Hey there. As some of you know, I play the ukulele and sing and stuff. And over the last year or so I’ve been writing some songs and putting together an album. I’ve posted many of the demo tracks here on my blog and some of you seemed to like them, so I thought I’d give my blog readers (all 5 of you) an update and a special deal.

The album “Ukulele Jim’s Authentic Down Home Marital Aid” has been submitted to online retailers such as iTunes, Amazon, eMusic, Rhapsody, Napster, etc. It won’t show up in the online stores for at least 4-6 weeks. In the meantime, I want to offer those of you who happen to read this an early jump at the record and a discount.

For the next week or two, I’m making the entire album available for only $5 through the Snocap digital store. That’s half of what it will sell for everywhere else.

I’m not going to tell many people about this special deal, but I definitely want to share it with all of you who are reading this because you rule.

So, if you’re interested, head on over to the Snocap store and check it out. The songs are MP3 format and DRM free. You can preview each track, and if you want you can get them individually for .99 cents or get the whole album for only $5 bucks.

If you do end up buying the album or one of the tracks, please come on back and post a comment here with your opinion. I’d love to know what you think of the music.

And sign up for my mailing list! I’ll occasionally send info about new songs, albums, exclusives, shows and other news. I promise I won’t spam you or sell your information. Honest.

Recently I’ve started work on an album of children’s songs, mostly written for my 3-year-old twins but also with the idea that other kids might like them, too. This is a rough demo of one of them. I still need to add accordian and some other parts to round it out.

(And in case you weren’t aware, the Hawaiian word “ukulele” roughly translates as “jumping flea”, due to the action of one’s fingers playing the ukulele resembling a jumping flea.)

Hit the “Play” button below to give it a listen…
Download audio file (ukulele_jim_-_the_jumping_flea_circus_demo.mp3)

What do you think of it so far?

Rate it!
Note: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it.

Well, we survived the Jesusita Fire with our house still standing. But damn, it was close. The fire burned to just a few hundred feet of our house, almost to the lot at the end of our road. If the dry brush in that lot had caught fire, it’d be a different story today.

It’s been a rough week. We were convinced on Wednesday that our house was gone. From my dad’s house we watched the TV news as it showed our neighborhood and surrounding hills on fire, with flames as high as 150 feet. I thought there’d be no way our house could still stand after that.

Then at about 4am on Thursday I couldn’t sleep, and I just had to know if the house was okay. I remembered that I had left a computer in the garage powered on and connected to the Internet. I tried connecting to it from my iPhone, fully expecting to get a “connection timed out” message, but lo and behold — it answered! That meant at least the garage was still standing and the power was still on! (Either that, or the computer had become sentient and absorbed by the Internet in a Lawnmower Man-esque fashion.)

We were allowed back home today, so we checked for any damage (none, thankfully) and then hiked to the empty lot to see how close the fire had come. The view from the ridge was spooky — everything was burned black as far as we could see. A few houses still stood, but the ground was scorched all around them. Clearly the firefighters had made a stand to save the houses. We could see where they made their break and held the line, which kept the fire from coming any further. They did a hell of a job, bless ‘em.

Looking back, I have to say that at times our local news media did a relatively piss-poor job of covering this disaster. More often than not, the local TV station KEYT would opt to air their regular daytime soap operas instead of providing the news about the fire that all of us were so desperately seeking. And when they were providing coverage, often times they were showing live feeds of houses burning or giant flames, but couldn’t tell us what area of town we were looking at. Or they’d leave the camera on a single burning home for twenty minutes, explaining that the fire was coming out of the windows and doors and roof. No kidding, really? Is that how fire works? And in between broadcasts they’d play El Pollo Loco commercials boasting that it was time to “taste the real fire”. Nice going, dipshits.

The local radio stations were not much better, often playing Dr. Laura or classic rock when they should have been giving round-the-clock coverage. I mean, seriously guys, the goddamn city is on fire, do we really need to hear Jethro Tull right now? As I said the other day, the best source of news about the fire was from Twitter.

Anyway, our house is still technically in a warning zone and everything is covered in a fine layer of dark gray ash, but tomorrow I go back to work and hopefully life will carry on as normal. Whatever that means.

We are evacuated and hanging out with family.

Meantime, cows wander through the streets as people try to flee. It’s chaos.

It’s warm and windy in Santa Barbara, so of course there’s a fire in the foothills above town. Why wouldn’t there be?

It started yesterday afternoon. This time it’s called the Jesusita Fire, apparently named after the little girl Jesus. So far it’s burned about 200 acres and is nowhere near being contained. Surprisingly, I’ve found that the most current information about the fire can be found on Twitter, of all places. Some of it is accurate and some of it is wild speculation, but at least it’s up-to-date speculation, which is more than I can say for what our local news is providing.

And of course, it takes one Twitter message like this:

To turn it into this:

Anyway, the fire is pretty darn close to our house and we’re on the border of the evacuation area, but nobody’s asked us to leave yet. So we’re still preparing. To confront Jesus, I guess.

I wrote this for my lovely wife Lisa as a gift for our anniversary, which is today. Thirteen years married, twenty-two together as a couple.

(It was raining really hard outside my window during this… some of it is audible, especially at the end.)

Here’s to you, darlin’. I love you.

Last night was among the best evenings of the year for novice star gazers. Hopefully you caught a glimpse of it. If not, here’s the next best thing.

(stolen from David Powdrell)

Happy Valentine’s Day.

It was raining really hard yesterday, and when the clouds parted we could see some snow up on the mountains by our house. Taking a chance that it wouldn’t melt quickly, we packed the kids in the car and headed up to Figueroa mountain. There was plenty at the top. We found a nice, level spot where there was lots of untouched snow. Many snowballs were thrown, and the kids made a snowman they named Mr. Angry Eyes.

Snow is such a gift here in Santa Barbara. We only get it once a year in the mountains if we’re lucky, so I’m glad we got a chance to go up this year.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Wishing you love and joy, from our family to yours.