In celebration of Los Angeles Fleet Week, I played a concert with ElenaGilliam at the USS Iowa in Los Angeles. We played for veterans, activeduty military, and the attendees of Fleet Week. Here’s a video, checkout the flyover from a pair of F-18 fighter jets. Fleet Week is a United States Navy, United States Marine…
Picking up from the previous blog, the speech at Early College High School in Costa Mesa was interesting. The group was 9th graders, age 14-15. The first topic we discussed was the idea of choosing a major before choosing a college. The idea of choosing a profession or a major at this age was complicating…
I’m back again with more anti-drug events for teens! This event inAugust featured a member of Alcoholics Anonymous named Daniela. Daniela was a heavy opioid user for about 10 years. She stated that shestarted with marijuana, went on to alcohol and cocaine, and also wentthrough a period where she would try anything and everything. Danielawas…
I’ve done some anti-drug speaking this summer and thought I would postsome of the stories and pictures. This event in July included a man in his 30s named Jason. He had somemental health challenges early in life and was elated to find drugs andalcohol at the age of 12. He said it helped him to…
I had a small event in Costa Mesa yesterday where I joined with 2 members of alcoholics anonymous, and we spoke to about 20 teenagers who are struggling with mental illness. The other 2 speakers were quite excellent. Ricky (on the right side of the photo) has an incredible 5 years of sobriety! He has…
Many of my recent jazz performances have been at Senior Living communities. Here’s some pictures from a recent visit to a Senior Living in Beaumont CA. (pics attached) The seniors really love jazz music. Some of them have told me they remember seeing this music live when it was being played in clubs in the…
I am currently doing some work with teens in the Orange County CA area. While drug abuse prevention remains my primary message, school assemblies are few and far between since the pandemic. I have turned some of my attention to other areas of concern for teens in 2023. The first is suicide prevention, and the…
When I was a social worker in Queens NY years back, part of my job was to help kids who were just starting to get into music stay focused and avoid substance abuse. I had an open mic for them, a drum class, and a few guitar lessons. Now the kids are all grown up…
I’ve been playing some gigs around Southern California with my group Casey Mahoney’s Jazz Conspiracy. It’s a hard bop quartet playing jazz standards. We add a singer for a few select gigs also. Here’s some videos My favorite venues right now are OC Fish Grill and Anaheim Packing District These venues have great music every weekend and…
Internet addiction isn’t what it used to be. When the topic first started getting tossed around about 5 years ago, the focus was on how it was affecting millennials. People of this generation experienced negative side effects of social media, such as- Teenagers in 2022 have overcome some of these issues. They’ve gotten the idea…