JAW KNEE YEAH

It’s 2:13am as I’m writing this. Once again, I can’t sleep. Yesterday I lied awake in my bed until nearly 5:00am and had to be in for work at ten. So horrible, I had only what, maybe 3 hours of sleep? Well, technically a little bit more than that, because I did take a nap as soon as I got home from work. But still, not very good. Anyways, this is the second night I seem to be suffering from insomnia and I hate it. It feels like such a waste of time lying in your bed, not getting the rest you need, and feeling like your time is just passing by, going to waste. So tonight, I’ve decided to post my first blog.

Just so y’all know, I plan on coming back online again. I have to admit that I do miss YouTube, and I feel that so much has changed since I’ve been gone. Almost 2 years have passed by so quickly since I started working a full 9 to 5. I haven’t had much time to make any videos, nor have any type of online presence. I apologize to all my fans who have missed me and I’m sorry for not having kept in touch by replying to any messages, etc… I hope y’all still remember me though, and I hope you know that I have missed you too. Even though I have said it many times before, I WILL be back. However, things will be a lot more different this time around. I know a lot of people may be wondering, where have you been? What have you been doing? Well, first off, I’ve been working a full-time job, and that pretty much takes up most of my time and energy. But that is not to say that that is the sole reason for why I have not posted any videos. I guess the real reason is that I needed the break and also I had just simply no longer wanted to. I’ll explain why, but first let me tell you about the origin of JawKneeYeah.

I think it all started at this kickback party in San Diego, back in college. At the time, I was playing music mainly through my classical guitar. One of the popular songs on radio at the time was Gwen Stefani’s “Sweet Escape”. For a long time, I’ve enjoyed learning the chords to the songs I liked, and just loved to play them on the guitar. So at this party, someone handed me a guitar and asked me to play a song, and I played my funny rendition of “Sweet Escape”. I think everyone enjoyed it, and a friend even told me that she actually liked my rendition of the song better than the original, so afterwards I decided to record it for her. After I finished recording it using Sony Acid Music Studio, I figured, why stop there? So I made a video to go with it and posted it on YouTube. My friend thought I was crazy and retarded, but heck, I thought the video was pretty funny.

After that initial video, I found the video making process to be fun, and it became not only a hobby but an obsession. It was almost like a game to me. You try to make an entertaining video, and you hope to get a lot of views as if they were points in a video game. I did this for a good 1-2 years and it was all in good fun. But somewhere along the line, it stopped being fun. At a certain point, I began to feel like the videos I made were forced, and were no longer genuine. And that shouldn’t be the case, because it’s not like anyone is really forcing me to make acoustic covers & parodies. So lately, instead of forcefully trying to post videos that come out bad, I’ve been trying to improve a few certain areas of my musical ability so that I can really truly express myself through it. There is still so much to learn, but I think it’s time for me to come back and start making music again.

So I will be back, but in a much different light. I know that there will be a lot of unhappy viewers who expect me to bring back the old school JKY black & white acoustic parodies, but I have to honestly say that I don’t really see that happening. Well actually, I shouldn’t say that. Who knows, I may actually want to do those type of videos again later on, but as of right now, there are other things I would like to do with my music. And I am aware that I have been typecasted as the acoustic guitar funny guy. But I really do hope to move away from that, because that wasn’t really what I had intended on being in the first place, or at least I don’t want that to be the ONLY thing I’m known for.

Anyways, I want to end this post by saying that music is something I really do love and enjoy. When I think about it, I can’t help but think of the episode on Full House where Joey goes on that talent show to showcase his comedy, and ends up losing the competition. He then tells everyone that he was going to quit comedy forever. But then Uncle Jesse talks to him and tells him that he can’t let go of comedy because it’s something that is a part of him, just like how music was a major part of Uncle Jesse’s life. And I agree with Uncle Jesse when he said that music is not something you do to chase fame, money or anything like that. Sure it would be hella nice if we could achieve all that, but for most of us, we simply do music for the sheer love of it. And the reason why I love music so much, is mainly because I believe that it is the greatest form of expression, at least to me. One of my biggest inspirations, Bruce Lee, said that to him, martial arts is about HONESTLY expressing yourself, not lying to yourself, something that is very hard to do. I think that his idea of honest expression should apply to all forms of art, including music.