan for the next six months is a simple practice that can serve us all whether we run a large company or a small household.  It makes no difference how large or how small.  Having a plan is essential to all success.

But just having that plan is not enough… We have to ask ourselves why we’re gonna do what we’re gonna do and get those answers really clear for ourselves and especially make sure those answers are spiritually based rather than just materially based.  “To make more money” is just not enough.  That will take care if itself under the heading of God’s Supply in a most miraculous way if our goals and motives are straight.  That’s a promise.

We really have to look at what we do through the looking glass of one criteria: How does what we are trying to attain help others and, consequently, help the world?

I love my life in music.  It’s what I live to do, and for years I always felt that the part of it that was most rewarding was the actual doing, the making of the music.  Once I had finished with producing a song, I always said that I simply needed to throw it over my shoulder and move on to the next and I would be happy.  But that was not always the case.  Too often the song would just land on the shelf and sit there.

Then in one of my goals and motives sessions with myself a decade or so ago I realized that my motives needed revamping.  I needed to consider far more than just my own self and to make sure that the work I did reached and inspired as many as possible.   It was then that real fulfillment began to take place in my life.  The nature of my music writing and producing then changed to serve my motives.

My goals changed dramatically and I found myself revamping my studio, changing and focusing my life on a much more specific level and founding and developing Watchfire Music as a delivery system for not only my own inspirational endeavors, but also for the various styles of inspiration generated by so many of my friends and music associates.

The desire and need to create inspiring music and thought became the driver of my creativity.  I promised myself, “No more I want you, I need you, I love you songs.   I would write for the rest of my life songs that would reach for a deeper content, songs that would explore a more spiritual side of my thought.  Why?  Because I wanted to reach people with the goodness of what I had learned passing through this life and, sticking it out there, perhaps enable them through song to better their own lives in some small or hopefully even large way.

But in order to really be able to preach it, I knew I had to live it.  That’s not always easy in this materialistic world, as we all know, but as I grew in my own spirituality and commitment to my goals and motives, I changed the way I lived, dealt with people, handled my business ethics, and controlled my own shortcomings.  Personally, I looked at my shortcomings and decided to try to drop then for more long-comings.  Most bad habits are short sighted and greed based.  Think of life on a longer-sighted level and we see the truth more clearly.  Greed then tends to fall away.

I essentially decided that money was no longer the object of my business.  The object of my business is now to inspire – first to put myself in the receiving position by the way I live to receive inspiration, and then to pass it on through the music.

Well, for quite a while there, money, not being the object of my affection, no longer appeared regularly on the horizon.  I had to get used to the artist’s life.  I was never poor, always supplied, but excess became a thing of the past.  I’ve learned to live with this concept now and, in fact, find great happiness in it.  I no longer live in debt, I carry no credit cards, I only buy what I have the money for, and it works great.  I find that I am sometimes in want, but very seldom in need.

My whole life has changed for the better based on just one or two of these little 1-3 hour sessions of goals and motives.

Now it’s time to do it again and refine thought.  I shall sit down this weekend while the Missus is away singing in Boston with my beloved yellow pad and pen and draw up my new list.  Goals and motives – a good selfless motive for each goal.

Come Monday of next week I’ll have a new beginning, a new start on life.  And most importantly, I’m gonna know where I’m going and why.

Goals and motives.  Give it a shot.

Even More Inspiration

• The Changing Scene
• Phoenix Rising
• Community Of Like-Minded Originals
• Here We Go – Video
• Hitting The Wall
• Inspirational Music

Barry Danielian - Trumpeter

Yesterday I had a blast.  Inspirational music took on new meaning as I recorded virtuoso trumpeter, Barry Danielian, here in NYC at Link Recording Studios.  I needed a 16 bar trumpet solo for the song, In That Great Gittin’ Up Mornin’ which is the climax song on my forthcoming CD, Goin’ Home – A Gospel Cantata – On Heaven and Beyond.

I had lost my precious musician phone book last year with all its numbers and so I called my friend, guitarist, Chieli Minucci and asked him for a recommendation of a great trumpet player who could play like the angel, Gabriel.  Chieli recommended Barry Danielian.  When Chieli speaks; I listen.  I hired Barry for the gig.

I wrote the first 4 bars of the trumpet solo for Barry to get him started and then gave him the direction to improvise the rest, to keep it Gospel, make it hot, iconic, hotter, joyful, timeless and apocalyptic.  Think, in the climax of the solo, Gabriel on acid trying to blow the roof off the moon.  I sent him home to listen to the track for a couple of days and he showed up yesterday afternoon ready to go at it, trumpet in hand.

We did 6 takes – each one discussed relating to shape, development and mood.  Barry was the perfect partner in crime.  He listened, but also brought his great ideas and mastery of his horn to the moment.

As I mentioned, the first 4 bars were written, but I wanted the next 12 bars to be improvised with the last 2 bars of the 12 sliding back down into the vocals.  Since this was supposed to be Gabriel, the trumpeting angel of Biblical lore, he’d better be good.  Barry was great.  He fulfilled the promise, hopes and expectations beyond my dreams.

After he had gone, I took a couple of hours and studied the various takes and composited together the best of the 6 takes into a gorgeous and soaring angelic moment.  As I sat back and listened when finished, I found myself suddenly standing triumphantly and raising my arms above my head like Rocky on the Liberty steps.  It was a true moment of inspiration.

Barry (blue shirt) w/ Tower Of Power

We talk a lot about inspiration here at Watchfire Music.  It seems like we’re always trying to get there one way or another.  Well, yesterday we did it, and, best of all, when we got there, we had recorded it for all to experience.  That’s the great thing about music.  It can do its thing to you over and over.  It’s a wonder.

There’s nothing like working with a great musician.  It’s not just the way they play, or their mastery of their horn, or their chops that makes them great.  What always stands out to me is their ability to listen and to take direction.  You’d think that somebody with all that ability would not have to listen, but that’s often what separates the men from the boys – their ability and grace to drop their own ego and listen, to take input, and to collaborate.

Here’s a little more info on this modern Gabriel:

Trained from an early age in his first love, jazz, some of Barry’s most memorable performances have been with such greats as Dizzy Gillespie, Illinois Jacquet, Paquito DeRivera, and Branford Marsalis. Equally valuable in the evolution of his style were some of his first New York gigs, with Latin giants Eddie Palmieri and Tito Puente. Starting in 1984, he toured widely with these bands over a number of years and began an impressive series of Latin recordings with such artists as Marc Anthony and Ricky Martin.

Dizzy Gillespie & Barry Danielian

Barry’s mileage on the road increased in 1985 with the first of several tours with rock fusion giants Blood, Sweat and Tears, and subsequently with Paul Shaffer and the World’s Most Dangerous Band, Queen Latifah, and Jon Bon Jovi. The early 1990s saw Barry on world tours with Latin-pop star Emmanuel and funk legends Tower of Power.

During the mid-1990s, Barry began to realize the reputation he enjoys today as one of New York City’s most in-demand session players and arrangers, racking up more than 200 recordings with such pop notables as Celine Dion, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Natalie Cole, and James Taylor, as well as with touring partners Queen Latifah and Tower of Power. His Jingle/TV and motion picture credits (for Touchstone, Columbia, and others) from this period are too numerous to mention.

I am deeply privileged in life to work with the best.  Yesterday was just another one of those great life experiences of music and creativity.

Even More Inspiration

• Light At The End Of The Tunnel
• Even Now
• WFM Listening Room – Series II – Event 4
• WFM Listening Room — Series II Opener
• WFM Learning Lab – Grand Opening!
• The Decline of Lyrical Craftsmanship – Part 1