Category: Music

Life Back on a 40-Hour Work Week

Acadia National Park – Photos by Dan Steven Erickson

I’m going to be honest. I’ve only worked 40-hour work weeks for about 3 years of my entire adult life. That’s right, I mostly worked part-time jobs in my teens and twenties. Then I went back to school in my 30s. Then I became a full-time college professor and worked about 30 hours most weeks.

It wasn’t until my stint with the USPS, advising at VolState, and now Cabela’s in the past two years that I’ve really worked 40-hours a week. Of course, if you go back to my childhood in a cult, I was working 60-hour weeks as a boy. I’ve done a lot of hard work in my life and I’m not afraid of it.

However, I’m a creative. And one reason I have been able to create such a mass of work in my life is that I’ve had the time to do that. My current situation allows me less time than I’ve had for creating than I’ve had in years. Not only am I working 40 hours a week, I have to drive 45 minutes each way. There’s another 8 hours taken up each week. Add things like shopping, doctors, and working on the condo and it creates a time squeeze.

Why did I take on a full-time job at 63?

That’s a good question. The answer is simple: for health benefits. I’m beginning to question if the time I have to put in to receive the benefits is worth it. There is also a secondary reason. I’m holding off on using my retirement savings a bit longer. And finally, I stay moving and active and social. These are all good reasons to work full time but until I’m 65? That’s something I am reconsidering.

This year I am able to work without my social security being tapped into. Next year I won’t be able to do that if I work full time the entire year. So, I’m considering moving back into part-time status part way through 2027. If I keep my income low by avoiding any major withdrawals from retirement I will be eligible for a healthcare plan at an affordable rate. I could continue working part time and maybe teach an adjunct class. Then again, who knows, maybe life will take another unexpected twist.

In the meantime…

I’ll keep creating. The process to complete projects is just taking longer. Although my studio room is mostly complete, I still need to update my audio. And even though I’m writing several lyrics a week, I have not yet been able to really focus on finalizing songs. I have been workshopping a “sound” for the songs but nothing is complete.

I’ll keep taking time outdoors and doing active things. Last week, I went to Acadia National Park. I’ll post more photos below. I spend quite a bit of the off-time I do get enjoying nature and trying to get in some exercise. That leaves me with even less time to create. It’s a bit ironic that the time when I’m supposed to have more time (after “retirement”) is actually one of the fullest schedules I’ve had in years.

Bear with me as I move through this chapter. My hope is that I’ll be able to get into the swing of getting some creative projects completed on the side if even at a slower pace. I will continue to produce work, it’s just a matter of time. – dse

Jordan Pond
View from Cadillac Mountain
View from Bass Harbor

A New Guitar from Montreal

Recently, I bought myself a new guitar. What? Another one?

I’m actually not a huge guitar hoarder. I let go of two and bought one. I have a total of four guitars currently. But I love texture and choice in acoustic guitar sounds. Currently, I own a 2013 Martin 00017sm, a 1969 Gibson LG1-to-LG2 conversion, and an American Telecaster. I keep the LG2 tuned to DADDAD for a different mode. Someday, I might get an old resonator. But the guitar I bought recently is a nylon-string guitar.

I have always liked the warm sound of nylon strings. And although I’m no classical player, I bought a guitar that is made and meant as a classical guitar. I picked up a Jellinghaus replica of an Antonio Torres Model 77. They are not easy guitars to find as there is limited production. I went to the Guitar Salon in Montreal to get mine.

I love small guitars. Anything over a 000 is too big for my liking. The Model 77 was Torres’ baroque guitar. The body is much smaller than an average classical guitar and the neck scale is 610 and I love it.

I will be working on a new project using this new guitar but it may be some time before anything gets posted because I recently moved back to Maine and decided to work full-time for the private health insurance instead of paying higher prices for the ACA options.

The project will include a group of songs in the works about corporate and institutional corruption and greed. I know the topic is somewhat common, but if we don’t keep speaking up nothing will ever change. And besides, I spent several years studying the life and music of Woody Guthrie in grad school.

I’ll keep you up to date with my progress. – dse

True Sounds

I’m currently in the brainstorming phase of a new experimental music project, The True Sounds of Nashville. The concept is simple.

We all know Nashville as the Country Music capital of the world. But I live here and what I see and hear is not country music. I hear the engines of cars and trucks on overcrowded freeways and streets. I hear sirens. I hear the hum of AC units cooling large buildings. I hear factories, construction, and the chaos of multiple bands playing cover music up and down Broadway. I hear birds, rain, and thunder.

In the coming weeks and months, I’m going to start sampling the sounds I hear in and around Nashville. I’ll then manipulate those sounds and mix them with my own experimental ambient synths and pads.

I’m not yet sure if this will be an Anderhill project, or a darker, heavier sound more suited to A Cult of Lies. In either case, I’ll keep you updated on the project and a potential release date. – dse

Old iPhone Song Recordings from 2016

This batch of songs was different than much of my songwriting. The songs were a little more experimental, not always following the traditional verse/chorus/bridge format. I believe I was inspired by Bill Callahan at the time.

I’m going to post some shitty-looking videos to my YouTube Channel. Why? Because I don’t care how they look. The entire objective of the channel is to catalog old work. In 2016, I made some iPhone recordings of a batch of ten songs I’d written 7 or 8 years earlier.

When I recorded the songs, the room was dark or I pointed the camera without caring about angles and got the ceiling light. The audio is okay, basic iPhone audio for 2016. Just as I’m cataloging old cassette recordings using Big Yellow, I decided since these are already recorded, so why not?

Remember, the point of the channel is (for now) not to post high-quality videos, but rather to catalog a portion of my more than 1500 songs. Here’s the first song from the collection. – dse

Side Two

A little over a month ago I released an Anderhill EP titled Coalescence. Today, I’m releasing Side Two, a second EP with the same basic vibe, a combination of ambient synths and minimalist drone-based beats.

It’s been fun to program some drums and I’ll likely do more of that up the road. But my next experimental electronic project will likely move away from drums and focus more on live sampling, something I haven’t done in a while. There is a lot of industrial, road, and city noise in my current location and I’m going to take my iPad with me on a walk to capture some of those sounds.

In the meantime enjoy this one. – dse

1995/96 Songs Coming Soon

I took a break from posting songs from my back catalog on my YouTube Channel a few months back. I thought I’d already taken some notebooks I needed up to Maine and was going to start back in when I moved. But I discovered my 1995/96 work is still with me in Tennessee.

I posted the first of 15-20 songs from 1995/96 to the YouTube Channel this morning. I’ll add a link to the list on my songs page once I post a second. In the mid-90s I moved from more traditional country and blues songwriting to more pop-oriented songs and melodies. An occasional blues or country song might have still slipped in, but pop and Americana dominated my writing for most of a decade starting in the mid 90s.

Take a listen and let me know what you think in the comments on YouTube. – dse