Author: Charlie Fern

Charlie Fern Ink, LLC, is a strategic communications consultancy that provides services including public relations and publicity, tour and media management, strategic message development and deployment, media relations and media training, executive coaching, speech writing and public speaking coaching, event planning, social media strategy; cross-platform branding, and professional writing and editing with areas of expertise that include international relations, business, and diplomacy; government, education, non-profit/advocacy, music and entertainment, healthcare, biotech, technology, social media, entrepreneurial/startup and general professional communications.

“Lennon’s Song: We Love, We Learn, We Grow” ….and I like. (Review)

April 14, 2010 /





One of the benefits of living in the live music capital of the world (Austin, Texas), is that you don’t always have to go looking for good music; sometimes good music finds its way to you.  

That’s what happened in the case of this disc: it found its way into my son’s music library by way of his former Montessori school teacher whose husband happens to be Erick Bohorquez — the man responsible for (literally every aspect of) “Lennon’s Song: We Love, We Learn, We Grow.”

I love this disc. Period. Bonus that my 5-year-old gives it the thumbs up, too. In fact, it’s on permanent rotation for daytime tunes in his room, and it leads the nighttime request list for bedtime tunes, which is a big deal in our family.  

The songs on “We Love, We Learn, We Grow” reflect a breadth of soul and talent that can only come from training and experience — as in life experience. As in traveling the world, playing a lot of music and being a father. According to his biography:

“In 2001, he studied flamenco guitar in Spain. In 2002, he graduated from the University of Texas at Austin. Deciding to try his luck in the music industry, he packed his bags and moved to LA, where he got his start at Elektra Records. In 2004 he left California for Austin, where he eventually landed the role as Regional Manager of Marketing and Promotions at Island/Def Jam Records. While there, he was the go-to person in charge of managing Universal Music Group artists while developing and maintaining relationships at Radio, Press, and Retail. Contributing to numerous #1 hits and receiving many accolades including 2005 Major Record Label of the Year. In 2006, Erick parted from Def Jam; then quickly shifted his focus to writing, recording, and playing live.”

Children have a way of inspiring good musicians to produce great music….and how great is it that a bevy of talented musicians have grown up, had babies, and filled a whole new genre with sounds that come from the very heart of parenthood. Add this disc to the collection of real and lovely music that’s all-age appropriate. 

The songs will surprise you, and they’ll probably grab hold of you, too, but in that nice way that says, “I want to inspire and entertain you, and I promise not to drive you crazy with pedestrian lyrics and over-simplified sounds.” This disc will be a crowd pleaser, and it doesn’t matter what the age of the crowd is. (Available on CD Baby and iTunes if you want to toddle on over and give it a listen.)

Erick swings by to say hello and drop off his disc for Mr. E.

The Great Relaxo-Couch and its Number One Potato

February 11, 2010 /

When I was in my mid-20s, the love of my life was a couch. It was a futon sofa, specifically, and it was supposed to convert into a double bed, but the futon frame was broken and hardly functional since the day we met. Which was appropriate, because so was I. 


I recovered the futon frame from the alley behind my 35th Street condo, next to a dumpster between my building and the adjacent apartment complex. At the start of every college break (the end of every college semester), that no-man’s land between the two buildings served as Purgatory for various pieces of furniture and junk.


I noticed the futon frame there one day, and it looked to be in decent shape. I called a friend to come over and inspect it with me. [A good rule of thumb — never dumpster dive alone.] The futon frame was solid wood, and we couldn’t find anything overtly wrong with it.       


Had either one of us been an engineer, we might have noticed the problem right away. But we were not engineers. We were girls talking about futon frame paint colors as we lugged it up three flights of stairs, one section at a time. Back in my living room, we reassembled the frame so I could start cleaning it up. It was then when we discovered the source of its dysfunction.  
The frame was missing a bolt.


The bolt must have fallen out when its corresponding slat of wood split and broke. Turns out that the split slat was a pivotal piece of the frame. It was the piece that pivoted during the frame’s transformation from couch to bed. The boltless split slat also served as a buttress. It was responsible for maintaining the platform’s horizontal position on one end of the bed.


With a broken buttress of a boltless split slat, that end of the bed tended to fold up on itself, so it looked more like a V than an H.
Suffice to say the broken piece rendered one half of its function useless, which is why it ended up in the alley in the first place, but no matter. The futon was a more comfortable bed when it was a couch and not a bed, mostly because of the brand new futon mattress I bought for it.
I also remember the source of my dysfunction – the end of a turbulent relationship and the beginning of living alone for the first time in my life. In fact, Id recently moved into my first official home — a 650 square foot condo with a loft and a spiral staircase, centrally located about two miles north of the Texas State Capitol.
I had never owned a home before. And, since I’d never lived alone before either, I didn’t know what to do with myself or my living space, but I was determined to embrace the change. I made some repairs. Patched walls. Upgraded countertops. And I filled it with things. My things. Borrowed things. Colorful things. Found things. Made things. And it wasn’t long before I was content living there with my dysfunctional couch (and a dog and cat).


I loved what that couch represented as much as I loved what it had to give. It seated three comfortably and often — four if we were all girls. It was good to my guests. It was true to form and multi-functional. It held me up. It gave me comfort. It said, “Don’t leave,” when I didn’t want to leave. And it said, “I’ll be here when you get back,” when I did leave.
It absorbed the tears when I laid my head down and cried on bad days. It withstood an assortment of hot and cold abuse. It even tolerated a rabbit named Pickles. And it was only slightly worse for the wear a year later, when I returned Pickles to the daycare from whence he was rescued. And still it hung in there.


That couch was the core and center of my all-time favorite weekend ritual. On many a Saturday morning, I would climb out of bed in my loft, stagger down the spiral staircase and crawl onto the couch, flip on PBS, and lay around half the day watching cooking shows and drifting in and out of catnaps. Sometimes that luxury stretched all the way through the afternoons.
I was no fool. I knew a good thing when I had it, and I knew that someday I’d look back on the experience and smile. In 2000, I left the futon frame for two salmon-colored chairs in Washington, D.C. Sometimes I miss those lazy afternoons with the great relaxo-couch. Sometimes I look back and smile.