I have some big news to share: After moving to Los Angeles at the tender age of 24, I have decided to sell my house and move to Kansas City. While this might seem to be a really out of the blue thing to most of you, I will say that I have been thinking about it pretty much all of 2014 and decided about 5 months ago to do it. I have lived at least the whole of the last 20 years reacting to what some might call intuition and others might call God’s leading, but whatever you call it, it is a “know that I know” feeling that I get that when I follow it always turns out to be the right thing to do, and I have this feeling about this move strongly. No, I don’t know anyone there except all the musicians that I met while I was there in October for a week’s visit, but I will have my dog and the bottom line is that there are 40 working jazz clubs in the KC area with great players and I want to be playing a LOT more than I have been, and playing what I WANT to play and am good at, which while a lot of you might not know this and think that LA is this wonderful music mecca, but I can tell you that that has been going away little by little for decades - ESPECIALLY for jazz. Years ago I used to go to the Monterey Jazz Festival and think about someday doing what I called a “playing retirement” where it was a smaller pond but a lot of good players and gigs, but it didn’t seem to be Monterey except when the festival was in town and the prices were too high for houses. Well, Kansas City has like 20 jazz festivals a year, because people go to them, so when the light bulb went off in my head at the start of the year, everything seemed to make sense. The other thing is that after I sell and may off the rest of what I owe on my house here and buy a comparable place of better in KC, i will have enough money or more to buy two more houses like it. Yes, for the second time in my life I am moving to a place where I really know no one with (at least in the first trip) nothing but a car full of essential stuff (working guitar stuff, computer, clothes, dog, and of course dog food), but I make friends fast (many times after one gig or meeting), and while i was there I had a realtor recommended by a friend that is a great realtor show me around the town and through at least a dozen houses and I was really happy to see what I did. There are huge wooded areas and water everywhere, and there are more water fountains in KC than in Paris or Rome, and besides that only hundreds of miles rather than thousands from my sisters and their families. I drove all over town and know where I want to live, and the plan is to rent a moving “POD” (mobile metal storage locker that gets delivered to your curb) to start filling up in early January, fix up the house for sale (mostly some painting and refinish of a hardwood floor and some new carpets) and be gone by March or start of April. The Extended Stay hotel I was in during my October trip takes dogs, so Django will be with me and a few times in a Pet Smart “doggie hotel” for a day if I have house hunting where I can’t take him. So that’s it, I have I think thought this through overall and all the ducks seem to be walking in a straight line.
Posted on: Wed, 17 Dec 2014 03:42:49 +0000
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