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kdinjenzen · 4 years

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Do u know any good resources for voice training stuff? Im transmasc and even on t i still sound pretty feminine i think, I cant find any good instructions or how to's. When i practice lowering my voice i just feel kind of foolish and embarrassed someones gonna catch me. I'm very tired. Thanks for your time, sorry if I bothered you.

That embarrassment factor is always a thing, isn’t it? Even now I have moments of “did that sound feminine enough?” and such thoughts every time I’m talking to anyone. It’s nerve-wracking.

But you have to get over that a bit, I know that sounds so easy to say, but training your voice is a lot of work and you’ll need to do it OFTEN if you want the results to be something you can be fully happy with every day.

And this is where all that time in a band and all my voice acting training I did when I was younger comes in to help!

Overall, what you are doing isn’t just trying to make your voice lower, but to master full control over your voice in general.

Deep doesn’t necessarily mean masculine, trust me there’s some husky female voices out there and they’re extra lovely. So, if anything, finding a new voice is more about about overall tone and finding consistency with the voice you’re working toward. But yeah, you can get that deepness (AND SO MUCH MORE!) you’re looking for with a little work!

SO! How do you go about this? How do you MASTER YOUR VOICE?

It’s a lot easier than you’d think, but it does take time.

1. Do Warm Ups.

These are the MOST important things to do, overall, and I cannot stress it enough. These warm ups will help you be able to control every little ounce of your voice with enough practice. They seem SO silly, but you need to do them, because without them... you could really hurt yourself and harm your vocal chords to a point of irreparable damage.

2. Hum.

This is something you can do anywhere, any time, and around anyone. If you really like the idea of a deeper voice, go from your current tone and migrate downward in scales.

This is just like playing on a piano and going from either left to right (higher pitch) or right to left (lower pitch). Slow and steady is the name of the game, do not rush, because you’re aiming for constancy and rushing to that won’t get you to your goal any faster.

3. Sing-a-long!

This is the fun part, find songs that you like to listen to on repeat and have a vocal tone you’d like to match and SING SING SING! If you’ve been doing the first two with any regularity, singing along will help you hit the more intricate parts of the voice you’re aiming toward.

4. Push your limits.

This is the one that I hardly recommend, and it’s because people are so eager to get to this moment that they rush to it FIRST and it ends up really hurting.

I cannot stress this enough, if you HAVE NOT done the first three in regularity for a LONG TIME, you can very much damage your voice beyond repair OR the more immediate threat of tearing your vocal chords which may cause you to cough up blood (been there, done that, IS NOT FUN).

But IF, and ONLY IF, you’ve been working with the first three on a daily basis for months... then you can start pushing yourself little by little. How low can you go? Can you try lower? If that hurts, stop. But after months of work, you’ll start to realize that your limits have lessened and by pushing yourself every so often you’ll find your next goal!

AGAIN! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE take care of your voices, I worry so much about this for all of you, and I want you to have a much easier time than I did with it. Which is why I’m SO vocal about the fun ways to do it rather than pushing yourself to the brink of madness and illness to get to those end goals faster. Coughing up blood hurts, breaking your voice is painful, and if you do it too often, you’ll end up doing way more damage than good.

SO! Here’s where I get to do a shout out to one of my FAVORITE people!

P.M. Seymour!

I always talk about picking up the Voice-Over Voice Actor: The Warm-Up CD, because that’s what I used every day to do my warm-ups. And if you can grab it, I cannot recommend it enough because Yuri Lowenthal and Tara Platt have a true vocal mastery and know exactly what they are talking about.

HOWEVER!

If you want something to help you RIGHT NOW and from someone who is SO EXCEPTIONALLY TALENTED, my boy Seymour is here for you!

He’s a voice actor and did a whole “Voice Acting 101″ series on YouTube, and everything you can learn from the Warm Up, Health, and Vocal Placement videos will get you on the right track to mastering your voice!

[Voice Acting 101] L02: Warm Ups and Health - https://youtu.be/YuBV6FJesNU

[Voice Acting 101] L04: Vocal Placement - https://youtu.be/iCn2Nn9MNnQ

Have fun! Be safe! Go slow! And find your voice!

#daydreams-from-the-void #ask me anything #ama #kdin #kdinjenzen #kdin jenzen

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newstfionline · 7 years

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I won the Doctor Lottery—but only after some bad encounters

Jackson Nakazawa, Washington Post, May 27, 2017

When my son was 5 weeks old, he began to turn away from my breast even when hungry. He’d suck, then cry sharply and twist away. I called the office of my pediatrician, but she had no free appointments, so I saw another doctor in the practice instead. He examined my son, told me he had “gas pains,” and then asked me, “Are you feeling anxious about being a good mom?”

The next day, my son seemed better. Had I been overly anxious? Then my son projectile-vomited across the bedroom. I strapped him into his car seat and headed back to the doctor. The doctor I’d seen the day before asked his nurse to take me aside for a “mom heart-to-heart.” Being a new mom is anxiety-inducing, the nurse said, adding, “What are you doing for you?” I burst into tears. They must have thought I was a postpartum hormonal time bomb.

The next morning when my son tried to breast-feed, he stopped and screamed in a way that resonated within my cells. That sensation was something I’d felt only once before in my life.

Three decades earlier, at the age of 12, I’d stood at the side of my father’s hospital bed after he’d undergone a bowel resection, a “routine” gastrointestinal surgery. Every grown-up had told me that my dad would be fine despite postoperative complications. But as I looked into my father’s eyes that afternoon, I saw a depth of pain-laced love and the anticipation of loss. My earth tipped on its axis. I suddenly knew that despite what everyone was telling me, my father would not be fine.

That night, at the age of 42, my father died.

I arrived at the pediatrician’s office on the third morning of my son’s unexplained distress. As I began to explain why I was there, the doctor--the same one--interrupted me, gave me a handout on colic and a pat on the back, and ushered me out.

Just at that moment, my son’s original doctor--the one I’d joined the practice to see--stepped out of another room and saw me. “Haven’t I seen you here every day?” she asked, in a very kind voice. I nodded, swallowing back tears. “Let’s see your baby.”

She extended her arms and laid my son on the exam table, gently palpating his abdomen. “Tell me about when you first felt something wasn’t right. What else have you been noticing?”

She took a bottle of breast milk from my hands and offered it to my son. He sucked, turned beet red and twisted away with a sob. “Does he do this on the breast, too?”

I nodded.

Then she uttered the words that would save my son’s life. “I listen to my moms,” she said. “Given what I’m observing, I’d like to get an abdominal sonogram. His abdomen seems distended and hard,” she said.

A few hours later, the hospital’s sonogram report suggested pyloric stenosis, a condition caused by a tight muscle that prevents food from exiting the stomach and entering the intestines. When that muscle becomes rigid, it resembles an olive.

“I’ve called a pediatric surgeon at Johns Hopkins,” the pediatrician said. “He’ll meet you at the ER. Pack what you’ll need for the next week.” She put her hand on my arm. “I know this is difficult. But I promise you, we will help your baby. We will get through this.” She handed me a slip of paper. “Here’s my cell. Call when you’ve arrived.”

As I held my son against me, feeling his tired exhales warm and moist against my neck, I clung to the paper like a talisman.

Later that afternoon, the Hopkins surgeon examined my son, rubbing his thumb over his belly, looking for the swollen muscle. “Pyloric stenosis, my eye!” he nearly roared. “There’s no olive here!”

The new tests he wanted to run seemed invasive, and our pediatrician called to reassure my husband and me. “Please, trust us with your baby,” she said. “This is a cautious but necessary path.”

That evening, we stood outside a glass-walled room while our infant son underwent a procedure in which an ingested chalky substance made of barium can show abnormalities of the gastrointestinal tract on a live X-ray feed. Suddenly, the radiologist screamed. She picked up the phone and called the surgeon. “You have to see this! His intestines are wrapped north of his stomach! They’re about to twist off!” The surgeon arrived and operated on our son, unfurling his intestines, removing 21 adhesions and carefully placing his bowels back inside his abdomen.

Our baby’s recovery was tenuous. Some days, we ended up back at the hospital. Our surgeon called for nightly reports on bowel sounds. Once, we met our pediatrician at her office at 11 p.m.; another time, she examined our son on a bench during her son’s sporting event to ensure that his postoperative discomfort was not related to the surgery. Each time we saw each other that year--and even a few times during the two decades that followed--we hugged, blinking back tears. As my son began to live a normal boy’s life, we sighed with relief. He was, we agreed, “the one who almost got away.”

Today, my son is 6-foot-2, about to graduate from college. When he was a newborn, his three-inch scar extended across his belly. Today that scar appears small. In the past two decades, his case has been taught in medical schools as an example of a potentially fatal diagnosis error in newborns, and it has been used in lawsuits by parents whose pediatricians hadn’t listened and whose children had needlessly died.

Why were we so fortunate? I didn’t know it at first, but despite almost losing our child, something good, and rare, had happened. We had won what I’ve since come to call the Doctor Lottery.

When you win the Doctor Lottery, there is no cash prize but a far greater payoff: the possibility of extraordinary healing, even a miracle. Our son survived because our physician took the time to listen, show compassion, partner with us, advocate and provide just the right care to save a life.

My family and I haven’t always won the Doctor Lottery. My father’s surgeon, for instance, had pushed him to have the bowel resection to “cure” him of diverticulitis, a disease in which the colon’s lining becomes inflamed. He stitched up my father’s intestines with a suture known to dissolve in patients who have been on steroids and hadn’t read my father’s chart to see that his internist had recently put him on cortisone. Nor did he look at the list of medications my father had carefully written down on his patient-intake forms. When the sutures dissolved, my father, who had a bleeding disorder, went into shock. His abdomen was distended and hard.

My mother asked the nurse to page the surgeon. “My husband is in so much pain!” she said. The surgeon, who was playing golf, told the nurse to tell my mother, “Pain after surgery is normal.” By the time my father developed a fever and peritonitis, it was too late. He died of a heart attack. “Normal courses of antibiotics proved unsuccessful,” my father’s death report reads.

These experiences informed my own health journey when, in 2001, I became a revolving-door hospital patient facing two long periods of paralysis from Guillain-Barré syndrome, or GBS, a neurological autoimmune disease that can cause total paralysis. The day my Hopkins neurologist delivered the diagnosis, I passed through a portal into a terrifying and unknown universe.

As my husband filled out admission papers, my neurologist sat beside my wheelchair, explaining the treatment I would undergo. He would start infusions of other people’s healthy immune cells to try to reverse my paralysis. After he finished talking, we sat together in silence. Nurses rapped at the door. His patient waiting room filled. But he never left my side. I asked him why he stayed with me when he had so much to do. “I will not leave you sitting here alone,” he said. “Not with the news I’ve just given you.”

Over the next few months, I mostly recovered. But although GBS rarely strikes twice, four years later I developed it again. This time, I fell into a state of paralysis faster, and the damage to my nerves was more extensive. During my hospitalization, several of my doctor’s fellow neurologists warned me to “hope for the best but prepare for the worst.” They said that I might never get out of a wheelchair. But my neurologist shook his head and reassured me that some people did recover. He thought I could, too. “Don’t listen to them,” he told me. “I’m your doctor; I know you.”

His words stayed with me until eventually, I was able to navigate steps with a cane, then walk out my front door and down the driveway.

Still, like many GBS patients, I navigated through continuing flulike fatigue. I’d also developed symptoms of what would later be diagnosed as gastroparesis, a condition in which the stomach can’t empty itself normally. When I saw a local doctor for symptoms of what I assumed was an intestinal problem, he seemed to think me a hysteric and handed me a prescription drug for heartburn and esophageal problems. I will never forget the look of disdain on his face the second time I saw him when I hadn’t improved: “A few days ago you came in saying you were nauseated, and today you say you have diarrhea!” he said. “Make up your mind!”

I tried several other doctors over the next three years as my medical problems continued, until finally I found Anastasia Rowland-Seymour, then an internist at Johns Hopkins, who carefully listened to me tell my whole medical story--without ever looking at her computer. I told her that I knew I was lucky to be doing so well--walking, driving. But I also had bone-deep fatigue, numbness and headaches, and I often found myself so tired I had to lie down on the floor after climbing the stairs.

“That has to have taken quite a toll on you,” she said, wondering whether I thought that the decades of stress I’d faced might have played a role in the immune dysfunction she believed I now faced. She asked me whether my childhood had been stressful. I was astonished. “I’ve never thought about it that way,” I said and told her about my father’s sudden and young death, which had profoundly altered the childhood of my siblings and me.

From that day, I felt I’d found a partner on a path to healing, one who helped me incrementally incorporate mind-body approaches to well-being with conventional medical care. Rowland-Seymour told me she believed that my childhood stressors probably had altered the way my immune system responded, playing a role in GBS and gastroparesis, and also causing my immune system to attack my bone marrow, leading to profound fatigue.

Over the next year, my health dramatically improved.

My family’s experience has taught me how important to healing the doctor-patient partnership is. Every patient wants--and deserves--to win the Doctor Lottery. It shouldn’t be simply a matter of chance.

Here’s what I learned:

* In my healing encounters, I felt that I was being heard, understood and respected by my doctor.

A 2015 study found that patients overwhelmingly felt that what mattered most was having a physician who listened, acknowledged their condition, was honest and treated them as an equal. A 2006 study found that the single greatest predictor of whether patients with HIV adhered to treatment was whether they felt “known as a person” by their physician.

* The extraordinary doctors who tended my family made it clear they would stand shoulder to shoulder with us--rather than simply to give directives and move on. Not one of them stared at their computer screen while in the exam room; they talked to us face to face, like a friend. That rapport helped us deal with uncertainty in the face of terror, and preserve a hope for recovery.

This doesn’t mean offering a patient false hope, Rowland-Seymour says, but rather “a sense that we are going to figure out how to manage this, and get you better, and we are going to do it as a team.”

* Past trauma needs to part of any medical discussion. Studies have shown its long-term impact on health, yet most physicians are trained to “walk around trauma as the elephant in the room,” Rowland-Seymour says. But you can’t achieve true healing unless you deal with that elephant, she says.

Being tended to by doctors who are sensitive to patient needs and experiences can make the difference between a healing experience and one that is traumatic or worse.

I only wish it weren’t too late for my father to win the Doctor Lottery. His unnecessary death has inspired me to insist on having doctors who listen and treat me with respect. It is bittersweet that my dad’s unintentional legacy would help me reclaim my health and save the life of the grandson who, sadly, he never got to meet.

Jackson Nakazawa is a science journalist and the author of “Childhood Disrupted,” “The Last Best Cure” and “The Autoimmune Epidemic.”

#Jackson Nakazawa #health care #doctor lottery #doctors and medicine #medical care

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rashadpoore-blog · 5 years

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Dwts: Aaron Carter Compared To Robert Pattinson In His Argentine Tango

There has been much speculation and numerous media reports encompassing alleged estimates from singer Aaron Carter on the famous King of Pop, Michael Jackson. When a noted interview made headlines over alleged quotes from Carter, the singer quickly denied that he had at any time said any of the things that he was being quoted as stating. In accordance to a new update made by the singer via Twitter, Aaron Carter will reportedly be featured on E! News these days in an interview in which he will be discussing the Michael Jackson story. The evening finished with Melissa and Mark tied for initial place with Mya and Dmitry. The scores were flip flopped all over the place. Followers and judges were surprised when the original source and his companion Karina Smirnoff landed themselves in the bottom two. But in the finish, it was enthusiast preferred Chuck Liddell who recieved the most affordable mixed judges and enthusiast votes. Chuck danced his final dance to the Texas Two Step.

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Yes, Miley Cyrus' latest video clip was premiered next, but I'm ignoring it. I'm not happy with her. Disney and pole dancing don't belong in the same sentence, says this mama.

Aaron Carter Net Worth 2017

Michael Irvin - This Professional Bowl Hall of Famer merely doesn't have the rhythm or moves of his predecessors Jerry Rice and Emmitt Smith, or even Jason Taylor. He will land in the bottom two, and will probably be leaving the show this week. It makes me really happy to know that people are that intrigued in sitting down down and listening to what I have to show them. It makes me pleased to know that individuals really enjoy my music and enjoy the work I place into it all. Michael Irving received a 23, which was the next most affordable rating to be dished out by the Dancing with the Stars judges. Michael has improved considerably in the final two weeks. Will Michael's enhancement keep him out of tonights Dancing with the Stars double elimination round? Will Michael obtain sufficient votes from the fans at house to keep him out of the dance off?

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With ABC advertising the display's lights out each season, beginning with the yearly Good Early morning The united states new cast announcement, Dancing with the Stars 2009 should be as large as at any time. The new season of "Dancing with the Stars," is being billed as the greatest season yet. sixteen celebs will be competing for the title of "DWTS" Champion. It all kicks off with a live three night premiere starting tonight at eight p.m. on ABC. Donny Osmond, Aaron Carter and previous Home Majority Chief Tom Hold off are among the contestants. Lindsay Lohan - 1 time flame of teenager feeling view - made formal her break up with Samantha Ronson on Twitter, or at least this is what US Magazine reports. Speculations had been running wild that Lindsay Lohan was in horrible form, and paparazzi had been on higher inform for some star studded cat fights.

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Chuck Liddell and Anna Trebunskaya. Chuck Liddell is a combined martial artist and greatest fighting champion. He also penned his own autobiography known as Iceman: My Fighting Life, which quickly became a New York Times Bestseller. His partner Anna Trebunskaya has been involved with DWTS on and off because season two when she made it to the finals with partner Jerry Rice. Her other partners consist of Albert Reed and Steve Guttenberg. With Steve's power and Anna's grace, this few might surprise the judges and the voting viewers. Dancing with the Stars week three ongoing with Ultimate Fighter Chuck Liddell and companion Anna Trebunskaya's Samba. I was stunned to see that Chuck goes for pedicures with his daughter. He does have a girly aspect! Woot! From the get-go, it was extremely hard to take him critically in his poofy sleeves, so it's a good factor that he misplaced them early on. There were a few good hip thrusts in there, but as my husband deadpanned, "it's a small like viewing Frankenstein". I can't very best that. It's as well accurate. Len congratulated Anna for her work with Chuck, whilst Bruno stated "it was like the Samba from zombietown". Carrie Ann said "it was a great deal of fun". Chuck Liddell and Anna Trebunskaya's Dancing with the Stars Drop 2009 week three scores: six, 5, six = 17.

Aaron Carter 2016

DeLay experienced to toss a joke about politics in there, stating that it is "simply outrageous for him to go left." His "Wild Thing" dance was described as "surreal," and his dancing was really much better than I believed it would be. He was goofy, and that was likely a fantastic idea to get the voting public to think of him as a polarizing determine. Kathy Ireland and Tony Dovolani. Kathy Ireland is a model, actor, Sunday college aaron carter movies and tv shows instructor and CEO. Will this well-known bikini model and company entrepreneur have what it requires to make it to the top? Her partner is beloved Tony Dovolani who has arrive near to the top of DWTS, but has by no means taken home the mirror ball trophy. His previous partners were Melissa Rycroft, Susan Lucci, Marissa Jaret Winokur, Jane Seymour, Leeza Gibbons and Stacy Keibler. This group might win fingers-down in the looks division, but do they have what it takes to reach the finish line? Maybe so. So that's that! Kathy Eire went home at the near of Dancing with the Stars week two results display. Be certain to tune in next week for more DWTS season 9 motion! Or you can just check in with me. You know I'll be viewing.

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oselatra · 6 years

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Blaze Foley: Never a star, always a legend

'Blaze' film makes a name for a Malvern songwriting legend — and now it's all different for Ben Dickey, the Little Rock musician who portrays him onscreen.

"Sometimes it feels normal. Sometimes it seems absolutely fucking bonkers."

That's Little Rock native Ben Dickey describing what it feels like to go from obscure indie musician to lauded indie actor.

And while his music remains respected in hip circles mostly centered around Little Rock and Philly, it's Dickey's unexpected recent turn as an actor that won a special jury award for achievement in acting from Sundance. Rolling Stone called it "astonishing." The Austin American-Statesman called it "a tour de force of oversized charm and verve." It's all for Dickey's work in "Blaze," a movie about Blaze Foley, the Malvern-born songwriter who made a name for himself in the Austin, Texas, music scene of the 1970s and 1980s — talked about for his drunken, duct-tape-wrapped behavior as much as for his stinging yet heartfelt songs. "Blaze" hits theaters in Arkansas Sept. 28 (Dickey will participate in post-screening Q&As at Riverdale 10 in Little Rock at 4:15 p.m. and 7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 28; 4:15 p.m. and 7 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 29; and 1:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 30.).

Helming his fourth feature, director Ethan Hawke has said "Blaze" is not a Blaze Foley biopic in the way "Ray" is about Ray Charles, but in the way "Raging Bull" is about Jake LaMotta. That is, you don't need to know who LaMotta is to enjoy, or even understand, the movie. And that's a good thing for "Blaze" the film, because few know Blaze the songwriter, born Michael David Fuller in Malvern in 1949.[content-1] Speaking by phone from Caddo Parish, La. — at a friend's farm not far from the Arkansas line where he's lived with his girlfriend, Beth, since 2014 — Dickey tried to sort it all out: "I just keep counting my lucky damn stars."

[content-2]

Having friends helps. "Ethan Hawke is one of my good friends. We became friends about 15 years ago. His wife, Ryan, and my partner, Beth, are best friends and go way back," he said.

"We're both Southern people, we both love music, we both love food, we both love movies, so we became friends. Over the last eight or nine years, he's been sort of encouraging me to consider acting, or at least doing something with movies. I love storytelling, but I never had it in me — I never had a wild desire."

At Sundance in January, Hawke described the origins of "Blaze" simply: "I've been a big fan of [Dickey's] music for a long time, and believed in him, and I've also been a fan of Blaze Foley."

Dickey said he and Hawke went "pretty deep about 12 years ago over Blaze and Townes Van Zandt, that kind of music. We had an idea we would work on something, someday, that would cover those folks — Blaze Foley, Guy Clark, Townes [Van Zandt], the list goes on and on, you know." But Dickey had his own thoughts on casting at the time: "I just always said to [Hawke], 'It would be cool if you could play Townes.' " The speculation ended on New Year's Eve 2015. "I think he'd been marinating on it for a while, but it looked like it struck him like a lightning bolt on New Year's Eve — at 4 in the morning, [Hawke] got, like, possessed. He's like, 'I'm going to fucking make a Blaze Foley biopic and you're going to play Blaze.' And I was just kind of like, 'Ha ha, OK, dude.' "

But Hawke's fever dream persisted: "The next morning, he woke me up at 9. We went to bed at 4, and here he wants to go for a walk at 9. We're still drunk. So we went for a walk, and he pitched this idea. He was deadly serious about it, and very convincing about it. He was like, 'I saw it. I saw it all, I saw it all last night. I realized you'd be perfect.' He didn't know beyond Blaze, other than that he had died tragically, and that he was a great songwriter. That's how the idea was born."

That March, Louis Black, longtime editor of the Austin Chronicle alternative newsweekly, hipped them to Sybil Rosen's 2008 memoir about her life with Foley, "Living in the Woods in a Tree." "He put that book in Ethan's hands," Dickey said, "and that's when it went from, 'I want to do this two years down the line,' to 'I want to do this straightaway.' "

Another Hawke project where Dickey was set to play a minor role and contribute music had recently fallen through. "[Hawke] said, 'Listen, I can make this movie like, now, if you want to do it, like for real ... I have the money to do it. And that's when it became super crazy real."

Most of "Blaze" was filmed in Louisiana. And most of the music in "Blaze" was filmed live. Both Hawke and Dickey emphasize they respect their subject enough to strive to nail the details, especially the musical ones. And people have noticed. In addition to the acting accolades Dickey has received, Rolling Stone called the film "the best music biopic of the year." Variety called it "the ultimate hipster movie," explaining it was a compliment. At Rotten Tomatoes, it currently boasts a 100 percent "fresh" critics' rating.

Dickey is in nearly every scene in "Blaze," which runs more than two hours. And while Dickey had doubts about his skills onscreen, he said, "The way that I looked at it was, the one thing I know I can do is do justice to Blaze's music. I have no idea what I can do with the acting bit. But it's a pretty great opportunity."

It's true — but director Hawke brings more to "Blaze" than just star power and investors. While most may know Hawke as an actor from "The Purge," the "Before Sunrise" trilogy or his star-making turn in 1989's "Dead Poets' Society," the Tony and multiple Academy Award nominee has directed feature films, a documentary and off-Broadway plays, and is tuned in to music. His documentary directorial debut was 2014's "Seymour: A Introduction," based on classical composer Seymour Bernstein. Hawke, himself a native of Austin, Texas, took a convincingly tragic turn as trumpeter Chet Baker in 2015's "Born To Be Blue," was a guitarist in 1994's "Reality Bites," and played a rock musician in 2018's "Juliet, Naked."

"I trust Ethan, and I trust the production group that we were all working with," Dickey said. "But I didn't really know what I was in for until it started, and it was really wild."

***

The string of events that led to Dickey the musician getting into Blaze Foley's music is as circuitous as that which got Dickey the actor to playing Blaze Foley.

"I turned my father on to John Prine about 2002," he said, and chided his music-loving father for his lack of knowledge. "He couldn't believe he'd gone his whole life without knowing who John Prine was. This was right up his alley." Prine's subsequent album, 2005's Grammy-winning "Fair & Square," had a version of Foley's "Clay Pigeons" on it. "And my dad is like, dude, this song is incredible!" The younger Dickey, in turn, had barely heard of Blaze Foley at this point: "I heard of his name and that he'd died tragically." Dickey's dad, meanwhile, became a full-fledged Foley fan. The elder Dickey eventually sent Ben a wonderfully dad-like Blaze Foley care package: a burned CD, pages of related articles printed from an internet browser. It was right before Ben and his girlfriend went on a road trip to see the Hawkes in Nova Scotia, where Ethan owns an island: "We sort of became obsessed on that trip. I went down the rabbit hole pretty deep 10 years before we started working on this movie."

But most in Arkansas have known Ben Dickey from a completely different rabbit hole — his own music. His band, Shake Ray Turbine, was a big part of Little Rock's glorious punkish DIY scene of the mid-to-late 1990s. At the turn of the century, the band relocated to Philadelphia and changed its name to the Unfixers. After a stint in Philly's Blood Feathers, he released a single on Little Rock's Max Recordings as Amen Booze Rooster. Dickey then released his solo debut, "Sexy Birds & Salt Water Classics," on Little Rock's Max Recordings label in 2016.

"I grew up in Little Rock, moved to Philadelphia when I was 20, I lived in Philadelphia the better part of 17 years, for a year and a half in Arizona, and a year in New York," he said. "But I've always been an Arkansan. You can't get it out of you."

***

"Blaze" "is a huge love letter to Austin; it's a huge love letter to songwriters; and [to] people falling in love — that's what it is," Dickey said.

Indeed, the film poster depicts Foley cradling the loves of his life — an acoustic guitar and a can of Pearl Beer in one arm, his partner Sybil in the other. "Based on a true Texas love story," it reads.

Alia Shawkat (Maeby Funke from TV's "Arrested Development") plays Sybil Rosen. Rosen was Foley's partner and soulmate; her memoir provided the basis for "Blaze." Rosen co-wrote the script with Hawke, and she portrays her own mother in "Blaze." Dickey now says Rosen is "one of my best friends. It's funny — all the people I've met through the project, I've really bonded with."

(Rosen participated in a Little Rock screening of the documentary "Blaze Foley: Duct Tape Messiah" in November 2011. Foley compatriot Gurf Morlix performed afterward. To add another Arkansas connection onto the "Blaze" fire, the screening was sponsored by Little Rock lawyer Brad Hendricks, who once was roommates with Blaze Foley. This Foley guy got around.)

And while "Blaze" is a love letter to many different camps, to tell the story of Blaze Foley is also to tell a story of self-destruction and addiction. "I say it all the time — Blaze torpedoed his own fleet. He was his own biggest enemy," Dickey said. "Blaze was probably bipolar. He was probably ... a number of things, but certainly an addict."

In the film, as in life, Dickey said his character dealt with his mental issues "by drinking, by doing drugs and running. And that was the name of the game for Blaze." Self-medication for mental issues causing a dual downward spiral is well-known in behavioral health. "I never met anyone who knew him in life who said, 'He was always nice to me!' " Dickey said. "It's always 'He was my best, closest friend — and then, he was a total horror.' "

Dickey's performance, though lauded by critics, took him to a dark place, he said. "I've never done it before, but the only way it made sense to do it was to immerse myself. The excitement of being up at 4 in the morning, and in makeup, and on the set, and in trying to be in this world is really cool. Even if the scenes are dark, the mission is clear. ... But when it's over, it's like, the super crazy fun musical summer camp is over, and your friends are all gone. It took me months to stop sitting in a cold, sorry pool of where I had been to get me close to that place," he said.

"I love Blaze. And I love his songs," Dickey said. "And there are many people in my life who live like Blaze, and write beautiful songs like that."

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Dickey may have been apprehensive about his acting but had full confidence in his playing. "The one thing I knew I could do was — I'm in a really unique position to — do his music right," Dickey said. The "Blaze" soundtrack, which also features an original composition of Dickey's, was released Sept. 21.

Austin, Texas, native Charlie Sexton plays Townes Van Zandt in "Blaze." In the mid-1980s, Sexton rose to Top 20 fame as a guitar-slinging teenager with the twin punch of MTV and his chiseled cheekbones. Thirty years later, Sexton is a perfect Hollywood-handsome version of long and lean Townes Van Zandt, who was both mentor and peer to Foley.

Like Dickey, Sexton is another musician turned newbie actor — and, like Foley, Sexton is earning raves for "Blaze." (Sexton's previous credit was in Richard Linklater's acclaimed "Boyhood" in 2014. Linklater cameos as a sleazy record exec in "Blaze.") And the association with Sexton turned into yet another great

opportunity for Dickey, this time musical.

"Ethan met Charlie when they made that movie 'Boyhood.' They played roommates, so they got to be pretty close," Dickey said. "I told [Sexton] I was going to try and make a record, and he said, 'I'd love to produce it if you're into it.' " Producing wasn't some lark for Sexton, who's produced albums for the likes of Lucinda Williams, Jimmie Vaughan and Edie Brickell in addition to his time playing in the supergroup Arc Angels and being Bob Dylan's off and on touring guitarist.

A soft release was given to a Dickey EP this summer so as not to detract from publicity for the movie. Tellingly titled "It's All Different," the EP was culled from the Sexton sessions. "I'm trying to get a band together," Dickey said, for a tour supporting the release of a full album in January. Called "A Glimmer On the Outskirts," it will be released on his new label, Dual Tone. Like so many things in Dickey's life, it's been put on hold for the movie. "It's a whole new world to me," Dickey said. "I have a management team now, and IFC is putting out our movie, so I have to coordinate all this stuff with them — it's really odd; it goes against my better instincts, really."

And although Little Rock missed out on the fanfare, the press and festival tour for "Blaze" has been extensive. From Kathie Lee and Hoda to NPR, Dickey said he's participated in around 50 radio and TV segments on the film, and "77 Q&As" to date. But who's counting? He's also had to turn down "some interesting things" to focus on promotion of "Blaze" as it caught fire. The work has paid off. Dickey cites the "more palpable" feeling that "Blaze" was connecting with audiences following an "overwhelming" film festival in Switzerland: "There were 8,000 people at this outdoor screening, under a lightning storm. Everyone was moved. It's very different, going from a screening with 200 people to 8,000." A subsequent tour of Texas with the film, where audience members actually knew or were related to the onscreen characters at every date, was equally powerful, Dickey said. "I'm working off of the vision of other people right now." Coming from the background of an indie musician, Dickey agrees, "that's weird. But they're all good people, so we'll see what happens." Chances are, yep, we will see what happens.

Dickey has another movie already in the can — a Western by Vincent D'Onofrio about Billy the Kid called "The Kid." Dickey notes the character he plays, Jim East, was "a real dude — Pat Garrett's deputy; Ethan plays Pat Garrett. Chris Pratt plays a villain for the first time."

And he has a couple of other movie projects in the works through Hawke's production company. Dickey said D'Onofrio "really helped me see the landscape in a really different way [regarding acting]. It simplified everything, and made me feel like I have these tools for preparation, and tools for executing, and tools for not overthinking or anything like that. He gave me some principles to work with."

And Dickey is reading more scripts and doing online auditions from Caddo Parish, because of course he is. "Again, sometimes, I go 'This makes sense;' and then sometimes I think, 'What in the world ...?' "

Blaze Foley: Never a star, always a legend

#Blaze Foley: Never a star #always a legend

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