I loved the sound of Ducky’s voice. Speaking. Singing backgrounds. Answering the phone. Mumbling silly songs. Laughing. Telling endless stories.  It was infectious. He was my Don Pardo. And my backbeat, for so long. At gigs or in the studio, he would say the nicest things. And those words would land. Make me keep going. Write songs for him and his drumming style. Things we could sing together. Ideas we could talk about. Late night post gig texts that would often end with ‘I love you’.  We played hundreds of gigs together. Made eleven albums over thirty years. Had some incredible laughs. And a few tough conversations. That were never meant to hurt him, but I fear might have.

We were supposed to grow old together playing gigs at a VFW. But maybe he’s setting up his drum kit somewhere. Tuning his drum while the bartender winces. Talking so loud.  Telling a story. In that voice.

A special person to many. And they all have a Ducky story, or two. I hope we get a chance to share them some time and toast our buddy.

Thanks to my new friends Renato Bottani and Marco Melzi at New Shot Records in Italy, I have a ‘new’ album out on CD! Renato became a fan of my project called ‘Violin Sirens’ , that was previously released only on cassette. He re-mastered it, and has just released it from his cool new label.  You can read the whole story here https://www.newshotrecords.com/ but it features the great guitar playing of Steven Paul Perry, Tom Sheppard on bass, Frank Corby on drums, and Jim Fitting on harp. Since it was recorded in two days by Ducky Carlisle,  the record has a very live feeling and definitely represents a period of time. It’s kind of wild how you send songs out into the world on cassette and they come back on CD from Italy thirty years later!

A  couple of years ago, I got fascinated with exploring other ways of telling stories. I took my first acting class and got sort of hooked. Zoom classes with the country's best teachers during Covid kept me and others sane. I now have a solid team of managers and agents helping me out in most major markets, and up until the WGA strike have been auditioning regularly for film, tv and an occasional commercial. No ‘big breaks' yet, but I was lucky enough to be cast more than a few independent films. A place to start, including a film I made myself in Nantucket with my teacher and friend James DuMont (Righteous Gemstones, The Butler, Blackbird). It's a twisted little short film about a mixed up middle aged guy and his unconventional therapist. So far, ‘Confessions Of A Name Dropper’ has been accepted into a half-dozen film festivals worldwide including one that I can go to just three T stops from my front door at the Somerville International Film Festival in July. Trailer below….