-In summer of 2007, my friend Keith Blackwell and I put on a ukulele festival. With help from the best team of volunteers ever, Uketoberfest was born. In 2013 we handed the keys over to our team who ran…

El Borko began as a way to play surf and related music styles. Like other genre based groups I have formed, just learning the style is not enough. In the case of El Borko, I wanted to follow the example…

I got up early this morning and edited three videos. I use an app called “Open Shot Video Editor”. Like most open-source software, you can send the makers some money. I try to do this once a year for the…

I was a kid in the 60s. I remember the music from radio, tv, movies, jukeboxes. I was lucky to hear such a wide variety of music; folk, country, classical, pop, I like 'em all. By the mid-seventies I was…

From the 50s through the 80s, albums were recorded on magnetic tape. This was still the case in the 90s, but by then, the industry was beginning the change to digital recording. In the age of tape, songs were often…

Histories of 60s pop focus on the British Invasion and American Psychedelia, but the zeitgeist reached far beyond that. I think all 60s music reflects the optimism and social evolution of the decade. Dylan, Beatles, Hendrix and the rest are…

A tribute to the Doors…

People are weird, when you're a weirdo.

When you're a weirdo, so is your clone.

People are mumbly, grumbly, and stumbly.

People get hungry, when they get stoned.

When you're weird, insects get trapped in…

Soul food, O' flood us. Nourishing mask.

Block & Blade. Cork & Cask.

Starbuck, chipotle, cinnamon sass. 

Donut Quixote, classical gas.

Sometimes our reach exceeds our grasp. We run for that train but it's already gone, we jump the ditch but fall in the water. When this happens to me, I beat myself up about it. I think that's both good…

A Power Trio is drums, bass, and guitar, with no extra baggage. Consider how many great bands have this configuration. To name a few; The Police, ZZ Top, Cream. Also four piece bands with a lead singer like The Who…

The maple out front is leafing out. The bamboo shoots are exploding. The Photinia is crimson with new sprouts. And so likewise is El Borko ¡Surf! We played last weekend at Deadwood Community center and it was a blast. I…

Sometimes, you gotta sit still. Last year was a relentless flow of performances. I loved it, but by December I felt exhausted and burned out. In addition, El Borko's drummer Cam is in New Orleans until April so No surf…

Do you write for yourself or for others? Does it matter? As a kid, before I could play an instrument, I would make up songs. There was "That House Is Haunted" which sounded a lot like "These Boots Are Made…

I started learning B♭ clarinet in fifth grade. I hated it. I wanted a trumpet, but my folks had a problem with the volume. Anyway, it's hard to learn music when you dislike the sounds you're making, so I gave…

An encounter with "Artificial Stupidity". I posted on an event for a gig today and facebook took the post down calling it "hate speech". What?! I gave the dates and band names and put up a drawing. Did the algorithm…

I attended high-school back in the Pleistocene Era and played electric guitar in a garage band. After graduation, I left the city and moved to a small town to attend college. Alas, there was no real rock there, just a…

It's here! The new album is finally done!

El Borko ¡Surf! is the first album with Cameron Wick on drums and James P. Daley on bass. I've been around the Pacific Northwest with these guys, they're fun to hang out…

Most people who have recorded an album know how much work it is. You have to write the songs, then play the songs, then record the songs. Then you gotta mix the songs, master the songs, make an album cover…

It's fun to break down a genre into sub-genres and see what they bring to the whole. Here are four possible sub-genres for surf music; cinematic drama, barefoot beach party, hotrod hoodlum, and sensuous jungle tiki.

Cinematic drama is the…

Ask someone for an example of surf music, then get ready for many different answers. Some will say "Beach Boys", some will say "Dick Dale", some will talk about the Ventures or Duane Eddy. They are all correct.  

Surf music…

I spent 2021 releasing and promoting two albums (Surf Monster & Surficana) and putting together the current line-up of El Borko ¡Surf!. I spent 2022 booking and playing gigs with El Borko ¡Surf!. Here at the end of the year…

Everything has to be new all the time. Does everything have to be new all the time? Why does everything have to be new all the time? Everything new happens all the time. So every time a thing is new…

Sometimes we do things just to see if we can. This week was an example of that where I played an El Borko show in Seattle on Thursday, a Miller Brothers show in Eugene on Friday and tonight it's up…

I have been so lucky to find such a great band. Jon Neher is a loyal friend and a great musician. He brings intensity and life to everything he does. James P. Daley illustrates the maxim, "still waters run deep"…

There's no such thing as an "unknown" band. If you're a band, and you play out, then someone must know you. I've played gigs where it was us and the bartender and two drunk people who left after awhile. So…