This is the first time I have had the privilege to work with Nori Tecosky and believe me, it is a privilege. Nori is 19 years old and one of the most mature young people I have worked with. She is very serious about her work which encompasses acting, singing, dancing and she does all of them very well. There is a good reason why Jennifer Jones selected her to play “Gypsy”. This is a character that grows from a naive child, to an independent woman before the eyes of the audience and therefore calls for an actor who can handle such a challenging role. It goes without saying that it would be very difficult to find a 19 year old actor with the chops to pull it off. Nori Tecosky has proven to be that, “one in a million.”

I have had a great time playing the ‘to-be’ step-father of Nori’s character in “Gypsy”. I can’t wait to get to the Lyric Theatre and present this story to the Stuart Florida audiences from Feb. 19th to the 28th. I am sure that everyone will be mesmerized when they see Nori become “Gypsy” in this musical. They will be among the few who can say, “I knew her when…”

Check out Nori here: www.noritecosky.exploretalent.com

‘Till next time, keep supporting your favorite independent musicians, and I will see you at the Lyric Theatre.

Jonathan Cummings

Hello everybody!

I hope everyone is off to a great start for this new year and new decade. Let’s make the next ten years better than ever with our goals and endeavors. It seems like it was the year 2000 just yesterday and now here it is 2010. The year 2020 will be here before we know it and the time to design the next ten years of our lives, is now.

It is such a pleasure to once again be acting in a Peter & Jennifer Jones production at StarStruck  in downtown Stuart, FL. This time I am playing "Herbie" in the musical "Gypsy". Gypsy was on Broadway around 1960, and featured Ethel Merman, as "Rose". Jean Ferreira will be staring in the StarStuck production of "Gypsy" at the Lyric Theatre and I am thrilled to be playing opposite Jean once again. Jean and I played "‘Sarah" and "Harry" in Stephen Sondheim’s, “Company” in 2008. We actually met in 2007, when we both played roles in “The Pajama Game”. This time Jean will be playing "Mama Rose", the most controlling stage mom ever. Rose eventually drives her daughters to... Well, you'll have to come and see it for the whole story.

This is a very talented cast of singers, dancers and actors.  During the next few weeks I am going to give my perspective and musings on some of the cast members. 

I think that Jean Ferreira has been perfectly cast for this part and once again she is proving that she will go above-and-beyond the call of duty. When we got together for the first read through, Jean didn’t even need her script and that is pretty impressive being that she has more dialog on one page than most of the cast has in the whole script.

Jean teaches fourth grade at J. D. Parker School of Science, Math, & Technology, in Stuart, FL. She has a Masters in Reading K-12. She also has one of the most amazing singing voices you’ll ever hear. She approaches almost everything she does with a smile on her face and a skip to her step and not one person who sees her performance in "Gypsy" will be disappointed.

I encourage everyone who can, to get tickets now at http://lyrictheatre.com/show/460-gypsy or call 772-286-STAR. The show will be playing from Feb 19th - 28th, at the Lyric Theatre in historic downtown Stuart Florida.

I’ll talk to you next time when I will be sharing my thoughts on Nori Tecosky, who will be playing "Gypsy".

Please remember to support your favorite independent musicians.
Jonathan Cummings

January 1st, 2010!
Who’d a thunk it?

I remember when I first saw “2001 A Space Odyssey", as a kid. And then the sequel “2010 The Year We Make Contact”. It all seems crazy now because I never imagined being here in this time, but here we are.

I haven’t been gigging very much because writing and producing my new CD has been a full-time project.  I have been doing a lot of jingle work as well. I hope to be able to balance everything out this year between jingles, CD sales, live performances and teaching.

So now is the time to start setting up some quarterly goals for 2010!!!

By the way, if we call the '90's “the '90's”. And if we call the '20's “the '20's”. What are we going to call the '00's? Not to mention, what are we going to call the '10's that are up and coming, for that matter? Somebody let me in on the secret if you are ‘in the know’.

Sailing the Wave of Rygil is complete! I just have to get it mastered, get the IRSC codes, get it registered with ASCAP, register it with Sound Scan, get it copy written and get the artwork done. As you noticed there was a lot of “getting” in there, so I had better ‘get’ busy.

If you haven’t done so already, check out my new jingle page and please sign up for my e-zine.

Jonathan

Labor Day has come and gone and here it is time for the Florida performance season to finally kick in. I have my first date set for Stuart Grill and Ale on 09-20-09 and will probably be playing at the Pelican Café soon after. My goal is to get at least three gigs a week. Back in 2005 when I was gigging five nights a week, I got a little burned out not to mention tired vocal chords as well.

I also have permission from the owner of Planet Zero to submit a possible jingle for his radio and television campaign. I would like to try to obtain a jingle job every couple of weeks or so. I am really trying to capitalize on this 'multiple streams of income’ idea.

Also, I will be submitting an audition to obtain the contract to write and produce the motion picture soundtrack for “Natalie, Queen of Scots”, a movie that I had the privilege to actually play a supporting role in. I am convinced that if the makers of this film, Brian Carroll and Ren Caldwell, hear what I am capable of, I have a really good shot at scoring this film. 

Income from gigs, from jingles, and from CD sales and now you are in business. If I really can earn enough to make ends meet  from multiple income streams (while decreasing my day job hours to about 15 or 20 hours a week), I may actually be able to cross that great chasm from having a day job to being a full time professional musician.

It is a brave new world out here with digital song distribution, you tube video campaigns and social networking. It sure is different from when I made my first studio recording back in 1981. The tape that was used by the engineer looked like it was about 4 inches wide. Sometimes I feel somewhat displaced being 45 and living in 2009. Well, you just have to go with (against) the flow I guess.

‘Till next time, remember to support your favorite independent musicians.
Jonathan Cummings

Les Paul is a name that I have heard and said from birth, and I am 45! What a life. What a man.

Could you imagine living at a time before multi track recording was invented? Or better yet, having a part in creating it! As a musician I admire the man but I am also a designer and engineer in the manufacturing industry, so my admiration is two fold. When you read what guitar greats such as Joe Satriani and Slash are writing and saying about him, it is clear that Les Paul will continue to influence musicians long after his passing.

Yes, Les Paul was a legend before I was born and he will be a legend long after I am gone.

Well, there is a lot to be said about being in the right place at the right time.

After a phone call from a friend and subsequently giving said friend permission to give my contact information to a movie producer, (who just happened to be in town filming a feature film on location), I was invited to audition for a lead part. I was hired on the spot and started filming the following day!

I have a significant role in the film and although I have many lines, there is no singing at all! Let me repeat… this is not a musical. That’s right folks; I made the grade on my acting ability alone.

The movie is called “Natalie, Queen of Scots” and is being shot even as we now speak! The cast and crew is a very professional group and I feel very fortunate to have such an opportunity fall in my lap.

Check out these websites to learn more about the project...
http://www.nataliequeenofscots.com/
http://www.lobsterback.com/nqos.php
http://www.lobsterback.com/wehavetofindaway/

I will fill in more details in the future. In the meantime, please remember to support your favorite independent musicians.

Jonathan Cummings

Well, many of you have given me great feed back on “The Knight and the Princess”, Thanks.

Someone said the song reminded him of “Yes meets Dan Folgleberg with a folk type presentation”. Keep the feedback coming, I am still trying to determine what this kind of music is. For my part, I am just creating it for the sake of creating it. So many years I spent trying to fit songs into the mold of what the record companies deemed “proper format”. You know, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge and then chorus out. Most of the time, when someone is listening to top 40 on the radio, they can tell when that last chorus is coming, it usually comes out of the bridge like a freight train. Man, do the record companies have the general public trained like Pavlov’s dogs or what?

Back in the '90s I wrote and produced a song that made it on Epic Records. Today, I listen to the song and laugh. 

After 10 years of musical inactivity, I hope to create music that really means something to me. Maybe other people will like it too, or perhaps it will just be some family conversation piece. “Listen to this and check out what a nutcase great-grandpa was”!

At any rate, the entire project is about a love that lasts throughout time.  From the dark ages to well into the future. I guess the message is, ‘love conquers all’.

I will continue to play guitar, bass, keyboards and drums myself as-well-as sing all the vocal parts. Maybe on my next project I will have enough resources to hire professional musicians so I can just concentrate of vocals.

'Till next time, please continue to support your favorite independent musicians.

Jonathan Cummings

O.K. Here comes the first of many rants regarding the music business.

One thing that I will promise right now is that I will never use Auto Tune or any other pitch correction software on my voice unless I am using it to create a specific effect. As a vocalist, I find it hard to listen to top forty country anymore because of the over use of such software. Although there are still some real singers out there, over fifty percent of all country music today features a lead singer whose voice is smothered with pitch correction. I think the music industry is creating a number of problems.

For one thing the average listener thinks that vocalists are just supposed to sound like that. Usually these are the same people who come home from a concert disappointed saying “He didn’t sound as good live”.

My opinion: If you have to use such software, get out of the studio and let a real vocalist sing the song.

Now don’t get me wrong here. If you are a producer and the vocalist has performed her takes and after she has flown back to Australia you notice one or two notes that are bugging you to tears, by all means use pitch correction to fix the problem. That is what the software was intended for in the first place. But it seems every time I turn on the radio, pitch correction is smothering vocal performances to the point of sterility.

I am proud of my vocal ability and you should be too. Don’t let a perfectionist sound engineer destroy your in studio performances with pitch correction.

Please keep supporting your favorite independent musicians.
Till next time,
Jonathan Cummings

Hi everyone!

I have been very busy with personal matters lately but rest assured, the new album is coming along nicely, (even if it's only in my head at this point). By the way, I will always refer to a collection of songs as an “album” regardless of the media format; just as a collection of photos is an album if it is in a book or on a compact disc. Maybe I am showing my age here but then again, maybe not.

When I was younger, I primarily listened to concept albums by bands such as Yes, Kansas and Rush. These bands created projects that were recorded to be listened to in their entirety. For the most part, my music is the same. Granted “Six Strings One Voice” is just a collection of songs. But, my new project “Sailing the Wave of Rygil”, is a continuous story from beginning to end.

I encourage everyone to download the first track for free on my music page. This recording is not the final master but you can get the idea. Please give me some feedback as well, positive and/or negative. I will be releasing the cd sometime, hopefully by the fall and will be embarking on a local series of performances to promote it. I will also be making every attempt to write a regular blog post. Life gets pretty hectic at times but I do feel the need to document this journey. I have a lot to say about the music business and their practices and am sure I will be ranting about that soon.

'Till then, keep supporting your favorite independent musicians.

Jonathan Cummings

I would like to thank everyone who made tonight a great success. Cactus Jack loves me but only because all of you keep coming out to hear me sing. So thanks; Rolo, Anna, Greg, Rolando, Mary, and Mary's mom (I can't remember your name right now I am brain dead), and everyone else who came out. And thank you, to the five people who bought my CDs, I hope you enjoy the music. See you next Saturday night!