ScottStuff

I have been having an absolute ball playing music with my road family and introducing our fans to a new show, new look and new vibe. It is quite a ride and I certainly am enjoying it. I know how lucky I am and I need not look very far to see exactly what it is that makes my life so complete. I have two wonderful sons that are healthy and full of life. I have an awesome wife that takes care of all of us better than anyone else ever could and I have a gig that brings me a great deal of personal and creative satisfaction. Life is good!

Last night I met a young man, Evan age 9, who is the grandson of a friend and business associate of mine. His father recently passed after a long battle with addiction. I can’t tell you how much this scenario haunts me. the idea of my kids having to grow up without their dad, the notion of a family broken forever and ever. A father and mother that gave everything to save their son’s life, but in the end, still lost the fight. This is really heavy stuff and the feeling it gives me stays with me like an unrelenting bad memory. When Buddy asked me to accommodate his family with tickets and hang out a bit with his grandson, I was more than happy to oblige. I didn’t know exactly what I was in for, but I certainly didn’t expect to meet an 9 year old that has clearly figured out a great deal of what life is truly all about. Precocious, sporting a winning smile and cool demeanor that made me feel as if we were old friends, I was smitten. Here’s this kid that has been through more than any child ever deserves to go through,  yet he is simply together, sweet and very much alive. He has clearly made a choice to live his life and to do so with happiness and love leading the way.  I know that he has a great family to help, a doting mom and devoted grandparents that clearly love him, but ultimately it’s up to each of us to be shiny, happy people and Evan shines all by himself.

This has been a long run for me and I miss my wife and kids terribly, but seeing this young man reminded me how sweet life can be if you just let it. I hope that neither myself or any of you suffer any unnecessary loss in this life, but in the hard times let’s try to remember how lucky we all are to even be here on the big blue spinning sphere. Let’s give thanks and remember that life is good….and let’s let it be.

S

Hello Blogophiles,

I have spent an inordinate amount of time in southern California this month. When we work on the opposing coast, or the west coast for those of geographically challenged, it is usually easier to just hub out of a central location as opposed to flying back and forth across this great expansive nation of ours. Lucky for me,  I like it here in sunny California. I actually lived here briefly in the very early nineties whilst attending The Musicians Institute in Hollywood, but that’s another blog. I really enjoyed my stay back then, but I must say that since that time I have discovered parts of LA county and it’s surrounding areas that are only discoverable by car, which I did not have then (I was green <broke> before green was cool<nerd>). I have had the good fortune to learn the lay of the land in parts of Malibu, Santa Monica and Venice, otherwise known as “the coast” and I highly recommend it if you or your employer has the means.

Anyway, while staying at my home away from home this month, there was an all too common celebrity sighting by Thad and Jennifer. Not that Thad and Jennifer are the only ones able to commonly sight celebrities, although that would be a funny super power. Super Sighters! Able to spy celebrities in a single glance…. the thing that made this sighting unusual was that neither Thad nor Jennifer could place the face of the sightee, though they both agreed that she was a “she” with blond hair AND they thought she might have been an actress on the Love Boat. After considering those few precious but telling facts, I deduced that there were only a handful of main stay actors on the show which should prove this quandary easily solvable. Neither T nor J (TJ Hooker….ha!) are old enough to have this sort of information readily available in their cerebral cortices. After I ran through the list of characters on the show I was shut down by the Super Sighting Twins. Alas, It was none of the regular cast. So I decided it must of been one of the many guest stars that were common and, in fact, central to that show. A fine use of my deductive reasoning skills and mid field memory bank I must say…and I just did.

My next move is pedestrian but effective. I did what any of us do when we want a reliable, air tight answer these days, I hopped on the World Wide Web and made a b-line for Wikipedia, you know, that trusted beacon of truth beaming out hard to find nuggets of useless information. Anyway! That led to a list of actors and actresses so long that it actually freaked me out a bit. I started to remember details of the show and of course it’s creator Aaron Spelling. What a genius that guy was. Think about the initial concept for that show. Let’s create a fun setting where you can drink and eat and be entertained, like a cruise ship. We’ll come up with a storyline from week to week that includes a little drama, some situational comedic fodder (and for that we will have a zany character named “Gopher”) add in the occasional life lesson shared between father and daughter or cruise director and captains daughter or at a bar on the lido deck with Issak, then we set sail for some exotic destination every week where we can have a blast filming b-roll footage the network can use for every made for TV movie hence forth. No wonder there were so many top shelf actors ready and willing to “jump on board” and when I say “top shelf”, I mean the shelf closest to the ceiling, but I mean to imply the best of the best actors. The list of thespians on this gig is pretty unbelievable <insert sexual joke here> it reads like a SAG members directory from 1985 and even sports a few current names like Janet Jackson and Hulk Hogan. I realize the Hulkster isn’t that current, but you get the idea. So how do you follow that act Aaron? Glad you asked. Instead of a cruise ship, just go straight to an island. An island full of fantasies (with one small exception) sorry Herve. Aaron was good for sure and I enjoyed watching those shows as a kid. Of course I didn’t have a thousand other channels to choose from, but if I had I would of still watched that crazy boat show assuming Gilligan’s Island wasn’t on TBS.

As far as I know we never did figure out who the would be Love Boater sighting was. My last guess was Charo. Maybe you can figure it out…coochie coochie ya’ll!

Just in case you don’t wanna google it, here’s the list.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Love_Boat_guest_stars

To blog or not to blog, that was my question. The following is my answer:

This year I am making a commitment to myself to document the years events through these handy dandy blog entries. It is my hope to be entertaining, but also truthful about my world. I often look at my life and I have to smile. I have been very fortunate to have made some good choices, been in the right places and get to know some good and talented people. I am looking forward to sharing some of those relations and experiences with you. I am writing this from my home outside of Atlanta a few days before the first Sugarland show of the year in Las Vegas. We have been off of the road since before the winter of 09. This has been a routine in my life for several years now, but it’s still an odd feeling, having that much time off and then coming back to work full bore. We had a few weeks to re-acclimate to the old music, learn the new music and then work up a brand new show. This includes a lot of production, which is to say gags and props and making sure things look right on stage then marrying all the music to that world. I have to say that I am more excited this year than I have ever been. We have taken more than a few steps forward since last year. There are things happening in my professional life that I literally used to dream about  when I was a kid. We are a lucky bunch and I hope that I never forget it, but if I do I can always look back on this post and remind myself or at least have someone else look back on this post and remind me.
It’s gonna be a fun year full of new experiences. I hope you will check in periodically and read all about it.

All the best,

Scott