Greetings everyone. I'm quite excited to announce the decision to take this show on the road next summer! We've had a lot of fun playing in and around our back yard these last few months, and we've met a ton of new people, and I know that this is only going to get bigger and better as we go to new places.

As with the release of the album, Waves, this tour will truly be a labor of love. I have no booking agent, no promotional staff, no manager, and no street team. What I do have is a strong desire to get out there and bring this love and music to as many people as possible. I also have google, the help of some good friends and fellow musicians, and most importantly: you!

That's why I'm writing now, to ask for your help. If you're on the east coast and want me to come visit, send an email to tour@jdavydwilliams.com. What I'm looking for are specific venues that can host us for a night, and help us out with a little money, a place to stay, some (vegan) food and a certified way to get the word out about the show.

Good examples are yoga studios, open minded nightclubs, coffee shops, book stores, and churches... but basically, if it's got a sound system and enough room for a chunk of people to sing kirtan in, it's worth mentioning. Even the sound system isn't totally required under the right circumstances!

The first date is already booked for June 4th, at the Integral Yoga Institute in NYC.

Expect to hear a lot about this from me in the coming months!

Om shanthi,

Jdavyd

So, here’s the short (but longer than 140 characters) explanation about my change of heart regarding twitter.

Social networking has been on a climb for years. When I first go into the internet, we had to walk 10 miles backwards uphill in the snow naked just to update our diaryland pages.

After a while, livejournal was the cool thing… and get this, you had to be *invited* to join LJ, so it wasn’t just for everyone, only the *cool* people. Eventually that changed, and anyone could join, but by then we had all gone to myspace. Then came facebook (which you could only use if you were at college… sound familiar?) and then twitter.

(I know there’s a million others in their as well. Friendster, I still love ya baby.)

Now we can have a CMS on our own domains that updates all of our other various web projects. One blog update to rule them all!

Anyway, twitter always bugged me. The concept – updates limited to only 140 characters – seemed to be the perfect example of our culture’s short attention span. We aren’t going to write any more than 140 characters because no one wants to read more than 140 characters anyway, so why bother pushing our friends/family/strangers to do more? There were some exceptions, like the use of twitter in Iran earlier this year, but the majority of what I coming out of twitter was: Keep it short, make it shorter!

So this week I was at an AA meeting, and the topic was Slogans. There are a shitload of them in AA.
One day at a time.
Easy does it.
Meeting makers make it.
Keep coming back.

I mean there are literally pages of these things. One person said their sponsor hated the slogans, and described them as, “Like being stoned to death with refrigerator magnets.” Another said it made them feel like they were in preschool.

Sound like twitter to you?

I hadn’t though much about them one way or the other, but it was an interesting thing to listen to people talk about, because most people saw these slogans as tools, and not unlike the memory aids we learned in school. One small phrase to connect you to a larger, greater lesson. Please excuse my dear aunt sally, anyone?

This sort of got me thinking about Mantras, as well, and how if you develop a practice around saying a mantra, it can act as a rope to pull you back towards your center in any given situation. It’s not unlike Kirtan, either, right? A simple word or phrase, and we instill it with power. The phrase isn’t the important thing, it’s the power we put behind it.

All of this sort of made me rethink my disdain for twitter, and the culture surrounding it. I can’t deny that there are people who are and will use it to shorten their already dwindling attention spans… but that doesn’t meant that I can’t choose to use it for something larger.

So, here it is: http://www.twitter.com/jdavyd

I promise if you don’t like twitter, you won’t like this either.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/squeez-bacon.html

"Each serving is as healthy as real bacon..."

When prop 8 passed in California, there was a shot of the reaction from the campaign headquarters. I'll never forget this. At the center of the image was a guy in a suit throwing both hands up, mouth agape in pure jubilation of victory. It was as if he's just won the Lotto. I just couldn't understand how someone could be so thrilled about having gotten so little. What did he get? Nothing. How did his life change? Will he not have to get up for work in the morning? Are his bills any cheaper? Has a loved one who was sick been cured? Does he get more money, video games, blowjobs, or whatever he likes to do in his spare time? He gets nothing. It was all because it felt so good to hurt someone.

Me: if someone uses the wrong method with the wrong technique, does that mean they did it right?
Arcadia: it means they're pregnant.

livejournal... i need your help.

i need some record reviews that don't suck. as a result, i need your advice on where to send the record to be reviewed.

let's have it!

So THIS is why Marshall hasn't been working on the Tacit Act album...



Yeah. Makes sense.

My monthly kirtan at the Twisted Branch is coming up this Friday. I am really quite excited about this for a number of reasons. First of all, we’re going to be sharing the bill with Ali Youssefi, who is one of my favorite local singers. He performs deeply spiritual music steeped in the teachings of the baha’i faith, but also carries the interfaith torch as we do.

Secondly, I’m going to be playing with a different lineup of Basement Bhaktis. Arcadia and Patrick will be there on Shruti box and Keyboards, respectively, but I’m also going to be joined by Kevin Ardrey on drums and Chris Rhees on Djembe. Leia Manuel will be on hand to sing responses, and old school Basement Bhakti Courtney Miller will be joining her. You may even see accordian player Tom Lynch in the house… anything’s possible! There’s a lot of new and different energy in this lineup and I’m quite excited to share it with you all.

Doors are at 9pm, and the cost is $5. Here’s that flyer again, in case you missed it!

Om Shanthi Shanthi Shanthi,

i've redubbed the basement bhaktis for the october 23rd show: me-tabla-ca. say it out loud.

occasionally in firefox, i seem to lose the ability to click between my tabs. i can still manually select the tab via the drop down list at the end, but if i click just on the tab itself, nothing happens. this continues until i restart firefox.

MAJOR BUMMER.

does this happen to you?