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Hey Folks, As many of you will know through my performances and content, I absolutely love freestyling and improvising. Even in elementary school, long before I knew about hip-hop, I recall making up silly songs on the spot to make my friends laugh.  Fast forward 2 decades and I've been doing a weekly freestyle show "Spontaneous Sundays with AllOne" for nearly 2 years now and constantly improvising rap in my shows.  This blog was prompted when a fan named Ryan sent a very complimentary email asking simply "HOW DO YOU DO IT?" So I thought a lot about it and polled an audience of some of my favorite improvisers that I know personally for their thoughts and responded with a version of the writing below.  I think anyone can freestyle if they practice and still I think it is one of the most impressive and amazing performances to watch whether it is musical, rapping, poetry, dance, acting or comedy.  Here are some thoughts.  I have so many personal and distant ar...

Hey AllOne family!  HAPPY NEW YEAR!  It has been a while since I've posted...in fact nearly half a year.  The mountain on the bottom half of the time-sieve continually grows.  I clearly don't post here often. I'm not sure if that will change (although it certainly will once I'm on the road and I'm writing a daily journal of my tour experiences.  When I'm home I find most of my thoughts and energies going to projects I'm not ready to share yet (albums and short stories) or just short quick musings that get blurted out on Facebook briefly.  Aside from sharing adventures, I'm not sure what to share. regardless...lets talk about 2015 a little bit. An experiment of a year...(no adventure has a sure outcome):         2015 was an experiment year for me.  I intentionally took time away from traveling and performing to make progress on my album and book.  I ended up working on three albums, doing 5 podcasts, ( Here are some podca...

Goodbye Albany, Hello Syracuse!       Friday morning started with me reading in Danielle's house and her waking up a bit hungover from her birthday merriment. That being said, I wished her a good morning and a happy birthday and she asked if I'd like to accompany her to the humble little garden level Hamilton Street Cafe that Jeany works at but she could never attend because she's always working the relevant hours. I of course, conceded and treated her to a birthday breakfast in an attempt to thank her for her hospitality. She dropped me at the bus stop and we hugged goodbye, glad to have met new friends. I had about an hour and while waiting for the bus to Syracuse, I finished reading the Chicken Soup For The Soul: Inspiration For Writers book my mom bought me. Overall, some of it felt a bit redundant but most of it was inhabited by strong and sincere anecdotes that jostled me into some thought. It was nice that each essay was usually only 4 pages maximum so...

    Glad to have you back diligent reader! When last we spoke, it was Wednesday the 11 th. I'd arrived in an overcast Albany, a place I'd never been, with a poetry reading on the horizon and no solid plans of where I'd be staying the night. Luckily, both of those things panned out in my favor! Lets experience the Capital city shall we? Welcome to Albany (the helpfulness of strangers)   I was still nervous when I'd arrived at the Albany bus station at 5pm because no attempt to stay with people in town panned out either through other friends or messages I'd sent on  Couchsurfing.org . I sent out one last mass text to some friends who I knew lived in upstate NY, asking if they had any friends in Albany, and explaining my predicament. My good friend Jill Drwal was texting me and had given me a call saying that her friend Danielle lived in Albany and had a potential place for me to stay but she'd have to wait until around 7 O'clock or so I know if t...