One of the many reasons why I love this video, is that the annual Carnival parade in this Mission District is blaring outside. That horns are honking, people are cheering, and MeaningLess Emphasis is sitting calmly on my bed, singing the softest cover of a hymn. This was recorded with the first batch of In My Bedroom Shows, back in Spring/Summer of 2010, at the old Shotwell apartment. 

MeaningLess Emphasis' creator, Emily Weiss, is a dear friend who I met over two years ago at Tyler and Jessica Kemp's wedding. She is an extremely talented musician and artist, and has released countless albums, the first three under the name MLE. She recently wanted to change her name to have some flexibility with experimenting with her sound, so MeaningLess Emphasis was birthed. I highly recommend checking out her site, she's been creating some incredible sounds, my personal favorites are "Landscape of Honeycombs," "Siberia" and "I Learned Self-Defense in Art Class." Her current album Help Set is available for free download, I highly recommend you check it out.

She is also the illustrator who created the background illustration of my bedroom for this site. This renaissance woman is also a talented graphic designer and photographer. AND she's a beautiful, loving human being.

Not a still from the video, taken November 2010, she sang to me while I was sick in bed.

November 1, 2009: It was the morning after an epic Halloween party at my apartment. My dear friend Emily Weiss (the illustrator of the beautiful background of this site and the musician MeaningLess Emphasis) had crashed with me on the floor of my extra tiny bedroom at my old Shotwell apartment. After cleaning up the copious amounts of beer cans, smashing my housemate's Dracula pinata in celebration with the rest of my housemates, she and I retired to my room. I was puttering around the room cleaning and organizing, when she picked up Jasmine (my guitar) and began to play. I stopped puttering and sat down next to her and listened. 

As you see, she has an amazing talent, but that wasn't the only reason it stopped me mid-putter. It was such an intimate moment: this dear friend of mine giving me a private concert of her seemingly autobiographical songs in my safe space, where I slept, wrote, cried, attempted to play Jasmine, made art, was sick, etc.

I didn't do anything with it for a while aside post to facebook. Fast forward to another event with Emily: Memorial Day weekend 2010. Emily, Evan, Darian, Angela, Nicole and I all went out for beer at Shotwells. We went around the table and told our life stories to Emily (who lives in Vacaville, so she didn't know their stories). After that we went back to Darian's apartment for a jam session. It was magical:

From then on I knew I wanted to do something with my musically talented friends, so we began to plan a fundraising rooftop show. I recorded four In My Bedroom Shows in my Shotwell bedroom as promotion for the fundraising show (and to serve as videos that my friends could post to their sites) and posted it to my personal blog. The rooftop show was in July 2010, and we raised over 200 dollars with just our friends donating $5+ at the door, and every dollar raised went straight to the Wednesday Night Homeless dinners at a local church, which we had volunteered with one Wednesday night. The day after the fundraising show, I moved a few blocks from my Shotwell place to the apartment I currently reside in, still in the Mission District. But with the move, and life in general being hectic for me, I thought that it was the perfect time to put the shows on hold.

Then one March evening 2011, the wonderful Skeltons came over for dinner. After some wine and delicious food, we retired to my room so they could show me the songs they had been writing. It was a similar experience to when Emily played after Halloween, so  I dove for my camera and recorded a show (you can see it here). I realized that these videos needed their own blog, and after a bunch of friends offered to help with the creation of it (see the About page for thank yous!), here we are. 

Folks have been asking what the goal of the site is, and I don't have one specific goal for it. I want to help encourage the music community, create a network of talented folks who can help/hire each other, and hopefully recruit some of these musicians for another fundraising show (I'm thinking end of September/beginning of October of this year!)

Memorial Weekend Jam Session, photo by Nicole Myers. Em and I, only she knows what she is doing...