Answering The Call to Adventure (New Song!)

Every Story must have a beginning. For the Journey to Start the hero must answer the call to adventure.  Thus my album, "Learning Adventures in Love and Revolution" begins with the song, "Morning Mantra." Allow me to explain...

I graduated from College with a general studies and philosophy degree at the end of 2008,  around the time Obama took office and the Recession set in. There were no jobs. And I didn't have a clue, what I wanted to do. I lived in Moscow, Idaho and had already tasted the 'big world out there' as I had spent some time living in Bangkok, Thailand a few years earlier. I knew that as much as I loved Moscow, I needed to get out of that town. I needed to explore...

So I took my meager savings, about 2000 dollars saved while working as a barista at a Food Co-op and I bought a cross country train ticket. I booked a little spoken word poetry tour, packed my bags and hit the road. The next few months were spent performing poetry at little coffee shops and on street corners, meditating in Philadelphia, Partying at Mardi Gras in New Orleans, hanging with Street Kids in Los Angeles, visiting family and sorting through generational baggage in Bellingham and Seattle Washington, washing my face in both the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean, and exploring DMT and altered states of consciousness in between. Along the way, I was given a book, "The Hero With A Thousand Faces" by Joseph Campbell.

This book made me realize, that I was on my Hero's Journey. Somewhere, Somehow, I got the idea that I wanted to tell my Hero's Journey in the form of a hip hop album. But first, I had to live that journey and I had to learn how to make music...

After I traveled the country for 3 months and visited 38 states, I came back to Moscow. I tried to live in Moscow. But I couldn't. I felt crazy. Something deep within was unsatisfied, I had the feeling that I needed to leave Moscow, it was spiritually a life or death situation.

So I moved to Seattle, Washington. Upon arriving in Seattle, I was quite isolated. In retrospect this was good for me, and upon further studies I realized that all Hero's Journey's include a period of isolation or separation from the known.

When living in Seattle, I would wake up every morning, do 10 minutes of yoga, say 22 positive affirmations in the mirror, than practice music for a few hours before I would go explore Seattle looking for jobs and opportunity.

The following song represents that era to me. In fact, this song was written in Seattle (making it one of the oldest songs on the album.) It is a song that represents answering the call to adventure, the quest for enlightenment, and an unknown white trash alien turned activist and family man MC walking through the city, inspired to make a change. And while it is not my favorite song, nor the obvious hit single, it is where the album needs to start: So here it is, track 1, Morning Mantra. I invite you to come with me on this journey...

This song is also the first song I have paid to be mixed and mastered with donations to my indie go go campaign from people like you. 

Click here to donate.

Peace, Love, Joy, Wisdom...
-Plaedo