A Long Way To Go - minimal version

"Magic is what we do. Music is how we do it." -- Jerry Garcia

Welcome to my page, my peers, associates, friends, and musical family. I'm a lifelong, multi-instrumentalist musician who records prolifically and joyfully. You'll hear me play guitar, bass (regular four string, and four and five string fretless), mandolin, banjo, keys (piano, organ, synth), lap slide, sitar, and sing on my recordings here. I've been in a few dozen bands in my life, playing everything from bluegrass, jazz, rock, jam band, reggae, funk, afrobeat, Middle Eastern, traditional Irish, singer/songwriter, pop/covers, to experimental/avant garde. 
  Since I found SoundCloud a couple years ago, I've found many talented, creative people with whom to create music. However, in the summer of '23 I formed a band called The Eclectic Collective with some of my favorite musicians I've met through here. It started as a loose collective of musicians and coalesced into a core group of musicians who find other musicians with whom we'd like to make music, then run their songs through our process, and in effect add a full band. That core of The Eclectic Collective includes Tez (Llanpsych), J.J. Terrel, Ken (K2 and the Three), Stephen (Texmex Shaman), Chris (cgmaness), and Mark (mistermark). A couple of other musicians are frequent collaborators, as well, including Artur of Surfers Like Us, and Steve Vervaet of Steve's World. More recently, we've been joined by Carl of The Beautiful Dark fame. 
  The magic of music is amplified exponentially by each person adding to it. So, we really try to add our sorcery all kinds of music from all kinds of artists. Sometimes, we keep it within the group, but a lot of what we do is collaboration with other artists. Therefore these days, 100% of what I do is collaboration, within the group or with other artists on the side.
  I, and we, are also available for hire if you have a song or lyrics and you really want to add bigger instrumentation or a band and good production to it. 
  A small sampling of the artists whom I consider primary influences, and whom you will hear coming through my fingers include Phish, The Flaming Lips, The Grateful Dead, Radiohead, Rye Cooder, Steve Earle, Miles Davis, Fela Kuti, Arcade Fire, Mikey Dread, Yellowman, Purpleman, The Meditations, Michigan and Smiley, Lee Perry, Dillinger, Django Reinhardt, Impossible Recording Machine, The Allman Bros Band, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Cream, Bela Fleck, Les Claypool, Sam Bush, David Grissman, John Prine, Talking Heads, Beastie Boys, MMW, Moe., Morphine, Ween, Steve Lukather, Michael McDonald, John Abercrombie, Dave Holland, John Scofield, Victor Wooten,  Cannonball Adderly, Thelonious Monk, Flea, Parliament Funkadelic,  Frank Zappa, Prince Paul, Pete Rock, Thievery Corporation, Amon Tobin, Chet Baker, Joao Gilberto, Stan Getz, Astrud Gilberto, Carol Kaye, Tame Impala, Mumford and Sons, Japanese Breakfast, LCD Soundsystem, Beach House, Sean Lennon, and Billy Strings, but of course there are many more. I also really like and am influenced by traditional Iranian, Palestinian, Indian, Sri Lankan, Sudanese, Mauritian, Somalian, Egyptian, West African, and Syrian music. I welcome anyone who plays non-western music to contact me for a collaboration, too.
 I'm overjoyed to have found my community on SoundCloud. This is a truly unique forum where everyone is sincerely trying to build each other up. The profoundly supportive and positive SoundCloud community has really opened up an exciting new world of collaboration for me. That is the main reason I'm in the Cloud, actually, to connect with other musicians and make music that I enjoy listening to, and hopefully others do, as well. I am ALWAYS looking to collaborate with interesting musicians, mostly though BandLab, which is where I record almost exclusively. It's a solid, free digital audio workstation hub where you can share recording projects, even if it's not where you make your recordings.
  Everything I do is live instrumental, not programmed, and using no computer beyond my phone. That's not to say that I would be opposed to using that kind of tool, it's just not my preferred medium with which to paint. If you like my music, please share it. If you want to collaborate, my BandLab handle is @bingo_pajama. Feel free to contact me at cornbreadband@hotmail.com, as well, even if you aren't on BandLab.
  If your music is primarily AI, please don't come around my page, as I'm not at all interested in complimenting a machine.
  Here's a link to music I've recorded live with a group of musicians here in Pittsburgh called The Northumberland Street Ramblers.
Check out The Northumberland Street Ramblers on #SoundCloud
https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/fU4Me

I have always loved music. I learnt piano as a child and have dabbled with guitar without ever learning it ... until now! I have been in choirs most of my life but have not really delved into making music until the last few years. After initially playing around with Garage Band, I moved on to Logic Pro and that's how nearly all of my music has been produced.

I use digital software, guitar and keyboards to produce my original music. I compose and edit using Logic Pro. Other people's vocals or collaborative vocals for any track really are very welcome! 

I love the interaction on Soundcloud and the comments from other musicians and composers are so helpful and supportive. Keep making music everyone!

If you like the artwork on many of these tracks, please visit www.summerlandsart.co.uk

Music from the Hill- Indie rock from near Oxford, UK.
NIGHTSHIFT TOP TRACK FOR MONTH OCT 2025:  Review here: http://nightshiftmag.co.uk/2025/oct.pdf
Nightshift review from Nov 24 http://nightshiftmag.co.uk/2024/nov.pdf
Nightshift review Oct 2023 Top Track http://nightshiftmag.co.uk/2023/oct.pdf
Nightshift magazine demo review (Nov 2022): 
http://nightshiftmag.co.uk/2022/nov.pdf
Nightshift demo review from Jan 2022: http://nightshiftmag.co.uk/2022/jan.pdf
https://linktr.ee/arrowsofthesun

Canada Stands With Ukraine
Elbows Up, Canada!
Never 51.

*singer-songwriter

Connecting, creating and sharing with others has been quite a transformative experience and one that I trust will continue for years to come. I enjoy listening to musicians on SC, and try to leave encouraging and descriptive comments.
Who said retirement can't be fun!

This is the Blagovrecords record company page. We do the recording, digital processing (mastering and mixing), assist in the preparation and composition of the material and publish our musicians.

Hi, I'm Brandi Vera. I primarily work on written story accompanied by ambient and experimental tracks. Occasionally I might try something different. 

Thanks for listening and I hope you have a wonderful day.

"Every day is a good day, some are just better than others." -BV

A Long Way To Go - minimal version

Phil Hawker