I try never to be negative towards others who are brave enough to break out and try to achieve their ambitious ideals and dreams but tonight, I’ve had it! Not everyone, but a certain someone really disappointed me when I was You-Tubing the Grammys..no-wait, the Emperor who is now naked (the powers of the media and industry) pissed me off because they make a mockery of the ones that paved the way before by marketing to the fast food appetite we’ve developed for entertainment.

Okay, how it’s worked for me:

I fell in love with a guitar, the sound, the arcane art of trying to connect chords and melodies, words, songs, it all got in me and I was hooked.
After that, I played, I played when I could have been striking out with all the popular girls due to my pail and skinny frame but instead, persisted and tried to perfect the three chords and one scale that I could play until I got the nerve to go out and expose people to my horrible caterwauling.
I quit college, lived in a house with a bunch of guys that wanted to ‘make it’ and we lived, ate, and breathed it, all the way down to pretending to be music stars with the local girls.

When everyone went their separate ways, like most bands do, I tried to settle down, I even got married, but it was in there, waiting to emerge and make a deal with me once again that if I persisted, I could get out of dead end jobs forever and do this music thing all the time.

Went to TN, got burned bad by sleazy business folks, came back home and started singing, singing and writing songs, studying, readings about all the great songwriters, it’s all I could do.

Determined, I moved to a music town, took every opportunity and slowly got jobs singing demos and writing with people who could teach me about writing songs that mattered.
Consequently, I signed a record deal with Atlantic under the premise that music mattered, that songs still changed the way we thought, it engaged and brought about new societal paradigms, etc.

After that, there’s a book I could write on why it worked, didn’t work, why nobody on a grand scale knows anything about my music, BUT, I survived, I drank it, did it, destroyed it, lived it and you know, I write those songs, sometimes to my own demise because I still think that becoming great is about a trade and doing your best at it. Transparency is important in this era so I try my best to put it in the music and art is sometimes ugly and painful, but creation has always been violent and if we survive it, something beautiful happens.

This means sacrifice, at least it does for me anyway. I had the bus, the billboards, I stole robes and towels from the Ritz, played in arenas in front of bigger acts, drank with the muckity-mucks and guess what…zero, zilch, none of it mattered, ’cause without a ‘hit’ you got no real fans when it comes to media-driven success.

What I got was a resolve to write songs until someday, somewhere, someone will hear one and it’ll be just right, it’ll strike that universal chord and perhaps I’ll be recognized for five minutes for it BUT…for now, my reality is a van, a trailer, driving like hell, unloading, opening for people I may or may not have heard of and after fifteen years, being paid the same for a gig that clubs paid fifteen years ago, about 150 bucks a night. I play, re-load the trailer, stay in ratty hotels and start again the next day and you know, I LOVE IT . I love it because its my trade, it’s what God gave me to work with and I want to keep at it until my fingers don’t work and my throat is shot.

I made a choice to try and learn to write and convey a message to an audience in a way that is unfeigned…..sometimes I do, sometimes I get in my own way and blow it with a childish ego, but it’s what I do and I put all I have into it. I live for the one or two people that come up and tell me that a song means something to them and it resonates down in their guts. It makes it all worth while.

All the publicists and hype by the media will never be able to give that to me because it DOES NOT LAST.

There was a moment in time when artists did something new, said something that mattered and they rode it to the bank, but they also broke new ground, they backed it up with more and more fresh creativity and carved a place for themselves in the little musical book of history.

That’s what I would hope for, I’m not there yet, but I believe in dreams, underdogs and persistence. NOT the fabricated shit that the media just told me was ‘good’ tonight. I heard it, the songs were presented poorly, flat and they had the hack-written sustenance of a twinky.

Sure that makes me mad, not bitter, just more determined to keep trusting that my gut is the one part of my being that doesn’t lie and that next week at the gig I’ll drive to , when that one person says that the music meant something to them, that I’m being true to something…a black art that I may never get a grasp on but one that will hopefully let me sleep at night and continue to do this when I’m old and grizzled.

I love Tom Waits and Ralph Stanley too, they do what they do and somebody else does, even if their hair ain’t pretty and Clearchannel doesn’t tell the masses.

Success, yes you can learn the ‘craft’, learn the biz, network and write 10 songs a week and up your chances that maybe someday, someone will pay you attention, but quite frankly, I was never one for clubs in school, I played a guitar because I couldn’t play ball, I wasn’t pretty and popular, I PLAYED MUSIC.
I’m not interested at this length in the teeth to try to play in a high school club with money, I’d rather try to earn a little respect through music that matters, it might not matter to but a few for now, but for me that’s enough.

Read a book and write a song, it matters…to someone, I promise it!
If you have nothing to fall back on, you’re probably on the right track.

If you want to be famous, learn the biz, get deep in the pockets of the funding folks and do EXACTLY what they tell you; they ARE the experts…then, sit back and wait for the checks and fan mail to pour in, if not, well, you can always get a real job.