Travel Journal Entry 7

Travel Journal Entry 7

April 12, 2022

Again I am writing to you in retrospect. I drove the past two work weekends. I find it difficult and selfishly unwise to drive and type at the same time. That, along with the distances between gigs, time taken up before and after the gigs dealing with equipment, and the allotted five hours of hotel time to sleep and bathe didn’t leave much time for journaling. 

Pretty normal work related stuff happened. I was fortunate to be in my hometown area a few days and I got to visit with family and good friends. That was especially nice, albeit short-lived. Seems like I have nothing but time when I feel alone but then get overwhelmingly busy when I get time to spend with those who make me feel not alone. I suppose that is adulting. Adulting sucks.

That’s it. That is all I got to share. I had plenty of things on my mind throughout the trip but nothing to say because I am so tired of hearing myself whine. Most of the past two weeks has been overshadowed by self-loathing, self-doubt, and an extraordinary lack of self-confidence. I had numerous happy and enjoyable moments but then I would be left ultimately with my thoughts and the grey skies would return and the emotions would turn dark and cold like the wind just before a big storm. Oh well. It happens. I just count blessings, focus on the moments that feel real and normal, and I hope I can be mentally and emotionally stable for more than twenty or thirty minutes at a time.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I hope that you have a wonderfully fabulous week and that you find happiness, even if in small bits, everyday.

Travel Journal Entry 6

March 27, 2022

I am writing this week’s journal in retrospect from the comfort of the home office/recording studio. Conditions for writing on the road this week did not coincide with my willingness to write at the time in which opportunity presented itself. 

This week’s work trip was fairly hit or miss on notable things to point out about travel with the job. If I documented it hour by hour it would get boring very quickly. Plus, I am fairly certain that you are getting the gist of what a typical work weekend involves for me by now. Typical was very much what this week delivered with a few notable exceptions.

At the gig on Friday Wes Peters informed me that he had a cigar for me and that we would retire the early evening gig by enjoying a smoke and the evening weather. Who am I to decline such an offer from a good friend?

When we got to the hotel we dropped our things into the room, grabbed the proper weather attire, and headed to courtyard to prepare for our evening festivities. We found our way to a concrete picnic table next to a closed but illuminated swimming pool. Behind the picnic table was a tall-back beach chair in blue with a blue outdoor pillow and a grey-striped cat. Someone had set up that chair for him and it was clearly his chair. He, and yes it was most assuredly a boy cat, didn’t seem to be bothered by us and we were not bothered by him. Everything was copacetic. 

As Peters and I were lighting our cigars and getting situated in our temporary cigar lounge we received the same text from Goode about Taylor Hawkins dying. Such sad news at the beginning of what was supposed to be a relaxing end to the day. I sent the message to a few musician friends. As the messages and responses came pouring in I hear Peters chuckle at me. What was he finding funny?

I look over to my left and there sits the cat looking up at me with his big cat eyes announcing that he would now like for me to and allow me to pet him. Peters snapped a pic of the event. 

I was texting with Anthony Rankin about the sad news and mentioned that a bit of good news also happened at the same time. A cat had decided to join our party and Peters and I agreed that the cat needed a name so we decided on Taylor Hawkins Clarion in honor of the situation. Anthony replied with “you mean Taylor CLAWkins”. That was settled The cat’s name is Taylor Clawkins.

For the next little while Wes Peters, Taylor Clawkins, and I solved world problems, debated important issues like How Smart Are Orcas, Right?!?!? We discussed gorillas holding small children in Cincinnati Zoos.  We even got to the most important and most frequently debated question among the band, will Selma Hayek show up at our gig someday and which one of us will she decide to marry? 

Taylor Clawkins hopped between us allowing each of us even amounts of time rubbing his ear and scratching behind his head. He was pleased with our efforts. There was a cat locked inside a room with its owners, I hope it was anyway, watching us through the plate glass window looking sad he couldn’t join. I swear that Taylor Clawkins was taunting that poor cat in their feline alien language somehow. 

The night air turned to a hard chill and we called it a night. Our buddy, Taylor, had found is way back to the blue chair to retire for the evening. I learned that he was through with the touching because as I walked past him to say goodnight by petting his head he scared the crap out of me and Peters by letting out a loud “ROWRRRRRRRRRRAHHHHH!” while jumping three feet into the air and took off running like he was shot out of a cannon. He was having NONE of my touching and he made that very clear. That was the most “cat” thing ever. 

New day and a new beginning that started and continued as usual. Nothing spectacular happened on Saturday. Nothing spectacular happened on the journey back today. I suppose if Frodo had to go to Mordor every weekend he would’ve never documented that trip. If he did it might go like this:

“Finally realized we could just fly on the big-ass eagle(s) there and back in a single day. Why did we ever walk in the first place? Sam Wise has learned to pack lighter too. No more stale bread in his pockets stinking up the trip. He thinks it was Gollum and not the bread smell that brought around that giant spider. He is, as usual, wrong. An Eagle pooped on Treebeard today as we flew over the forest. We laughed. Tree B didn’t find it as funny as we did. We have a standing bet going on whether or not he throws acorns at us again when we fly back over. Let me assure you, T.B. can sling those little nuts hard. Merry can’t stop laughing at me saying ‘sling those little nuts’. Mordor kinda sucks. Not sure why we keep having to go back? Anyway, that’s all for now…” 

Anyway, that’s all for now. I hope that you have a wonderfully fabulous week and that you find happiness, even if in small bits, everyday.

Good evening.

Travel Journal Entry 5

Friday March 18, 2022

Where to start? I released my newest single at midnight and I awoke needing to do all of the social media and website stuff to make aware that it is available. That took about an hour and it was immediately time to pack up the last bit of stuff not already loaded in the truck from the night before. It was raining pretty steadily and I am glad I was smart enough to load up all of the gear the night before.

Music release days are always an emotional rollercoaster. As I began the drive down to Tuscaloosa to meet the band and ride in Jeff’s rig to Auburn for the first of two gigs, I began winding down the hours of driving with the usual self-doubt-athon that is release day.

I have released ten songs over the past eighteen weeks. You’d think I would be used to the routine by now but, no. Every release is like the first time. 

That number seems unreal. Ten songs in eighteen weeks. Two of the songs were previously recorded and just needed vocals and mixing but the other eight have been built from scratch. That seems darn near impossible but that is what I have done and continue to do. Two of the songs weren’t even written those eighteen weeks ago. The rest have been written for years, decades even. 

Part of my self-doubt-athon is that very thing, I am doing this entirely by myself. How will I know if what I am putting out is any good? I know I like the song but it is my song. Have I successfully removed my bias enough to be honest about the song, the recording, the sounds, the musical and recoding engineering choices that I made?

I do have Greg Deluca playing drums on some select songs and so far two songs have been cowritten with Brandon White on a song and Greg Fells on another. Otherwise, anything you hear on these releases is done by me, in a home studio, sitting alone in a little room full of various instruments and a computer.

I am the writer/creator of all of these songs. I write the chord progressions, the melodies, the harmonies, and the lyrics. I arrange them. I record them as I perform them. I mix and produce them. I master them. All of the guitar, bass, drum programming, sampling, keyboards, lead vocals, harmony vocals, banjo, resonator guitar, lapsteel guitar, acoustic guitar...all me. 

I am learning as I go about mixing and mastering. I do believe those aspects are improving with each song. But are they? How do I know if they are without a test group to discern if my bias is switching along with the newly learned information or are the mixes objectively getting better? Should I have kept to a very specific style with the exact same instruments and set ups so I could A/B the songs to have a constant point of reference?

You know what? I am boring myself. Self-doubt gets old even to the doubter. Let’s move forward.

I sat in an Arby’s drive through in Tuscaloosa for ten minutes waiting for, and you are never guess what they had me waiting on, a damn Roast Beef Sandwich. Not a Meal. Not even a sandwich and a drink. Just meat(?) on some bread. Ten minutes for microwaved already sliced meat on some hamburger bun. They took ten minutes and still got it wrong. Imagine that! 

6:30PM CST

Rode from Tuscaloosa to Auburn Jeff’s truck. Set up, stood on my sneakers to keep my socks dry and I changed into my suit in the misty evening air. A dressing room you say? Ha! Why would anyone want that when you can change in the wet grass by a truck in the wide open were everyone can see. Plus, how are we supposed to get pneumonia in a dry, warm room?

March 19, 2022 (but just barely)

12:47AM CST

Show went well. Pretty sure none of us will be able to talk or sing tomorrow after six straight hours of being outside in the cool, wet night air. 

Sitting in the hotel now. I am not going to eat but I am stupid hungry right now. I’m going to bed. It is almost 1AM. Talk to you in the morning. We have to be on the road at 8am to drive to New Orleans for a wedding gig. 

Night.

March 19, 2022.

10:43 Am CST

We have been on the road now for almost three hours. I’m on my second large coffee. The first from a Starbucks in Auburn, AL. The second from a Shell gas station in rural southeastern AL. I’m typing on my portable keyboard/iPad combo in the back cab of a Ford F450 pulling a trailer full of gear down the highway. Pretty bouncy back here but I rarely get the distraction of writing while traveling so I am going to take advantage as long as the ride is smooth.

This weekend has been a rough one on my psyche. Like all artsy folk, and most people for that matter, I struggle with depression regularly. I try with all of my might not to let it seep out and onto others. This has not always been the case. I have been a Debbie Downer more than a few times in my past. 

Now I tend to keep the darkness, as I refer to my depression, to myself. It is mine and I hate sharing. I’m stingy with my depression. Get your own darkness and get off of my lawn!!

I don’t know if this happens with others that struggle with depression but I have a hard time separating the darker thoughts from the silly and happy thoughts because they so often occur simultaneously with each other. One seems to drive the other. This does come in handy in uncomfortable, emotional situations given that I stay in the mindset of emotional ambiguity and numbness almost always, so there isn’t that awkward shock of uncontrollable emotions to bog me down.

See, here is the thing I have found works for me. I just look for something positive to focus on and move forward. No matter how far spread the darkness gets I look for something to focus my naive optimism on and let the storm, as it were, run its course. Look for that silver lining in those dark clouds. 

Easy-peasy, right? Is it just that simple? Not exactly. It does work occasionally but it would work so much better if my brain and my emotions weren’t a tropical island in the wet season.

But, hey, at least it is a tropical island and while I do get tired of always getting drenched from a sudden downpour right about the time my clothes dry from the last time it poured down on my happiness I, at least, do get to exist on a tropical island; and when the sun or the stars come out you just can’t beat that view. Am I right?! Welcome, to Fantasy Island! It just not your fantasy and it still goes horribly wrong just like in the TV show from the 1970’s.

Once again, I bore myself with this whining. 

The truck keeps bouncing and I am missing key strokes and I am unwillingly making up some pretty funny letter/number combinations as I try to type. I find this annoying distraction very amusing in the moment.I am looking forward to getting a Cafe Au Lait while in New Orleans. I need some chicory in my life. I won’t sleep at all tonight with all of this coffee and soon to be even more coffee but my tastebuds will be happy. 

I am wearing “readers” now and when I look up to see where we are currently at in our journey, I can’t see shit. Looks like I’m trying to spy through the window of an Old West saloon. Anything not immediately in my line of sight is very blurred out. 

Kinda funny when I forget that I have them on, look up, and my brain immediately goes into panic, self-diagnosis mood and I have to remind myself I have on glasses and I am not having a stroke. I find that funny. If you can’t laugh at yourself how can you laugh at others? I can do both. 

We just hit the Dolly Parton bridge. No more smooth road for a while. I’ll be back later.

March 20, 2022

12:31AM CST

List of things to write about the wedding gig here in New Orleans:

Pain in the ass load in.

2 hours of down time, No green room, No wear to store valuables.

New Orleans is not where you want to be stuck with no where to sit and no where to safely store belongings. 

Forgot we needed vaccination cards to go inside anywhere. Card in my bag in my truck in Tuscaloosa

Band contracts and venue workers that are total assholes for no reason. 

Show was good. Nice wedding and reception.

Getting hit in the mouth by my mic 6 times.

Photographers: Once you let them take a pic from the stage area they think they can hang out there all night. Literally standing in the way, blocking access to the mic. Hopefully the photographer gets hit in the mouth by the mic too so I am not the only one.

Great cafe au lait and really good bread pudding. 

I practiced moderation.

Pain in the ass load out.

On a brighter note:

There was a full moon over Big Muddy tonight. I have never seen the Mississippi River that it hasn’t sparked interest in me about the things it was witnessed over its years. The shear size of this moving body of water is so impressive that it always elicits the same thought from me which I blurt aloud almost instinctively and with zero regard for surrounding company. I even say it aloud when no one is around. That thought is, “damn, that’s a huge ass river!” 

Tonight, under the full moon sky, I am taken in by the river’s romantic charm once again. Despite the absolute shit show that was tonight’s beginning and dismissal from our gig I can’t help but fall victim to the beauty of her and to the imagination ignited by the possibilities of this imagery. I took a pic that I intend to share but there is no way that it can capture how this feels in real life.

I certainly can understand what drew humans to the New Orleans area to begin with and what keeps them coming for millenniums. Nights like tonight with the cool early spring wind whisking me away and escorting my imaginative dream around the Quarter makes me completely, and temporarily, forget that I ache and my mood is dark and brooding. 

As I breathe deeply I forget that I quit playing music as a career about eight or nine times in the last set alone; and now I want to sit here watching the moon rise and dream up songs to sing in the glory of this unique place on this planet. 

I can see and hear the melodies of the music birthed here. I can taste and smell the air of the native cuisine while I imagine the good times past, present, and future that occur here. I can breathe in the debauchery that drove this one-of-a-kind city to fame. No wait, That’s not debauchery as much as it is sulfur, vomit, cat and human piss, someone’s feet, absence of soap and soft water showers… I really wish the wind would start blowing again. Ah, there it is. Now, Where was I?  Yes, I could stare at the moon and the river and get lost for hours.

Alas, back in reality, I am standing in my sweaty underwear and t-shirt on  a third floor narrow little balcony surrounded by empty road cases that take up almost all of the room on the walkway while a family in a mini van below in the parking lot stare up at me changing out of my suit and back into street clothes. All of this is happening while I am continuously in the way of the rest of the band trying to load cases back into the room where we played. 

March 20, 2022

9:15AM CST

“I bet y’all had fun, didn’t you?” Is always the question you get when you say you played a wedding in a place like downtown New Orleans. If I can reflect on that moment in my mind of floating along the mighty Mississippi like Huck and John floating away to freedom, well, then I can honestly answer “yes”.

Ya know, I’m just going to leave that list above alone to speak for itself. Let your imagination take you through the journey of that day filled with a six hour ride, loading in and out of the French Quarter on a Saturday lunch hour and Saturday evening with no loading area to pull into. 

I will let you pretend you have two and a half hours of downtime with nowhere to sit except public benches (just not the one’s beside the venue because the wedding photographer needs those to look empty while photographing the wedding party in the middle of a Saturday in the heart of the French Quarter) around the city. 

Don’t forgot you weren’t told and didn’t research at all about city laws in a city which you do not live and because you were told you would have a room to change within the venue itself that you didn’t bring your vaccination card with you so you can not go in anywhere to get food, a drink, and just sit and enjoy the city.

I will let you ponder what it feels like setting up a show that routinely takes over an hour with all of the space in the world to last minute instructively being limited to under thirty minutes with almost no space with which to work around each other. 

Also, picture the only open space left in the room not filled with dancing bodies while you perform is the space for the band and then people and the wedding photographers using that space as if it were a crosswalk to drunkenly stagger past kicking your mic stand base driving the mic into your lips and teeth. 

Go ahead and contemplate the restraint you would show while one of the event venue’s employees talks to you like you are a beggar asking for bread crumbs even though you are contracted to be fed by them and you have the audacity to just stand there awaiting your food because he told you the food as ready but ignorantly figured only three of the nine band member crew wanted to eat. In all honesty, I should’ve just punched that dude square in the mouth.

Yet again. I tire of the whining that I seem to relish typing out for you. The writer in me loves telling the reality of the events in the course of the weekend. That guy loves shattering the illusion that music is a “cush” job with hardly any work. But, the part of me that reads back what I wrote to keep up with what is being said, he just yells inside my brain, “Dude, shut up! No one wants to hear your bitching.”

I am typing again from the backseat of the F450. I am almost back to my truck. I will finish up when I get back home in 200 plus miles. See ya then.

10:32PM EST

I am back home. I have been home for a few hours. My March Madness bracket is no completely busted. I’m just now sitting down to upload everything to my desktop computer. 

The past sixty hours have felt like an entire week. I traveled just under one thousand miles. I slept all of seven hours combined in two different beds.  I went through two different bouts of darkness. I quit music about thirty times while playing music. I dreamed of spending my life performing and writing music and formed a few new band projects in my mind. 

I traveled through five states. I drank around ten cups of coffee. I showered twice. I changed clothes outside in the public eye four times. I lost my phone, my wallet, and my keys three different times. I found them exactly where I put them “so I wouldn’t lose them” all three times. 

I laughed aloud more times than I can count. I got to see various places of beauty that not very many people get to see in a single lifetime. I heard many different accents and dialects. I even got to make a few people smile with a quick joke who may have not had a reason to smile. That, that is the part I like most. Yeah, that is the best part. A genuine smile can change the world.

I hope that you have a wonderfully fabulous week and that you find happiness, even if in small bits, everyday.

Good evening.

Travel Journal Entry 4

Monday March 14, 2022

I am writing this week’s journal retrospectively as a summation instead of writing as the weekend goes along. I am doing so mainly because of the riding situation. So here I sit outside in the orchard at home trying to recall events of a whirlwind gig trip.

All one-day gig weekends are physically stressful mostly because they almost never happen near home. Usually those gigs are five to six hours away at the very least. This sets up the ol’ drive and ride for a quarter of the day, set up immediately upon arrival, get changed and stuff down food (if there is any around), perform, immediately tear down while getting changed back into normal clothes, ride to the hotel, sleep about four hours, head back home routine. Not a lot of time for settling in and typing out all of the thoughts of the day. Just enough time to get things done that are required for earning a paycheck. 

This wasn’t always the way. At one point we, musician friends, would get to destination gigs a day early and go find things to do and then stay there for a day or two or even a week until time to head to the next gig. Mr. Wes Loper actually shared a photo to Brandon Whigham and me, this weekend, of his old sailboat. Man, the fun time I got to have with them on that boat. 

I do miss that freedom of not having many responsibilities and the means to explore new places and build amazing friendships. Mainly I miss having the physical dexterity and energy to go do things like that. 

Now I can’t even imagine having enough energy to do anything but sleep and ache after a day of snorkeling with Neil and Eric, boating and fishing with Wes Loper and Whigham, or cooking freshly caught fish (that Wes and I caught earlier in the day) with Les Hall prepping the food at midnight and having everyone over at four in the morning after their gigs were over. Everyone sat around and unwound until the sun was almost directly over our heads.

Let’s not forget the two year on-going every Monday night jam session at The Garage after party that was always hosted by Ryan Balthrop and Kenny Lewis. They allowed for us to have straight up cookouts in the backyard that started around five o’clock in the morning. Everyone in the entire Mobile, AL music business that was awake would come hang out as Kenny, Glenn Siggers, and I took turns grilling and whipping up dishes. We knew how to have a good time and build lifelong friendships. 

Nowadays, its just get there, play, go home or go to the next gig. Friendships are still made but not the way the used to be. In your forties it definitely feels more like a day job. I luckily have good coworkers so I do not feel like I am working a 9 to 5 type of gig. But, somedays I certainly miss sitting around a Waffle House or Denny’s table in the wee hours of the morning sharing stories and the happenings at the gigs we all had that night. 

I digress. It snowed. I got up extra early for the trip after going to bed extra late. A lovely sight to wake up to unless you are an early bloom in the orchard. Now you are deceased and wilted. Pretty, still, but you are fragrant no more. 

There were some funny things that happened on the journey there. I accidentally clobbered a five year old with a Starbucks bathroom door. He ran hard into that closing door. Poor little guy. Caitlin witnessed it and laughed but was able to restrain the sound of her laughter. I apologized to the kid and his dad then immediately laughed. Emotionally I felt bad for the child but visually that shit was hilarious. 

This weekend was a good crowd and was fairly easy to make function. That’s all I can remember at the moment. 

I hope that you have a wonderfully fabulous week and that you find happiness, even if in small bits, everyday.

Good Day!

Travel Journal Entry 3

March 3, 2022

Today’s gig was a Fraternity party in Opelika, AL. Opelika is a neighboring town to Auburn, AL and home to Auburn University. People rent out the turn of the century buildings in downtown Opelika for formal events, which this was. This part of the town is actually quaint and well kept. Alabama is full of these neat southern gothic towns. This one is lucky enough to be cared for. 

The situation for this show was to drive there, unload and set up, perform, break down and load up, then drive back home. We do not have a Friday gig this week. Just Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. I figured that going home was better than a wasted day and an unnecessary hotel expense. As high as gas prices are this week they are still not as expensive as hotel rooms three nights in a row. A four hundred and twenty-three mile round trip and another long day.

 Normally in these situations we are hired to play for a four hour time span. This equals two ninety minute sets separated by a thirty minute break. Rarely do these functions begin on time and we often will start about thirty minutes late and then do two seventy minute sets separated by a twenty minute break. Not tonight. Tonight we started five minutes late and ended two minutes early, non-stop. Luckily we were only booked for three hours. But, hey, what’s a four hour drive, a two hour set up, a thirty minute break for whatever fast food is close, a two hour and fifty-three minute performance, a one hour load out, and a three and a half hour drive home, if not good for the soul?! Geez!

I chose the Gibson SG as my guitar for the night, thankfully. The SG is my lightest weight guitar at around seven pounds, but that is not the reason I opted to play it. I chose it because I love how it plays and the way it sounds. I’m happy with my decision because my shoulder and back are old and weary. Still, all in all, it was a good show and a fun crowd.

Memorable standout moment of the night:

I experienced a first for me as a performing musician of twenty-nine and a half years. That is a rare thing with so many hours of observing drunken stupidity over the years and living within my own stupidity and clumsiness. Not many things that can happen to you while on stage haven’t already happened to me more than a few times but it did at this gig. This really did happened.

Somewhere into the beginning of the second hour of playing the crowd was close to the front of the stage and having a good time. The show was high energy and non-stop. Two couples found their way in front of me. One of the girls directly in front of me preferred to stand with her back to the stage and looking and talking to her friends. This is odd to people born before 1990 but pretty normal for Millennials and Gen Z folks. I thought nothin of it. They were having fun and as long as she was engaged and enjoying herself I take no offense to her turning of her back to the band at the front of the stage. 

When I am not singing I stand away from the microphone by a few feet, especially in COVID times. No distance is too safe. When I sing though, I have to be right on the mic. As I walked up to sing some harmonies at this point I felt something that made my body revolt. I started to choke a little. It felt like a fly had flown into my mouth. However, I couldn’t feel anything in my mouth. I stopped singing and tried to find whatever it was with my hand thinking maybe it was on my lips. Fun fact, No! I didn’t find a fly or a gnat or a bug. I felt what it was as I was on the verge of gagging and I couldn’t really process what happened or how it happened.

I looked forward at the people in front of me and noticed the young lady in front of me, her back still turned. She had been head banging exaggeratedly with her friends and I suppose she was trying to fix her hair back by teasing it vigorously with her bare hands. She had lovely, long red hair. Lovely long hair that was leaving her scalp at a rapid pace and that is when I realized I, when taking a breath, had sucked one of those hairs into my mouth and down my throat!

I found the hair still hanging out of my mouth and pulled. This thing felt like it was ten feet long. It was all the way down my throat and still hanging out of my mouth. Oh yeah, I was gagging. Gagging from my gag reflex and gagging at the thought of someone’s hair down my throat.

I walked back to my amp and took a big gulp of my watered down melted ice and Coke Zero. That didn’t help. You know when you find a bug on you and you flick it off it still feels like it is there for the rest of the day? That’s how this felt except it was a hair, and not my own hair, and it felt stuck in my throat. 

Now, I’ve had long of my own when I was younger and I have had it get into my mouth many times, but I have never had a random stranger’s hair in my mouth and down my throat. That shit will mess up your evening with the quickness. I ran off stage and over to Caitlin, who was side stage, and told her what happened. She turned green and had eyes as big as saucers. Very sweetly and concerned she got me a bottle of water. I got back on stage and finished the song. For the next hour and a few minutes I kept playing and singing with that feeling in my mouth. Not fun, at all.

On the bright side, I had a new experience. Now I have a story to share with you that doesn’t involve the usual aspects of a gig.

March 5, 2022

9:00PM CST

The usual so far. Drive, unload and set up, sound check. Two hours to kill before the show. Caitlin, Tim, and I went to eat next to the venue. Mexican food. Still have an hour to kill. I laid in the bed of the pickup for a bit and let the early springtime wind wash over me. I’m typing this now so I don’t forget to tell you how much I love the wind.

3:03AM CST

Just got into the hotel room. I am alone tonight, no sharing a room. Only two of us are more than twenty to sixty minutes away from home here on Tuscaloosa, AL. I welcome the solitude and embrace to loneliness for the evening. it.

There are tired bones, sore joints, and ears ringing again tonight. However, the ringing tonight is a bit more extreme in my left ear. Long story short, let me condense the story by saying when using in-ear monitors do not allow random drunk and excited young high pitched people to scream into the microphone. This isn’t the best idea. I feel like someone fired a 9mm pistol off right beside my left ear while riding in a car with all of the windows rolled up. But, hey, ‘they were just having a good time”. I know, I know, if I hadn’t had a passport.

Remind me to tell you the “…if I hadn’t had a passport” story. Actually, all of my passport stories, with the exception of getting my passport the first time, have been bizarre and highly confusing and unlikely to ever happen to anyone else, ever.

Wind, yeah, wind. It is my favorite part about being alive. It is the only thing I have encountered that settles the darkness inside and soothes the tangled knots of my mind. It lifts my soul out of my body and sends it flying freely into the sky, through the trees, along the water, into the fields, and wherever else I wish to go to get free of the snare that is my deepest thoughts. 

Before the show and after I got show ready I sat on my tailgate and felt the cool breeze begin to caress my skin. I laid back and peeked at the few celestial bodies that the lit streets would allow to be seen. A portion of the sky was blocked out beautifully by large southern Oak trees. I could see the wind coming in to lift me high above those rustling leaves before I could actually feel it thanks to the swaying of the branches. I heard the rustle and closed my eyes awaiting my escape. When it took me, it took my by surprise with a mixture of soon to be summer warmth accompanied by the last vestige of the coldness of a hard winter and a hard few years. The wind floated me upon its promise of hope.

The ride was short lived and was ended too soon by the den of bar clatter and passers by hoping to discover that elusive parking spot that didn’t exist in the back lot where the employees park. That is when I got out the keyboard and wrote to you. I am happy I did or I might have prolonged telling you about the wind tonight.

It is now 3:30AM CST. I need to attempt sleep and I need to charge the iPad. Thanks for sticking around. See you tomorrow.

March 6, 2022

1:41PM CST

Sleep was intermittent last night from logging off until about 6:30 this morning when I got up to use the restroom. When I laid my head back down I closed my eyes for what seemed like a blink. Immediately my alarm was telling me that it was thirty minutes away from check out time. That went by way too fast.

Got up and got clean then headed towards the next gig destination. I got to Birmingham a few hours early of load in and had the great fortune of meeting my friends Megan and Chase for lunch. It was fantastic communing and breaking bread with friends. Good friends are a blessing and I am so fortunate to have Chase and Megan as friends. Good company is food for the soul and we always laugh together. I appreciate them making time to visit.

In this moment I sit alone in a local donut and coffee shop typing to you. It’s a warm-ish Sunday afternoon. There is a park across the street. People are out being people and the world seems almost normal again. That is if you dismiss the war, inflation, constant weather fluctuations, civil unrest created by everyone being offended by every thing, and the lack of desire to compromise on anything anymore. Otherwise, things feel pretty normal today. I am enjoying seeing families having picnics and seeing frisbees thrown and hearing innocent laughter of children who have yet to learn the actual world awaiting them in the coming years. All of this is embellished by the coffee shop radio playing the soundtrack to my middle school years. In this moment I remember that I still loving earning a living the way that I do and that I love traveling while I get to work. 

4:53PM CST

I really am a miserable old man. I mean, I would not wish to be around me at work. Why do I say this? Because it is true. I just got irrationally mad about food delivery apps. Really. In my defense they f’n suck and should be banned from society. I loathe them. Why would I want to pay $37 for a $7 Arby’s order? And why in hell would I want to wait forty-five minutes for it? The Arby’s is a half of a mile away? I cannot leave the gig so that is my option at the moment. Ya know what? This is a pointless rant. I have to get ready to play. Bye.

March 7, 2022

Well, I made it safely home after the gig last night. I should apologize for the rant about food apps but I am not going to do that because that is the reality of life on the road. It is manic. The ups and downs that can happen within any given day is a lot like reliving puberty over and over. You go from being totally alone and isolated craving company to being surrounded and craving isolation. This happens many times a day. You go from wanting to be noticed to wanting to be invisible. In some moments you feel seen but those occurrences are usually up-ended by reality reminding you to “dance, monkey, dance”. It can get you messed up very quickly, especially if you listen to your fans and critics or if you rely on their approval, which some mistakenly call “energy from the crowd”.

It is so hard somedays to be grounded in reality because you exist in this alternate world that lies somewhere between adult responsibility and childish freedom. Not knowing which realm to occupy is a crap shoot at best because it is totally dictated by the company you are in and the circumstance you find yourself in at that moment. Once again, it will get you messed up really quickly if you let it. 

I am very lucky in that I have a wonderful support system at home with my loved ones, my friends, and the dogs who don’t seem to care at all about me writing a good line in a song or playing an emotionally moving guitar solo. Nope, they just want to be fed and want to use my leg as a prop for their head so they can nap. Everyone needs that kind of reality to come home to. Even if you do not feel like you need it, you do need it.

That is all for now. I hope that you have a wonderfully fabulous week and that you find happiness, even if in small bits, everyday.

Good Day!

Travel Journal entry #2

Friday Feb 25, 2022

Today was a long day. Lots of driving followed by equal amounts of riding. Six and a half hours over all of vehicle time. The only interruptions were the fuel stop and a vehicle change.  

Conversation isn’t always on the menu while traveling with a band. Everyone is lost in their own world. All are busy bringing weekly home life to a close and getting mentally prepared for the work weekend. The silence of thought may get a brief respite with a “Hey, did y’all happen to notice..?” type question, but silence returns quickly and you stare out of the window and return to your dreams of spending money you don’t have on things you don’t really need. 

We got to our destination on time and began the load in. Load in for this band can take anywhere from forty-five minutes to three hours, including sound check. There was a bit of confusion about the stage and a rather lengthy set up due to Jeff changing a few things for the better making upgrades on his equipment. Not too bad though. Time to get this show going! Well, not quite. We still have two and a half hours to wait. 

After a very Spinal Tap half hour of figuring out where to get changed we found our changing room and spent the next two hours waiting, changing. We sat in steel chairs with thin canvas padded seat cushions while we stared into the mirror covered walls awaiting our start time. Thirty minutes before time to play we were invited to eat. Our meal for the evening was catered food, fried chicken tenders and fried fish pieces. There were also French fries, deviled eggs, lots of mayonnaise based sauces and a tomato sauce. You may not know this but fried foods and singing don’t really mix. You know what else doesn’t mix? Being a broke musician and turning down free food. Catering wins again.

Start time and we did our thang. For one hour and forty-five minutes. That was then followed by a twenty minute break and then another hour and forty-five set. Immediately after the show we began packing up. Just under two hours and about eight thousand pounds of equipment later we are loaded up and ready for the thirty minute drive to the hotel.

Checked in. Everyone made it safely into their rooms. Time for bed, finally. 

I began my day at 8:30am EST and laid down at 3:45am CST. Long day. Can’t sleep. I lay on my back and stare into the shadows on the ceiling made by the light cast from the street lamps outside. I learned in sixth grade that light can not bend. I learned in college six years later that light actually can bend. This process its called diffraction and the amount that light bends is relative to the size of the wavelength and the size of the opening. The brighter the source of light and the more open the path means longer wavelengths and greater bending. Well, this hotel window seems to border the sun and the distance from the curtain edge to the wall is roughly the size of Snake Canyon. There is more light in the room than darkness. I look for darkness on the ceiling and try to trick myself into believing it is dark and time to sleep. 

The ringing in my ears is still as loud as it was on stage. I am too tired for advantageous thought so I just ponder my existence and wonder what I will tell you about the day and what will I buy with all of that money that I do not have in the bank.

Saturday morning greats me with cat poop flavored drool on the pillow and in my beard. My ears are still ringing. I didn’t really sleep as much as I rolled, tossed, turned, and snored while being partially awake. It is 8:30am CST. I very clumsily hop out of the bed and into the shower. That’s not entirely true. I did actually hit my knee on a table in the room and I pulled hard on a push door. Then I made it into the bathroom. I get cleaned and brush my teeth with just enough time to make “bus call”. It’s a four door truck this week but it is still bus call. 

For the next six and a half hours I repeated the pattern of the previous day but in the opposite direction. The journey was uneventful except getting “the bird” from a passenger in a car that damn near clipped my front end merging into my lane with no signal. I suppose I forget to read the mind of the driver and just know that she wanted over. I mean, why use a turn signal when other drivers are clairvoyant?

So that is the story for this week. I put in 24 hours of work and driving into a 30 hour work weekend. Pretty normal for a traveling musician. It always looks easy and fun from the crowd, and it is, but it is a lot of other things that can not be described as “fun”. That is not a complaint. It is a statement of honesty. I still enjoy what I do and I know I am blessed to have such a vocation.

That is all for now. I hope that you have a wonderfully fabulous week and that you find happiness, even if in small bits, everyday.

Goodnight.  

Travel Journal (post 1)

February 19, 2022

I bought a Bluetooth keyboard to pair with my iPad mini and now I can work on essays from the road. I am not sure if you have ever tried typing out several hundred words with your thumbs on the screen of an iPad mini but it isn’t very fun or fast. This keyboard thingy seems to be doing the job pretty well so far. Hooray for that!

It is 4:12 AM EST and the ringing in my ears has yet to subside. I attempted typing in the dark. Did not work out so well. I thought I was a poor speller under normal conditions. I just tried to read this crap I typed and it looks more like a cat walking along the keys instead of an adult typing out words. Light back on. I will not keep it on too long though. I am sharing a room with Wes Peters. I try not to be a bad roommate. I like to stay up a bit longer than whomever I share the room so they can fall asleep before I do and I commence snoring. This rarely helps me from waking people but I do like to try. 

I am going to attempt to sleep now. I will pick this back up tomorrow and maybe get to a point. We shall see.

Goodnight.

12:37 PM EST

It is now Saturday, it was Saturday last entry but since I didn’t sleep until early this morning I will consider that time awake as a really long Friday. I am sitting in a Dunkin’ having a Latte with almond milk and pulling the bread away from a breakfast sandwich. We have a two and a half hour drive ahead of us and four hours to make it. I thought I’d check in. 

Nothing much to tell so far. Last night’s gig was a typical college bar gig. Lots of people with lots of young energy doing college age stuff. A part of me misses having that drive and energy. Another part of me wishes they would just go home and stop taking selfies every thirty seconds. This will be one well documented generation. Sadly, they will look back on these times and photos and only remember trying to capture the perfect selfie. That being said I wish I had taken more pics of family and friends. It would be so nice to see them smile when I need a smiling face to brighten up the day.

With this younger generation I have learned a few lessons. Lesson one, Reading FREEBIRD!!!! on a cell phone shoved in your face is just as annoying, if not more so, than some drunk idiot yelling it at you all night long. While the yelling has gone away the pestering and dismissive nature of what you are doing is still there. 

Lesson two: No one of this age group seems to get that playing an instrument while singing takes a ton of concentration. Combine that with a total lack of spacial awareness and you get someone talking at you while you try to entertain. This can be very annoying but it is almost always very funny in a “I’m on a Larry David tv sitcom right now, right?!” sort of way. If I were watching the events unfold on the tv I would be laughing so hard at it. So, a part of me, a part I can’t hide, laughs aloud. Look, if something is funny, even if it distracts me from my task at hand, I am going to laugh. Fact. Honestly, many gigs it feels like we are in room full of five to six feet tall toddlers. All of them vying for favor and attention, tugging at your shirt screaming Gimmie, Gimmie, Gimmie and NO, NOT THEM, ME!! They search out the stage for set lists and demand you play only the songs they know and like. Once again, if it were a tv show it would be very amusing to watch. I still laugh anyway. 

Lesson Three: It is okay being yourself at all times. This generation is so accepting of people as they come. While I realize there will always be social groups, clicks or a “squad”, these younger adults don’t draw the lines of old. It really is a beautiful thing to see. The diversity in the audiences and in the groups within the audiences is a sight to behold. If you can peel back your own biases and look objectively on these folks you will see that the better world we all worked hard to build is there. Yes, it may have brought along some ideas that are foreign to us old folks but we are getting what we hoped to get. Diversity, inclusion, acceptance do not come about without creating new ways of experiencing the world. People are allowed to have their own ideas. While some of their ideas may seem odd to us, and some may be a terrible waste of time and resources, these generations must be allowed to make up their own minds and make their own mistakes. Heaven knows we certainly did so. That part of the college age experience is my favorite part and my favorite lesson learned.

1:25 AM EST Sunday morning.

Last gig of the weekend has finally drawn to a close. Gear is loaded out and packed away. After a short drive from the venue, a country clubhouse, and numerous slow laps around the parking lot trying to discern the Divinci Code level numbering system used by this Econo Lodge I am sitting alone in the hotel room. It is quit except the ear ringing accompanied by the sound of my heartbeat and my breathing both pulsing inside my ears. As I sit here wondering what to write to you I begin to nod. I hear music and conversation as if I’m standing backstage at a concert hall while the orchestra tunes and the audience shuffles their way to their seats greeting familiar faces on the way to sitting down. It is strange that as I begin to doze off the noise gets louder. I only know that I am awake when the room falls back into silence. It is so loud inside my head. It is a harsh clutter of noise in there. I sit here alone waiting for my mind to silence and slow. 

I’m not really alone, though. You are here. Thank you for being here with me tonight and all weekend long. Seems like a small thing to just read the thoughts of a person traveling for work, but it means a lot to me, your being here. Knowing that you are reading/listening helps quit the din that all to often screams me to sleep.

12:04 PM EST Feb 20, 2022

I’ve stopped for lunch on the way home. I realized on the drive up this morning that I forgot to mention that I lost my voice yesterday morning. I wasn’t able to sing at the show last night and this morning I can’t use voice text while driving. I have to wait until I stop for lunch and gas to announce my estimated time of arrival and deliver a good morning. Otherwise, It is nice to not talk aloud. Sitting in silence and letting my mind wander I hear my internal monologue. It doesn’t actually sound like I sound when speaking. It sounds like a conglomeration of all of the people I know. If I say something my sister would say my internal voice sounds like her, my dad sounds like my dad, my mom sounds like my mom, my niece sounds like my sister and me combined with Sissy Spacek’s Loretta Lynn portrayal, which is how she sounds in real life anyway, and Rachel sounds like Rachel...but, I don’t sound like my outward voice. It is more like words that just appear as if I am reading or typing. I don’t actually hear it at all in my mind. I hear the others just not myself. There is a rhythm and a cadence. I even experience tonal ups and downs for excitement and let down. I just don’t hear, or rather, imagine the sound of a voice. I suppose that is pretty normal, right? 

Anyway, I am unable to sing at all and couldn’t sing last night. It felt weird to just play and not harmonize. While I was able to focus more on playing guitar I couldn’t help feeling like I let the bad down by not jumping in on vocals. It happens. I am blessed that it is only temporary. But for now, I am enjoying the silence and departure from hearing my own BS when talking. 

That is all for now. I hope that you have a wonderfully fabulous week and that you find happiness, even if in small bits, everyday.

Goodbye.