My routine has been broken. I took a shower at 1 am and shut the water off when I couldn't shut the warm rush of thoughts off. Here they come, this blog will be the absorptive towel (I had to check, it's a word, and I spelled it correct).
I'm introspective again, which was the way I spent my single years.
I am braver, singing in front of strangers, full volume, on my bicycle, knowing full well, they can't hear the (probably obscure) music I'm listening to.
I'm ready to try and fail and try again.
I quit silencing the performances of my music while customers walk into my store.
I am ready to reflect on the events that got me from Milwaukee to Boston to Milwaukee to Brooklyn to Orange County.
I am willing to admit I miss the change in seasons, despite the knowledge that the admission of this could increase the persistent urgings from my mother to move back to Wisconsin.
I am on a precipice, about to be a father for the first time.
I can't wait to play with toys and abandon my dignity, get caught up in the imagination I promised not to lose.
I want to be honest and vulnerable.
I'm tired of being to cool to display my excitement for the geeky things I enjoy that few others will/can discern the greatness of. That makes me more excited in some ways. Like when I used to delight in hearing a jazz musician quote another jazz song, or more obscurely, someone else's solo, within their improvised solo as I sat up alone at night in my room in the basement. I experienced this same feeling enjoying a performance by Gavin Castleton this weekend. I got even giddier when he busted out Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer."
I looked for my old blog and put in the wrong address and swiped this rumination from the site:
"I've learned that I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy it. "
Why else am I driven to leave family, familiarity, deny material abundance, find new friends and support, and reinvent myself for the sake of music not once, but thrice?
Am I delusional? egotistical?
did my grandmother overinflate my esteem and the sense of uniqueness that I want to share with others.
Am I buying into the hype from my teachers?
If that were so, I'd be farther along in my career now.
You see, I've been playing it safe. Sideman in countless bands, assistant engineer, music teacher, short-film scorer, front of house sound tech. All of these things have the scent of what I love to do, but they don't contain the essence. They need to be funneled, channeled into what it is that I have to do, which is to be a performing songwriter/musician. I have to do it because its who I am. To deny that is to deny being me. I struggle to balance this out when remembering that I must deny myself and take up my cross daily. It is easy to use this scripture to excuse my inactivity and mask my true paralysis: fear of failure.
But then we played a show in Long Beach and Gavin Castleton performed first. It woke something up in me that lay dormant. As amazing a performer he and his band were, the depths (of which I am increasingly appreciating the more I learn about his craftsmanship), he doesn't get the full credit for this mind-altering shift. It was in me, he just helped wake it up.
His performance was in the league of hearing Jeff Buckley for the first time, seeing Shara Worden(Awry and My Brightest Diamond) live in Milwaukee playing guitar with a pencil stuck in the bridge, or watching Annie Clark (St. Vincent) at school, still relatively unknown, playing otherworldly music in our cafeteria.
I was angered by my friend's inability to appreciate the craft, the deft storytelling and wordplay and tasteful rap(?! yes, and it didn't bother me at all), the groove, the mix of aural influence. Like a Sigur Ros, elbow, Peter Gabriel, J.B. , Postal Service, Notwist,Beck/Prince mashup- and it worked. If she found the music too challenging, she didn't understand me very well. This is the kind of artist I am, but I haven't been upfront with this side of myself, offering palatable pop and pushing my darker eccentricities aside. I've let the polite face be the ambassador of my inner self for too long. And now I realize that California has undone the hardness of New York living.
I started Midwest, went east, toughened up (too much), moved west, softened up (too much)
Two nights later my wife and I found ourselves scrambling to find songs to play at a gig that had been handed to us the morning of. I pulled out all the stops, and slowed down time onstage, living in the moment of it, playing with the audience, inviting their playfulness, joining in their fun. It was the culmination of "effortless mastery," the amazing book that taught me to laugh at my mistakes, that music isn't hard- its eather familiar or unfamiliar, get familiar and it just comes out of you naturally. It wasn't Glenn versus the audience anymore. I had underestimated them for too long. They aren't the enemy.
We were rewarded with much applause, many kind words (and the encouragement is food for the soul of a musician plagued by self-doubt).
And when I got home I started to read Gavin's wincingly soul-baring blog. Like a diary. He reminded me that it is the work of the artist to share what we have gone through not simply for our own catharsis or process, but for others to learn from. And I learned a lot about myself through his experiences and I will now pay the favor forward.
Instead of being jealous of all the skills he posseses, or Elliott Smith has with chords and melody, or the octaves of Jeff Buckley, or the whatever of anyone, I need to take stock of and utilize my assests. This is not vain braggings, but a reminder to the artist in me that has been stifled by self doubt for so long;
I have a way of presenting things in ways that people have not been able to articulate, and I'm doing it in my music.
I am writing the kind of music I like to listen to without sounding like a blatant copy of the music I listen to, yet I've reached the level where I know how to do that too.
I write clever and intelligent lyrics that are universal, even when drawn from personal experience
I am proficient on the saxophone
I have lots of software, plug-ins, and synths/drum machines
I can play guitar well, and have finally connected it to my ear the way I had with saxophone
I can play bass even better
I am playing drums better than I ever have before, although I should improve
I have gotten better at the piano, and some of my best songs are performed on it.
I am finally getting better at singing and braver at it.
I own several guitars, a bass, two keyboards, and have access to laptops. I need to start sequencing backing tracks so I won't feel naked on stage
I'm okay with being naked on stage.
My wife is an amazing vocalist and an even better encourager.
I have a lot of friends everywhere I've ever lived, even California, with many amazing skills that can be tapped with mutually beneficial results:
a party promoter/co-ordinator, a photographer/rock journalist,
a graphic designer/web design guru, video directors, other musicians who have been where I am and are where I want to get to.
I have a pool of students who are interested in my musical comings and goings, and its time I let them in on what we're doing.
I CAN get enough people to do a pay for play club,as much as I hate the idea of paying to play.
Now here are some things I will need to get to the next level:
Photos of us.
a band, be it people I know, or a laptop, or an ipod.
I could use some work in arranging
to let people know what it is I do and who I am
To accept who I used to be and start letting Chelbie in on that world without fear of shame or hurting her feelings.
Some more gigs
Ok, this is my dream here it goes, watch it grow.
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