High On Believing

Zooming back to 1980. Our Punk/New Wave band “The Sponges” was very much happening, but at the same time, Scot was also hooked-up musically with our friends Dave Kinney and Peter Smith in a project called “The Double Cross Band”--doing ‘Americana Stuff’ before it’s recent rebirth as the contemporary soundtrack of our lives. Scot had a few songs that were written at this time that went on to be incorporated into set lists for various different projects throughout the years. In the course of preparing this blog, I have run across a couple tune-lets that had been left behind. Today’s track, a solo demo of his original, “If You Ain’t a Gift from the Gods” is a perfect example of this phenomenon. To give you an idea of just how 'thrifty' Scot was, this song is recorded over a demo tape we received when we were booking bands for The Roosevelt.

Regarding today’s artwork, I remember the day when Scot bought this pen. It would really aggravate him when he would actually want something that he considered expensive. This pen probably cost $15. To Scot—that was expensive. Scot bought this pen because he wanted to experiment more with pulling washes out of the actual line work of the graphic and this hideously expensive pen was especially designed for this purpose. In the face and hands Scot is playing with a technique to create 3-D modeling. I love this sweet angel. I’m high on believin’ that this is sort of how things are for Scot right now. He’s out there, not too far away, offering us all help and love he can—which is a lot—still very much engaged in the world. The way I see it (and I ain’t whistlin’ Dixie) a gift from the gods, no more certainly could be, than he.