Welcome to my favorite month of the year friends - October. For me, the emotions, thoughts, memories and moods which the colors, events, music and weather of October effortlessly flow into me always make this month both a  joyful and a melancholy time in my life. I have had many personal events throughout my life happen in the month of October. None of them seem to fade as years go by. In fact, many just grow stronger. As for the Holidays of the seasons Halloween has always been my favorite. I celebrate it much differently these days, and usually alone, but I do hold court on Halloween one way or another.

As for music news, the A1A season is winding down and I am getting ready for my hibernating season, so to speak. With the exception of some solo performances and a couple of Jeff Pike Band shows I have no more travels coming up and am looking forward to staying home to work on music and a new me for 2016.

To fill up my time during A1A's off season I have been rehearsing a lot of Dan Fogelberg music for 'Souvenirs', my tribute to Dan with pianist Kenny Kirby. I have also been working with A1A keyboardist Eric Baumgardner on putting together a tribute duo to Elton John. We are concentrating on a vast number of classic Elton's album tracks along with many of his hits. These are two projects I have always wanted to undertake and I am very excited about both of them.

On a personal note, 2015 has been a year in my life that I will never forget, yet one that I will be glad to see grow distant in my rear view mirror. It has been a year steeped with great change, loss, pain, fear, heartache, misunderstanding, broken dreams and struggle. And yet, it has brought me much gratitude and a clearer understanding and awareness of myself. In some ways I am still searching, but in other ways this year has helped crystallize within me the true understanding of what I have, who I am and what I want for the second part of my life. I won't lie to you. I still feel like I am drifting, or at best steering with one oar, but I am starting to see dry land appearing in the distance.  Like John Chrighton from the Sci Fi Series, 'Farscape,' I am living on hope. Hope keeps me going.

So I am striving for 2016 to be a year of good changes.  A year of new music, new work, new goals, new dreams, new friends and new memories. But hey, I am getting ahead of myself aren't I? Halloween is just around the corner.

Jeff