This week I’m taking a break from Song by Song posts about my recent album release Exist Everywhere in favor of some randomly assembled observations loosely related to my life as a working musician.
The other day I watched a video of a Tiny Desk now famous desk performance by a band a friend recently told me about. I enjoyed the 18 minutes of music but then made the mistake of reading the comments. Those at the top were positive, glowing even, but several alluded to the earlier negative comments so I could not help but scroll down to where all hell broke loose. The comments were predictably scathing, everything from “this guy can’t sing” to “what drugs did they take before this performance.” My already ailing faith in humanity rattled then sagged. Seeking context, I went a step further to click through to the profiles of a few commenters. One led to a moribund account, another to a profile with zero videos posted, and a third to an aspiring jazz shredder ripping blues riffs over old standards. On behalf of the band I was tempted to launch a counter insult but all at once I was overcome by a feeling of emptiness. I thought I heard the sound of one hand clapping but then realized that it was just key strokes chattering like nervous plastic mice in lonely rooms around the world.
A career in music is said to be a bit like high school all over again, something of a popularity contest. This in part explains why I have no rebuttal for the accusation that I’m hiding out reading poetry in the library during lunch while the MVP’s of school popularity smoke cigarettes in the woods just beyond the fence of the football field.
Guitar players learn to noodle at a young age. They have history on their side.
The man leaving the bar the other night as I set up my drums said “It must be tough to play such a small space with such a loud instrument.” He seemed to forget that a body, my body, creates the sound. I briefly imagined it the other way around, the drum set dragging me along as I held on for dear life. His comment was nonetheless an upgrade from another man at a similar type of gig who approached me before I even unpacked my drums to say, “You better not play those too loud while we’re trying to eat.”
When I was in my late teens I drove to the beautiful and idyllic state of Vermont with two friends. I expected to see traces of Robert Frost everywhere. We parked at the trailhead of a hike that featured the first moose I’d ever encountered in person (at a glance it simply registered as a horse with no tail) and a mountain lake by which we camped. All night a lone loon wailed into the darkness, its call reflecting off the water to echo through the woods before being lost to leaves, soil, distance. Meanwhile, back at the parking lot, some jokers broke into our car. They stole a small drum, a book of CD’s, and my journal. I’ve forgiven them the first two but not yet the third. Our redemption was in how disappointing the hit must’ve felt when they returned home to tally up the score.
The best move a band can make in a compromised situation is to ask for requests and then proceed not to play them. This is a power play by those presumed powerless. Disclaimer: your tip jar will suffer.
The other day I sat and listened to music with an 18 year old friend. He played something that sounded like electronic laser beams slicing through enormous bass drums amplified by recycled smoke machines. The sonic onslaught catapulted me into a forgotten urban warehouse beyond the bounds of building code. A vocalist screamed through distortion and I remembered anger is not red or yellow in the crayon sense but is hot as actual flames as in a fire. Laptops power the new underground. All at once I had the image of a room full of youth, each named according to a musical sub-genre I’d never heard of. I felt age consuming me like sweat and too little oxygen in an enclosed space until a metallic-sounding synthesizer patched to a preset called “Rebellion” pulled me out of my stupor.
My debut full-length solo album Exist Everywhere is available exclusively on Bandcamp, for free or pay-what-you-wish digital downloads or to purchase as a limited edition vinyl record.
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