One of the toughest things about having a website with a great amount of content is having reliable storage.
In the real world storage units are available to folks who need extra room. There’s actually storage unit options available for website owners too—although you can’t pull your truck up to them to unload.
I won’t bore you with the technical reasons websites often need to utilize online storage units, but in a nutshell it comes down to storage room (just like in the real world) and site safety.
Photos and text don’t take up hardly any room at all so they’re easy to manage. But videos and sound files take up an enormous amount of space.
The cost of finding hosting that would support all the videos we have on our various channels would be astronomical. I’d be much better off to buy my own server…but then I’d have to manage and support it and even then there would be hiccups, especially with my slow internet service.
Last week I was working on moving a few sound files from Blind Pig and The Acorn to my online storage unit and it took me longer than it should have because I kept stopping to listen to all of them 🙂
One of them was a song Paul composed way back when he was in high school, “Down the Escalante.” He played around with it then but let it fall to the back of his guitar case pretty quickly.
Back around 2008 Paul re-worked the song and even put it on one of his and Pap’s cds “Lamp Lighting Time.”
As Pap would say I heard the song anew the other day when I was moving it to its new home.
Years ago when I wrote about the song I said listening to it made me want to ride off into the sunset with The Deer Hunter. It’s seems the perfect tune for doing something exciting.
I hope you enjoyed the song as much as I do. As you can tell from listening Paul used several instruments to record it. The main guitar used is a Recco Classical.
Paul was a young boy when the bridge on his cheap hand-me down guitar came loose. While visiting Wayde Powell, a friend of the family who owned a recording studio, Paul asked Wayde if he had an extra bridge laying around. Wade told Paul he thought there might be one in an old barn down below his house and Paul was welcome to go see.
Paul found the classical guitar. It was old, dirty, and actually had rats living inside it. He took it back up to Wade and asked if he could have the bridge from it. Wade said “You can have the whole thing.”
Paul took it home and Pap helped him clean it up. Once Paul heard the sound of the guitar he knew it would be one he’d keep for the rest of his life.
To purchase your own copy of “Lamp Lighting Time” follow the link below.
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Love that!! Great playing!
Thank you for sharing this. Paul is incredibly talented. I love hearing him sing and play the guitar.
Sounds a lot like one of my favorite artists–Jesse Cook.
Something about that song reminds me of hang gliders. Years ago there was a group of people that flew off of Burkemont Mountain above Morganton. I used to watch them swooping and sliding, spinning and gliding in the updrafts and eddies aloft. I never saw where they landed, if they ever did!
Wow, the tune Paul wrote “Down the Escalante.” is so upbeat and pretty. I really enjoyed it!
I understand a little about digital storage. I have a lot of pictures I’ve taken with my phone which seems to always be exceeding my limit according to Google. Google always tells me to buy more storage, but I won’t, so I’m always cleaning out pictures not needed or duplicated.
I use to write activity themes for an email newsletter for Activity Directors that worked in living assistant facilities. The first website I wrote activity special themes and events for was Re-Creative Resources (Recreativeresources.com) under Free Recreational Program Ideas, Special Themes/Events called “Christine’s Themes” back around 2008-2009. These activities can still be found on that website. I also wrote a few special theme activities as a guest writer for The Activity Director’s Office in 2009, sadly they no longer exist, so those theme ideas I wrote, to my knowledge, no longer can be found on the internet. Thankfully, I kept all my themes I wrote, but unlike you that store yours digitally, I printed mine. I did save them on my computer back when I originally wrote the themes, however after my computer crashed I lost all digital copies, so I was very thankful I had printed them all out on paper. My experience with digital storage is small potatoes compared to yours Tipper. I only wrote simple things only relating to activities, nothing really useful or interesting except to those few activity workers who just needed an idea or two to jump start their own creative ideas for activities or events to do with their residents. Now days I’m lucky to keep track of where I put things. Anyway, I feel for you having to keep track of all the everyday blogs, songs and videos that you created over the many years, plus the expense of keeping it all up and available on your website. Tipper, you’re doing an amazing job of it all. Hopefully, you will continue for many, many years to create, write, video and play music for all to enjoy! Thank you for sharing your time and talents with us. We greatly appreciate you!!!
Tipper, I haven’t listened to Paul’s music yet, but I thought I’d address the first part of your post: the size of audio and video files. I’m going to guess that your video files are recorded in MP4 format and your audio files in MP3 format. (Please tell me if I’m wrong . . . or if it’s none of my business. :> ) Are you aware that those file types can be compressed to reduce the amount of storage?
Robert-Yes you are correct 🙂 I am aware of using compression, but thank you for making sure!
OK, I listened to ‘Down the Escalante’. It is a great tune. I agree that it has commercial potential. I heard music much like that when I worked in Madrid a number of years ago. I tried to find what Escalante Paul might have had in mind when he wrote it. A place? A person?
Robert-he was inspired by the beauty of the Escalante River 🙂
Great song and great sounding guitar.
I love this tune! thanks for sharing it!
memories of my grandad.
Wow!!! Great tune, great sound, great playing!!! Thanks for this gift.
Beautiful! What talent your brother has! Sounds like it almost has a Spanish flare to it.
Wow!!! Love this tune!!! Love the sound of that guitar!!!! Can’t believe that rats were living in it. So glad Paul rescued it. This song reminds me of something you would hear in a 1970’s western movie – maybe one with Paul Newman or Robert Redford. Fantastic!!!
I love this & I love the story too.
I just want to say that the picture on Today, if you will hear his voice is so real and just true of all the things I’ve read and heard you talk about your dad. I just love the picture. ❤️
Sounds great! Have been using a gut-string for about 45 years….Mickey Newbury tried to talk me out of it…lol…..he did autograph it for me one night when we were jamming.
Are they real gut or did they come from a nylon cat?
Now “Down the Escalante” really twanged in my ear- I think it is FANTASTIC and I do mean one of the greatest potential western movie theme songs I have ever heard and I love westerns! They’re actually my favorite movies! I could see this song being used for action movies like Kill Bill or Jackie Brown even…. Paul can write like nobody’s business! This is a super tune waiting for HOLLYWEIRD to snag it or maybe Japan or Italy- yep, it’s THAT good!!! I’m computer challenged and I wish you luck on storage. I’m thinking put it in THE CLOUD, but I got no idea about that and I don’t want my stuff in the cloud… lol bless you cause with computers, you’ll need it!!! Blessed Sunday to you all and Paul the man of the creative hour!!!
Gee, I’m sorry you have such troubles. Guess I should have known though. Seems there is always a downside to most everything here in this world. We appreciate your hard work and dilifence.
I like the tune. It sounds somewhat southwestern. Maybe the title influences me to think thatbway. Anyhow it seems to tell of an adventure of some kind. And the connection with a barn “find” makes it even better. Musical I am not so I don’t know the right adjectives but, as others noted, that guitar has a sweet sound, or maybe the word is ‘mellow’?
Oh, I remember this one and I sure do like it. Be sure it doesn’t get misplaced, it’s a keeper! Cold morning in the mountains here and this tune wakes me up and warms me up!!
I like the sound of that guitar.
Wow !!! Lamp Lighting Time !!! Great tune. Are there lyrics to it? Would love to hear them ❤
Martha- thank you! So glad you enjoyed the song. Down the Escalante doesn’t have lyrics but maybe he should write some 🙂
Thank you for the history of this song. It is one of my top favorite songs that Paul has composed. I love it! I am not technically savvy in all this computer stuff, but know someone who is. To me, all computer stuff is boring. The way I feel about computers is the same way I feel about cars – you should just be able to turn them on and they run forever without any further anything – no stopping for gas or oil or any other maintenance. But I know it is not so. The same with the computer world. I applaud you, Tipper, for having the knowledge and patience to work with the computer end of running your blog. Me. I just call the person I know. And then I have to patiently wait for him to be able to help me as his career is with building servers, and all the other technical computer stuff, on an international level. Amazing how the world lived without computers since Adam and Eve, but ever since the last 30 years or so, no one can function hardly without one.
Donna. : )