| and just like my daddy done, i ain't afraid to die |
[Dec. 20th, 2009|02:11 pm] |
my life is starting to rule again.
in the end, the only thing that could ever really make me happy was my first love. music/touring..
a few months ago i decided i wanted to write a book about touring, honestly it's just to pass time. i write a lot on tour and i wanted to have something to focus the hobby on. i have no real intention of doing anything with it. just for me...maybe something silly to show my kids....i don't know. who knows maybe one day i will give it to someone to publish.
i was reading some of it today and the introduction felt real good to read. even when i was depressed on tour missing alex i still admitted touring was first. i decided i wanted to share it in my journal that a few of my friends read.
i don't think i have ever asked for input...but this time i would love to hear what you guys think.
"Introduction"
So when I decided to write this book, I did with great hesitation. The fact of the matter is I am not famous; it would even be hard to call me successful when you sit down and evaluate what it is I actually do. After great thought on why I am writing a book like this I can only give the answer “for myself”. It makes a lot of sense when you compare that response to everything else I have decided to do in the last 6 years.
This book is written to the skeptic, someone who would never lead with his or her heart. For someone who sits behind a desk focused on the pursuit of wealth. Hating their life a little more everyday, starring out the window at work wondering what the world is really like, what being free must feel like. I know not everyone behind a desk working a job I would hate actually hates what he or she does. Maybe a person like that could read this book and just imagine what it would be like. This book is also a guide for those wanting to take a step towards the life of a touring musician. I don’t want to come off as someone who thinks he is a master of his trade. I am just offering my experience to you as point of reference. Maybe I can help you decided if this is a good idea or not. Maybe I can keep you from doing something stupid that I did. More so then the skeptic, this book is helpful for you. In 2008 I was filling in on guitar for a band called GraveMaker, an amazing band you should check out if you get the chance. On that tour we played a few shows with a band that gave a very odd speech from stage. They said “get out and tour this country, everyone should do this.” I remember not liking that much. Very few people actually belong in this lifestyle. It’s a crazy unkind ride that takes everything away from you. You have to be ready and willing for the sacrifice ahead of you. If you’re not, you will be eaten alive by a very cruel industry. I would say about 85% of kids who decided they want to tour for a living quit their first year on the road. I am always reminded of a quote of Kurt Vonnegut’s “if you want to upset your parents and don’t have the nerve to be gay, go into the arts. Because the arts are not a way to make a living, just a way to make life more bearable.” That’s how it is, this life is not glamorous, it’s not your mtv/vh1 catered backstage party. 95% of the bands you listen to, especially if you listen to any under ground genre, are just a few dudes in a cramped van waiting to get to the next show to do the only thing that makes since to them. Making life more bearable for themselves and for people who love the music said band makes.
I am a hopeless romantic. I love the feeling of being on the road, riding off into the sunset every night. I feel immortal on tour, I think of an American Nightmare lyric “I believe that when I am gone my love will live in song.” As bad as it gets I would never stop this. I love the life, pain of payment, and reward of finally getting somewhere on my own. Few things in my life have been this risky, but that’s what makes it exciting for me. Sometimes it will sound like I am complaining about this awesome trip I have ventured on. I assure you I don’t mean too. I love what I do, I just have to be honest with the kid on the fence. This shit sucks sometimes, people won’t hardly ever care about you, you’ll learn how cold the world can actually be, you’ll miss meals, lose sleep, you might have to even deal with losing relationships you thought could last any test of time. I don’t think as people we are made to be alone. I don’t think we are built to move from city to city without a hand to hold, without a warm body to sleep next to. I know what I do should never come second nature to me, but it does. That is why I feel I can write a book like this and give an honest account of the life I lead.
The last person I would like to read this is my mother. I spent the last two years of my high school career thinking of ways to make her proud of me. My father passed when I was 14, my mother who had never really worked stood in his place and raised my two brothers and me. Never did I miss a meal, never did hear my mother complain for the cruel hand she was dealt, never did I go to bed cold, or feeling alone. She is the best person I have ever known. She deserved to have the first born son go off to collage and become a doctor, or a lawyer, just something fancy she could brag to her friends about. After all her hard work she deserved to have something she could point at when asked where her life went. She poured everything into my brothers and me, working a million shitty jobs and going back to school to get a degree. Now I am 24 and she is a professor at the local collage, I still tour the country in a punk band no one has ever heard of. I skipped on collage and rushed into the life my mother worked so hard to make sure I missed. Every night that I go to sleep cold and hungry, I feel as if I am slapping her in the face. I went from a warm loving home, to a cold life I will spend alone as long as I pursue it. My father was a truck driver, I swore when I grew up I’d be nothing like him, but when I drive through the mountains of Tennessee or North Carolina I remember the story’s he told me about driving through them himself. It is moments like that I realize I have let my mother down. I’m just like my father, running away, alone in my drivers seat perusing something that may not even be there. Alas this is my own life, and my mother would say she was proud of me for going after something I love. That’s another reason I would consider her the perfect mother. Somehow she understands me before I do.
I told you about my mother so you get the point, this life will almost certainly lead you to let everyone you know down, because it always comes first. Even before the loving woman who raised me, even before myself, I am a hopeless romantic for this life. I descried it to a friend this way; “I have been dating a girl for 6 years. She doesn’t mind when I see other girls, cause she knows she will always out last them. She only gives me enough to keep me around, nothing more. She is a cold, heartless woman, but I love the way she makes me feel. This little lady’s name is music/touring, and she is not the kind of girl you take home to meet mom.” |
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