http://colemitchellmusic.com/news.html Cole Mitchell: News Jannis' PHPRss class - http://www.jannis.to/ Sun, 05 Feb 2012 01:29:21 -0800 http://colemitchellmusic.com/news.html#21 ]]> http://colemitchellmusic.com/news.html#21 - Cole Mitchell - News http://colemitchellmusic.com/news.html#22 For a blind, diabetic, transplant recipient, I feel pretty good, considering. This being the case, I’ve taken on a multitude of projects fully intending to finish them; and if I haven’t, I will. So when the general malaise set upon me, and I found it harder and harder to extract myself from the couch and harder yet to pick up my guitar, I chalked it up to depression. I don’t know from depression, but Lauri agreed that this seemed like my diagnosis. Having some experience with the dark feelings, I moved forward on this premise and sought relief in the form of anti-depressants, the “happy pills” that supposedly made life worth living again. In doing so I felt that I was on top of the matter, and I settled in to await the new arising.

The new me, a healed me, felt conspicuously similar to the couch-ridden slug I had been before; not quite so crippled, but suspiciously lethargic and uninterested in my calling. Needless to say, this was very disappointing. They told me that six months is the minimum trial period for these wonder pills, so I rode it out till spring. Six months came and went, and I decided to get myself out and enjoy the warming weather--gardening, hoeing, digging, planting trees and making plans for our permaculture summer. Ah yes, the best laid plans. Come to find out, my mental state had more to do with my body’s ills than with my mind’s. It seems that my transplanted kidney received 18 years previous was showing the strains of forty years of diabetes and almost two decades of immunosuppression drugs, not to mention the rigors (or shall we say abuses) of a very colorful life. Now one would think that this would be enough to sink a battleship and for a while I went with that; for crying out loud, who would think anything else was wrong? But forty years of diabetes pulls no punches! On June the 1st, 2011, we were leaving Dallas after a solo performance the night before when I became violently ill, stopping every 20 to 50 miles so I could heave my guts out. There was nothing in there. This went on for the duration of the 10 hour trip. My kidney was giving fair warning.
Thus began the wretched summer culminating in August with a week-long stay in the hospital. Things weren’t looking very good for the kidney, and my blood pressure and cluster headaches were on the rise. When I was released from the hospital, still no one--me or anyone else--was any wiser to the coming events. Until the middle of one night in September when Lauri found me face down on the kitchen floor, seemingly from a grand mal seizure. I blew it off as a low blood sugar episode, although more extreme than I have known before, and continued believing that I could pull out of this any day.
Lauri left for a trip to New York later in the month and had only been gone a week or so, when it happened again; and this was no mere blood sugar episode nor was it a seizure. I had been lying on the floor of my rehearsal room for a full day when I began to come to. Crawling around on my elbows trying to get to the back door to let the dog out, unable to rise, speak or even know exactly where I was when the phone began to ring. Who knows how long it had been ringing. Someone was trying to get through, over and over they called and then after a while--nothing. I’m not sure how much time had passed when I began to hear my neighbor calling from the front door. I tried to call to him; the only word I could get out as I yelled was “back, back!” And soon he came to the back door, which was open. (I had somehow been able to reach up and open it to let the dog out.) He came in and found me in my miserable state, unable to rise. He helped me to the couch and with a little juice and stimulation soon I was able to get some words out, but still unable to grasp the full gravity of what had happen to me. It seems that through all this, my daughter Sommer had been contacted and was on her way up from Las Cruces; a few hours later, there she was with me. Back on my feet, I had taken a licking, but here I was still ticking.

The next day we walked into my doctor’s office in the hospital and they began trying to decipher what had been going on. This of course led to my being admitted for another hospital stay. Congestive heart failure is when your heart begins to function so poorly that your lungs fill with fluids, and this is what has been happening to me over the past months. After several days of lying around, waiting for something to happen, one day I began to gasp, unable to breathe any longer. The charge nurse took matters into her own hands and declared a state of emergency. Things were hectic, I can barely remember anything; just having the bi-pap oxygen mask (which forced air down my throat) shoved on my face as I was declaring my last breath. This lead me to the intensive care unit where I finally began receiving the care I had needed for months. Adding insult to injury, my kidney had also taken its last breath. I was sent down for an angiogram where they also placed a vascular catheter in my neck so I could began dialysis.
The angiogram showed that yes, indeed, I had suffered a couple of heart attacks and that the three main vessels from the heart were occluded. At that moment, I had thirty percent heart function. The treatment they suggested was triple bypass surgery. At this point, I felt like I have been run through the ringer. Thank goodness for Dilaudid. Over a period of three weeks, I had deteriorated to a mere 145 pounds, this was at the least twenty five pounds below my regular weight and I was beginning to wonder if I would survive the hospital stay.

At last a dialysis chair was secured at a local clinic as well as an appointment with a cardiothoracic surgeon. I began dialysis and in two weeks meet with Dr. Peter Walinsky and was extremely impressed by this confident, guitar-playing surgeon. He promised me no grand outcomes and also informed me that what I thought were seizures in September were actually heart attacks. And he was so nonchalant about this being an elective surgery that I thought fleetingly, “why would I need it at all”? But the words “you will never get a kidney transplant without this operation” sealed the deal, and I haven’t looked back since.
Heart surgery went well, a textbook example of how this procedure should look, no problems from the start. My heart pumping like a freight train and a returned sense of ambition and ideas, not a bad birthday present. It has been a slow recovery by music industries standards. I figure I’ll be back to my old self in about 12 weeks, and I am patiently putting one foot in front of the other until then. It’s been a long arduous trip since the beginning of this total deterioration. I can pinpoint the noticeable decline beginning September 2010. Cole Mitchell and the Curs’ last stand. It was an outdoor gig under a pavilion, 92 degrees in the shade. I was unusually nervous, we hadn’t rehearsed much, but these are very seasoned musicians, there shouldn’t have been a problem. A few songs in I began to feel my blood sugar dive, I had had this problem the previous show as well. I was starting to get concerned. About half way through an hour set, I called for a Coca Cola to try to regroup, but it never happened. I barely gasped the vocals to the end. The band held their own, this was my worst show ever. I had tried to blame blood sugar issues throughout this yearlong ordeal when actually it was congestive heart failure that was bringing me down. Hindsight tells this story and who knows how long it had actually been in the making. That was then, and this is now, and actually for a blind, diabetic, transplant, dialysis patient and triple-bypass recipient, I feel pretty good. 2012 should be full of surprises, stay tuned kids.]]> http://colemitchellmusic.com/news.html#22 Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800 - Cole Mitchell - News http://colemitchellmusic.com/news.html#20
So... Mel Bay and my favorite recordings became my teachers”¦.

Skip ahead past my first bands and the beginnings of my wandering minstral lifestyle. Though I never set out to travel so many dark avenues, it seems that’s where you find the brightest jewels. Early on, I took to searching for used record shops in each city I would find myself in. Or shopping the cut-out bins of mom-and-pop record shops, whiling away hours upon days flipping through others’ rejects. I was driven purely by karma. I came to understand this much later, but it’s the only logical explanation for the way one’s life lays out. In my early 20s, while rummaging through a cut-out bin in an obscure record shop, in a city I can’t recall, I stumbled upon an album with a price tag of a buck fifty U.S. currency, called “Obituary”, by George Gerdes. Karma being what it is, this was in my price range. I took my booty home, not yet knowing the gravity of this serendipitous moment. The needle hit the groove and “You should come out to California where I’ve been living in the trees”¦”

So far so good, this one would be added to the collection I hauled around in milk crates. And then it hit me like a 100-pound sack of cottonseed meal. “Sweet Janine Taylor, she sings just like Sophie Tucker, and if you want her you can find her in the back room of the North Beach bar room ballroom floor. I don’t need no other ladies, you can keep your sexy Sadies, cuz sweet Janine, she pleases me and takes me on a voyage, over far and distant waters, sweet Janine you know I need ya, can’t you hear me call, as I’m heavin’ and I’m weavin’ over here inside the bathroom stall.”

The structure, the imagery, the way it flowed. I was immediately enrolled. I went to school on this handful of songs. The darkest alley is where you’ll find the brightest jewel. And that’s how I came to consider George a mentor and an inspiration. I’m certainly not a parrot--I never cared much for being a mimic, and to this day I only have a handful of covers that I pull out once in a blue moon for no other reason than to cleanse my pallet after constantly quoting myself. I’ve never known anyone who could turn a phrase like my friend double G, very clever, but never trite.

The media was looking for the next Bob Dylan and that’s how George fell through the cracks in the early 70s after only a couple albums on Arista Records. He is certainly no Bob Dylan, and guess what neither is anyone else. And Bob Dylan is no George Gerdes. Many a good songwriter has been lead out in to the ring over the past 30 or 40 years and been touted as the next Bob Dylan, and either stood on their own, or drifted into the oblivion. After all there’s only one Bob Dylan, one Hank Williams and only one George Gerdes. Creative people, creative geniuses if you will, always suffer the contempt of the media. Creative vision comes, more times than not, ahead of its time. And this contempt and lack of creativity, which is driven by corporate lust for the almighty dollar, leads a vast public like lemmings over the cliff to its Stepford conformity. But I digress--sorry for the dark clouds.

There are an ever-growing number of discerning pallets whose embers have always been aglow, who appreciate artistry ahead of its time, or harkening back to its roots, done with moderate to small success for the sheer sake of being an artist. When this is the case, there is no option not to create. My original introductory copy of George Gerdes “Obituary” has been lost in the shuffle of converting a music collection from vinyl to CD to who knows what next. But the bright side of this bittersweet nostalgia is that karmic connection. My new-found old friend, the wonderin’ double G has kept himself quite busy over the decades as an actor and troubadour and is still as I first knew of him, an excellent songwriter with a razor wit.]]> http://colemitchellmusic.com/news.html#20 Wed, 02 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800 - Cole Mitchell - News http://colemitchellmusic.com/news.html#19
There are those who walk among us in our reality, who are barely able to keep their mental and physical actions behind the restraints of common decency, as if walking through a candy story or a valley of want. This is the same valley of want we are all sentenced to until death or until some sort of enlightenment unburdens us. This valley is known by a myriad of different names, and it varies depending on what discipline one practices or doesn’t but alas a rose by any other name”¦

We are all attached to, repulsed by or oblivious to each other as we are attached to countless pleasures and comforts; and, as we labor for understanding, most likely we come up short. As the reality of these shortcomings sets in, it is no wonder that some are driven over the edge. Scaling towers or lingering in dark alleys, living naked dreams with outlaw themes. It’s a very thin line that separates those who go off the edge to those about to go over, and an even thinner line that separates so called “normal society” from those teetering on the edge. So, as the wolf mingles sheepishly or hides in the shadows waiting, we may not recognize him but we know he’s there, ogling the scantily-clad girls, walking on the street with tattoos needled into the small of their backs, just above their hips, “the tramp stamp,” like bait; chumming the waters for sharks. Not to say that one’s style of dress or lack thereof is reason for attack; but for those without reason, for those over the edge, this hardly matters. Nor does it matter that there are laws against such behavior. This is a disease of an extremely deluded mind. The culprits might believe that they are enticed into these actions and are hardly to blame for them.

The point is obvious, I think; we are all in control of our own fates from one end or the other, i.e. past actions or present actions. So as we walk through this valley of want, seeking pleasure and shunning discomfort, it may be worth the time to check and see if our MO is working out for us. Are the pleasures we seek truly a source of happiness, or are the discomforts we reject truly unbearable? It’s hard to tell from person to person, but deep contemplation of these matters can yield profound results. And so it goes--the ever-changing, yet never-changing, predicament we find ourselves in. Heaven or hell; which is it today? I guess it depends on those disciplines that we practice or don’t. Heaven or hell is merely a state of mind, believe it or no.]]> http://colemitchellmusic.com/news.html#19 Wed, 16 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800 - Cole Mitchell - News http://colemitchellmusic.com/news.html#18 http://colemitchellmusic.com/news.html#18 Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800 - Cole Mitchell - News http://colemitchellmusic.com/news.html#17
The world just doesn’t seem to be as cold when you got someone to drink with, whether you speak or not. In this den, you could find all the vampires, drunks, junkies, working girls and the like. It was a den of contemplation; whether you were reviewing actions taken, regretting a past squandered, or plotting some illicit scheme, believe me, you weren’t the first. Many waited day upon day, night upon night for that elusive opportunity that never appears, they waited nervous but patient, until they starved out or some small opportunity opened up to change their luck. They were interchangeable, one would leave and another one would show up to take their place. Every day it was the same, on the throne at the bar or in a booth at the back, we were holding court, seeing and being seen.

There was a space in time when someone had discarded a mattress by the dumpster behind Jack’s, and the garbage truck would come each week and dump the dumpster and leave the mattress. It was out there in the back of the parking lot for what seemed like months. One Navaho woman used it to turn tricks until she earned more money than she could drink up and bought a bus ticket back to the reservation.

There is a thread running through each of these stories that makes everyone the same. Strip away how unique each of us felt, the suffering and silence or the obvious screams of pain. Each and every one was there for refuge, for rescue. Each was asking for forgiveness, reaching for help, saying throw me line, someone please throw me a line. Pull me in from this raging sea of suffering. The comical aspect of all this is, through all the routine comings and goings, some never even knew they needed or wanted help. Now take this dismal scene and transplant it”¦ anywhere, Anytown USA, any town throughout the world, and there will be those who feel they are trapped there, trapped like flies stuck to a strip of fly tape hanging from a west Texas gas station ceiling.]]> http://colemitchellmusic.com/news.html#17 Fri, 04 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800 - Cole Mitchell - News http://colemitchellmusic.com/news.html#16
So vigorously do we try to shirk responsibility for these actions that the recountings become more and more elaborate as time goes on until our rose-colored history is woven into the fabrics of our minds. Mindfulness and contemplation, avoiding distraction, slowing down and going inside to study what has actually gone on and why, although extremely difficult, is necessary to keep from committing the same mistakes over and over and therefor reducing the difficulties we create for ourselves.

A primordial reckoning may sound like a one-time housecleaning, organizing our thoughts and memories into an understanding of what has and will happen; but, once the reckoning has begun, one is locked into a continuous analytical process the duration of which hinges solely on the effort applied. To this end, we spend our lives on the path seeking illumination from entrance to exit, one stage to the next, and one moment to the next. If our contemplation has been correct, we will have realized early on that to make a journey so long and tedious it’s a pretty good idea to have an experienced guide, one who’s made the trip, who knows the way.]]> http://colemitchellmusic.com/news.html#16 Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700 - Cole Mitchell - News http://colemitchellmusic.com/news.html#15

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/colemitchell4

We’ve been at work all summer fine tuning this fresh bunch of songs, around the camp fire beneath the stars and I think we’ve got ”˜em just where we want them to be. Damn near as raw and alive as they’d be if you were sitting around the fire with us. Looking forward to your feedback because it’s all those thirsty ears that keep us riding and playing in the first place. We’ve enjoyed all your comments over the past few months. About house concerts, our recordings and especially the lively repartee having to do with my news journal entries. http://colemitchellmusic.com/news.html
Stay tuned to colemitchellmusic.com for new journal entries, tour dates and all the news that’s fit to print. Thank you for allowing us to do what we do out there on the twilight trail.]]> http://colemitchellmusic.com/news.html#15 Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700 - Cole Mitchell - News http://colemitchellmusic.com/news.html#14 For instance, I will not sell my integrity for whatever that’s worth but I will continue to caress the muse for it’s been with me longer than anything or anyone in my life, save for the members of my family that are still alive. Therefore, my skin has thickened into armor akin to the hide of a rhinoceros. If you happen to ask, most folks agree that I’m a pretty good egg in spite of all the reckless years I’ve spent way out on the other side; out on the edge, the fringe of blue collar Americana. There are cynics, though, folks that think I’ll never live up to my potential; I tend to look at these as short-sighted individuals or maybe just middle-of-the-road as far as taste and creativity are concerned.
The funny part of all of this is that I can no more refuse the call to write then I can the age-old call to water; my thirsts will be quenched simultaneously when I move beyond this life. Then there is always the question of dues: Have you paid your dues? Will you pay your dues before you make it? My answer to this question is, “yes I’ve paid my dues, and I’ll be paying till the cows come home.” For I live my art, I don’t consider it a job, though it is work, 24 hours a day. I eat, drink and bleed the words, and I get out of it exactly what I put into it. I believed I’d “made it” the moment I realized there was nothing else I could do; the moment I let it take me over, never to return. So what are the options in living up to my potential? Who dictates the measure? I like it when others are able to enjoy the work but that’s not the reason for doing it; it’s done because I can’t not do it. Though it’s only good for this lifetime, it is the greater part of who I am. In my mind, I have no laurels to lean upon so I will continue to perfect it as long as I am able. For those who watch me toil in disbelief, I have but one thing to say: I’m going to get it right, come hell or high water.]]> http://colemitchellmusic.com/news.html#14 Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700 - Cole Mitchell - News http://colemitchellmusic.com/news.html#13 http://colemitchellmusic.com/news.html#13 Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700 - Cole Mitchell - News