CitizenMofo

Thank you, Wayne. I only wish I knew how to get songs on the radio. That would be nice. But until then, all the songs I recorded with Sunny War are at thesunnysessions.com, if you ever care to check them out.

Thanks, Danke. Yeah, we had a great run for six months. But all good things must come to an end. I may not ever have another run like that, where the songs come so easy, but it was sure fun while it lasted.

Thank you, Paul. I really appreciate your comments on the song and the video! The piano is a loop, so all hail looperman. Yes I made the video, using free public commons footage (a lot of amazing stuff available) and Windows Movie Maker, very simple to use and a free video is the result. So happy you like it!

Right on. A la Jim Croce - was just thinking about him the other day and how he wrote some of the best songs ever (like "Time in a Bottle"), so simple, so beautiful. Sunny needs no pitch correction in her vocals, and her guitar work is on point every time. I'm glad you like simplicity as I do, and thank you for your comment!

Thank you! FYI, I started using LANDR online mastering and love the convenience and cost - $300 for unlimited mastering for a year, much better than the service I was using. If you're referring to a little zip that occurs, that's part of the guitar sound and I decided to leave it. If you're referring to something else in the mix, ah well - these tracks are probably locked down forever. There are definitely imperfections in the songs but I'm glad you respond to the overall sound. (I think there are lots of someones from the past in this sound...) Thank you!

Thank you! Sunny War has a voice for the ages, and plays guitar like no other. What a pleasure it was to work with her! If you want more, all 55 of our songs are on thesunnysessions.com. Appreciate your comment!

Sunny War is awesome. When I started working with her, she thought of herself as a guitar player, not a singer or a bass player. Now she's played bass on 55 of my tunes, so she's a bass player. And with all the positive looperman feedback I've shared with her on her vocals, she's got to feel like a pretty fine singer now. Thank you, and I will share with Sunny!

Thanks, Orlando. I'm smiling now.

Thanks. :)

Thank you, Spivkurl, and sorry I'm so delinquent in my reply. Your thoughtful comments are fantastic to read.

Yes, we live in a sea of propaganda, distortion and suppression. It has always been that way. In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church make it a capital crime to translate the Bible from Latin into any native language. People were burned at the stake for doing so. That way, the priests could say what the Bible said, could control it, and could use their restricted knowledge as means to get money, through the sales of "indulgences" for sin, where people could pay a fee to the church and get their slate wiped clean in heaven, so they were told. It's similar today, except it's not the Bible, of course, but the facts that show our country is completely fucked up.

I appreciate your detailed comments on the music as well. Sunny did some amazing guitar work on this piece, but then again she did on pretty much all 55 songs we recorded. She is something special. I made a video for this song, fyi, which is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTXDOYVJMO0&list=PLwqrYdLC9-Z5qkDNGCjbM0_Q2RNZKwBeN

Thanks again.

Thank you! Very much appreciate your comment and I know Sunny will when I pass it on to her.

Hey phatkatz, no problem on the guitar. I may not be seeing Sunny for a while so you can always connect with her directly as well, you may already have thru Facebook, which is cool. In the last week of the Sunny Sessions, I got laid off from my job, which is hilarious. Perfect timing, cuz any earlier and I'd've had to stop. The six months working with Sunny were the most creative - and creatively satisfying - in my life. Sunny's not only a fountain of music, she's a magnet for it, and she pulled music out of me like never before. The songs came so easy, and the recording sessions were so loose and fruitful, with the three of us in the room (incl. recording engineer) becoming the tightest little song making team you ever saw. Man, it was beautiful. A very special time for me. I'm sad it's over, but then again I have 3 solid hours of Citizen Mofo ft. Sunny War songs to enjoy for the rest of my life, and I just couldn't be happier with the results. Thank you for all your support along the way! And have fun in your new home!

Thank you, Ed. Feedback like this really keeps me going, especially coming from you, as you're pretty revered around this joint. I love the creating part, hate-the-trying-to-get-it-out-there part, but I need to slog through it so that more people can hear this stuff. Even just registering all the songs on ASCAP (55 of them) is a lengthy chore, and I am one of the world's great lazyasses. Give me a joint and headphones and I'm done. So, anyway, I really appreciate your feedback - it is very motivating. Thank you!

Thank you, Xmachine. This actually started out as a piano piece, fully orchestrated, but I decided to junk it all and just let Sunny play. And that was the right decision. Yes, Sunny is a very special singer and on top of that a world-class guitar player. I will pass this on to her. Thank you!

Thanks so much, Xmachine. This is a special one for me so I'm really glad you like it. Sunny War, the singer and guitar player, is simply amazing. Thank you.

Thank you! Yeah I love it when songs just come into my mind out of nowhere and suddenly I'm singing it. Feels like gifts from the spirits... I appreciate your comment!

Thank you, Silverman. Sunny is a pro, a working musician but just barely scraping by. It's a damn shame because in my eyes she's a superstar - a guitar goddess with an angel's voice, I mean, what a package I was blessed to get to work with. It definitely pushed me as a songwriter. Had to bring in stuff that was worthy of her talents. The last six months was very very special creatively. Now I'm working through all the getting-it-out-there steps I should have already done, and maybe I can make something happen eventually...... Please check out thesunnysessions.com sometime when you have some time. All 55 songs are on there. Thanks again!

Thanks, Shatner. Much appreciated. Yes, Sunny brings the emotion but it seems so effortless for her, she just stands unmoving at the mic, head cocked, and delivers. And the guitar comes just as easy. Music just flows out of her. We recorded this song in 2 hours, start to finish, and Sunny had never heard it beforehand, and the first draft was the final. Lucky me.

Thank you, Danke. This piece makes me happy in every way and I'm glad you like it too. This song along with all the others is at thesunnysessions.com. It's in the "Rising" album. "Rising" and "Burning" are the last two albums we did, one personal, one political, in what I think of as volume 2 of the Sunny Sessions. I think they're the tightest of the 5 albums. Please let me know if this works for you. Thanks!

Thank you, Spivkurl. That hiking trip sounds epic. And sad. And traumatic.

I think this song had something to do with my mother dying, although it was a couple years afterward. I wrote another song around this time, which I recorded with a different singer, that made me weep too. It's called "Just Let It Go" and it rose up inside of me when I was driving at 3 a.m. and made me sing it. Crazy things, songs. They can really mean something sometime - personally. But you're never sure if it gets across.

Thank you for your comment which made me very happy.

Thanks, man. Those are good things to be reminded of so, right on. I'm very very happy with the results we got in the Sunny Sessions. Mic drop. The world still doesn't give a crap, but mic drop anyway.

Thank you, Silverman. You made my day. Dylan defined a great song as one that seems like it's been around forever, so reminding you of the '70s is all right with me.

Protest is hope, and hope is in short supply these days. How absurd hope looks in the face of such enormous government corruption and general hatred. When there's no hope then out of hopelessness comes random acts of violence, and these are increasing on a daily basis. I fear that now any protest risks being a violent clash between the people and the government or between the people of one view and the people of the opposite view. We've had a house this divided before, and guess where it led? 620,000 dead. Ah, music. Can it make any difference?

Jeez, I wish I knew how to get things on the radio or to get any success at all, beyond the intense soul satisfaction that I'm feeling at the moment, having completed the project. But I'm working through the necessary steps, and maybe I can make something happen this time. Thanks for your comment, it gave me a boost.

55 songs in multiple sessions over 5-1/2 months, not just one session...

Thanks for the comment and feedback!

Yeah, these are ridiculous times. When Watergate was going on, which I remember well, we had just come out of the turbulent '60s, the protests, the Civil Rights movement, the riots, the assassinations, Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News with the nightly body counts, the Kent State killings, etc. Nixon had just kicked off the unconstitutional and illegal "War on Drugs" in order to target first Vietnam protesters and then blacks, and here we are, 46 years later, still waging that suicidal mission against ourselves. Having been alive for a long sweep of history, I look back and it's pretty clear that that's where the slippery slope really started which has landed us at this low point of moral degeneracy and sheer insanity as a country. I can't even begin to process the scope of our degradation and lack of understanding of the most basic, basic aspects of democracy, freedom, and decency - not to mention the ability to differentiate good from evil. It's no surprise that the stunning violence of Americans on Americans is growing every day. As hopeless as it is, all I can do is make songs as my witness to the insanity and my criticism of the bullshit. Otherwise I'd go crazy. Thanks for listening and for your thoughtful comment, I really appreciate it!

Thank you! I appreciate you taking the time to listen and comment!

Thank you. We've done some harder guitar-driven stuff on the BURNING album too so stay tuned... It's all on thesunnysessions.com though. Thanks for the comment!