ericprincessdragon

Category: Videos

  • Finger Wizard, THE BAND!

    A couple months back I wrote a lengthy entry about a new instrumental shred project, and took a dive into my personal history and connection to this music and these artists. At the end of the entry, I noted that I wanted to call the band Finger Wizard, but I couldn’t get the other fellas to agree. Well, I’m pleased to announce that they accepted the name, and we are officially operating under the name Finger Wizard.

    As with any project, there is a mandatory process of throwing dozens of names at the wall to see what sticks. There were a number of twists and turns in names before I arrived at the name. I was noticing my fingers getting into rough shape while building my chops up practicing songs for the band’s repertoire. I wrote out a number of names to do with dirty strings and shredded fingers before this one came to me. I realized quickly after that I first heard the phrase in an obscure sketch by Metalocalypse creator Brendon Small — a parody of guitar instructional videos in which he plays a character called Thor Von Clemson teaching a course called “Thor Von Clemson’s Advanced Fast Hand Finger Wizard Master Class” I was a teen when I last watched it so not sure how it holds up.

    Soon after the band name came to me, I was on the road through central and eastern Oregon, playing a series of solo gigs around Salem before making my way out to Bend and back to the coast. It was during those travels that I started to imagine Finger Wizard not just as a funny band name, but as a character and a mythology. I really wanted the name to refer to something more than just simply the band and so I began to develop a vision of a cosmic wizard who listens to sounds from Earth and plays along. I started to think of the songs we were doing with the band as being the kind of material that this figure would be excited to listen to and play on his guitar.

    And so my mind began with a series of questions: Does the Finger Wizard dream up the sounds that we play here on Earth? Are we playing what he plays? Does he give us the power to shred? When we perform, is he listening/watching as if he was part of the audience? If that’s the case, do we speak to the wizard? Do we conjure him, or are we conjured up by him?

    Before I even got approval or denial from the band, I was on the road asking these questions and writing notes in between stops around Sisters and Bend. Travel was suddenly cut short as an unexpected stretch of heavy rain descended upon the region — expecting summer in the high desert, I hadn’t brought any boots or other rain gear, and I was camping out of the van, planning to hike and camp for another three or four days at least. Following the weather, I decided to cut the trip short and started heading home. I was driving along highway 242 — McKenzie Highway and came upon the Dee Wright Observatory.

    In the middle of a huge lava field, surrounded by cascade mountain peaks in every direction the Dee Wright Observatory stands. This structure was built in the early 20th century and it is made OUT OF LAVA! How cool is that? I felt so inspired as I explored the structure and soaked in the surroundings. It seemed like exactly the sort of structure where Finger Wizard would dwell! I started to develop a concept for the location and world where this cosmic being would call home. I took video to use for visual reference and inspiration:

    On top of the observatory there is a large bronze disk which points to each of the surrounding cascade peaks — listing their names, distance and height. This inspired the idea of Finger Wizard’s ‘all hearing orb’ — which is conjured to project sounds from around the universe. I had a clear image of the wizard on top of his tower, listening to music from our planet with his magical orb.

    Here are some better photos of the observatory I found online:

    Leaving this site I was bursting with ideas, a mythology was beginning to form. I took a ton of notes and made my way down the mountain pass, from the lava fields and into the forest where I spent the night in a lonely campground. I didn’t see or hear a single car for the rest of the evening. By the time I got up in the morning, it was pouring rain and I headed for the coast.

    Days later I was with the band and pitched the name — they shot it down before I had a chance to explain my feverish vision of the Finger Wizard mythology. I had even saved a folder of different wizard images to reference for character design ranging from clip art wizards, to Adventure Time’s Ice King and black mages from Final Fantasy IX. I was disappointed, but I let it go.

    Until the next gig…

    Above is the video flyer I made for our late July performance at Mr. Eds Underground Pub in Port Orford. It was during this performance that I talked about the name, bringing up Finger Wizard again, which had a positive response from the crowd, and then I noted that our next gig would be in Crescent City, CA at a renaissance festival… what better name for a renaissance shred band than Finger Wizard?! In that moment the fellas agreed to adopt the name and that was it. That very night I stayed up til the sun came up creating the design for Finger Wizard and his world.

    As I began to collage and design the character, experiment with fonts and logos and piecing together the world of FW. I really should learn to use photoshop because drawing, editing and collaging some of these elements took way too long. Zooming in and drawing each pixel with the touch pad long. The image above has around 50 layers of images including clip art, a cut up and duplicated paper image, photograph of the Dee Wright observatory and heavily edited photos of the cosmos from NASA. By the end of this overnight graphic session I felt great about the designs and laid the groundwork for the simple zine/comic I would put together in time for our next performance. Here are all eight panels in full detail:

    The pocket sized comics move from an introduction to the character on his home planet, to a band introduction here on earth, doubling as a booking and social media card. I’ve got some ideas for future comics, so keep an eye out at future gigs. I printed out a bunch of these to give out along with t-shirts and stickers. We are now all merched up.

    Our main collaborator in merch is Emily Jackson who hand printed all of our shirts. We worked together to refine the designs for the t shirts and she has been handling the merch table at our last shows.

    [I will add photos of the merch here later]

    By the way, here’s a video of us playing Zomby Woof by Frank Zappa at Mr. Eds


    Crescent City Renaissance Festival

    Our first official gig as Finger Wizard was on August 22, 2026 at a Renaissance-themed block party hosted by Enoteca and One King Entertainment. We got the gig thanks to our friends in Antique Dog, who were on the bill and got word from the promoter that one of the other bands had dropped out.

    We played an hour set outside and the sound was huge. On the coast we’re often expected to set up our own sound for gigs, relying on friends to advise us on the mix, but in this case we just showed up, plugged in, and within a few minutes we were rocking with great sound on stage and out front. The reception was warm and we got very high compliments from the promoters, stage crew and folks in the audience.

    This was also our first time playing a gig where we had merch. Right before I arrived at the venue I went across the street to pick up thirty printed copies of the zine and frantically folded a few just before taking the stage.

    One of the great things about performing as an instrumental project is that we don’t need to spend much time on the mic and I don’t need to be any kind of frontman — although I have been the one mainly addressing the crowd between songs. In general when performing I like to have fun with the crowd and tend to come up with intentions and concepts going into a performance. For this one I started repeating the line that we had merch — that we had T-shirts, stickers and comic books — and after repeating it multiple times between songs as the set went along, I decided to just keep saying it to the point where it became like a mantra. There were even people in the crowd repeating the words back as I spoke them.

    This would come back in a big way for our next performance at Hog Field.

    Here is a snippet of the solos from “Love Is The Saddest Thing” I found on facebook posted by Kenneth Hower on Facebook

    Here’s a nice comment I got from a local shredder who was in attendance.

    Hog Field Sixes Summer Sound Off!


    Our last gig was at a day festival up Sixes River Road on a property known as Hog Field. This event had been in the works for a couple of months so we’d had it on our calendar all summer. I participated in one similar event there years back — probably seven or eight years ago — but that was a one-off, and we didn’t know how this one would go. The day we arrived I was happy to see that the organizer was pleased and there was a big crowd in attendance. It was a hit.

    The night before, Emily had printed a bunch of T-shirts, so she had a huge stock prepared just for this day. Elaborating on repeatedly mentioning the merch in Crescent City, I got the idea to lean even more aggressively into the idea of selling merch — to take it to the point where it felt like playing music was only secondary to our goal of selling merch, like the band was just a vehicle for moving product.

    I take this as a parody of the reality that in today’s day and age bands have a better opportunity making money from touring and selling merch than they do selling recordings. The idea was turning that on its head and blowing it up to absurd proportions. We are so about selling merch that I would mention it during every break.

    The last thing I did before leaving the house was write up our setlist for the gig and print out copies for each of us in the band. I had already expressed to Ryan my intention to really lean into this merch-selling bit, and while preparing the setlist I was testing out fonts and found one that looked like some kind of hard rock or heavy metal font. It was upon viewing that that I got the idea to offer setlists at the merch table — and as I told Ryan about it, we had a laugh taking it further. What if we were offering signed setlists with our merch? We both found it hilarious considering that we’re pretty much nobodies performing obscure shred guitar instrumentals. So I printed out ten copies and packed them with the merch and a Sharpie before we took the stage.

    The three of us signed the setlists, and I came up with the first words I would say to the crowd. Before any introduction I just told them: first things first, we’ve got merch. We’ve got T-shirts, stickers, comics, and signed setlists.

    I told a few people — friends and other folks — about my concept for this bit before the performance, but most of the people there didn’t know us, so in hindsight they probably just thought I was somebody obsessed with selling merch. The reality is I am god-awful with business, commerce, making money, selling things. I am a bad capitalist. Regardless, every chance I had between songs I would mention the merch, even checking in with Emily directly, who was set up at our very well-stocked merch table. I don’t think I’ve ever played in a band that had so much merch, and just seeing the table itself was such a laugh and brought me much delight.

    The performance itself was great. Antique Dog, whose members were putting on the event, play very loud hard rock music, which isn’t too far off from the kind of material we’re doing — but otherwise the other acts were playing more classic covers and mellow originals, so we stood out from the previous entertainment and served to set the stage for the heavier music that was to come later in the day.

    There was a handful of people I could feel were really enjoying the music. One woman in particular came up with her elderly little dog in a stroller, thanking us deeply for the music. I had noticed her rocking out the whole time, along with a few other people who were jumping around, bopping their heads and cheering enthusiastically.

    At some point, Tony Houck (singer of Antique Dog and organizer of this event) told us that Finger Wizard was his guilty pleasure. I asked where the guilt came from, and said “there’s no shame in shred.” Here’s a photo he sent after the event:

    We actually did sell a good amount of T-shirts, and I told Emily to just give away the rest of the stuff I had made. Again — I’m a bad capitalist. I don’t have much of a mind for business, and I had already received my payment in just doing the bit. I was surprised that we gave away most of the signed setlists, and the T-shirt sales from that gig alone quickly got us to break even on the cost of the shirts and printing. I guess it’s all green from here on out.

    Ryan and I have come up with further ideas to push the merch bit to even more absurd heights, and I feel compelled to increase the variety of merch we have at the table. So look out for more Finger Wizard merch and memorabilia coming to a merch table near you. Emily told me that people were disappointed the comic wasn’t a full comic book, which got me excited to continue elaborating on the story and world of Finger Wizard.

    One thing I’ve been feeling strongly for years but finally integrated into the performances we’ve been doing lately: I’ve grown majorly fatigued of the performance culture in our area. Most events have one band playing two hours of music. I enjoy playing a lot and long performances can be fun, but I feel that two hours is pushing it, especially if you’re playing regularly with the same act. I see the same bands coming through Mr. Ed’s playing very similar sets month after month, and it’s something I’ve been feeling for the last couple years that I actively want to avoid.

    I’ve found a tendency with projects to start up with a lot of steam, building up a set, and then once the expected amount of time is prepared, the steam disappears and we fall into the routine of just playing the same material gig after gig — with rehearsals dedicated to keeping that material in shape rather than developing new music.

    With the members of Finger Wizard and some other collaborators I’ve been playing with over the last year, we’ve been doing many different performances with different lineups, different setlists, pushing ourselves basically every month to come up with a new concept. Finger Wizard was born out of this idea — I believe I talked about it in my previous entry, The Finger Wizards.

    With that said, we’ve got a solid one-hour set and we could keep playing this up and down the coast and wherever else we book for the next few years. But I think we all had the sense after the Hog Field performance that we’re ready to change it up. Since our first short performance at the end of April we’ve performed some of these songs about a half dozen times now, and we’re ready to build up new material. Both Ryan and I have been contributing original ideas in this style of technical shred rock, and we’ve begun developing this material as a band. Our goal is that by the time we perform again — which looks like it will be late October — we’d like to have at least half of the set swapped out with new material, looking toward all originals.

    I’ve found it very stimulating and rewarding to return to this type of material. It still challenges me. In the week leading up to the Hog Field performance I played more guitar and bass than I probably had in years, and the night before the performance my fingers were fried as I practiced the set. I could feel that I was really pushing my technique to the limit. My fingers were so sore, calluses worn down — I had saved the largest hurdles for the very end of a marathon, when I was close to the point of collapse. Still, it feels good to be getting my chops up, because I know my technique has improved in the quest to get down this very challenging material.

    As far as the composer brain, it’s been liberating. I’ve returned to a style of writing I haven’t done much of for many years, but it’s basically where I started — imagining melodies in my head and orchestrating them on the computer, specifically using an application called Guitar Pro. It was with this very program that I began notating my first musical ideas when I was just a young teenager, and I still have some of those files, preserving some of my earliest musical ideas from before I was actively recording and keeping voice memos and demos on the computer. In the last entry I mentioned a piece I had written called Crazy Stuff, which was most certainly notated this way as I was figuring out how to play those melodies on the guitar.

    With the new Finger Wizard material I’ve been writing, I haven’t been too concerned with the practicality of actually playing these guitar parts. I’m leaving those duties up to Ryan, who is a seasoned super shredder. I don’t need to consider the practicality of playing these lines or how to notate them on the guitar — that’s his problem. Instead I’m focusing on writing interesting grooves and movements, with melodies that carry the piece, trying to create pieces that hold their own amongst the set of shred classics we’ve been performing. I’m very excited to bring these ideas to life and to the stage, and I look forward to sharing them here soon.

    Our next performances will be in the last week of October and I’ll announce those dates soon.

    By the way — right after the Hog Field performance, Ryan and I took a trip out to Redding where we watched Mike Keneally perform in a small venue no bigger than Mr. Ed’s. It was a mind-bending performance with a stacked lineup: a band called Beer For Dolphins featuring Bryan Beller on bass and Joe Travers on drums and Rick Musallam on guitar.

    If ever there was a figure embodying the character of the Finger Wizard here on earth, it would definitely be Mike Keneally.

    That’s all for now.

    Remember: There’s no shame in shred.

  • Updates: Redwoods, Studio, Cornfield Blues

    It’s been a couple months since I’ve published any new entries on the site. I’ve got a few big entries in the works that I’ve yet to sit down and finish. For now, some updates from the last few months.

    Over the last months I’ve been spending a lot of time with family and dividing my weeks between my home on the Oregon coast and the new home of my dad and grandmother at the foot of the redwoods just outside of Crescent City, California. I was still a teenager the very first time I traveled up to see the redwoods. Walking in the redwoods and hiking coastal trails in Humboldt County deeply expanded my awareness of the diversity and vastness of nature and life on earth. Over the years I began to take regular trips up north and held a dream of living amongst the great coastal redwoods. My first realization of that dream was in my 20s when I settled on the Oregon coast, where I live just over an hour from the most northern coastal redwood growth outside of Brookings, Oregon. But now, in spending time with family, I also spend time in the redwoods two or three days a week on average – the dream of my late teenage years feels more real than ever before.

    It’s been about a year of taking regular trips to Crescent City, exploring the town and neighborhoods in a quest to find a suitable living situation for my family moving up from down south. But along with the time in the city, I’ve been exploring the beaches and trails along the coast, discovering nooks and trails through the redwoods along the Smith River. Throughout the fall, winter and spring I visited the Smith River countless times, and just last weekend, as we turned our cheek toward summer, I finally enjoyed back-to-back days of swimming the Smith.

    As I mentioned, my visits to Crescent City have been more about spending quality time with my family and exploring and discovering more of what the surroundings have to offer. I haven’t been so productive when it comes to my creative projects. I might do some editing or mixing, and I’ve been practicing and playing quite a bit down there, including on visits to the Smith, but overall I’ve been saving my music projects for home.

    At home, I’ve been working every day in my new home studio space. This has been a project in the works for nearly two years, since an existing structure on our property became unlivable due to serious storm damage. We spent close to a year just working on construction projects, and it would’ve been just over a year ago that the goal to dedicate space to recording first occurred to me. By the time the autumn rains began I had moved the majority of our equipment into the space, where there were still active projects of drywall, painting and attic/roof work to be done. I would spend several months shuffling gear around to accommodate projects, keeping a stripped-down recording space available throughout — the majority of all the demos I’ve recorded since fall 2025 were done in this space.

    Yet it wasn’t until about three months ago that I had finally removed all construction materials from the space entirely and had it set up for a live band rehearsal. Even then, it would still be a few weeks until the space was ready for live recording, as I was still putting up sound panels and generally unpacking and organizing gear throughout. There were so many tedious little projects along the way, and I’m still not on the other side of them. In the span of a week I must’ve spent over 20 hours organizing cables — wrapping them, adding velcro cable ties or twist ties, sorting them in piles and then crates, boxes and bags, and finding places for them. I still have a small box with miscellaneous cables that didn’t fall into simple categorization. With all that said, the space is now pretty well set up for recording and rehearsing, and we’ve got a few active projects happening within it. I will get to those across my next couple entries.

    My focus for a couple of weeks was a room where I’m setting up an analog work desk — a space for digitizing VHS tapes, playing, recording and reproducing cassette tapes and CDs, and playing back a variety of physical media. I’ve got a couple of boxes of home movies that I’ve been caring for for many years and only now have the space I could dedicate to setting up the equipment for digitizing them. That space is mostly together, but I’ve still got to figure out some solutions for shelving, storage and organization. What was previously a kitchen in this space is now the main working space, with a computer desk, studio monitors, access to our main recording console and so on. This space connects to the large area where we have a drum kit set up, guitar and bass amps, and a vocal booth in the corner of the room.

    Next door to the analog room is the space that is still the most in shambles, which I intend to use as a dedicated video space — shooting against a green screen or other backdrops.

    While I was still moving around and organizing boxes of records, cassettes and CDs — and trying to figure out some hi-fi humming issues in the setup, opening up a massive can of worms — I received a call from a local musician, Steve Montana. He was looking for some assistance in capturing a video performance of one of his original songs at the request of some documentary filmmakers. He specifically asked if I could do green screen, and I let him know he was in luck, as I’d been setting up a space for doing just that. Although the room was still being used as a transitory space for gear that needed to be sorted out, the one thing that was set up in the space was two walls covered in green fabric. I asked him to give me a week or so to tidy up, and when I did, he came over one afternoon to record Cornfield Blues.

    The song was written by him back in the 70s when he was a student at Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa. It’s a humorous folk song that talks about the school, moving to Iowa, and — among other things — corn. From what I understand, it was an essentially forgotten part of his original catalogue until he was contacted recently by a documentary filmmaker who had just completed a film about the school.

    The documentary is called When Maharishi Came to Town and it covers the period in the 70s when Maharishi International University came to Fairfield, Iowa – including the time the Beach Boys came to record their M.I.U. Album at the school. The filmmaker, Dick DeAngelis, spent months trying to track down Steve before they connected and the filmmaker requested a video of Steve performing the song. That’s where I came in.

    In the aforementioned unfinished video room I set up lights, two cameras, two microphones, and one DI for the guitar. We probably spent close to an hour dialing in the lighting and camera placement and the audio, and then he did three takes. The last take was the one submitted to the filmmaker. For the green screen background, Steve requested a video of the Oregon coast if possible, and after looking at our options, we found a short video on Pexels that he was happy to use as a simple repeating loop. Within just a couple hours the video was ready, and that was that.

    This was a special event because it was the first project I worked on for somebody else in the new studio space. This is something I really want to do more of — making videos and recording for others, other friends and musicians in our coastal community.

    You can watch the full video, with the filmmaker describing the background for this song, and Steve’s performance at the end. Note: I tried everything to embed the video on the website but facebook is non cooperative. Link here: https://www.facebook.com/reel/856519317517536

  • Dust / Been Missin’

    In October 2023 we began the first round of Tim Bulster’s song-a-week songwriting group. This came at a perfect time – I had resolved to dedicate the fall and winter to writing and recording, stepping away from other obligations to hold space for that. I was also on the mend from a rough break-up that happened a few months before and coming out of a depressive spell that followed (and preceded).

    Writing became the main engine for processing everything I was feeling. There was one evening where I was trying to play guitar and felt so disconnected from the instrument – there was a huge emotional block and I couldn’t stand it. I started playing with the intention of letting out anything and everything I was feeling. I spent the next couple of hours improvising a handful of songs and this unlocked something in my process. From that point forward I began to put more intention into externalizing what I was feeling, which meant connecting with my body and tapping into whatever emotions I was feeling at the time.

    Dust started on October 9th, 2023 – the very first day of the writing group. I began the song that morning after reading Tim’s first email. I began singing “I’m sorry” and then it started to pour out from there.

    I was reflecting on the past, reflecting on the period of my life spent traveling, on the people that I met and places that I went, the places that I hadn’t returned to and the people that I have lost touch with over the years. These reflections… hurt.

    I have a basket filled to the top with journals, trinkets, things I found along the way and wrote and scribbled – sketches, doodles, notes, lyrics, contact information on places I traveled, phrases and translations in a number of languages, and other things which I’m scared to look at. At the time of writing this song, the basket was under my bed, and I thought it was a good reference point for how I felt about this period of my life and about this past.

    I was envisioning the dust-sealed old box of notes, physical material artifacts from this period, and I feel cowardly, too cowardly to return to them. It just hits something deep – longing, regret – the emotions that come with a past lost, a connection lost, a friend lost, with the words that haven’t been sent or said yet, the things I’ll never get the chance to say because it’s too late. These artifacts carry all of it – and they’re from some of the simplest, most wild, most ambitious, most dangerous and reckless and careless and carefree and wonderful and rewarding times of my life. I loved those days.

    “Dust” starts here:

    Under my bed
    Tucked away are pictures and notes
    Written by a ghost and left for someday
    Someday I have the strength to reconnect

    The ghost is a past version of me. There was simply too much happening all the time, every day – too many adventures to remember it all, too many periods of motion without stopping to reflect or write regularly. Even if I went through every note and drawing, there may be more lost than recovered. I still haven’t found the strength to dive into the box.

    More than 10 years have passed
    Haven’t taken one glance
    Just let the dust take it over
    The words on the pages
    Places and faces
    Phases and names
    Feel so far away in the dust

    Going into the chorus:

    I know someday I’ll go back to the places
    As they remain, everything else seems to change
    Some friends have passed and gone
    I know now how I was wrong
    Not to connect while I had the chance

    I have returned to many sites of my early travels. I love to return to places just to soak them in – to see what I see, think what I think, feel what I feel, remember what I remember. There are places I’ve yet to return to which I still intend to. And even more so I hope to reach out and find some of the people I’ve lost touch with out in the world. Those I still can. Others are gone now – people I can only connect with through memories, photos, dreams, or if I’m lucky, their art and music. I regret not reaching out to them more while I still had the chance.

    When I’m really struggling, I tend to withdraw, hide away. I won’t reach out. I remember in some of the worst of times grabbing my phone and looking at the contact list, stopping on names for a moment, but not being able to bring myself to just ring them up.

    It’s so simple. It’s such a simple action – just pressing a button on the screen. But what if they answer? I will have to acknowledge the difficulty that I’m facing. I will have to acknowledge that I’m not doing well, that I need help. But if they’re not doing well? And what if they’re not available? What if they don’t answer and never call back? More pain on top of what I was already feeling.

    I don’t know that these thoughts would even go through my head in that moment. It’s more of a general feeling of paralysis. There’s this part of me that wants to reach out, but I just cannot bring myself to do it. And instead, I isolate. It ain’t good, but that’s where I was at and that’s where I was writing from in verse two:

    Heavy in bed, I lay awake
    Thinking of you and all my mistakes
    All the dreams I didn’t share
    The words I didn’t say
    The songs I didn’t sing
    I wrote them for you and I locked them away
    To pick up the phone, look at your name
    I wanna press my thumb
    But I’m paralyzed by my aching heart
    My heart aching, but I know that someday we must reconnect
    No matter how much it hurts, I know it
    Someday we must reconnect
    I can’t lose you like the rest
    I want so bad just to tell you I’m sorry

    The song moves from the dusty past which I’ve hidden under my bed to the present where I’m lying in bed struggling, wanting to connect, feeling unable, and recognizing that I just need to do it – I have to, before it’s too late. By the end of the song, I still haven’t accomplished the task. I leave this song as a declaration of love, of hurt, of regret, of accountability, of genuine apology. If not a request for forgiveness, at least an expression, an explanation, and hope for understanding.

    The last chorus:

    I’m sorry I didn’t call
    I had no good reason at all
    I love you with all my heart
    I’m just hurt by the distance that’s grown between us
    That’s left us in the dust
    That’s left us in the dust

    Interestingly, one of the friends I had in mind when writing this actually reached out to me for the first time in a couple years that morning while I was finishing up the recording.

    Been Missing

    “Been Missing” is the sister song to “Dust.” Where “Dust” is the somber snapshot – reflecting on the past with regret and heaviness – this is a song of triumph. When I’ve managed to overcome that disconnect, let go of the regret, and make the connection.

    I was truly inspired after writing “Dust” to actually reach out to some friends from the past. I started writing “Been Missing” after a very long and deep conversation with an old friend I hadn’t talked to in years and seen in even longer. It was a sunny day and I was just getting to the beach when I took her call. We walked and talked for close to two hours – catching up, going through all the motions of reminiscing about the past, joking and laughing and getting very serious, sharing the difficulties we’d gone through and the good things in our lives. The dogs were running around on the sand. The sun was shining. After the conversation ended I took that feeling of goodness and put it into this song.

    I tried to write in the motions of that kind of catch up conversation. The questions that come with it: How have you been? Where you at these days? What have you been up to? How did that one thing work out? Have you seen so and so?

    I want to know that the people I care about are doing well. But it’s not always that way, and if it’s not, I want to hear about that too. I want to know what their struggles are, what their dreams and hopes are, what stands in the way of those things. I want to know if I can help.

    And eventually it’s my turn. Where have I been? What have I been up to? Where do I begin… There is always lots to catch up on. Many of my old friends don’t even know where I live. People will ask me how Portland is and I’ll say I don’t know, I haven’t been there in some time. It’s five hours away from me. Sometimes I’m catching up with people and I realize my life is crazy – weaving between periods of intense travel or isolation, of staying home, relationships in and out, being intensely focused on family, or music, or work, or just being far, far away for extended periods of time. So much happens in this life and I’ll often lose track along the way.

    The part I love most about reconnecting with old friends – the discovery that though much has changed, much is the same. One friend says “No time passes in the hearts of good folk” and I am so grateful for this. When I can reconnect with someone and it feels like we’ve just picked up from where we left off. Sure there are things to catch up on, but the understanding, openness and love has been there all along – across great distances in space and time. We can still be ourselves, silly and ridiculous, deep and thoughtful. And receive each other as friends. I cherish these connections.


    Been Missin (Original Demo)

    Been Missin’ (Live from home)

    Where you at 
    These days 
    I’ve missed you 
    Since I been away 
    Tell me now
    What’s changed 
    And what’s remained the same 
    Let’s take our time
    Catching up
    Before we get to reminiscing 

    Have the years been kind to you
    Have you done the things that you wanted to
    And when you did how good was it
    Take me there I want to know what 
    I been missing 

    Where have I been
    Where do I start
    Some years happened to someone else
    And I lost touch along the way
    Between everywhere and nowhere

    Do you
    Remember the last time
    Last time it was just you and I
    I do

    In the grand scheme of things
    It was less than a blink
    But in these brief human lives
    It was a long long time

    Now talk to me I want to know what
    You want today everything that
    Stands in the way of your dream
    I love you and you know I believe

    Though much has changed
    Much is the same
    Our bits are as dumb as ever
    One second we’re on the ocean floor
    The next we’re in an uproar
    Our laughter scores the night
    And sleepless voices jam til sunrise
    You don’t stay up like this 
    But you’re not surprised
    We did the same thing last time

    Last time it was just you and I
    And when we did 
    How good was it
    We’re here today I’ll never forget
    What I been missing
    What I been missing

    P.S.

    I still struggle. I still withhold and isolate. It all goes in phases. I still haven’t opened up those notebooks, revisited those trinkets, revisited that past. And I still haven’t reached out to some of those whom I dream about and write about and think about. Some of them are gone. Some of them I’ve lost touch with, lost contact – I don’t know how to find them. And others, I just have no good reason at all. But sometimes I pick up the phone. Send a message or make a call. And when I do, it’s good. No time passes in the hearts of good folk.

  • March [2024]

    March is a collection of songs and videos self-produced between February and April 2024, beginning at home in Oregon and continuing as I traveled between Oregon, Hawaii, mainland Australia, and Tasmania.

    These tracks cover a span of six years and a distance of 8,000 miles. Some took months of creative teeth-pulling to put together. Others were written and recorded in a few hours — one in the moment of creation. Recorded across states and continents, across different moods and seasons and lifetimes. Edited, mixed and arranged on buses, planes, in forests, cliff sides, spare bedrooms, a van, a dome, and probably more odd spaces that escape me now. They are united in that they were completed in the month of March.

    Everything you hear and see was self-produced. The audio was mastered and videos re-cut for final release in April 2024, shortly after joining a recording session with some crazy hippies at MONA Museum’s Frying Pan Studios in Tasmania.

    1. Acaso

    Built around “Temple City Theme,” a piece of music written on the road in 2014 and dedicated to the San Gabriel Valley suburb where I grew up. The song became a reflection on returning home after years of travel to help my family through the sale of my childhood home and my parents’ separation – and the ongoing search for new homes that followed. Written during the first song-a-week challenge, fall 2023. Full entry and lyrics →

    2. Scroll Hole

    A short song about a recurring experience: reaching for the phone to open the tuner app and emerging twenty minutes later from an Instagram spiral with nothing to show for it. Written in March 2024, recorded and filmed in the guest room of my friend Alex’s family home in Adelaide, South Australia – an all-nighter with my face buried in a camera lens. Full entry and lyrics →

    3. Sweet Sleep

    An instrumental piece from a series of horn-driven compositions I call Dokie Okie. Cut together with video from a rare snow day at home in Port Orford – the snowfall lasted about twenty minutes, but I grabbed the camera and ran through every room shooting until it stopped. Full entry →

    4. Gutter Baby

    A character study drawn from people I met traveling around Montreal, Humboldt, and Mendocino counties, with roots in a dusty notebook from 2014-2015 when I was hitchhiking the states heavy. An amalgamation of stories heard on the street, some of my own experiences, and a hard-won happy ending. First demo completed January 2024 during a song-a-week challenge. Full entry and lyrics →

    5. Cloudsurf

    A beat made with the Jamstik MIDI guitar, cut to a rainy night drive into Old Town Bandon, OR.

    6. Somewhere New

    Written five years before the March release, this one captures the feeling of marching into the unknown. Shot in the Canary Islands — La Palma and Tenerife, the home island of my great-grandfather.

    7. Miles Away

    Written on a drive home along the southern Oregon coast, coming around the bend at Humbug Mountain when the ocean suddenly snapped me back into the present. A song about autopilot — all the time that passes while you’re somewhere else. Recorded at sunset on the cliffs at Sister’s Rock, playing until it got dark and cold. Full entry and lyrics →

    8. Real Life

    Written and recorded on a day of hitchhiking outside of Swansea, Tasmania. A sketch that became a song about sitting with uncertainty and staying open to what it brings.

    9. Oahu Noodles

    Two improvisations recorded on the porch of a hostel on the north shore of Oahu, the morning of my last day on the island. Recorded guitar and synth into a handheld recorder through headphones until the batteries died- caught a flight to Sydney that afternoon. Full entry →

    10. Beaten Track

    The tale of a relationship going from a joy ride to a runaway hell ride. The wavy keys are a Jamstik running through a borrowed Nord Stage 3.

    11. Can’t Abide

    A song about choosing time over money, work that means something over work that pays. Written in a couple of hours, finished before I even knew it. Full entry, video and lyrics →

    12. Been Missin

    he sister song to Dust. Written after a two-hour phone call with an old friend I hadn’t spoken to in years, walking the dogs on the beach in the sun. About the moment the reconnection finally happens and you discover that though much has changed, much is the same. Full entry and lyrics →

    That’s all folks! March wasn’t necessarily planned as an ‘album’ – I simply set out to release everything I finished within the span of a month (or two) and these were the songs and videos I managed to finish in that time. I’m certain some of these songs will find new life in future arrangements, recordings and releases. Stay tuned!

  • Redwood Nature Trail — Moving Water

    Redwood Nature Trail — Field Recording

    In January 2025 I took a drive up the beautiful Chetco River on a mission to capture the sights and sounds of water flowing along the Redwood Nature Trail. A frequent stop when I find myself in Brookings, the Redwood Nature Trail is just eight miles up North Bank Road – half a mile past Alfred A Loeb state park. Here lives the northernmost redwood grove in the US with old growth redwoods reaching up to 250 feet tall and 10 feet in diameter. According to the USDA some of these trees are estimated to be as old as 800 years in age.

    The 1.1 mile loop begins along a creek, which on this January day was flowing quite strong. I arrived as the winter sun was setting and captured these clips as the last light began to fade. The audio was recorded using a Zoom H6 field recorder, mixing the detachable XY microphone with a Rode NT5 condenser mic – pointed at the source. Each scene has a distinct sound. The first video is a compilation of each scene, changing approximately every thirty seconds. The subsequent videos are extended versions of each scene ranging from 1-3 minutes each. Please watch, listen and enjoy. Best to listen with headphones.

  • Miles Away

    For several years I worked with the county providing audiovisual services – mainly during their routine business meetings. Commissioner meetings, workshops, budget committees. Any instance where the elected officials were set to discuss and vote on county business, I would be there making sure everything was captured on video and audio and streamed live to the public. There were periods where this was the most consistent money gig I had going.

    The commute was nearly 30 miles each way between Port Orford and Gold Beach – coastal highway the whole way, passing multiple state parks, untouched beaches, cliffs dropping straight into the Pacific. It should have been one of the more scenic commutes imaginable.

    I am a night owl and often struggled to balance weeks of late nights with a sudden 8 AM meeting with the commissioners. I would find myself sleep deprived on the way there and on the way home, not the best state to be working or traveling in. By the later part of my time with the county I was often running on autopilot – multitasking through the meetings themselves, working on music mixes or editing videos with the audio feed in one ear, sometimes taking long phone calls or leaving voice messages to friends while the meeting ran in the background. On tired drives home I might be in a total state of detachment, spaced out in far away sleepy thoughts. The drive would pass and I’d find myself home before I even knew it.

    There were days I felt I took that drive for granted entirely – all those breathtaking views of the wild Pacific just passing by unnoticed. Often enough I would pull over and take a moment to calibrate. Just feeling the breeze, looking out to the endless ocean, reminding myself – this is it. Sometimes I’d run out onto the beach or stand at the top of the cliffs above the crashing waves. Other times I’d stop at Sister’s Rock and walk out of sight of the highway and just sit and breathe.

    The song began on one of those drives home. I was coming around the south end of Humbug Mountain – winding roads where long straight stretches suddenly morph into tight turns, speed signs, roadside memorials reminding you to slow down and be careful. It was that passage that snapped me back one day. I had awakened in paradise. Coming around the last bend the ocean came back into view and the sky was brilliant. It became so clear in that moment that I’d been on autopilot – the whole drive up until that point had passed in a flash without me really noticing the sky or the sea. The song just started coming and I started singing – lately I’ve been losing my sense, I’m here sitting at the driver’s wheel but I’m miles miles away.

    The mortality thread in the song wasn’t entirely conscious at the time. All the roads with their twist and turns all leading to the same place. Here today we’re not here to stay. I’ll be there soon, I’ll be right back here on the one track. Looking back I think the connection was more subconscious – that great shock of presence, suddenly feeling so alive and aware, carries with it the recognition of how much time passes while you’re somewhere else. Going in and out of presence felt connected to going in and out of consciousness, in and out of life itself. To be drifted away in thought is still being alive, but in a sense it’s not really living.

    This song was something of a precursor to Body, written at least a couple of years before it. Both songs circle the same territory – the pattern of spending so much time outside of presence, outside of the body, occupied in thought and disconnected from the environment. Body was a more direct reckoning with that. Miles Away was where the realization first started to surface.

    The recording came during a day I spent experimenting with a compact setup for capturing video and audio while traveling – a kind of proof of concept for how I might document performances on the road. I stopped at a few locations, dealt with some overexposure issues and audio problems along the way. My last stop just before sunset was Sister’s Rock. I played through a few songs up on the cliffside as it got cold and the light faded, playing until almost dark. It was one of the last takes and the most usable. Sister’s Rock is one of my favorite stops along that drive – I’ll often go there at night with the dogs, especially on a stormy or moonlit night when I can hike out to the edge of the cliffs and down to the beaches without a flashlight. I’ve written and finished songs there more than once. It felt like the right place for this one.

    "Miles Away"

Lately I've been losing my sense
I'm here sitting at the driver's wheel
But I'm miles
Miles away

All the roads with their twist and turns
All leading to the same place

Back in the seat, looking all around me
I can't believe I'm almost halfway home
Ocean meets the sky
Great stars shine their light
My body is here in paradise
But I'm miles
Miles away
Miles away from here

We're here today we're not here to stay
And I just can't believe it
All the years all the folks
They're just passing by
I'll be there soon
I'll be right back here on the one track
I'll be there soon
I'll be right back here on the one track

Lately I've been losing my sense
I'm here strumming on this (pink) guitar
But I'm miles
Miles away from here

  • Sweet Sleep

    This piece originated in the winter of 2023. I got into writing a series of instrumental pieces based around horn parts – the collection of songs that I file under the name Dokie Okie. Eventually, I’d like to produce the songs properly with a full band and live horn arrangements, but for now they all exist as MIDI demos.

    I brought this one together and included it on the March collection after shooting video on an elusive snow day at my home in Port Orford. The snowfall only lasted about 20 minutes, but being a desert child, it was magical nonetheless. As soon as the snow started falling, the house started buzzing – in fact, I believe it was my brother’s first time seeing snowfall. I grabbed my camera as quickly as I could and ran around shooting from every room and window around the house. Once the fall stopped, I got a few more shots outside.

    I wanted to cut the video to some music and felt this track fit, so I did a little bit of arranging, condensed the track, and put it together in the month of March.

    We’re not quite out of summer at the time of writing this, but I look forward to the change of seasons and the next elusive snow day.

  • Oahu Noodles

    “Oahu Noodles” is a track made up of couple of improvisations I recorded on the porch of Backpackers Vacation Inn & Hostel on the north side of Oahu, Hawaii. The first week of March 2024, I was making my way to Australia for the first time and saw flights that transferred at Honolulu airport, so I decided to book a 4 night layover, rent a car and explore Oahu for a few days.

    Through couchsurfing I had lined up a sweet spot to stay on a small boat during my visit, but the day before I arrived the stay fell through. In between a bus trip across Oregon and a couple flights over I was frantically trying to find another couchsurfing situation, researching places I might be able to sleep safely in the rental car (which is illegal and highly discouraged on Oahu!), I was able to stay for the night of my arrival with some coast guard dudes but finally ended up booking a hostel on the north side for the rest of my stay. I was bummed at first but it ended up being a great landing and shaped the trajectory of my entire trip.

    One of my roommates at the hostel was a folk musician who, nearly 50 years earlier, had nearly slid to his death while hiking a nearby trail. He told me that besides two major heart attacks he had later in life, that fall was the closest he had come to death. He told me that he slid and slid and slid until he came to the edge of a ridge with a perilous drop below. He was able to walk along the ridge, which formed a nice natural trail. Eventually, he found his way back to civilization, but that spot stuck with him.

    Now here he was in his early 70s, retired from his trade, returning for the second year to stay for a month and try to find the site of his near-death experience. Each day he would go off to hike and search for this elusive ridge. He was nearing the end of his trip and told me that if he didn’t find it this time, he’d be coming back the next year to continue his search. While he was out searching for a needle in a haystack, I was trying to get lost – driving around, meeting many dead-end roads, gates, fences, trespassing signs and so on. In hindsight, I should’ve tagged along with him, but I was content wandering around the island, swimming, eating and playing guitar in the sun, and on a rainy day – shooting video as I made my way around the island. I later cut the video to the “noodles”:

    One evening we threw together an impromptu open mic out on the porch. We started with only a cheap hostel guitar, which I drove across the island to buy strings for, cleaned up, strung up and tuned up. Eventually, with some imagination, I managed to set up an electric guitar, vocal and little synthesizer amplified with my laptop and a Bluetooth speaker. Hostel folks came by the porch to hang out, listen, sing, and jam.

    One of the musicians who came by was a fella named Dave Lee, a New Zealand-born musician who had been living in Tasmania for almost a decade. He came out to Hawaii for a surfing trip and joined us on the porch where we jammed, swapped tunes and riffs, and had an all-around good time. Dave plays bass in a Tassie band called Lennon Wells. Our meeting inadvertently directed my trip, as just a week later I would find myself in South Australia, looking for leads and opportunities to get involved with events across Australia when I saw that Lennon Wells was playing a small festival in Tasmania called Echo Fest. I reached out to the festival and offered my help, they invited me along straight away. From one island to the next, Oahu to Tasmania.

    The noodles of “Oahu Noodles” were recorded on the porch, the morning of my last day on the island. I took my little guitar/synth rig and ran it into a handheld recorder, along with my phone feeding basic drum tracks. I played through headphones until the recorder batteries died. I would be flying out to Sydney that afternoon, so this was my last chance to capture something from the island. I offered to give another roommate a ride to the airport before my flight, and we spent the afternoon driving across the island with just enough time for a waterfall hike, pictured above and below.

  • Scroll Hole/Alex

    “Scroll Hole”

    I like short songs. I don’t like being addicted to the phone. If I’m going to be addicted to the phone I might as well make short songs about it. This is based on true, recurring events. This ditty tells the story of reaching for my phone to perform a simple task (tuning a guitar) and mindlessly getting lost scrolling instagram. I wrote the song in March 2024, finishing the recording and shot the video while staying in the guestroom of my friend and his mum’s house in the suburbs of Adelaide, South Australia. While they were off working I was in the dark with my face buried in a camera lens, experimenting with the video edits to pull off what I saw in my head. Watch the video here:

    I’m reaching to do something quick and simple on my phone
    Then suddenly
    I get lost
    In a hole as I scroll I have no control at all
    I’m sinking
    Precious fleeting
    Moments of my life
    That I’ll never get back
    I can’t recall
    A single thing that I was just looking at

    I never close this app with more than
    I had when I opened it

    Where was I at
    Oh that’s right
    All I was trying to do was open up the tuner app

    LISTEN


    Every video, every recording and every day is a fresh experiment. From the album “March 2024” available on Bandcamp and all streaming platforms. “March 2024” is a collection of songs that reflect my life and travels. Recorded across various states and continents, the sounds and images for the album cover a span of six years and 11,000 miles.
    https://linktr.ee/ericprincessdragon

    Alex

    I will add some additional notes to fill in some details of the trip from Oahu onto Tassie. I will also take a detour to talk about my good friend Alex and some of our adventures around the globe.

    I arrived in Australia on March 12, just two days before my birthday, beginning a one-year working holiday visa. I flew on a one-way ticket with more luggage and gear than I had ever traveled with before. I wanted to be ready for a whole range of possible gig/recording/photo/video scenarios and packed enough gear to perform as a solo act, take photos & videos in different scenarios, record myself or a full band, put on an impromptu hostel porch open mic and more. Between the guitar, backpack, and big suitcase, it was too much to comfortably lug around a city, on buses, trains, or the side of the road – too much even to easily stash at a hostel. I had planned to purchase a vehicle as soon as I arrived and continue my adventure into the unknown. The only step of the trip I had figured out was the very first: arrival in Adelaide and a stay with my longtime friend and travel buddy Alex.

    Alex is a multi-talented fella and all around sweet heart. He is a photographer, actor, ASMR artist and after living and traveling around the world for years has settled back into his home in Adelaide working for VFX company Rising Sun Pictures.

    We first met in the winter of 2013 when I was working in Granada, Spain at a hostel called Makuto. He came in as a guest while touring Europe and we hit it off, wandering the cobblestone city, sharing travel stories, and hiking out early one morning to catch the sunrise over La Alhambra.

    I was nearing the end of my stint in Granada and nearly ready to head to Berlin for Christmas & New Years. As it turned out, Berlin was one of Alex’s next stops and our visits would overlap. Just a week or two later we met up to spend more quality time wandering, this time in the grittier urban setting of Berlin. One of the highlights from that visit was attending an event in the basement of a bookstore – a storytelling open mic where everyone was encouraged to get up and tell an improvised story on a particular theme. That night the theme was “family.”

    We both joined the audience and told our stories. I spoke about my grandparents and what I knew of their migrations from Cuba & Mexico, of my paternal grandfather working in forced labor camps operated by the new Cuban government under Fidel Castro. I spoke of my maternal grandparents being robbed by the “coyotes” they hired to take them across the border and my mother eventually crossing into the US underneath the seat of a car as a child. And I spoke of my life and travels being a walk in the park in comparison to the experiences they endured.


    After Berlin we went our separate ways, keeping in touch but living worlds away, both of us traveling regularly over those next years. Eventually, in 2016, Alex’s travels brought him to North America and he came to visit me in LA. I was living in San Bernardino County at a warehouse at the time – a condemned building which just a year or so later would be demolished without a trace, but at that time provided refuge for a large cast of artists, musicians, hippies, stoners, and weirdos. Me being one of the all-those-things. We went wandering around the area from the warehouse, my childhood home (Acaso) out to downtown LA where we drove past tent cities and looked over the skyline. Alex returned to the US once again in 2018 and our adventures continued around my new home in Oregon. Across over a decade we have met up on three continents in four countries.

    Back to 2024: I felt like family coming to stay with Alex and his mum, an intelligent and hilarious woman from South Africa. We shared lots of interesting conversations and she took an active interest in helping me figure out my next move. When I first got the inkling to go to Tasmania, she was very encouraging, recounting the itinerary of her honeymoon trip around Tassie while I saved the locations of all her favorite places on the map. I remember just after that conversation, finding Frying Pan Studios while researching Tasmania and being overcome with a sense that I must go there and record. Tasmania was pulling me in.

    I only stayed about a week in Adelaide, and Alex was working for much of that week, but we found time to do plenty of wandering around Adelaide and take a trip along the coast of South Australia, share meals with his family, catch some comedy at Adelaide Fringe and share plenty of d&m (deep and meaningful conversations) along the way. Here are some photos taken on film. I shot the photo of him, and he the photos of me.

    Also within that week I managed to fit in an all nighter, staying up past sunrise working on the Scroll Hole video. The song was written just before I left for Australia, but I recorded it, shot the video and mixed/edited everything right there in Alex’s family home.

    On March 20th, after a quality stay in Adelaide, I was off for Hobart.

  • Acaso

    Acaso

    From the March album – originally written Fall 2023

    “Acaso” came together during one of the most emotionally intensive periods of my songwriting life, built around a piece of music I’d been playing with for years. It was 2014 when I returned to the states after over a year of traveling abroad – this was a piece I’d begun playing on the road but finalized and decided to dedicate to the San Gabriel Valley suburb where I grew up. I called it “Temple City Theme.” Here’s a recording of the piece I did with my friend Stephen Reed (of the brilliant band Xinxin) on drums:

    The Songwriting Challenge

    “Acaso” was written in fall 2023 during the first round of a new songwriting group led by Tim Bulster (of Tiller of The Moon – check out The Songwriting Mind episode with this talented musician). We committed to eight weeks of writing a song per week, recording demos and sharing them with the group. This became the first of four challenges we’d complete between fall 2023 and winter 2024.

    Here’s “Acaso” as originally submitted to the song-a-week group:

    (Original demo recording)

    Back in 2017, my childhood home in Temple City had been sold and my parents separated at long last. The anchor that had tethered a broken, unhappy family was finally cut loose.

    “Acaso” became my reflection on that time and process – from a free life on the road to returning “home” to serve my family through this transition and see them through to the other side. Eventually leaving to find new homes where the search and quest to claim spaces for ourselves continues.

    Here’s the version released with the collection of songs “March” performed live in my living room.

    Video:


    The unknowns been good to me
    Much better friend than certainty
    I traveled long and I traveled far
    Found myself across the world
    Now I got a call I been waiting for
    It’s time to go back home

    Hey it’s okay
    To finish what you started
    It’s run its course
    I know we’re all exhausted
    Don’t fret we’ll be alright
    This days been coming all our lives
    No more tears no more fights
    Just step through the door
    Gotta go back home
    For the last time

    At home I got a role to play
    Our folks are going their separate ways
    It got so bad they can’t speak
    Their voices move through me
    It ain’t fun but it’s gotta get done
    If we’re gonna move on

    All packed up and I’m the last one out
    Last chord needing cutting was this house
    Where we were born where we grew old
    What stood between us and the cold
    This broken home is all we’ve ever known
    But it’s time we close the door
    We’re gonna find new homes

    Every video, every recording and every day is a fresh experiment. From the album “March 2024” available on Bandcamp and all streaming platforms. “March 2024” is a collection of songs that reflect my life and travels. Recorded across various states and continents, the sounds and images for the album cover a span of six years and 11,000 miles.
    https://linktr.ee/ericprincessdragon