After what was an incredibly busy November and December, January has hit my like a ton of bricks. Suddenly the tour and December shows are over, I’m no longer living out of a duffle bag, and I’m back at home with my wife and puppies in Nashville. Now what?

While it’s great to be back, I simply don’t do well when I don’t have a ton of projects going at the same time. I have a hard time doing what most people would call relaxing, and I fight mild depression when I don’t have a challenging project to tackle each day. 

On top of that, I lost both grandparents on my father’s side of the family over the holidays, which has been difficult for not just me, but the rest of my immediate family. Not to say there hasn’t been great things that have happened over the last few weeks, but there’s definitely been a fair number of trials, as well. 

That said, I have been working on a few things: 

• I’ve been able to hang out with musicians around Nashville since I’ve been back, including talented drummer Ben Jackson, former drummer and executive director of Carpe Artista Steve Grossman, and a handful of others. This town never ceases to amaze me at how talented and kind the musicians are here. 

• I’ve been working hard at collaborating with a few musicians, and while nothing is officially finalized yet, I’ll be letting you all know soon about some of them. I also played a few gigs with various artists, including roots rock group Get Down Bella. 

• As many of you know, I program Mainstage patches for clients all over the world, and I’m working hard on releasing another pack of custom presets soon. I’ll let you know when I’m done with them, and in the meantime, check out my page with info about the other presets available. 

• With extra downtime comes a lot of boring stuff, including tons of housework, email, and other I’ve-been-gone-for-two-months chores. A couple of the fun things I’ve been getting to do since getting back are: 

Weight lifting (first time in 4 years)

Cooking (my mom wrote cooking books growing up, and I love still love experimenting in the kitchen)

Reading (Including “Into The Wild”, “The World Is Flat”, and a few others)

Piano practice (re-working up Bach’s Inventions, along with a variety of other cool pieces)

Photography/cinematography (I just bought a beautiful Canon T3i camera for videos, and I’m learning the basics now)

As usual, I keep coming back to the same realization- I’m extremely lucky to be here in Nashville, and even luckier to have an amazing wife, great friends and mentors, and good health. Very blessed.