music – Page 3 – The Conscious Pilgrim

attentive

In my artistic life – not that I segregate my life, but certain things require a singular focus and art is one of those things – my band and I are embarking on another recording project.

To date, we’ve released 3 full length albums and essentially 3 EPs, and I’ve essentially lost count of the ‘sessions’ we’ve done because (a) there’s been a lot of them, and (b) my memory is not great most of the time and these things tend to run together, especially when it’s been the same 3 guys, and pretty much historically has happened in the same studio. We’ve also done a bonkers amount of rehearsal recordings.

Sometime next year, we’ll take our artistry and duplicate it a whole bunch of times and turn it into a product to be bought & sold. It’ll become a commodity that people can have an opinion on, and they’ll determine if it holds up to our other albums, and at some point someone will say they liked our “old stuff” better, which will add a linear element to all of this, thereby making us feel old or something.

But for now, we make art. We set up microphones and baffles and headphone mixes and we flush out chord progressions and ramblings and churn them into songs. There will be pounding drums and loud guitar amplifiers and we’ll allow our imaginations to take us into strange places. We’ll weave together poetry and bent strings and interesting rhythms and low frequencies and our dreams will stretch our further than our shadows.

Working a job in between recording sessions is brutal, but we’ll do it because it’s the part of the process we can’t do without just yet. The transition from the top of our creative mindframe to the of an exhausted and underslept worker and back again is so painfully humbling, yet necessary.

Months later, a critic will refer to our efforts as “fairly country” or “chaotic” and if we’re lucky, both of those terms in the same sentence – but that’s in the future, and we don’t live in the future, we live in the now, and now is the time for art. Now is the time when we redefine and reframe the way we’re perceived by the world, designing a work that will give us another shot at notoriety. We fully believe it will propel us further, but how much further is not yet determined.

I have to focus on the art right now, though imagining a future in which this artist work already exists is such a beautiful distraction.
Now is the time for focus.
Now is the time to be attentive.
Now is the time for art – while completely disregarding the future possibilities.

We can’t create art for the future, this is a snapshot of the present.

The future will take care of itself.

The future happens anyway.

grown up

I’ve spent a lot of my life in the bottom half – and if you know what that means, then you have likely spent a little time there. Maybe you’re there right now. I’ve always been ‘okay’ in the sense that I’ve been able to keep a roof over our heads… but I’ve kinda always needed a little help.

Needing a little help comes with the territory of historically broke-ass musicians. We tend to live a little closer to the wire than most people are comfortable with, primarily in sacrifice to our art. This is especially prevalent with the big stuff… like purchasing a vehicle.

I’ve made mention of some vehicular obstacles over the past few months, and they are persisting – but the realization that we’ve been making due with a vehicle that – love it as I may – is not particularly well-suited to our needs. It’s a small pickup truck that’s not a comfortable ride when you need to put a 3rd adult-sized person in there, and after 16 years of parenting, there are 3 adult sized people in my house… as well as a 145 lb dog. I also play in a rock & roll band, and have need to move equipment pretty frequently these days… so it’s all added up to a vehicle purchase. We’d intended to address this in early 2020 after The Confusionaires second album was released… but a lil’ pandemic came along.

All that to say… the time has come.

So when it came time to do this deal, it was kinda freaky to be able to do it on my own… like a grown up. I suppose I became a grown up a few years ago when we bought our house without any help from our folks, but it has sunk in even more so now. I now own a vehicle capable of doing everything I need a vehicle to do.

I wondered how it would feel. Sometimes with these things, after all is said & done you just feel dread – but really I feel a sense of freedom despite the impending payments that must be made. I’ve doubled down, and bet on myself and on my music in the process of doing this and I’m ultimately setting myself up for success.

Who would’ve thought…?

ain’t done yet

It’s likely no secret that I don’t get up every Saturday morning and post these at exactly 8am MST. These posts are written in advance – sometimes a couple days, and sometimes a couple weeks – and this one is no different.

As I write this, my band is gearing up to shoot a music video for a brand new song called “Ain’t Done Yet” and boy-oh-boy am I ever not done yet.

The song is actually old. The music was crafted during the pandemic but the lyrics are older than this band, and emotionally, they send me back to a time in my life when everything was harder than I needed it to be, and writing the song was ultimately a form of poetic escapism… yet as I read these lyrics again today, you might think I had just written them, because they describe the way my life is now.

Evidently, I was setting goals.
And journaling.
Both of which I feel like I struggle to find the time to do. Actually no, wait, scratch that – I know exactly when I should be doing these and I absolutely have the time required to make a habit of these things – I just don’t.

I know what I want, and I think I even know how to get it… so why write it down? Because these things change over time, sure, but also because these goals get reached and it’s important to genuinely adjust your sights every once in a while. We need to take an inventory of where we’re at and where we want to be.

The future happens anyway. So I might as well be prepared for it, rather than to wait and see how it affects me.

I once heard an anecdote talking about losing weight or running a marathon or going back to school… whatever, it doesn’t matter I guess… but it was proclaimed that “getting to that goal would take 4 years – I’ll be 45 years” and the response was “yes, but in that time you’ll be 45 anyway… wouldn’t you rather be capable of (goal).”

I think about that from time o time, and I realize that I am right where I am supposed to be.

Anyway… please go watch my new music video. (Out JUNE 5th)

you are the one

I like to run, and I like to run long. I can do a 30-45 minute jog and feel okay about it, satisfied that I did what needed doing… but if I can get 90 minutes or more, then I’m happy.

Sometimes I run in total silence… these runs help me finish songs or solve vintage automobile problems, often because my headphones are dead.
Most times, I run with podcasts or audiobooks. Anything from Ernest Hemingway to David Goggins… Rich Roll, Andrew Huberman, et al. A lot of endurance athletes cut with philosophy, or science, 12-step, and the occasional novel to keep my brain in motion.

I invite and allow these things to speak wisdom and creativity into my life.

The recurring message I’ve been receiving as of late is “you are the one you’ve been waiting for.” I’ve taken to doing hard things as a physical challenge for some years now, but a couple months ago I decided to gamble on myself in a much more vulnerable way – with my art.

I booked my band (Confusionaires) into a theatre that would potentially put us in front of one of the biggest (indoor) audiences we’ve ever played for if we sold it out. Beyond that, the theatre organization didn’t book us…I booked us. I rented the room, and then proceeded to jump through every hoop in order to make the show happen. Then… as if that wasn’t enough, I did the same in 2 other smaller theatres.

A week before the shows, I got a ticket count from all 3 venue box offices, and found out that we’d moved enough tickets in presale that all my expenses were covered and then some. This alleviated a pile stress that I didn’t even realize I was carrying. I was never concerned with selling those venues out to capacity – but I thought it’d be nice if we made enough to (a) cover our expenses, and (b) help fund out tour in Mexico the following month. That’s the tour I’m on right now as this is being posted.

I rolled the dice on myself and I won. Nobody swooped in to save me because that wasn’t an option. Sure, I would have recovered from the financial setback eventually, but that’s not the point. The point is that I set out to break new ground, and I did – and in so doing I’ve elevated the status of The Confusionaires beyond where we’d previously been. We’ve established our value as an artistic entity of value, and I couldn’t e more proud – not only of myself for pushing my own envelope – but to my boys Jayson & Adam for delivering a show worthy of the ticket price we were asking for.

Some really great things are coming for this band and I’m excited to share them as they get closer to their reveal date.

I am the one I was waiting for.

sabotage

I can’t stand it, I know ya’ planned it…

For someone who’s spent more than his fair share of time sabotaging himself, I certainly had a smug and mired view of the people around me doing the same. My lack of experience (something I can’t blame myself for) and lack of self awareness (something I can blame myself for) allowed me to hear people say things like “I just need a drink to calm my nerves” and think “that’s so cliche – they’re just doing that because they heard somewhere that they should” without ever realizing that I was; in fact wrong, and that really what they were doing was giving themselves an excuse to drink that had nothing to do with the calming of the nerves at all, and everything to do with justifying the remedy.

I’m not here to pick on drinkers so much as I am here to expose my lack of awareness.

I come from a community; a scene, if you will, that was largely populated with GenX’ers and although I am technically not one, I was certainly born during a strange time between the GenXer’s and Millennials that allowed me to plant one foot in each camp – both fairly nihilistic for different reasons. This scene was special in many ways, but it was not unique in it’s collective attitude towards commercial success. The idea of ‘selling out’ was ultimately tantamount to treason, and I believe that my need to belong prevented me from pursuing a level of success that I believe I always had the chops to achieve. Many of us did, but many of us talked ourselves out of it. Now, at 41 years old I am chasing my teenage dreams once again… but that’s probably a topic for another day.

A stronger version of myself might have told all of those people to kick rocks, but I wasn’t that. I was me, for better or worse. And honestly I’ve been sabotaging myself for decades – this is just the most friendly, and possibly pivotal example of it.

This all does lend itself to a fear I developed, or maybe always had. Hell, maybe all of us had it – the fear of success. We’re all aware of the concept of fear of failure and the workoholism that tends to follow suit, but fear of success is much, much stronger and far less often acknowledged.

What if I succeed and I have to keep doing this?
What if I become known for the wrong thing?
Imposter syndrome often follows, with “what if they find out I’m actually not remarkable?”

As a musician, the thought of both alienating my old-school, cool fans while simultaneously not being able to sell what I’m doing to a larger part of the populous meant living in “insincere loser purgatory” for what could be the rest of my life. My personal concerns included:

not being punk enough for punk rock fans
not being pop enough for the pop crowd
not being heavy enough for the rock/metal crowd
not being a good enough guitar player for the guitar geeks
not being interesting enough to be interviewed… or handsome
What if I never write another song?
What if I actually suck, and nobody is telling me?

It devolves into an embarrassing series of notions from there, I assure you. This line of resistant thought kept me starting and cratering bands every few years for a couple decades… except for the ‘what if I never write another song?’ which kept me pen-in-hand and riffing constantly for my whole life.

I’ve released over 125 songs in 8 different bands, have co-written singles, and have composed music for commissioned works, as well as writing my own parts for a couple hundred songs on other people’s recordings and/or performances… and wondered if I had what it takes to be a consistent, solid, good musician pretty much the whole time.

In the end, I tend to think that these types of failures of self; for lack of a better term, come down to manifestation. We speak hard things over ourselves, and we receive them. We also say enough contrarian shit about ourselves and we’ll inevitably start to believe it – and we do that because it’s EASIER to say “I could have accomplished ______” than it is to actually set our sights on something and go for it.

If I have anything to bestow on anyone who read all the way to the end of this, it’s that (a) it’s okay to daydream, and you should do it without remorse or embarrassment, and (b) be kind to yourself, even when you don’t want to.