TAXI Road Rally, NEW Duck Dynasty placements, 100lbs and more!

I'm extremely excited, honored and humbled to announce that I've been added to a panel in the Main Ballroom at the upcoming TAXI Road Rally in LA next month! I'll be taking part in the "5 Year Plan" panel on Friday morning just after the main keynote interview with songwriter extraordinaire Diane Warren. If you don't know her name, I am certain you know her work ("Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now", "Because You Loved Me", "How Do I Live", "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing", "Un-Break My Heart", "Rhythm Of The Night" just to name a few). I'll be joining fellow composer/songwriters,  Matt Hirt, John Mazzei, Dave Walton, and Dean Krippaehne, that are not only my colleagues, but friends as well.

Quite honestly, I look at those guys and I think to myself "Why did Michael ask me to be up there with them???" You can ask my wife, any time I mention someone in this business that I'm trying to model my career after, those names are the first four names that come out of my mouth. There's a book I've been reading by Dani Johnson in which she says, if you want to be successful, find someone who is doing what you want to do and do what they do. Well, those four are the ones that I've been modeling my career after for the past three years. So to be on that panel with them is extremely humbling to me. I honestly can't say enough how grateful and excited I am to be on that panel with them.

Last week was another good week of placements for me. I had a few new cue sheets show up for Access Hollywood, the Dr. Oz show and Monster Man, as well as a new series for me, Big Rich Texas. But the placements that I'm most excited about are Duck Dynasty! I absolutely love that show and would watch it even if they weren't using my music! But since they are using some of my music, I like the show that much more! In the two episodes that aired last week, I had 2 placements in the first episode and 7 placements in the second episode, granted a couple of them were VERY short but a placement is still a placement in my book!

Truck Commander - http://www.aetv.com/duck-dynasty/video/3591235578

My track "Pesky Beavers" was used starting at the 5:15 mark and the 10:08 mark.

Si-Yonara - http://www.aetv.com/duck-dynasty/video/#3411011514

My track "That's Right Jack" was used at the 0:24 mark and 0:40 mark. Then my track "Give Me An Offer" was used starting at the 3:15, 3:35, 5:27, 5:37 and 5:50 marks. That track was originally written for Auction Kings but made it's on way on to DD instead.

And finally, I'm very proud and excited to say that I have achieved my weight loss goal of losing 100lbs in under 6.5 months. I reached my goal with one week to spare. It still hasn't sunk in yet but I imagine it's just a matter of time before it does :-)

Well, that's it for now. Until next time...

A NEW Deal, Placements, Big Blue Madness and More!

It feels like the past month has been a blur! Sandwiched between my birthday and my wife's birthday, was my mom's birthday, my parent's 40th wedding anniversary, a photo shoot and a little thing called Big Blue Madness (pictures to follow below) and some new music placements!

Let's get the placements out of the way first. In the past month I've had some new placements in some old favorites such as Access Hollywood, America Now, Auction Kings, the Dr. Oz Show, the season 2 premiere of Duck Dynasty, the Nate Berkus Show, the Rosie Show, and What Not To Wear. And then I've also had my first placements in some new series for me including Barter Kings, Goldfathers and Bad Girls Club (they used a spy music cue). All in all it was over 30 placements for all the episodes combined. Not too shabby :-) Here's one of the cues that was used in Auction Kings, a hard rock track a la Disturbed.



And here's a link to the episode of Duck Dynasty, my music is the piece heard just as they come back from the first commercial break, around the 6:30 mark - http://www.aetv.com/duck-dynasty/video/the-grass-and-the-furious-1293379786?cmpid=MRSS_Hulu_AETV#1293379786

Now, here's more about the new deal... Last week I was approached by a music library owner who heard some of my music online. They offered me a deal to start supplying them with some new music for a couple of different projects. The contract arrived today and I'll be putting it in the mail tomorrow :-) VERY excited about this. Not just because it's a new deal, but because of the manner in which it happened. Just made my day!

And finally, Big Blue Madness... I had a chance to take one of my former college roommates with me to the event. We had a nice time catching up with each other. It was probably the longest we'd hung out together since we were back in school. Just wanted to share a few pictures of the event.

Whitaker Bank was giving away t-shirts to anyone who could make 2 out of 3 bank shots.          

I accepted their challenge. I was a bit nervous as it had been quite a while since I had shot a basketball. How did I do? See the next photo below...

Dad holding up the free t-shirt that I won for him. I went 3 for 3 :-)

One of the coolest things I've ever seen. They used the court as a video screen!

Oh yeah, there was some actual basketball there too :-)

And finally... it was 6 months ago today that I began my weight loss journey. As of today I've now lost 98.5lbs and I'm only 1.5lbs away from my goal of dropping 100lbs before the TAXI Road Rally. This has been without a doubt one of the best decisions I've ever made.

Until next time...

Music Placement Update for 8.13.12 - Monster Man, My Big Redneck Vacation, Hollywood Treasure and more!

Time for another weekly update of new music placements and last week was a good one! I'll start with some shows that my music has previously been in... one episode of The Dr. Oz Show (syndicate), three of Interior Therapy with Jeff Lewis (Bravo), and SIX episodes of Rajin' Cajuns (Discovery)! Then as for new shows... one episode of Guiliana and Bill (Style), four episodes of Saw Dogs (Velocity), two episodes of My Big Redneck Vacation (CMT), one episode of American Digger (Spike), three episodes of Hollywood Treasure (Syfy) and finally, two episodes of Monster Man (Syfy)!

The cues that were used on Monster Man, Hollywood Treasure, American Digger and Rajin' Cajuns were written specifically for those shows. It's always a nice feeling of accomplishment when the cues you write and pitch for a specific show end up actually getting used by the music editors. Great feeling actually.

This past week I've been writing some blues cues for the show Duck Dynasty on A&E. I only had a chance to write one cue for the first season and it got used twice in one episode so this time around I've tried to write a few more than that. Hope they find their way on to the show too! But I'll be watching the show regardless as it's one of the few reality TV shows that both me and my wife ACTUALLY enjoy. I've got all of season one still on my DVR and not just for music research purposes :-)

Until next time...

(new) Music Monday and more - 6.18.2012

Last week I started a new weekly post on Facebook, Music Monday, and decided that I should probably incorporate that into my blog. I'll also include a link to the track from last week at the end of the blog.

I've found out about quite a few new placements since my last blog entry that I wanted to update you on. They range in style from pop/rock to metal to tension to delta blues and they were for some old shows that I've had placements in before, like The Dr. Oz Show (29 new episodes) and NY Ink (6 new episodes), as well as a bunch of new shows such as Disappeared, Oprah's Next Chapter (4 episodes), Secret Service Secrets, Ultimate Armored Car, and finally, what has become one of my new favorite shows, Duck Dynasty!

I also had a track get used in a nomination video during last month's Webby Awards Show. I haven't been able to locate the video itself, but it appears that the nominee that my music was used for created a product that turns your iPhone into a stun gun!

A quick update on my RevAbs weight loss journey. I dropped another 3.4lbs this week for an overall total today of 48.1lbs! I've got 6 weeks left and 21.4lbs to lose to reach my goal for this 3.5 month program. It's going to be close but I think the goal is within reach! This week is going to be a challenge for me to eat healthy as I'm going to be at a small music conference from Thu - Sun. But I'm going to be planning things out ahead of time so that it won't be as big of a challenge as it could be otherwise. If you want to succeed in life, you have to plan for it.

And now for the new music. This is a track that I wrote last night for a pitch to a music library looking for hard, aggressive "sports rock" type music. I called it "Headbuster." Enjoy!




And for those of you who didn't see this on my Facebook page last week, here's the track that I posted. It's a co-write with Darin Martin and Juliet Lyons, with Juliet doing an awesome job on the vocals!



Until next time!