14 years

[The following is excerpted from “Friday – Skip Birong’s Musical Story”, which may be found in its entirety on the Bookshelf in Days Seven.]

The “Skip Birong” album cover was created in pen and ink by Terry Barckholtz from the publicity photo above. Terry, who is the founder and current president and CEO of the Barckholtz Group in Saginaw, Michigan, was part owner of PDM Design in that same city back in the mid-seventies when I played a really posh restaurant there. He and his partner needed an instrumental soundtrack for a marketing film they were producing, and I needed an album cover. Thus, my first “trade-out.” And the cover ended up being printed in black and white, whereas the original artwork included green and yellow print for the name. Couldn’t afford the color print.

The album was produced by Ray Lynn and me at the Warehouse Studio in Jacksonville, Florida in 1976, and took about two months to complete. All of the songs are registered with BMI and are originals by me except Dammit (Mike Peyton), Sportin’ Life Blues (Sebastian, Yahowski and Butler), and Dreamin‘ (which I co-wrote with Doug Pike). The first cut of each side was fully produced, including strings and brass. Side A was contemporary, pop-oriented, and side B was country-oriented. I had intended to use the album not only to sell off the “back of the truck,” as it was called in those days, in order to earn the money to repay the loan I had to get in order to produce it, but also as a demo album for other opportunities which I hoped might come up from time to time. The songs can be downloaded from the “The Songs” link on the post above.

Continue “The Album”

Preface

Skip Birongin

Buchananthology

14 years

The City of Buchanan: Population 4,800. Settled in 1833 and named for James Buchanan, the fifteenth president of the United States. Cradled amongst the gentle hills of Southwestern Michigan.

Anthology: A random miscellany of stories. Eight tales plucked from myriad recollections of an idyllic childhood in a quintessential small town in Midwest America during the years following the end of World War II (1945–1965). Names only half-heartedly changed to protect the innocent.

Growing up in a bucolic environment so charming that my sister and I still go back and drive the old roads from time to time just to reassure ourselves that it actually existed–not just some romantic figment of the imagination.

Peek in the windows of Colvin school. Deserted. Desks stacked up in the corner. Nothing changed inside in fifty years. Spooky. Wait–is that an old rubber snow boot with metal clasps up the front that I see in there?

Continue “Preface”

EQ – the novel

Skip Birongin

EQ - the novel

14 years

Dear reader:

“EQ” represents my first foray into the deep end of the pool as far as writing goes. The novel is the culmination of five years of work during the period from about 2003 through 2007. (Okay, I never said I was a fast writer–James Patterson, the famous mystery author, by comparison, could easily have whipped out ten novels in that same time period, even with bathroom breaks).

The “EQ” story is a science fiction adventure that is jam-packed with excitement, fascinating insights regarding the creation of our universe, an utterly mind-blowing, sentient spaceship (that would be Alena), and my view of no less than the ultimate fate of our species. Oh, I almost forgot, the true meaning of life is also in there, cleverly hidden between the lines.

Anyway, I know this is a good book because my son said it didn’t suck–and he’s one picky critic. Better download your copy now while it’s still free–I am totally expecting a phone call from Ron Howard momentarily regarding movie rights.

Skip

Liner notes…

The story of Benjamin Duke begins in 2002 in a quiet scientific enclave in Poland where, as a seven-year old boy, he resides with his younger sister, mother and his physicist father. A mysterious scientific experiment gone awry leaves him and his sister orphaned and then adopted by his father’s brother and his wife.

Continue “EQ – the novel”