Yakov Smirnoff Sails into Branson


with the “Pirates of the Black Tide”

Yakov Smirnoff Pirates of the Black Tide
by Gary Powell

Yakov Smirnoff and I first met while sailing together as “Cruise Directors of the Caribbean” in 1978. We were twenty-five years ahead of Captain Jack Sparrow’s appearance. Did we both actually dress up like pirates on Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines Pirates’ Night? Of course we did, but, in 2008, Yakov is doing it again and in style! This time he and his cast from “The Yakov Smirnoff Show” are singing a parody of my tune, “Pirates of the Black Tide,” not on the high seas, but in Branson, Missouri. Did our earlier Caribbean swashbuckling-midnight-buffet adventures set up this new collaboration thirty years later? Oh, there are too many escapades to tell that we will both take with us down to Davy Jones locker!

Although not a singer’s singer, Yakov has performed several of my songs since 1978. He thinks he sucks. I don’t. I think that when you give him 2,000 adoring fans in his own theatre, tighten the spotlight, and let him sell it, the “almost” part of being a singer is washed away with his sheer and demanding presence. It’s something to be seen and serves as an excellent lesson for young singers to quickly absorb by watching this very real performer.

In 1978, Yakov was a new American. Now, he is a model American as foretold and defined by our founding fathers. In that and in his show, you will see the truest traits of this individual striving to build a life which reflects the strongest and most ambitious vision for himself and for us all. This is the ground on which our friendship is anchored. It’s a friendship of choice, reflection, and unwavering loyalty and honesty – one could say, the pirates’ code.

Sail on my friend. I’m at your rear quarter and you are at mine.

For ticket information and show times, please visit The Yakov Smirnoff Show. On my site you can read the lyrics and story behind “The Pirates of the Black Tide”, Words and Music by Gary Powell and published by Jesmax Music, BMI.

Yakov Smirnoff Pirates of the Black Tide
by Gary Powell

Yakov Smirnoff and I first met while sailing together as “Cruise Directors of the Caribbean” in 1978. We were twenty-five years ahead of Captain Jack Sparrow’s appearance. Did we both actually dress up like pirates on Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines Pirates’ Night? Of course we did, but, in 2008, Yakov is doing it again and in style! This time he and his cast from “The Yakov Smirnoff Show” are singing a parody of my tune, “Pirates of the Black Tide,” not on the high seas, but in Branson, Missouri. Did our earlier Caribbean swashbuckling-midnight-buffet adventures set up this new collaboration thirty years later? Oh, there are too many escapades to tell that we will both take with us down to Davy Jones locker!

Although not a singer’s singer, Yakov has performed several of my songs since 1978. He thinks he sucks. I don’t. I think that when you give him 2,000 adoring fans in his own theatre, tighten the spotlight, and let him sell it, the “almost” part of being a singer is washed away with his sheer and demanding presence. It’s something to be seen and serves as an excellent lesson for young singers to quickly absorb by watching this very real performer.

In 1978, Yakov was a new American. Now, he is a model American as foretold and defined by our founding fathers. In that and in his show, you will see the truest traits of this individual striving to build a life which reflects the strongest and most ambitious vision for himself and for us all. This is the ground on which our friendship is anchored. It’s a friendship of choice, reflection, and unwavering loyalty and honesty – one could say, the pirates’ code.

Sail on my friend. I’m at your rear quarter and you are at mine.

For ticket information and show times, please visit The Yakov Smirnoff Show. On my site you can read the lyrics and story behind “The Pirates of the Black Tide”, Words and Music by Gary Powell and published by Jesmax Music, BMI.

Singer Kenny Williams Performs On Broadway

Kenny Williams Banzai Lion King

Kenny Williams Antelope Lion King

by Gary Powell

Kenny Williams auditioned his way into my life in 1987 while he was studying voice at the University of Texas. In my life he has been and will stay. Kenny started his theatrical career at Austin’s Zachary Scott Theater Center performing in “Once on This Island,” “Five Guys Named Moe,” “Forever Plaid,” “Blues in The Night,” “Gospel at Colonus” and originated his unforgetable toes-turned-up-elfish role in “Rockin’ Christmas Party” – the “Beehive” spin-off created by Austin director Dave Steakley.

Kenny left Austin in 1997 for his first national tour, appearing in “Grease!”. A year later, in 1998, he joined the national tour of “Smokey Joe’s Cafe” which later landed him in New York City. Not to be intimidated by NYC, Kenny joined the Broadway Company of The Lion King on May 28, 2002! The show is performed at the 1,597 seat Minskoff Theater located at 1515 Broadway.

So, just fifteen short years after I met Kenny Redell Williams, he catapulted onto the Great White Way with yet another story of over-night success – full of training, discipline, talent, persistence and several hundred auditions.

To hear this amazingly silky, smooth and emotionally moving voice visit Kenny William’s MySpace page or go hear Kenny in person in his own show “Just For The Love Of It….. Kenny Williams Sings!” on May 5, 2008 at Sortie, 329 W. 51 Street, New York City. Kenny sang two songs on my very first album produced for Walt Disney Records, “Disney Babies Playtime” in 1989. I am proud to have been part of Kenny’s early creative life and also proud to have had him in mine. I am looking forward to many more projects together in the future.

Click the photos above to enlarge and see the full size versions of Kenny backstage and in costume.

gary powell kenny williams

These Kenny Williams solo performances can be found on various Disney Karaoke and other recordings listed below. Please note that I do not sell these recordings. For more information please go directly to Walt Disney Records or follow the links below for specific titles.

The Lion King Performances

“The Circle of Life”

Various Disney Group Performances

“Celebrate,”(from Pocahontas), “I Hear Thunder,” “Twist and Shout”

Solo Performances

“Imaginaria”, (released on Miramar Productions), “Wiggle Your Toes,” “Here is the Church” (from Disney Babies Playtime) with “Wiggle Your Toes” also appearing on the Disney album “Mother Goose Songs and Rhymes”

Solos for Gary Powell

“Love Means Forever” (Ensemble 109 – The University of Texas), “Magical Dreams Come True” (Demo for Disney World, 1995)

Kenny Williams Banzai Lion King

Kenny Williams Antelope Lion King

by Gary Powell

Kenny Williams auditioned his way into my life in 1987 while he was studying voice at the University of Texas. In my life he has been and will stay. Kenny started his theatrical career at Austin’s Zachary Scott Theater Center performing in “Once on This Island,” “Five Guys Named Moe,” “Forever Plaid,” “Blues in The Night,” “Gospel at Colonus” and originated his unforgetable toes-turned-up-elfish role in “Rockin’ Christmas Party” – the “Beehive” spin-off created by Austin director Dave Steakley.

Kenny left Austin in 1997 for his first national tour, appearing in “Grease!”. A year later, in 1998, he joined the national tour of “Smokey Joe’s Cafe” which later landed him in New York City. Not to be intimidated by NYC, Kenny joined the Broadway Company of The Lion King on May 28, 2002! The show is performed at the 1,597 seat Minskoff Theater located at 1515 Broadway.

So, just fifteen short years after I met Kenny Redell Williams, he catapulted onto the Great White Way with yet another story of over-night success – full of training, discipline, talent, persistence and several hundred auditions.

To hear this amazingly silky, smooth and emotionally moving voice visit Kenny William’s MySpace page or go hear Kenny in person in his own show “Just For The Love Of It….. Kenny Williams Sings!” on May 5, 2008 at Sortie, 329 W. 51 Street, New York City. Kenny sang two songs on my very first album produced for Walt Disney Records, “Disney Babies Playtime” in 1989. I am proud to have been part of Kenny’s early creative life and also proud to have had him in mine. I am looking forward to many more projects together in the future.

Click the photos above to enlarge and see the full size versions of Kenny backstage and in costume.

gary powell kenny williams

These Kenny Williams solo performances can be found on various Disney Karaoke and other recordings listed below. Please note that I do not sell these recordings. For more information please go directly to Walt Disney Records or follow the links below for specific titles.

The Lion King Performances

“The Circle of Life”

Various Disney Group Performances

“Celebrate,”(from Pocahontas), “I Hear Thunder,” “Twist and Shout”

Solo Performances

“Imaginaria”, (released on Miramar Productions), “Wiggle Your Toes,” “Here is the Church” (from Disney Babies Playtime) with “Wiggle Your Toes” also appearing on the Disney album “Mother Goose Songs and Rhymes”

Solos for Gary Powell

“Love Means Forever” (Ensemble 109 – The University of Texas), “Magical Dreams Come True” (Demo for Disney World, 1995)

Creating Your Own Opportunities

by Gary Powell

New opportunities are emerging for all of us in the creative arts, science, education and even politics. These opportunities are optimized and become more sustainable when they are born from our own ingenuity and talent and then coupled with the knowledge and implementation of new technologies. This is not new! Look no further than Walt Disney, the Man, to understand combining an individual’s ingenuity with new technologies. Also, for me, these new opportunities are not simply happening from having spent thirty years of becoming a successful composer and record producer. Yes, my effort and contribution can’t be dismissed, but it’s not the whole story.

In November, 2007, I intentionally made a shift toward creating relationships with individuals rather than companies. Some individuals connect. Some don’t. However, in the past five months since my outreach toward the personal began, I’ve identified and attracted, as we say in Texas, “a whole ‘nother level” of creative human beings who are contributing to the good of the whole. These are individuals who have also learned how to take care of themselves in the process. No longer does each of us see large institutions as stumbling blocks or the gatekeepers of our aspirations. We simply see these biggest and most immovable organizations as becoming irrelevant. In looking back on my relationships with large corporations, universities, churches, and arts organizations, I now understand that I never really had relationships with those institutions. I had relationships with people – with individuals.

This is how both we and the things we care about can win.

As people of substance, talent, training, education, and entrepreneurship in the arts begin to embrace and support each other’s visions, we each create deeper and more nuanced relationships. This has always been true. Now, unfortunately for some, the naive and narcissistic often mistake computer code as relating. Meaningless code traffic, to coin a new phrase, will never yield more than flipping through channels did on the TV two decades ago. However, code traffic, when accurately reflecting our work and our relationships, then shared publicly, can be powerful. This is how both we and the things we care about can win.

I did a study about networking, while I was teaching at the University of Texas Butler School of Music, in order to learn how all of us choose the people with whom we work and associate. The results – the smartest and the brightest find each other. Period! It’s like the law of magnetism. In youth, we utilize this law unconsciously, but in adulthood, we can CHOOSE who we associate with, especially in a public way – online. Our connections then gain significance when attraction to the successful also turns to the soulful and to the brilliant and to the quiet and to the lovely and to the healing and to the pliant and to the conscious and to the absolutely wonderful individuals who enlighten not only their world, but our own lives and purposes as well. And, as we purposefully link to one another beyond simply adding code, the occasional unseen moment of beauty, as in the photo above, just might yield to our will while others watch in amazement.

(I shot this photo from a car window on Balboa Island thinking I was just getting two people with a beautiful sunset behind them. I did not see the subtlety of the connecting cloud between them until later.)

Helpful? Then Copy, Paste and Tweet It:
Creating Your Own Opportunities. http://tinyurl.com/6mbnwz

All Content of Gary Powell’s Site is Licensed Under a
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.

by Gary Powell

New opportunities are emerging for all of us in the creative arts, science, education and even politics. These opportunities are optimized and become more sustainable when they are born from our own ingenuity and talent and then coupled with the knowledge and implementation of new technologies. This is not new! Look no further than Walt Disney, the Man, to understand combining an individual’s ingenuity with new technologies. Also, for me, these new opportunities are not simply happening from having spent thirty years of becoming a successful composer and record producer. Yes, my effort and contribution can’t be dismissed, but it’s not the whole story.

In November, 2007, I intentionally made a shift toward creating relationships with individuals rather than companies. Some individuals connect. Some don’t. However, in the past five months since my outreach toward the personal began, I’ve identified and attracted, as we say in Texas, “a whole ‘nother level” of creative human beings who are contributing to the good of the whole. These are individuals who have also learned how to take care of themselves in the process. No longer does each of us see large institutions as stumbling blocks or the gatekeepers of our aspirations. We simply see these biggest and most immovable organizations as becoming irrelevant. In looking back on my relationships with large corporations, universities, churches, and arts organizations, I now understand that I never really had relationships with those institutions. I had relationships with people – with individuals.

This is how both we and the things we care about can win.

As people of substance, talent, training, education, and entrepreneurship in the arts begin to embrace and support each other’s visions, we each create deeper and more nuanced relationships. This has always been true. Now, unfortunately for some, the naive and narcissistic often mistake computer code as relating. Meaningless code traffic, to coin a new phrase, will never yield more than flipping through channels did on the TV two decades ago. However, code traffic, when accurately reflecting our work and our relationships, then shared publicly, can be powerful. This is how both we and the things we care about can win.

I did a study about networking, while I was teaching at the University of Texas Butler School of Music, in order to learn how all of us choose the people with whom we work and associate. The results – the smartest and the brightest find each other. Period! It’s like the law of magnetism. In youth, we utilize this law unconsciously, but in adulthood, we can CHOOSE who we associate with, especially in a public way – online. Our connections then gain significance when attraction to the successful also turns to the soulful and to the brilliant and to the quiet and to the lovely and to the healing and to the pliant and to the conscious and to the absolutely wonderful individuals who enlighten not only their world, but our own lives and purposes as well. And, as we purposefully link to one another beyond simply adding code, the occasional unseen moment of beauty, as in the photo above, just might yield to our will while others watch in amazement.

(I shot this photo from a car window on Balboa Island thinking I was just getting two people with a beautiful sunset behind them. I did not see the subtlety of the connecting cloud between them until later.)

Helpful? Then Copy, Paste and Tweet It:
Creating Your Own Opportunities. http://tinyurl.com/6mbnwz

All Content of Gary Powell’s Site is Licensed Under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License

.

The Body Beat Pulsing Metronome

Body Beat Pulsing Metronome
by Gary Powell

If you are ready for an entirely different method of keeping better time with your own internal clock, the Body Beat Pulsing Metronome may be just for you. This is the new millennium’s latest version of the good-ole metronome we have all grown to hate and which was only, and almost always, an annoying audio click or beep. Simply put, the Peterson BB-1 Body Beat Pulsing Metronome changes the human interface of the metronomic beat from an aural experience to a vibratory one.

The greatest drummers have always had an exacting sense of time. For the rest of us, the Body Beat just may deliver a similar internal experience that these greatest human metronomes have always felt. It took just one full song for me to get used to the little pulsing vibrations of this machine and to be able to play in time with it. I’ve been listening and playing to clicks since 1970, so I was anxious to see if I could keep time at all without hearing the traditional click in my head. In my very first test, I found that I responded to the Body Beat best when the vibrator was attached to the sleeve of my T-shirt. As a pianist, this put the beat directly into the same appendage that was playing the music – my right arm! Yes, I do understand that the vibratory beat went to my brain first, then back down to the fingers, but it didn’t feel like that. I think I could get used to this and I’m positive that it could make me a tighter player without the annoyance of the audio click that seems to always rush or drag! (That’s an old musician’s joke first credited to Chet Atkins.)

Hopefully, future versions will have some kind of sync input for use in recording studios. Until then, this is a beautifully conceived and executed idea. Thank you, Christopher Parsons, President of DOT Music and the inventor of the Body Beat Metronome.

Body Beat Pulsing Metronome
by Gary Powell

If you are ready for an entirely different method of keeping better time with your own internal clock, the Body Beat Pulsing Metronome may be just for you. This is the new millennium’s latest version of the good-ole metronome we have all grown to hate and which was only, and almost always, an annoying audio click or beep. Simply put, the Peterson BB-1 Body Beat Pulsing Metronome changes the human interface of the metronomic beat from an aural experience to a vibratory one.

The greatest drummers have always had an exacting sense of time. For the rest of us, the Body Beat just may deliver a similar internal experience that these greatest human metronomes have always felt. It took just one full song for me to get used to the little pulsing vibrations of this machine and to be able to play in time with it. I’ve been listening and playing to clicks since 1970, so I was anxious to see if I could keep time at all without hearing the traditional click in my head. In my very first test, I found that I responded to the Body Beat best when the vibrator was attached to the sleeve of my T-shirt. As a pianist, this put the beat directly into the same appendage that was playing the music – my right arm! Yes, I do understand that the vibratory beat went to my brain first, then back down to the fingers, but it didn’t feel like that. I think I could get used to this and I’m positive that it could make me a tighter player without the annoyance of the audio click that seems to always rush or drag! (That’s an old musician’s joke first credited to Chet Atkins.)

Hopefully, future versions will have some kind of sync input for use in recording studios. Until then, this is a beautifully conceived and executed idea. Thank you, Christopher Parsons, President of DOT Music and the inventor of the Body Beat Metronome.

SXSW 2008

by Gary Powell

Kate Schutt Album Cover

This March 15, 2008 I shared my birth date with the SXSW Music Conference in Austin, Texas while serving as a panelist for their new “Quickies Session”. Instead of the typical panel full of self-serving musical contradictions and pandering, this experience was different. Not unlike “speed-dating”, each panelist sat, with no more than four pre-registered participants, for a twelve-minute jam session of ideas and brainstorming. Its subject being centered on studio production, there were few, if any, beginners participating in this panel. The main question I inferred from the participants was, “what do I do next?” That, of course, is the question for all of us regardless of where we are developmentally. Consequently, there were no questions about how to become a better musician. Being a competent musician seemed to be a given and that fact should, of course, never be a given. I found myself not talking about gear, recording techniques, how to work with singers, financial issues, producing, or my connections. I did find myself talking predominantly about creating relationships, which was the one skill or strategy noticeably absent from most of these participants. We humans have done a poor job of integrating our humanity within the technically evolutionary construct of the past two decades. “Future Shock” is now here, delivered and filled with all our many creative tools and technologies which are often isolating.

If born after 1981, then this isolation is possibly all you know. Unless humanity takes an overwhelming evolutionary leap backward, humans will be still, very unconsciously, be making decisions about whom to work with the same way we have in the previous hundred thousand years. It will and always has been about relationships. Who are our allies? Who are not our allies? Who can you trust and who can trust you?

Let me introduce you to Canadian singer/songwriter from Toronto, Kate Schutt, who was one of the participants at the “In the Studio” panel. Yes, I left that session with many CD’s handed to me from other participants. Two days later, however, Kate is the one who followed up with me by writing a personal note with her enclosed Artistshare download card. Her note made her music personal to me. Now I wanted to hear it. How simple was that?

Kate has also adopted and implemented the paradigm shift of Web 2.0 by including her audience in her music production ideas. You can go to her ArtistShare site and submit personal love stories from your own experiences. If chosen, Kate will write up to four songs drawn from her audiences’ own experiences to be released in August, 2008 on her album entitled, “The Telephone Game”.

Fortunately, Kate Schutt is also the real deal. Within her jazz leanings, she is a songwriter (and I don’t give that title lightly), arranger, guitarist and sings with a seductive and whispery vocal timbre. This is what we want to see; talented writers and performers who not only hone their craft and deepen their artistic expression, but also take the initiative in taking care of themselves rather than Waiting for Godot.

SXSW 2008 Logo

Other Helpful Links from the SXSW 2008 Convention Floor

    Find recording session musicians and collaborators using the online tools of file sharing and professional networking of INDABAMUSIC.
    SONGNUMBERS provides your music with a unique telephone number for listening and downloading songs to your customers.

    FIZZKICKS lets you create custom designed download cards for your music.
    MYXERTONES creates ringtones directly from your music.

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All Content of Gary Powell’s Site is Licensed Under a
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Phil Ramone (1934-2013)

The Producer of Many Influences

by Gary Powell

It was March 6, 2008 when this story wrote itself. At this time of Phil Ramone’s passing, it seems appropriate to remember his influence on me and the music I compose and produce.

Phil Ramone Gary PowellGlenn Richter, a longtime ally of mine and professor of music at the University of Texas, called this morning and invited me to have lunch with Phil Ramone. There are two producers in this world that would make me get dressed this fast. One is Sir George Martin, whom I have already met and briefly worked with. Phil Ramone is the other. Also present at the lunch were Executive Director of the NARAS – Texas Chapter, Theresa Jenkins and Project Director Jennifer Vocelka along with Ed Evans, Director of Technical Operations for Villa Muse and UT Recording Technology professor Mark Sarisky.

As a producer and composer, I am conscious about who my musical and production influences have been. I have many of these producers’ albums hanging on my “wall of influences” in the cutting room of my studio. Igor Stravinsky is hanging there right beside George Gershwin, Aaron Copeland and Leonard Bernstein. But wait, also present are Simon and Garfunkel, Peter, Paul and Mary, Chicago and James Taylor. It is seldom the artist themselves that attracted my attention.

So, what was it about these particular artists that make me listen more closely and why are they on my wall of influences? It was Phil Ramone!

phil ramone book cover

Following lunch, Mark Sarisky facilitated an interview with Mr. Ramone in the UT Music School’s Recital Studio for students, faculty and NARAS members. My sense was that these college students had little appreciation or knowledge of Phil Ramone’s contribution to the American musical lexicon. Culturally, we tend to buy into the myths sold to us about the capabilities of our recording artists. This was a brief moment for us all to look around the curtain and now would be a good time for us all to contemplate Phil Ramone’s Discography!

Thank you, Phil, for mentoring my ears ever since introducing Lesley Gore in 1963 and for now writing your book, Making Records – The Scenes Behind the Music. My best wishes for your continued success and for making our popular music more nuanced, more powerful, more meaningful and simply better than it would have been without you.