It is another cold rainy Monday which probably affects my choices of music for Music Mondays. Whose idea was it anyway to blog about music on Mondays. Sure, the alliteration is good, but really?

So, I sat down with my cup of coffee and listened to some of the latest submissions on Sonicbids for the Music Review section of Orient Lodge.

There is a young musician who did session work for Barney. Upbeat pop sort of stuff. Nice. Perhaps good going into the holiday season, but it didn’t really fit my mood. Anyway, I should have my daughter review that submission.

Clicking through the pages, I came to J. Peter Boles. He has a new Christmas EP out. In my book, it is still too early to be Christmas shopping. There is still a month to go before the serious Christmas shopping begins. I’m not ready to listen to Silent Night or Go Tell It On the Mountain. Yet I like to give each musician a fair chance and listen to their music.

I listened to the guitar intro to Silent Night, and I half expected Boles to start off with “Annie laid her head down in the roses”, except maybe singing Mary instead of Annie. I flipped over to the website to read about The Resinator, a guitar that Boles built with “ocean-swept driftwood & found abalone in a custom polymer resin composite”. Fascinating.

So, if you want to really mix up your music for the holidays, add Boles Christmas Sky to your mix.

Yet there is much more to Boles than his Christmas EP. His debut album has some great songs on them. Perhaps the song that resonates best with me is “Bard Lane / Sweet Eagle Dreams”.

There stands the man that I used to be
He's starin' past the fences out toward the hills
His eyes full of questions, his mailbox full of bills
He wouldn't trade this life, but he can't help but wonder sometimes
...
He sees the sun goin' down like an artist's dream
While the pearly crescent moon begins to gleam
The L.A. freeway's gonna set us free
The Ventura River is flowin' down to the sea

Yeah, another comrade in arms. Boles sings about hobos, the December rain, and tides ebbing and flowing. It’s some good music to listen to on a rainy Monday morning.