"Blue Skies" by the Jazzman

[QuestionMark]

 Here's a new video of me playing an acoustic guitar interpretation of "Blue Skies".   My original paintings and drawing accompanies the music.  

I think we all  can look forward to some "Blue Skies" when this pandemic thang is eventually over.   Until then, keep pick'n and doing what's needed to try and stay healthy.

QM aka "Jazzman" Jeff

 

 

 

 

[Red 333]

Wow, Jeff! Your artwork is outstanding. I especially enjoyed the portraits and some of the scenes of everyday life in the town. Do you live in the Northeast on the coast somewhere? My favorites, though, was the series of the open windows with the curtains blowing. I would have liked them just on their own anyway, but they provided very fitting and effective visuals for the song. Your playing, of course, was excellent. What guitar are you using? It has such an interesting sound. Was it the archtop you painted? Whatever it was you made it sound great.

Best,

Red 333

[QuestionMark]

23 hours ago, Red 333 said:

Wow, Jeff! Your artwork is outstanding. I especially enjoyed the portraits and some of the scenes of everyday life in the town. Do you live in the Northeast on the coast somewhere? My favorites, though, was the series of the open windows with the curtains blowing. I would have liked them just on their own anyway, but they provided very fitting and effective visuals for the song. Your playing, of course, was excellent. What guitar are you using? It has such an interesting sound. Was it the archtop you painted? Whatever it was you made it sound great.

Best,

Red 333

 

Red333-
THANK YOU for listening and watching and the feedback.  As always it is appreciated.  I live in the northern suburbs of Chicago and a number of the images are inspired by the Southwest Michigan region, where I have vacationed each year for practically my entire life.  First with my parents as a young kid and then with my own family.  
 

The window scenes are of the cottage/cottages I’ve visited and stayed in since 1973.  Heather, who is named on some of the window scenes was a girl the cottage owners once told me had terminal cancer and that her parents had told them had a last wish of staying in the cottage we normally stay in, and so my  wife and I, willingfully agreed to switch for the coming week to a different cottage so Heather could have her last wish to stay in the cottage.  However, when we arrived at the cottages, we found that another party, other than Heather and her family,  had occupied the cottage we had given up.   I asked the owner why and was told that Heather’s health at the last moment had turned significantly worse, and, as a result, she and her family would not be able to be there, so the owner rented the cottage to another (leaving us committed during that stay to a different cottage.)  It tore at me that Heather would not get her final wish to be in the cottage and see it’s beautiful view out it’s window of Lake Michigan, so I painted her a view from inside the cottage, got her address from the cottage owner, and shipped it to her parents to give to her, so she could, in her own way, have the view from the cottage she longed for as her last wish.  When I painted it, I also painted a version of the same painting for my own keeping, to have a copy of my own.  That’s the first window view in the video.  Per her mother, Heather kept her painting of the cottage’s view next to her bed when she passed away.  Before she passed away, Heather also wrote me a thank you note that I still have, that arrived after she passed away.  The other window scene paintings are my tribute to her and her story in one form or another.  That story occurred was over +25 years ago, but her story lives on.   I might add that I never met Heather, but her mother (who I also never met) and I exchange holiday cards each year.  Many times we reference continuing to tell the story.  Which, I just did, again.

A lot of people tell me the paintings resemble a scenes in the northeast, like the Nantucket region.  But, I’ve never been there.  Although, I was in the Canadian Niagara Falls and once drove through upstate NY coming back.  More on Niagara Falls, later.  The window and cottage scenes though are inspired by SW Michigan.  The town scenes are also inspired by there.  The portraits are of my family members or sometimes abstractions of people.

For the music I am playing my 2017 Epiphone Limited Edition Mahogany (in natural, not the standard sunburst version) EL-00 Pro that I acquired a few months ago.  It’s sound is very similar to the spruce top vintage sunburst EL-00 Pro that I also own, except with a slightly different sound variation because of its mahogany top.   Both are great guitars with great vintage 60s slim taper necks.  Both are now discontinued...in my mind because they were so good they competed with the much higher priced 00 Gibson versions.  They are that good to play in my opinion, and  as you noted about the sound in the video.  

Back to the paintings, yes, in the one(s) you noted, I intentionally worked to get the sense of the wind blowing in the inanimate flat surface image.  Likewise, in the Canada Niagara Falls one, I worked to get the roar of the falls into the inanimate flat surface image.  (The one time I was anywhere in the northeast.)  The painting of the guitar on the beach is a depiction of the 1936 N.Y. Epiphone Zenith that I acquired in my collection circa 1988.  For the painting, I used the actual guitar as a model and then once I had that painted decided, in terms of the painting, to transport the guitar’s image to a beach setting context...rather than the real setting of it sitting in its stand in my home. 
 

Again, thanks  for your feedback on the video (as well as for giving me another chance to tell the story of Heather and her painting and life.)

Stay healthy!

QM aka “Jazzman” Jeff

 

 

 

 

Edited July 15, 2020 by QuestionMark