4/23/16 So I found this draft I wrote back in April.

I'm not gonna lie, I was gonna trade sides to Wordpress for hopefully this new chapter in my life but I couldn't figure out how to customize it how I wanted. I gave up and redid this one and it came out a lot better than I hoped. I don't completely hate it so I'm gonna roll with it.

Sometimes I sit around and wonder if 31 is too old to be an aspiring music producer. I laughed a little in my head too. When I was younger I said I'd give up in my late twenties.  I still get the itch to make music every day and it eats me alive that I don't. I feel I've procrastinated the dream too long. I've watched and read countless books and videos on making music but I'd never get my feet wet. I think I'm still afraid to suck at what I love the most knowing that everyone Sucks At First. I see friends like JRob and Sndze making and mixing music and think damn I should be practicing. They inspire me every time.

Last night I thought a lot about my future and what I want to do with it. Obviously music is my number 1 choice. Whether I'm making it or behind the scenes, I know I have to be involved somehow. Aside from that I'd really really really really love to  travel the world. Especially since I've made it to 31 with no wife and kids holding me down to one location.

Last night it came to me. If you know me, you know I'm a big dreamer, I've blogged a ton of times of things I want to do but then never do. Even writing this I'm like ugh, another blog about a time I was gonna change my life and didn't. Not this time. 

Here's the dream. 

31 Bay Area - Get in shape to travel the world, make tons of music and save as much money as possible so I can fix all the financial problems I got myself into in my late 20's.

32 LA - Move back to LA, make tons of music, save save save to travel travel travel. After settling in LA, my new focus is going to be going back to school at Santa Monica College and then do either Psychology or Marketing. I love Psychology and would consider going all the way and becoming a doctor. Marketing would be the job I could do and still somehow be involved in the music business and not hate life, I think.. either way I'll be headed in one of those directions. I have between now and the Spring '17 Semester at Santa Monica College to learn as much music production as possible. Meaning dedicating all my free time to it. Once I enroll back in college, even though school will be my new focus, I'll always have music in my spare time. Music will be for me, for the love of music. It's time to finally master my art.

Travel Itinerary

May '16 Denver (Visit Greg / Disclosure)

June '16 Las Vegas (edc)

July '16 Cancun (Family Reunion)

Feb '17 Daytona (Daytona 500)

March '17 Miami (Ultra)

June '17 Nashville (CMA Music Festival)

Jan '18 Melbourne

Sept '18 Belgium / Europe (Tomorrowland)

9/8 Update: Denver, edc, and Cancun was amazing. I didn't get to 200 but I got close. I also continued to finish zero songs.

Moved back to the Bay...

So I put myself in a situation where I couldn't afford to live in LA anymore and instead of staying and fighting to stay and really trying to make it work down south, I took the easy route where I had two jobs lined up for me the second I moved back to the Bay. I didn't want to go back to being broke. Since moving back I haven't even opened up Ableton. I've pretty much spent all this time trying to get all my shit together which I finally did for a brief time, life was going great, the future looked amazing, I had a game plan to take over the world and then it all came crashing down. When it rains it pours and I got a hurricane coming after me. I officially hit my new low when my car wouldn't start after paying $700 to get it out of storage, which in turn will probably set a few other things in motion guaranteeing I wont be a free man in a little over a week. It's getting harder and harder stay positive and keep a smile on my face and not want to go into raven mode.

Later that night, after my car not working we went to see Ummet Ozcan. I really needed a night out in the city and I've finally found friends who actually enjoy the nightlife as much as I do and it was one of my co-workers friends Maya's Bday, so perfect situation to go out. About halfway during the set I think I hit bottom for the second time in my life. The reality of my living situation kinda sank in. Awkwardly in front of my co-worker Kimmie, who's recently turned blonde and looks stunning. I remember just sitting there watching the show and feeling the lowest I've felt since the first time my world came crashing down a few years ago in LA and hearing live music is my ultimate upper. The glimmer of light was after the show I felt inspired, it was like a reminder of what I needed to do in life. And then Pedro and I ran into Ummet!

Next day I woke up a little hungover from the night before but in an amazing mood. Ready to take on life again. The highest number on the scale I ever remember seeing on the scale was 244 and that morning I weighed in at 212.

I was making progress in life. I am making progress. I'm gonna keep on trucking and fighting everyday to make my life better than it was the day before. Come July/August, once I hopefully have everything in the past, look out world. No more wasting time. Today I am going to open up Ableton. Back to Plan A cause Plan B sucks.

New Beginnings

So originally I was gonna jump ship to tumblr, but I think I've decided not to. I love the layout I currently have too much. I might even make it my main website and give up on the wix one I’m currently using for jamiecherish.com. It’s been over a year since I've written a real blog entry. I recently moved to the NoHo Arts District two months ago. Since I left West LA after only living there 6 months a few years ago, I’ve wanted to come back to LA badly. I missed it, so when the opportunity came to move in with my brother, I had to take it. Leaving all my best friends, family and work behind was gonna be tough but I love adventures too much not to move. I was kind of bored of the Bay. I’ve decided LA is gonna be the place I turn things around. Especially if since I was giving up so much to do it. I want to focus as much as possible on making music and since I’m in LA, networking. Who knows how long I’ll actually be down here. So far I love it and I’m not sure whether or not I still want to go to Nashville in a year. I may want to extend my stay down here. I’m gonna go with the flow on that one and figure it out in a year. For now I want to sit back and enjoy the good times. Over the next week, I kinda want to recap the amazing time I've had so far down here. From then on, every Sunday I’m gonna try to hammer one of these out and recap the week give or take. If nothing interesting happened, then it will be a short post. Let’s hope that doesn't happen that often. I still want to get my youtube series started on tattoos. That’s gonna be my second project down here, another amazing opportunity only LA can provide. No updates in the love life, well there’s this one girl, I think I’m just really really intrigued by her, I’m gonna have to ask her out to lunch.

P.S. I’m gonna start writing the music that was played while writing this blog. I think 10+ years from now, if I ever look back on this blog, I’d really love to see what music I was listening to at the time.


Drake – Hold On, We’re Going Home
Keith Urban – Shame
Krewella – Can’t Control Myself
The Weeknd – Professional
Kaskade - How It Is
John Newman - Tribute

Johnny Cupcakes - Ice Cream Sandwich LA meet up

I'm in the video! lol.  At :55 seconds for a split second and then again with my ex roommate at 2:16.

I did it, Santa Monica 2010

I realized its been two months since I last wrote about wanting to move to Santa Monica and... Jan 4 I officially moved to Santa Monica (well kinda, technically its West LA)! So step 1 of my plans for the future has worked out. I've been in Santa Monica two months now and so far I'm loving it. It's definitely has had its ups and downs though, like going to jail and getting tons of parking tickets, but then I get to do a lot of cool things only LA can offer, there's tons of things to do, and meeting people like this dude who is going to be on an episode of tough love from new york to meeting a guy whos worked on videos with britney spears, flyleaf to meeting another dude who's worked in the music business industry whose worked with rappers.

Technically I moved to West LA which is pretty much right in the middle of Santa Monica and Beverly Hills. Santa Monica blvd runs from the beach in Santa Monica all the way through West LA, Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, Hollywood. Sunset Blvd is a parallel street down in Hollywood. All of that is literary down the street from me. I swear I see at least one Bently or a Porsche or a Ferrari or even a Rolls Royce once a day.



A big difference down here is everybody LOOVES Coffee Bean and you see them everywhere here. Same way you'd see Starbucks on every corner in San Francisco.

There's only one country station in LA, well depending in what part of LA you're in. I couldn't find any country clubs like the Saddle Rack down here. It's possible it exist, I'm gonna have to start asking around but I get a feeling there isn't a lot of people that listen to country in LA.

Another thing I've noticed is nobody is from LA lol. I would say a little over half, maybe 2/3's of the people I meet down here moved here from somewhere else. I'd break it down as 1/3 from another country, 1/3 from somewhere else in the US and 1/3 actually from LA.

What I'm really liking is that there's tons of local restaurants. There's almost no point in going to a chain restaurant. I know i'm going to try to avoid them and try all the local places.

The weather is definitely beautiful here. I'm enjoying it way more than the Bay Area. I personally love the sun and other than those two rain storms, its been nothing but sunny.

Why I'm Moving to Santa Monica...

I posted a thing on Facebook saying i'm moving to Santa Monica and got a few people asking why and I realized that I haven't really updated my blog on the whole situation. So in a way this an update to "Nashville and Chasing Dreams"

Quick recap, I'm not gonna be happy with life in the long run unless I'm doing what I love and am passionate about, which is music. In order to do that I've gotta go to college and Belmont University is the best fit for me. I can't get into Belmont University (in Nashville) on my high school grades alone. So I've decided to pretty much go with Option B in my last blog about the situation, which is go to community college in Santa Monica for a year and then transfer to Belmont. Problem with that was it would take me a year and half of community college to get the credits I needed, so I decided to start early, which is why I went to San Jose City College for the Fall semester.

Why go to community college in Santa Monica instead of The Bay Area??

Why the f not. No offense to the bay area, its my home, but i'm kinda bored of it. I'll come back eventually and settle there. For now though, I want to see the world and I'm pretty sure i'll only have when i'm young to do it. I don't have a career or wife and kids holding me down yet. So now's my chance. I've always thought about living in LA, so i'm gonna take this opportunity and take it. Its only a year. Then I move to Nashville for the next three. Then back home to hopefully San Jose or Fremont. During those three years at Belmont though, i'm really hoping I can do the study abroad thing and spend a semester in Australia and another semester in Italy.

Nashville and Chasing Dreams..

This is more of an update to my last LJ/Blog about “Florida and Chasing Dreams” In a little over a month and a half it will have been a year that I typed that up and shit has happened. I’ve done shit. In the meantime my little brother who kinda decided he wanted to go to Expression to learn digital animation so he can work for Pixar started college a few weeks ago. FML. He really sorta lit the flame under my ass to get moving. I’m not getting any younger.....

Over the last few weeks I’ve been looking up Full Sail University and I found out that a lot people are complaining about the school. They’ve won awards and such and the alumni have worked on big projects (The Dark Night, Crash, King Kong, Saints Row 2, 50 Cent, Eminem, Mariah Carey) and have won awards, but after reading bad reviews from students, I was pretty disheartened. Enough to make me search and see what else was out there. I found out for what I want to do, it doesn’t matter what school you go to but the experience you have.....

So I came up with the plan to go to a JC in Nashville for 2 years and then transfer to UCLA and live in LA for the next two. Why Nashville? It’s nickname is Music City, I mean come on, it was begging me to move there. And I love Country Music and its Country Music Headquarters, all the majors have a Nashville Branch. I’m thinking I could actually join a country band and if my singer/s get signed, hopefully they’ll keep me as their drummer and I can tour the U.S. with them. The overall Nashville lifestyle sounds exciting to me.....

Enter Belmont University. I’ve found my new dream school. I was looking around at schools in Nashville that I could attend and found Belmont University. ....

-Time Magazine named it one of the two best music business schools in the U.S. The other being NYU.....
-It made Rolling Stone Magazines schools that rock list....
-US News and World Report cited it as a “School to Watch” for its innovative programs and it ranked #11 of masters-degree universities in the south. ....

From wikipedia:....
Belmont is home to the only AACSB International accredited Music Business program in the world.[14]....
Belmont's Mike Curb College of Entertainment & Music Business (CEMB) consists of current/former authors, performers, expert witnesses (for industry lawsuits), artist managers, lawyers, record label executives, songwriters, and others. The former dean of the CEMB, Jim Van Hook, is a legendary Nashville label head, especially as part of the Christian music industry. He is currently CEO of Word Entertainment. One of the hallmarks of the program is its internship program, which sends hundreds of students annually out into the Nashville music industry to intern for record labels, management companies, publishing companies, booking agencies, publicists, recording studios, law firms, and other businesses.....
Besides having three professional-quality recording studios on campus, Belmont owns the Belmont Studios (including Ocean Way Nashville), part of which is operated for-profit (used by such artists as Dave Matthews, Sheryl Crow, and Bob Seger), and part of which is used by students. Belmont also operates historic RCA Studio B (formerly used by Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, and Dolly Parton), in conjunction with the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Curb Family Foundation. In addition, the music business program operates Belmont West and Belmont East, which enable students to spend a semester learning about and interning in the entertainment industries in Los Angeles and New York City, respectively

Quick FYI Mike Curb started Curb Records, a major independent country music label. The home of Tim McGraw, Rodney Atkins, LeAnn Rimes, Hank Williams Jr. They also have programs to study abroad, which I’m just as excited about. Preferably I’d study overseas. The counselor said they have West and East which is basically schools in LA and New York. He also mentioned London and Australia. On the website they have Italy. Out of all the places I’d go to Italy first since its been my dream to visit Italy and then go to Australia. By then I’ll already have lived in LA so that wont be as appealing and New York to me would be a nice place to visit but not live and I don’t really like Londons weather. I’m a summer guy. Not sure how those programs work though. Luckily Nicole has done the whole study abroad thing so I’m gonna ask her instead of the admission people so I don’t sound like a dumbass when I do get around to asking Belmont.

........................................

....................................................

The problem is I sucked in H.S. There’s no denying or getting around that. I talked to admissions today and basically he said yeah, you’re gonna have to go to a JC and after you get 30 units, you’re eligible to transfer. So I called my good friend Renzo lol and he schooled me on everything college and how it works. Basically I can get those 30 units in one year and I’m honestly gonna shoot for a 4.0, lol, no joke and then transfer. I’ve decided to reverse my plans and go to LA first. Go to a community college. Get the credits I need and after a year move to Nashville and go to Belmont! New problem is I kinda don’t have the $$ to just move and pay for living expenses and college and I don’t have rich parents. But I don’t want to wait any longer to start college, I’ve waited long enough. So my two options are....

Option A....

Go to Ohlone or Chabot or some local community college for the Fall semester and then move to LA and do the Spring semester in LA. The Pro being I can possibly attend Belmont next Fall. Cons being, no idea how I’m gonna support myself and go to college. I’d probably have to cancel Driving across the US with Right Hand Man and Sidekick and cancel Visiting Las Vegas, Mexico and Kansas. I was kinda looking forward to spending a year in LA and this way I’ll only be living there around 6 to 7 months.....

Option B....

Bust my ass and make as much money possible from now until Dec, SAVE SAVE SAVE, and start the Spring semester in LA and actually live a whole year in LA and then move to Nashville and go to Belmont. Pros being I get to live a year in LA and I can possibly still go on trips and hopefully have made/saved enough money to go to college. Cons are I don’t want to delay going to college anymore, I really want to get started ASAP. I’d start Belmont in 2011 and graduate 6 months older.....

Really don’t know what to do. Any help/ideas? Kinda need to figure things out ASAP being school starts in mid/late August....

p.s. Yes one of the presidential debates was held at Belmont last year. And funny thing is I don’t NEED to go to college. Things are picking up with Real Estate and I could honestly see myself doing this the rest of my life. I actually kinda think its fun, but I’ll never forgive myself and I’ll regret not going to college to learn music and I don’t have regrets. I’ve been wanting to do this since I discovered you could go to school for music 10+ years ago.....



----------------
Now playing: Gloriana - Time To Let Me Go
via FoxyTunes