Hey Friends, a big wind is blowing and the ocean is dancing with whitecaps. Classic springtime look and loving it!

Last week a talented young muso named Justin Froese brought his completed CD by to celebrate the cool ride we had recording it. It’s done and what a good feeling after all of the details and remixes. Here Rules finds Justin on guitar and vocals along with bassist Gunnar Biggs and Jesse Charnow on drums exploring 10 of Justin’s original tunes. Set in a guitar driven folk style Justin has some great lyrics and creative direction in his music—including some sweet grinding guitar! Click on the photo to the right to be transported to more info on Justin and his music. Good news!

On Friday Leonard and I made our way to the California Center of the Arts to dig on Pat Metheny and Brad Mehldau exploring new sonic territory. Tremendous music and enormously rich sound traveling from just the two of them on acoustic instruments all the way to the quartet hitting hard and Pat transmuting thick doses of synth guitar. We all heard it and it rocked! Afterwards Leonard and I made it backstage to thank the musicians for being so insane and Leonard’s cell phone snapped this compromised picture. Can you even tell it’s us hanging with the wizard?

On Sunday we gathered the gang and played a show at the 101 Artist Colony in Encinitas. What a great spot and dig this, 2 stoplights from my house — zero freeway time for this one folks. The music was fun, complicated, simple, moving, worry filled with some mistakes, loud, quiet, inspired, and not inspired. All of this and we had a spirited audience that was taking it all in with enthusiasm. Big fun in Leucadia. We’re sorry to see the Colony go as it’s slated for a bulldozer at the end of next month and some fancy town homes are on their way. Danny, the cool man the runs the show, will prevail though. He’ll find some new place on the brink of disaster and turn it into an artistic enclave for as long as the art can outrun the bank. We’ll be running with you amigo!

For this week, guitarista Fred Benedetti and I gear it up for a duo concert in Bonita as part of the Perfect Pitch concert series. There is a good man who runs the ship there and he’s got a young magic kid guitarist opening up for us. Then Fred and I will take the stage and do our thing which includes jazz, flamenco, folk, Celtic, samba, and shockingly rocking. Yep folks, the acousticas are burnishing distorting devices and they plan to ignite them at least once during this show. Hope you can come and see the sparks fly…

That’s it, Peter