You are also a musician.  What instruments do you play and do you have any projects going on right now?

What bands inspire you creatively?  Why?

I play guitar, bass, piano and drums, but haven’t written any songs in a long time.  I played the heck out of rock band drums for the last three years and finally decided to get a real (electronic) drum set that has the high hat and snare in the right places and crash and ride symbols. It is sooooooo much more satisfying.  It’s the best workout ever – it works my shoulders and obliques and lats and pecs.  

No bands really inspire me lately.  I think it’s because listening to music makes me sad that I’m not writing and recording it and actively jamming in a band (I don’t really care about playing out).  But now that I’m drumming, I’ve been listening to music differently and paying attention to only the drums – mostly the Stones and Phish.  It takes a lot of concentration to pick out just the kick and snare so you can copy it, and then adding the high hat (with pedal), additional drums, and cymbals is like a spastic palsy puzzle until it all comes together and you can groove on it – then you feel like a total rock star!  It’s very meditative because there’s no room for any internal dialog. I’m going to the Summer Camp music festival at the end of the month, so I could have a surge of musical inspiration, we’ll see…

I am interested in writing a couple of education themed rockin’ albums that make learning hard stuff fun like the constitution, physics concepts, spelling, and other things where you are supposed to memorize a bunch of facts to spit back out on a test. I know I could write it pretty quickly, it’s just the stupid marketing that keeps me from doing it, and because I’m putting all of my energy into selling ‘Scarlet Begonias’ and playing Warhammer (and painting my Orcs and Goblins units) for the Blood in the Sun tournament in June.

If anyone can recommend bands and music for Stephanie put it in the comments.