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...

May Update

Thought it would be a good time to update the blog with some of the latest news about placements and deals and stuff. This is the time of year that my musical output tends to increase a bit as I find myself having more time to spend composing since the college basketball season is over, the NBA playoffs are nearly finished and most of my favorite TV shows are on summer hiatus (or cancelled!).

I had a chance to write some pop/rock cues in the style of Colbie Callait and Sheryl Crow for a new series that's about to debut on ABC Family called Beverly Hills Nanny. I wrote seven tracks for it and all seven were accepted and sent to the editors of the show. So I'll likely record that show to see if any of my cues get used.

Currently I'm writing some Hip-Hop cues for Fox Sports. It's been a stretch to say the least, but I've watched quite a few mix tapes of Kentucky basketball players to help me get a feel for the genre :-) I'm also co-writing with a couple of other people on these, one in particular who's VERY well versed in Hip-Hop. Thanks to most of their home games against lesser opponents being broadcast on the UK Basketball network via Fox Sports South, my dream of having my music played during a UK game broadcast is one step closer to reality!

On to some placement news... Since my last update, I've had placements show up in Clean House NY (4 episodes), The Rosie Show (14 episodes), NY Ink, It's A Brad, Brad World (8 episodes), and Last Call with Carson Daly (4 episodes). Now here is one of the rare times that I actually know in advance about an episode. The episode of What Not To Wear (episode title - "Desiree") that will be airing on Tuesday night, June 5th at 9pm Eastern / 8pm Central will feature 3 of my tracks in it. And since I know which tracks are being used, I can actually let you know which ones they are as well :-) So here they are, the first two are acoustic guitar based tracks and the third one is a driving pop/rock track:

Making Choices


Tough Decisions


Leave It All Behind


I'm not sure the exact moment when they will be used in the episodes, but it does appear that it will be in the back half of the episode, with the third clip being the next to last piece of music they use, and it gets played for 56 seconds. So it might be used during the final "reveal" scene based on the type of cue and placement in the episode.

And finally, an update on my progress with the RevAbs program that I started over 6 weeks ago. I'm VERY excited to announce that I just completed Phase 1 of the program and so far I've lost 37.1lbs, 4" off of my waist and about 18% of my body fat. I'm feeling great and can't wait to see the results at the end of Phase 2 later next month!

Until next time...

New Placements (video link) and my RevAbs Jump-Start Week 1 Progress Report

One week ago today I started on a new path. There were times that I didn't know if I could make it or not but I'm happy to report that I stuck with the plan, both the diet and exercise, every single day. I'm excited to announce that so far I've lost 16.5 pounds!!!

Now I know there will be some out there who are concerned about the pace at which I've lost this weight. I appreciate your concerns, but let me reassure you that you need not worry. For the past week, I've had around 1200 calories per day by eating 5 meals per day (3 meals and 2 snacks, and that's it) that consisted of all natural and organic foods, nothing processed (except a couple tablespoons of A-1 Sauce!), gave up diet sodas and replaced them with at least 80oz of water a day, and exercised 30-45 minutes a day for 6 days. If I got hungry again later in the evening, instead of grabbing another snack, I drank a 20oz bottle of water.

I can honestly say that I feel great! I have not experienced a single headache during this entire process. And every time I start to feel hungry, it's usually time to eat again anyways. I'm a bit sore from the exercise, but that's because I've done more exercise in the past 6 days than I've probably done in the past 6 years combined! I've also eaten more broccoli and asparagus during the past week than I've eaten in my entire life!