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Phil Traynor

Phil Traynor, AKA Llarion, is an accomplished jazzer with over 200,000 plays at mp3.com to his credit. His material is light with true musicality. Phil is also an extremely active member of the online bulletin board community with almost 100,000 posts at thewireweb BB alone. I chatted with Phil between balancing his family PC and online persona......

Mb: Hey Phil
llarion: Hey dude!
Mb: So how's it going?
llarion: Good! Just getting home after a long week...
Mb: Getting ready for a few hours online?
llarion: Well, more likely, I'll be hip deep in my wife's PC trying to resolve some XP compatibility issues...I'll probably tune in the The Michael Yongue Show later if I can.
Mb: And take a few moments to post a few greetings at Paisley's BB?
llarion: Always. I think I have more posts there than anyone; I'm about to break the 10,000 post mark on Paisley's board. I've been a mainstay there ever since the MP3.com BBS went to their in-house format, and at the same time became substantially unfriendlier to us all.
Mb: That's wild! And how do you keep your cheery disposition after 10k posts?
llarion: Yeesh, you call *this* cheery? :) I dunno, I figure that ultimately, it's just ones and zeros, nothing to get in a bad twist over. Besides, I've met far too many wonderful people there for anything to outweigh that.
Mb: So what's an average day for Phil Traynor?
llarion: Well, I get up in the mornin' <insert blues lick> , head off to work (I'm a Systems Engineer for a huge computer distributor by day). I come home, check mail and the board for anything new, and then it's either fixing people's PCs, or choir practice, or praise band practice, or record in my studio. Then some more mail/BBS, and off to bed. Oh, yeah, and I have a wife too. :) Seriously though, I spend as much time with her as I can, I'm teaching her guitar.
Mb: Nice of you to take a moment away from the web. How does she feel about all the time you spend?
llarion: Well, I think it's a mixed bag. She understands the need, and she has plenty of online diversions of her own (I'm also webmaster for 3 domains, she does two herself and has a stamping business), but she always wishes we could spend more "quality" time together. Frankly, I do too. :)
Mb: Ever try chat? Maybe she could post on the boards!
llarion: You mean, like this? ;) Actually, she does post at Paisley's once in awhile, her handle is Mystic Journey. She has a musical project too; www.mp3.com/mysticjourney it's abstract ambient. So, she gets as involved in my world as she can be, I'd say.
Mb: So what about your music? How long you been playing?
llarion: Well, I started on drums as a 4th grader in 1974. I picked up guitar, bass, and piano in 8th grade ('78) I'm self-taught on everything, unless you count a year of snare drum lessons, 3 piano lessons, and 2 guitar lessons.
llarion: I've been writing since freshman year in college. (1983)
Mb: Do you perform live much?
llarion: I haven't been on a stage in any form since August of 1999, and I haven't been in a band since 1995. I had a vocal jazz project called Pacific Coast Highway, and I was a member of the dark, eclectic rock band Rocky Ruckman & The Beat Heathens for a few months along the way there too. I wish I could out play more, but the nature and style of my music doesn't really lend itself to live performance.
Mb: Do you ever just do piano bar or solo?
llarion: No, I really don't have the chops or repertoire to do a solo thing. I can only think of one of my songs that I could perform as a solo piano piece and do it justice, that would be The Haunted. (Well, The Sentinel was an improvised solo piano piece, so that counts too, but it's not duplicatable...)
Mb: having any big aspirations with your music?
llarion: Well, sure... But my bigger aspirations run along the lines of production, composition, arranging, that sort of thing. It's that end of the business where I think my gifts are best suited. My dream career would be to run a recording studio, produce pristine recordings for people like Steely Dan, Pat Metheny, and anyone else who likes prissy production values. On the side, I'd write, license my material for others, and put out a CD every now and again just for vanity's sake. Though, I'm told I should be looking at the Japanese market with my music. Apparently the Asian urban culture loves my kind of stuff.
Mb: Where would you find the time?
llarion: Tell me about it. :)
Mb: Any hobbies other than provoking Paisley or laying down slick jazz grooves?
llarion: Well, I'm sort of a movie buff; I have about 450 on VHS and about 120 on DVD, and growing. I'm one of those geeks that can watch movies over and over, and catch new nuance each time. I've also recently gotten into choral singing. I'm in two different choirs at my church, a 70+ voice main choir, and a 19 voice small ensemble called Chorus Angelorum, that does a nimbler, more difficult kind of singing. I'm a first tenor. I'm good in a choir, but oh, you just DON'T want to hear me solo. :)
Mb: Anything really personal you want to share with us?
llarion: Well, under my clothes, I'm totally nude. That alone is a frightening thought. Beyond that, just to say hello to all my online friends at Paisley's, love to my wife Bonnie, and that I got my cholesterol down finally. :)
Mb: Anything else you'd like to touch on?
llarion: My URL should you need it is www.artistlaunch.com, and my personal site is www.llarion.com. I'd like to touch on Shania Twain, but this is a family show.