Val Halla – My Journey to Rock N Roll Heaven

Well, its been two and a half years since the last “album”. So needless to say, I AM SO EXCITED.

I’m back home in Regina, Saskatchewan and it feels almost perfect. The weather couldn’t be any colder. Its been down to the -40 to -50 area (in both farenheit and Celsius) and it reminds me of when I used to walk to school in this bitter cold and wonder if i would survive the walk!

Here is a picture from INSIDE my parents house to show how cold it really is. The INSIDE of the house is frosting up, even with the heat on!

INSIDE THE HOUSE!

So i think this is the exact kind of setting I need to make an album that is going to really hit hard. I’ve learned so much in Nashville, but I also know there is a certain grit about life in general when you live somewhere that skin freezes in a matter of seconds, cars get “plugged in” every night to keep the engines from freezing, your skin on your face contracts and gets tighter from the temperature, your eyes water, your limbs go numb, roads are like skating rinks, walking is foolish and running is necessary, and no single kind of weather added to this could keep friends from getting together and rocking out.

I think this cold carries the threat of death so well, you can’t help but feel awake and alive.

Tomorrow we start on the song “Dark Sister”. A very vibed out, almost sinister, grooving song about your darker side.

All kinds of things are swirling through my head these days. I’m 25 and about to start work on my 4th album. But by far the most prepared for, most well organized, most important, and most promising compilation of songs I’ve ever been able to comprise.

Its not all about me…i know i’m yammering on here having some kind of self realization moment… but i also want this album to be about giving something useful to the world. I feel like the last album i did in 2007 was a bit of a snob fest. It was fun as hell, but we weren’t too concerned about whether people would identify with the music or not.

This time, these songs are all songs that came out of very real places in my life, but instead of hiding the lessons in crazy symbolize and inside lyrics so that no one would find out my secrets, i decided to just fess up and be really honest and open lyrically. there is still symbolizes, but its meant to shed light, not to hide the truth.

Anyway, its late and i’m still exhausted from the drive up from Nashville. I’ll be blogging, posting pictures, shooting video etc. for the duration of the recording process (in true geek fashion).

So hopefully i can yammer on some more later, and for now get some shut eye!

Very excited though, and i hope I make you guys proud and don’t disappoint on this one! But I already can tell, there is some magic in the air in Saskatchewan right now! I’m feelin good!

Here’s a picture from my drive up to show the prairie air, so cold that the steam from the plants just hangs in the sky.

Goodnight! See you tomorrow!

Just the same old story, of movin’ on
It’s turn the page, ride into the dawn
But this gypsy life just beats the hell outta me.

My eyes are puffy, my stomach turns,
My bones are stiff, my muscles burn
At the mercy of this life for all to see.
—-

Its been a 100 nights just this year
Alone in a hotel, goin’ tear for tear
With every cryin trucker held up in a beer.

Cause what honest man, ever there was
Would want a woman to try and take care of
Who he would rarely get to kiss… or hold near?
—-

And sometimes I’ll feel it, one touch at a time
And for one night, he’ll be mine
But it won’t be long before he too lets me go

Most of em, act like its just fine
But I know what’s coming down the line
Its when I forget, that really irks my soul.
—-

I fell too hard, I fell too fast
Fell for a feeling that just couldn’t last
And this gypsy life, quite quickly, gets real old.

Cause what honest man, ever there was
Would want a woman to try and love
Who he would rarely kiss or get to hold?
—-

I fell too hard, I fell too fast
Fell for a feeling that couldn’t last
I wonder if I, or this gypsy life,

Will be the first to go.

I think I would write more often if I didn’t have such hatred for this damn computer. Not this one specifically, but the computers in general. The computers that now consume my day. Make my wrist sore and weak. Make my fingers move slower when playing guitar, and shake with fatigue. Blasted computers.

I saw Don Felder of the Eagles perform tonight. He is a great guitar player. Very melodic. He did things I’ve never noticed a guitar player do before. Not that other guitar players haven’t done these things…just that I am only now beginning to notice these things. As if I have entered into a new understanding of the language. I can now understand the deeper connotation. Next is to learn how to speak it myself.

I don’t know why it is that I am now 25 years and some months old, and only now am I discovering Bob Dylan. I said the same a few months ago about Bonnie Raitt. It is not that I have never heard of these artists before, and it is not that I haven’t heard them on the radio. It is WHAT I heard of these artists. I heard only what a few select people decided I should hear of these artists. And at least it put them on my radar. But DAMN. Unless there is someone putting the music infront of your face, sitting you down in a chair and saying “Listen!”, it is very hard to find out about music that came out before you were born. Your parents generation assumes that you know it… how could you not? Its Bob Dylan! How could you NOT know Bonnie Raitt!? But the Bob and Bonnie stuff I have discovered on the internet, in films, in documentaries and old performance clips, isn’t at all like what I have heard on the radio.

I don’t know why I am only in the last few months starting to discover things that are really starting to work within me. Really moving me. Really inspiriing me. Why did I go so many years without inspiration? Was I depressed and lethargic? Maybe… I don’t know. I feel like I’ve been in a funk for about the last 4 years. Nothing I can pin point or call anything more specific than a music funk. And not a bad one. Not like I’ve been crying myself to sleep every night for the last 4 years either. Things have been fine. But right now, things are starting to happen again. And I don’t mean in an outward sense like my career is moving along better…though it is. Maybe in some way it is related. But I don’t care to analyze that idea much further. I just know that first I found The Kills and The Dead Weather. Contemporary bands that got me stirred up inside. Do I idolize them the way I do the classic rockers?…no…not yet anyway… but maybe that isn’t due to their music but a time and an illusion. I don’t know. But I know I like those two bands a lot, and I know they got something stirring inside of me. Then came Patty Griffin and Bonnie Raitt and at that point even more, things going on around me got me thinking.

But Dylan for some reason is earth shattering for me right now.
I never knew anything about him. Maybe this is part of it. I had a Bob Dylan greatest hits album. And that’s all. And I remember listening to it as I would walk to work in Vancouver, when I was a security guard on weekends at an all boys private highschool. I would walk to work from the bus stop at 7:30 am listening to his greatest hits. And it was good. But it wasn’t earth shattering at that time. However, now a lot of the songs I’ve been discovering, I like even better than a lot of the stuff on that greatest hits album. And EVERYTHING, both music and man, that I am discovering in Dylan is really getting to me. In a really good way. I feel like finding out more about the way his career shot along, in some way is giving me permission to do a few things in my own creativity that maybe I otherwise might not consciously realize I have the ability to do. This is like an abstract painting in which you can find your own meaning. Obviously nothing Dylan was doing in the 60’s was trying to influence me and my own creativity in 2009. But I can find things in there. I can find permissions for myself. I can find justification for some of the dreams I would like to realize, but maybe never gave myself permission to believe I could do before. I’m getting huge amounts of confidence in myself, the more I learn about Bob Dylan. I can’t explain it.

Then there are the Bob Lefsetz of the world. People who call out certain artists, and make points about why they can’t fly in this country, why the public in North America won’t buy it, what the people really want, what a real artist is and what it takes to be one. Bob Lefsetz has a blog/newsletter you can subscribe to. He used to be a music attorney, but not sure what his claim to fame is that allowed him to develop such a large readership. He is a good writer I’ll give him that. I do read what he writes quite a bit – though maybe I will need to take a break. It gets very negative sometimes. A lot of whining and complaining about what is wrong with the music industry, and artists today, and all kinds of misery. He does write relevant commentary though….but sometimes goes too far into opinion land that it falls off the fact sheet and into a rant from an unsatisfied middle aged music listener. Not that there is anything wrong with middle age, but it is nothing new to hear of the “music of today” being unsatisfying to one of a generation earlier.

I can understand though. People take music seriously, and for some reason this guy writes well enough for others, including myself, to take him seriously.

But I just can’t honestly believe that there is a right or a wrong or a good or a bad. Him saying we need to get down to the root of things again, like a guy on the stage with his guitar… he was referring to a country singer who played at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville last night. He is saying THAT is what music is all about… not the “synthesized hip hop beats” and what not. I’m paraphrasing from memory because I’m too lazy to actually bring up his email and copy and paste a quote from him.

But I’ve been to these tiny little hip hop shows in Vancouver or Toronto, in some dingy little bar, and they crank those beats out, and a guy on the stage alone with a microphone raps along to a backing track. And I’ve been moved to tears before by this. I’ve been just as moved watching this, as seeing Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart perform solo acoustic and knock the socks off of me, at which point I also burst into tears. But how do you say one is better? How do you say one is real music and one isn’t? How do you say one is a real artist and one isn’t? All you have is Bob Lefsetz telling everyone that a lot of the problems with the music industry today are directly related to things like songs coming out that he doesn’t understand, and don’t make him feel a certain way. A way he remembers songs “used to” make him feel. But that’s just him. There are a lot of people who are really wound up by Lady Ga Ga and Miley Cyrus right now. Would I compare those women to Bob Dylan? OF COURSE NOT! Why would i? Why would anyone? Why would you even bother or waste the time or thought?

To put the “music industry” into a little box like that, and try and compare different artists in different genres, with different styles, different abilities, different things to say, and different audiences all together…. Is just insane to me and selfdefeating.

I don’t want to make music in a way where Bob Lefsetz will consider me a “real” artist… I don’t know anything about Bob lefsetz… I don’t even technically consider him a “real” lawyer because he’s never done a bit of work for me in legal matters. I consider him a blog writer. May he in fact be a lawyer? Sure he could be! And if he is, does whether I think he is a “real” lawyer or not, change whether he is or isn’t?

A “real” artist. What a bogus statement to begin with. Who are these people? Like there’s some measuring cup we all have to jump into and see what little red line our eyes are at.

You can’t even say Bob Dylan was a “real” artist. He was just him! That’s it! And he happened to play guitar and sing songs! People think if you dress a different way or in a way that is considered “loud” or almost in costume, that must make you a joke? That was another Bob Lefsetz quote I remember reading…well not quote…but again paraphrase. He said Lady Ga Ga changed outfits so many times at the VMA’s she basically proved she was a joke. How the hell does changing outfits have anything to do with the songs that the woman wrote, or her singing ability, or her ability to communicate? Or even what HER fans, HER audience thinks of her? Bob proves he doesn’t like costume changes. But so what? If that’s part of a person’s expression, should they NOT express themselves that way, in order to fit into a box of what an artist is SUPPOSED to do in order to “TRULY” express themselves, or express themselves in a “real” way. To “truly” be a “real” artist. Bogus. All things happen in life. All things happen in THIS life. The problem is people who romanticize musicians. They put them into a box in their own heads, to make it easier to gain their own inspirations from these musicians. Just like I am doing, in order to gain confidence in myself through viewing Bob Dylan in a certain way. That is why so many people lost their shit when Dylan went electric and they had him sitting in this folk – protest song box. It blew their heads off basically.

That’s all that’s happening to Bob Lefsetz. Everything about “the music industry” as he knew it, as he designated it in his head, and as he saw the artists he grew up adoring, is now making his head explode. He’s forward thinking on the technology side, but doesn’t know how to handle the actual MUSIC the “kids” are creating… he only knows how to handle their software programs! He doesn’t know how to relate to an artist like Lady Ga Ga. But there are a lot of people who do. Its like Jeff Price said when I was interviewing him about his company Tunecore, which sells music through iTunes and other digital retailers. “Absolutely EVERYTHING has a niche market. There is NOTHING that won’t sell”. And he’s right. Even if you are a coverband who plays down at the filthiest bar in town that only has 10 regular customers. You probably still have a couple of those people who think you’re the greatest band around. Maybe even a groupie or band girlfriend who just loves the fact her boyfriend is the drummer. Sure everything may not relate to large groups in the same way, but there is a place for everything.

I think the people who are bitching and complaining about the state of the music industry today need to shut the hell up. Its making it worse. If everyone IN the industry is whining and moaning, what good does that do any of us? Especially those of us who are still feeling positive, feeling ambitious, feeling passionate, feeling jacked up ready to go! Bring it on we say! And the people who came before us, are going to whine and complain about the music of today???? Why is this sounding so familiar? There are a lot of economic and technological factors at play here, that are affecting the way people consume or purchase music. But there is no lack of creativity in musicians today. Mainstream or not… it is the responsibility of each individual to see to how they wish to express themselves. I’m not saying that everything I hear on the radio, I think is good. A lot of stuff on the radio doesn’t necessarily speak to me personally as a 25 year old. I think there are a lot of things that AREN’T on the radio that are REALLY good. But there is no clear cut line…. Of commercial music verses non commercial that in anyway would directly correlate to GOOD and BAD, or TRUE or NOT TRUE, or PHONEY or REAL.

Yes its great to see musicians who play instruments. But sometimes its good to see a show where an 808 kick drum is bumping so loud you can feel it fighting against your heartbeat for the role of ultimate pace setter.

There’s just a few different types of creativity we get to see now a days. We have live instruments, and sampled instruments. And I think they’re both pretty freaking cool, and allow for people to express themselves, as artists, as people, as animals making primal rhythms with each other. Whatever you want to call it.

Bob Lefsetz just doesn’t speak the language of sampled music. Just like I never heard anyone play guitar like I heard Don Felder play tonight. Not because he is the only one to ever play those notes, or that Hotel California solo, but because I finally understood enough about the language of guitar playing to hear Don’s personal style, inflections, and expression IN those notes.

Music is alive and well. Don’t let any of the naysayers tell you otherwise. Just go out there and find something that gets you stirred up inside. I went too long without even looking….. because I let these people convince me it wasn’t out there anymore. I went 4 years without looking. And only I suffered for it.

It might have been released 50 years ago, or it might have been released yesterday.

But its out there. Go find it.

Val Halla review by drummer Gary Allen of the Charlie Daniels Band

 in his newsletter “Gary Allen’s Music City Beat” Issue #50 October

“I was calling Val, Marilyn from the first look at her picture and after listening to her Sonicbids EPK. After just a few strums and her no nonsense approach to the guitar, suspected she would be the winner of this round. Her sound is a little bit pop with a big dose of electricity. If Nancy Wilson could sing like Val Halla, she could have kept all the money. I have always been a fan of Chrissie Hynde, because she sings and plays as good as any male. So does Val Halla.

 

 

-Gary Allen (The Charlie Daniels Band/JJ Cale/Stonewall Jackson)

To sign up for Gary’s newsletter email garyallendrums@bellsouth.net

Thanks for the great review Gary!

“This 25 year old ‘Carmen Electra meets Marilyn Monroe’ and her super tight band nail a hard-boogying riff to the floor, while Halla’s seductive singing and coy lyrics, coupled with her explosive octave bends and Gibbons-inspired solo licks, slam her perky pop palms up against the ceiling.” 

- Michael Molenda, Editor in Chief, 

Guitar Player Magazine – November Issue 2009 

Thanks Michael!

To subscribe to Guitar Player Magazine visit www.guitarplayer.com

Here is a little video I cooked up from the New Jersey sessions at Felix the Cat Studios.  Unfortunately the amount of caffeine I had consumed at this point, not only made me a bit of a weirdo, but also meant I couldn’t hold the camera steady for the life of me! I tried to edit out the shakiest parts, but ummm….well you’ll see….

***** This video has been removed due to copyright issues.

Well its around 10 pm New Jersey time, and I’m here in Felix the Cat headquarters.  We are working out of the recording studio here, tracking one of my songs called “Taste For Blood”.  I’m working with producer Warren Hibbert straight outta Jersey!!!!!

Felix the Cat is EVERYWHERE.  This is also where all the Felix shiz goes down.  I met Felix’s owner Don Oriolo today.  Don is an exciting, charismatic person, who could very well be a cartoon character himself!  He has a great energy about him, and there is MOST IMPRESSIVE artwork all over this building.  His paintings are incredible.

Its really interesting to the see the evolution of a cartoon.  The way that something like that can develop over time, develop with technology, develop through the eyes of its creators, and then watch the use of it in pop culture also seem to mould the culture itself.

One thing I know for sure, is that working on music in  place the every door is painted a shade of pink, purple, blue, red, green, yellow, etc…  its pretty hard not to be in a good mood, and not to grow a little “loopy” after 4 red bulls and 3 days of writing/recording.

Its been a really interesting experience so far.   I think I’m finally starting to zero in on a unified sound, and a way of expressing exactly what it is I want to say.

Well, Les Paul sadly passed away today at the age of 94.  He lived a long life, and influenced many people, and touched many people with the gift of music along the way.

Here are a couple videos I was enjoying today, remembering his legacy:

And my goodness was I ever surprised by the talent of his wife Mary at playing the guitar as well!

I played my LTD EC-400, which is basically ESP’s version of a ….well LTD’s version (made by ESP) of a Les Paul Standard. I played it allll night long. Which was great. I suddenly realized I’ve been working on the Stevie Ray Vaughn song “Lenny” for the last 10 years and still don’t have it. And by working on, I guess I mean maybe attempting to play it once a year…so I think that is the problem. I’m hoping that with the inspiration I had tonight, and the longing desire I’ve been having lately to get my ass back into gear as far as my guitar playing, I can really turn things around here in the next little while. I play usually at least an hour a day, but mostly that is playing rhythm parts to accompany myself, whether practicing my songs, writing, or recording. The thing I need the most work on is soloing, and actual technical and melodic ability on the guitar. I want to rip some FAT GUITAR SOLOS basically.
So my goal, on this the day of Les Paul’s passing, is to start spending an hour a day on improving my technique and ability. Whether it be theory, scales, mechanical drills, learning other masters songs, writing, WHATEVER… I must improve. I MUST!

Please check in and see how I am doing, and hold me to this damn it! If I can’t do this in Les Paul’s honor, for what he has done to inspire me, may I never come to have a Les Paul of my own. And THAT would be BRUTAL. So here we go….

So cruising around on ebay one night I stumbled on an old toy organ that looked straight out of a Disney movie like Jumanji or a Tim Burton movie like Edward Scissor Hands. Its hard to say really.

The look of it alone stopped me dead in my feverish mouse clicking. I did a quick search on youtube and found a few clips of the organ in action. Let me link you to what I saw and heard that fateful night:

The First Glimpse

An Emenne Organ Christmas

So already from hearing those two clips, I was completely sold on this little guy. I began my pursuit of the Emenee Golden Pipe shortly after that. Watching intently on the ebay auction.

When it was all said and done, I lucked out as if fate itself had decided this would be my organ. No one else made a bid, so I took the organ for $35 USD all in (shipping and everything included)

Now the organ has arrived and I did my first recording session with it today. It sounds amazing. I highly recommend these little guys to anyone looking for a cool vibey organ, that will give some color to a recording, without wanting to spend a CRAP LOAD of cash.

They also make a very nice addition to your home or studio decor!

I guarantee you will hear this in use on some of my future recordings.

Ok so Nashville is pretty cool.  But at times, it gets overwhelming.  At times you are all alone. No one is around, nothing is going on.  This wouldn’t be so bad IF you hadn’t just had THE MOST INSANE NIGHT OF YOUR ENTIRE LIFE just the night before.  Now lately I had someone say to me “Oh, you are posting things trying to be some rockstar or something”.  I disagree.  And feel free to disagree with me as well. But mostly, I won’t care.

This is my life.  Do I think I’m better than anyone because i’ve gone through STUPID hard times, and had some AMAZINGLY GOOD things happen as well. Of course not.  And is struggle comparative?   Can you say to the son of a crack or heroine addict that their struggle isn’t valid, because they didn’t grow up in a war torn country where they lost one of their parents to gun fire?

How can you compare struggle? i don’t think you can. On any level.  Tupac could rap about things, I will NEVER IN MY LIFE experience, but I can identify. SOMEHOW>  through the struggle.  And so can millions of other people.  There could be someone who suffered through terrible tortures, the likes of which Tupac never dreamt of, but even they could identify with him.  Because you can’t quantify struggle.  There is no measurement of adversity.  It is simply adversity.  And it is something we can allllll identify with.  And great stories of overcoming adversity are meant to inspire us all.  Not make us feel guilty about coping with our own.  Just inspire us.  Let us know we are not alone.  Let us know, there is hope, there is success, there is overcoming, there is victory.

Now Nashville is a great town.

I’ve had some crazy and amazing things happen here. Things that mean a lot to me, because they are related to music, and because I care about music a lot.

I still end up in my tiny little apartment alone at the end of the night.  I still write songs alone, present them alone, put myself out there alone, and wait for the criticism to fall on myself alone.  But it is a welcomed practice at this point.

I get hurt alone.  I cry alone.  I think alone.

But I win too.  I win a little, in some way, almost every day.  Just being in Nashville.  And when I win, I NEVER win alone.  I win with others.  I win with those who support me, who encourage me, who message me, who communicate, who reach out, who help, who respect, who champion my success for some reason I still do not know.  I win with them, because they are THE ONLY way I ever win. But we do. We win.

As far as my music goes, things have been going exceptionally well lately.  I feel they will only get better.  But if I had no one to share each small victory with, I think I would go mad.  I think true happiness comes from sharing a knowing moment with something else.  Nature, friends, family, god or the universe, some unknowing, unphysical thing even.  But it is shared.   A piece of great artwork.  You could stand alone in front of it.  And be brought to tears by it.  But someone else’s hand created that, to communicate to your eye, and then to your core. And it was shared.  Even nature, is shared.  The existence of light, just to be able to share the form of the world, for the recognition of those with eyes to perceive it.  Plants don’t have eyes. But yet they share something with us, that we could never duplicate, that we could NEVER give back to THEM.  

I’m not stoned. Trust me.  

Read this book:

A Little Book on the Human Shadow

by Robert Bly

Listen to this band:

The Kills

you don’t have to of course.  And if you do, you don’t have to think they are very incredible. But I do. And since this is my blog, and I’m guessing you have come here to read what I’m writing, I’m going to write about two things that have affected my life in a great way lately.

Now for your thoughts.  the age old question.  Are people basically good, or are people basically bad?

And don’t even think about leaving a comment with your opinion, without at least attempting to justify your reasoning…

I’m going to write more often. I promise. I’m sorry for being so slack after setting this blog up. It doesn’t make much sense to have a blog and not to use it, does it?  Well I’ve dealt with some things, and I think I have the ability now to operate this site in the way I have always desired.  Its a matter of tweaking your own brain and the things you’ve always struggled against, to a point where they no longer have dominion over you….and all your greatest desires, are now within reach.