Better Each Day Podcast Radio Show with Bruce Hilliard

We don’t smoke and we don’t chew, we’re the class of ‘72. I was honored to play at an Aberdeen High School class reunion 1972 and had a great time and I’m not surprised. The acoustics in the party venue well…as big boomy rooms go, the sound wasn’t optimum so to those who couldn’t hear the troubadour, this is for you.

Hey everyone! And welcome to the Better Each Day Podcast Radio Show…the show that features recording artists and their work. That’s what we usually do but this episode is all about a party I’ll be playing in a week. It’s taking me back home to Aberdeen Washington or Warshington for the washing impaired.

Aberdeen, the town that put the Gator on the Animal House movie via Bill Murray who watched in person our hometown ritual dance, the Gator, performed at the Rocker by our beer soaked Schmenges flailing on the dance floor like freshly caught fish on a dock. He told someone at SNL and low and behold, the John Belushi Gator.

Aberdeen was the childhood home of both football icon John Elway and Patrick Simmons of the Doobie Brothers. William E. Boeing was a local and Nirvana sprouted out of a garage just down the street.

Most importantly to me are the friends and family that came with the magic of growing up there. I remember a happy childhood with neighbor kids everywhere. We were the baby boomers and we knew how to have fun. As a kid, I’d go to door of my buddie’s homes, knock politely and ask in my best Eddie Haskell voice if their precious child could come out and play with the well adjusted neighbor Bruce.

Then we’d go out and build a howitzer slingshot or blow something up. Hot air or hydrogen balloons with fuses, model cars with fuses, everything with fuses.

As I got into my 60s I found myself metaphorically going from door to door to see if anyone could come out and play. It seems in our old age we’ve become jaded and have seen and done it all. No one to play with anymore.

Until one day I received a call from Aberdeen friend Paul Koski asking if I’d like to take a three hour tour on his awesome boat with Ginger and Mary Ann. (I made up the Ginger and Mary Ann part but the boat was pretty cool.) Plus, I got to reunite with some people I hadn’t seen in a long time.

We did two of those boating day trips and had plans to travel to Finland to visit his relatives and see the sights. COVID put that on the back burner but last March we drove to Helena MT and back in four cold and snowy days. The goal? To deliver a car and visit with his brother-in-law and have fun. We did both. I’m so glad I got to know him beyond our teenage years.

He returned to his wife and home at Aberdeen Gardens to complete his new house. What was to be his final home I assume. He was killed working on it about a month ago in a tragic accident. He never moved in.

His friends gathered for a rememberance and there was still a sense of numbness. Those get-togethers can be so healthful and bring some smiles but for me there was a silver lining bonus of being asked to play a set at Aberdeen High School’s graduating class of 1972 reunion in a week.

Now those guys graduated two years prior to my class of ‘74 but having known many of these classmates, my friend Paul being one, I said “yes, where, when” without hesitation.

So from my heart to all the Aberdeen High School Weatherwax graduates of 1972, here with us or gone, my song I’m Coming Home. There’s a line at the end: It’s not on a map, only a poet would know, I’m coming home.

Hey, it's Bruce Hilliard with today’s guest Tommi Tikka with a message to go to the Born Free Foundation and he and several generous and concerned musicians have donated time and music to the cause…cause that’s what we do.

Please kick back and listen to our chat and music from the Born Free climate change project.

Born Free Climate Change Contributions Welcome Here!

Hey, it's Bruce Hilliard with today’s most excellent guest Steve Blaze, lead guitarist in of one of the hottest rock bands I’ve heard in years, Lillian Axe. Their latest album From Womb To Tomb will be released on CD on August 19 by Global Rock Records. This is the band’s first new album in ten years and it comes ahead of their first UK headline dates in 29 years.

Coming up, a few cuts from the LP written by our guest Steve Blaze and a chat with Steve!

Hey it's Bruce and come see me in concert at the Black Lab Gallery and Bar in Everett WA on Saturday July 23rd (that’s 2022) at 8:00. And please welcome today’s guest Silvano Ancelotti…From Italy, its Uncle Bard and the Dirty Bastards and some of the best Irish pub music you’ll ever hear.

Folk/Rock music, spiced up with Irish Trad! Based in the north of Italy (weird, innit?) and made up of lads who, in one way or another, lived or spent too much time in Ireland!

Too rock for the Folkies and too folk for the Rockies, the Bastards could please or disappoint almost everyone. Formed back in 2007, they play a unique blend of folk/rock and Traditional Irish Music. Uilleann pipes, tenor banjo, mandolin, Irish flute: there are few others bands in the folk/rock scene that could compete with the Bastards in terms of deep knowledge of Irish

Traditional Music and Irish culture and society.

As written in a review of the first album, “Uncle Bard & The Dirty Bastards don’t pretend to be Irish. [...] They are showing “huge gratitude and all the due respect to Irish music and culture”. They are really Ireland’s adopted sons and have brought a new breeze to the European Celtic rock scene.”

CONTACTS

Management: [email protected]

Booking: [email protected]

Web: www.ubdirtybastards.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/UBDirtyBastards

Instagram: www.instagram.com/dirtybastards

It’s a Thursday edition of the Better Each Day Podcast Radio Show and here’s the reason. The Zombies are in town. Live at the Historic Everett Theater tomorrow night at 7:00 PM, tickets are still available. And next week Saturday July 23rd I’ll be at Black Lab Gallery and Bar in Everett…two blocks away from the Zombies’ show the week prior so you can hang at the park for a week and just walk to my show.

Here’s a conversation from last September (when we first warned the village folk that the Zombies were coming) with Colin Blunstone, the voice of the Zombies’ #1 hit Time Of The Season.

Asher began classical violin training at the tender age of 2 and had already performed with the Buffalo philharmonic by age 13.

Asher’s expertise in trans-genre improvisation has led him to a career as a soloist in demand, performing at venues such as Madison Square Garden, Carnegie, Lincoln Center, the Jacob Javitz Center and across four continents. Asher has also been featured on PBS, and has made headlines on CNN, WABC, and NBC and many other major news sources.

Asher is known for breakdancing across stages with his LED electric violin, in addition to performing as a DJ violinist, bringing his experience as a live performer and technical prowess as an audio editing and mixing guru to countless clubs and stages across the country.

Thank you for being here with me, Bruce Hilliard and today’s guest Flood Dud, yes me, to talk about blind dates. You can say what you want about them, or even worse….go on one. This can be a marathon event to locate someone you like but with the right amount of perseverance I’ll be finding a mate.

There’s no better defining moment between artificial intelligence, in this case the dating app on my iPhone, compared humanoids, in particular your friends that know what you like, than the blind dating process.

The blind dating process that involves a matchmaking algorithm that’s set up to keep us using their app, flipping and flipping through screens in search of love only to meet this awe inspiring person and embarrassing yourself into permanent submission.

Smart Picks. Up sells. You have to budget your dating app investment to allow a few bucks for the date. I’m doing a reverse Houdini here. How hard can it be to get locked into a trick? I’ve become great at escaping but getting handcuffed and submerged in ice water in a coffin hanging from the Space Needle is getting harder and harder to find these days.

I went on a college blind date when I was 19. It was possibly the funnest date ever for me. It was a WSU barn dance in a small grange building in the middle of a wheat field in the Palouse of Eastern Washington. She was a short freckled faced chubby girl in bib overalls and a “let’s go have fun” face.

We got drunk on the way there, parked on a small road and with only the light of far off grange we cut across the pitch dark field to save time. Without being able to see where hell we were, we fell ass-over-tea-kettle into a 15 foot deep irrigation ditch full of mud. It was so dark we couldn’t see and when we realized we couldn’t climb the slippery muddy embankment to escape the bowels of death, we started laughing. And man, it’s hard to climb out of a muddy irrigation ditch when drunk and laughing hysterically.

Climbing out involved inadvertently pulling one another back to the bottom of the ditch which got us laughing to paralyzation. The picture we posed for later is one of the best mud photos ever taken at a dance.

That was then, this is now. The dating scene for us old guys is brutal. If you’re married, stay there. Don’t be thinking you can put on your “hey I’m hittin’ it now” look on and strut out there with the confidence of Buddy Love. I read in the one Christmas gift I received this year, Dating for Dummies, you should never talk about other women on these trial dates. So stay tuned because just as I felt the Titanic start to wobble and sink I played the “talk about other women” card.

I was at the meet up bar before my mystery date and spotted her oddly shaped butt as she waddled though the doors. I waved to her and pulled out her chair. Something told me I was in for an awkward test of my character.

We chatted for a minute and ordered. She said she was dying for a rum and coke so she ordered a Margarita and meatballs. I wanted a glass shard Tabasco smoothy but stuck with the near beer I’d been nursing before the princess arrived.

Then the screening began. It began with the description of her favorite husband…the one that could do everything I do only far better. He played every instrument and was an awesome DJ. He was ambidextrous and had perfect pitch. I wanted to say “same here” but walking on water wouldn’t have impressed this jaded lady.

So it was my turn to impress. I wanted to use the airline joke and tell her in the unlikely event of a water landing, we could use her ego as a floatation device, but no. Here’s what I did.

I changed the topic to my YMCA friend Freya. My way too young Freya is happily married and is in no way romantically involved, at least that she knows of, with me. Freya was my helper smurf when I needed advice as to a place to meet this ice cold blind date super sized Slurpee.

My...

Chuck Wright is today’s guest. When Chuck is not fighting crime by night, he is best known as the bassist from Quiet Riot!

Thank you for being here with me, Bruce Hilliard and today’s guest Chuck Wright, to talk about his new and first solo album, or project as he refers to it, Chuck Wright’s Sheltering Sky.

Chuck is proud and excited to release his debut solo album,Sheltering Sky, on Los Angeles-based Cleopatra Records, onMay 20.The album features guest appearances by several of Wright’s musical peers including keyboardist Derek Sherinian (Dream Theater/Billy Idol), guitarist Lanny Cordola (House of Lords), vocalist Jeff Scott Soto (Yngwie Malmsteen), Troy Luccketta (Tesla) and the late Mr. Big drummer, Pat Torpey.

The album’s 11 tracks also illustrate Wright’s impressive songwriting ability as he either wrote or co-wrote all nine original songs on the album.Also included is an edgy, intense version of Bjork’s “Army of Me” along with a soulful, Celtic-rock take on the The Youngbloods classic, “Darkness, Darkness.”Chuck also produced and engineered most of the album.

Sheltering Skyexhibits a diversity and breadth of musical styles that embraces facets of Wright’s hard rock legacy while also delving into a more varied side of Chuck’s musical vision with well-written songs that feature ethereal guitar work, tasteful, soulful 70s era influences, Prog, Jazz Fusion and even a bit of heavy funk.Besides his usual outstanding bass work as performed on a variety of different bass instruments, Wright also contributes on keys and acoustic guitar on several tracks.

The new single fromSheltering SkyisThrowin’ Stones,a fierce and passionate call for the end of armed conflict, a call which couldn’t be more perfectly timed for today’s world.It features a heavy funk groove that emphasizes Wright’s powerhouse playing and the various playing techniques for which he is known.

Thank you for being here with me, Bruce Hilliard telling you they tattooed her in darkness. That is a line from Goddess Reborn, a song we’ll hear and hear all about from guest and rockin’ it James Carr. James is the front for the James Carr Band. If you get a chance, check them out. Very good. James Carr plays some kick ass guitar and what a great vocalist!

Okay, I’m back with a couple minutes to play this by request. A song I wrote about a promise made by a little girl to a little boy one sunny day in the 60s. Her name and the name of the song, Kerri.