Oen-o! -or- how I came unto Dionysian employ

So, as I may have mentioned, I’m in the wine business now, along with the music business. I’ve always been hot for the world of imbibing, whether it be coffee (a well-know and documented addiction of mine), whiskey (also well-known and documented), beer, wine, hell, even water. Me likey drinkey.

So, in the midst of my Nashville scramblings—finding an apartment, networking in the music scene, foraging for nuts and berries—I happened upon an opportunity in the wide world of wine that intrigued me, and I figured I could use the dough. Soon enough I found myself a part of YN, inc, an up-and-coming player on the Nashville wine scene, and I’ve had a lot to learn. Which is how I found myself as the YN representative at an industry tasting yesterday in a swanky, modernist Italian restaurant in historic Germantown, just a bit north of downtown.

I tried to look stylish and successful, donning a black-tie, velvet-blazer upper (the successful part) paired with some dark jeans and Converse All-Stars (the stylish part), but I’m not sure that helped. This was a showcase for Frederick Wildman and Sons, a major importer and distributor out of New York City and it seemed most of the big dogs in Nashville wine were on hand. While tasting wine sounds like a simple task, and one that any lush or rummy off the street would have no trouble accomplishing, it’s actually a bit stressful and requires a lexicon and perspicuity all it own. Basically, a bunch of people in expensive clothes gather around a couple of tables pouring, and sniffing, and drinking, and dumping a volatile amount of wine into metal receptacles, all the while expecting that their Versace suit will come out unscathed. I tried to work my way down the line of the reds first, taking time to note both the nose (read: smell) and the taste of the wine, find the brand on my price list, and record my observations. Meanwhile people are bumping into me, more experienced merchants trying to move quickly down the line, laughing, and talking, and shouting with cacophonous zeal. Needless to say, I still don’t really know what I’m doing or what I’m saying, a mere roustabout among professionals. I’ve been relieved to find out that I can actually identify what I’m smelling and tasting, but I’m not confident enough yet to believe what I’m saying. My boss seems to think I’m doing just fine, for whenever I give him my notes on a particular tasting he says something like “You’re doing fine,” or “spot on”. I’m not convinced. I had an easier time with the whites, as the crowd was beginning to thin as the tasting wound down and one of the proprietors took the time to walk me through a few of his personal favorites. I was surprised to find that I had an easier time feeling conclusive about the whites; likely, this is because I’ve spent enough time with reds to learn how to appreciate the myriad flavors of which they can be comprised, and I don’t know much about the complexities of white. Its like trying to explain to someone who only knows how to appreciate the baser elements of music—say, Nickel back and Britney Spears—why Joe Henry and Ornette Coleman kick so much ass. I guess I was able to find the Britney of white wines. It takes time to learn the finer things.

So, here I am, bravely riding forth into unexplored territories. Or perhaps it’s a little more like creeping forward, peering into the shadows for booby traps. Regardless, I’m advancing toward my own western horizon, my very own American frontier. Now where’s my Davy Crockett cap?

Another Day, Another Night

Time is speeding up in Nashville, Tennessee. Patterns are beginning to show themselves, streets are starting to makes pathways, things are happening or appearing at regularly scheduled intervals; yes, I think its true, the honeymoon is over and this is my island now—coconuts, thatched roof, and all.

I’m kidding of course—about the tropical island theme, that is. Despite an unusually warm winter for me (I’m from the north, remember; I’ve lived in Ohio, Boston, and the second wettest place on earth, second only to the Amazon jungle, Swansea, Wales) including a day or two at 70 degrees, today it is snowing. And this time a real snow, with big New England-sized snowflakes that dust the windows and stick in your hair.

I know I should embrace the winter here because it won’t last long, and I really like wearing coats and jackets and scarves, but it’s hard because my house, beautiful as it is with is dark-stained wood floors, mahogany and tile kitchen, and large-stoned fireplace is cold as a son of a bitch. We can’t turn the heat up because we’re poor, and when we do, Harlan can only lay in bed at night counting the times the furnace turns on, calculating the fiscal damage each firing incurs.

Last night, probably the coldest of the year so far, I headed over to the Mercy Lounge, a venue housed in an old cannery warehouse, down in the industrial lowlands of midtown Nashville. The place has a great stage and sound system, with a tidy, loft-like vibe, all steel, concrete, and wood with red velvet trimmings. Outside the big-paned windows trains roll by frequently, though without any aural disruptions; they must have insulated the shit out of that wall. Watching trains roll by in the dark, a Guinness in your hand, makes the music that much more romantic, and that’s why I like the place. I was there to see my friends The Bittersweets, a band from San Francisco who also recently relocated to Nashville. They been in the throes of finishing a new record, one that I’m very excited about, and so last night was the first time I’ve had the opportunity to hear some of the new material. Afterward I tried, inconclusively, to offer my services as a pedal steel player, but I’m still not really great at being suggestive of my worth to potential suitors, musically or romantically. I, of course, blame my long and multifarious history with women.

Another boon of my late-night winter-laden traipsing was that the whole show was full of great acts. The night was opened by the banjo-tinkling Julie Lee, who sang quietly and quoted Emily Dickenson, and was concluded by sets from Robby Hect, a soulful, finger-picking, beanie-cap-wearing fella with a great band, and Judd and Maggie, a duo from Nashville via Baltimore. I went home, feeling restive and fully awake, so I paced around the kitchen, eventually pouring myself some cereal, and read some of Dave Eggers new book, What is the What, a semi-biographical novel about Valentino Achak Deng, a Sudanese refugee and American immagrant; thus far, the book is, like Eggers’ first, both heartbreaking and genius (Eggers’ first book was called A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius).

I did get to thinking last night, however, and it occurs to me that one habit I’ve been getting into here, thankfully, is the willful embracement of each day. I don’t feel paralyzed by options, or tortured by my dreams and aspirations. There are a whole lot of things that I want to do, yes, but I do have time. I probably won’t be famous, and I probably won’t be rich, and I probably won’t see nearly as much of the world as I’d like to, but at least I’m trying now, and not just worrying like I had been for the last two years. I think I’d like to call it the post-collegiate stress syndrome, or perhaps the 21st century freeze-out, but whatever it’s called I’m glad that it has passed. As weird as it feels to say it, I’m just happy to be alive and doing stuff, and excited to see where it all leads. And, no, I’m not on Quaaludes.

And there you have it, another day and another night in Music City. I better find something to be pissed about before this blog gets excessively sentimental and cloying. F*%# Santa! Yeah, that ought to do it.

Pestle to the Mortar

I’m still here, I’m still not dead, and I’m only mostly broke; today marks three weeks that I’ve been in Nashville, and I’m here to report that things remain relatively unremarkable, though not negatively so.

I’ve spent a lot of time meeting people, cold calling folks I respect, sending emails into the black hole of cyberspace, seeking knowledge, direction, and positive reinforcement. And mostly, that’s what I’ve received; the people, it seems, are why one stays in Nashville. I know that I’ve raved and ranted blindly about the social climate here in the past, insistent that the people of Nashville—or, more specifically, of the Nashvillian music scene—would have to be nice, professional, and supportive, if only for the sake of career longevity. First of all, this can’t entirely be true, semantically or ideologically, because it would also therefore indicate that people in New York City wouldn’t be pretentious, arrogant assholes completely self-deceived of their city’s importance, and people in L.A wouldn’t be smug, over-sexed meat heads completely self-deceived of their own importance, and we all know that not to be true. Oh, stop it. (Yes, I realize that I am making bold, unsubstantiated claims about entire metropolitan populations, but what fun would a blog be without some bitching? In addition, suffice it to say that I have many, many friends in both of those cities whom I love and respect for being bigger, better people than me, and I would be both delighted and enthralled to have the opportunity to live in either of those fair points of egress. ‘nuff said.)

But, for the most part, it is true: people in Nashville are nice. Sure, some drive like dicks, and some are probably bigots, the public transportation authority sucks, and the discrepancy between wealth and poverty is all too apparent. But, hell, you can find that stuff anywhere, places where there isn’t an amazing community of musical minds and industry folk, a few of whom still believe in music. I can say, with certainty, that all of the people who I’ve met or contacted have been fantastically accommodating, humans of the highest caliber.

You may also have noticed that I’m getting a little work. I’ve got my first Nashville date coming up in March, at the hip club The Basement, which I’ve mentioned frequently in the past. This gig is with a singer/songwriter named Chad Harris, a talented and earnest chap who reminds me, musically, of Emerson Hart, the former lead singer of the-big-in-the-late-nineties-band Tonic. He’s got some good things in the works for future touring and also has the current theme song for Speed TV. I’m sure I’ll have more to report on this soon.

Also still cooking on the stovetop is the record for my bud Matt Mackey, which is somewhere in studio-land, being mixed and awaiting overdubs of piano and organ by none other than keys maestro and Nashville resident Gabe Dixon. I’ve been told I might have something to do with this, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed. From what I’ve heard (literally, I’ve listened to a couple of cuts, not just heard it through the grapevine), Mackey’s record is going to very cool, and fill a unique space in today’s music market, falling squarely between the contemporary sentimentality of white-guy singer songwriters and the grit and sex of Bill Withers, which, in my humble opinion, is a pretty cool place to be. I really hope to get out and tour behind that record, but all of that is yet to be seen. I’m hopeful though, as Matt just moved a bit closer to me, now finding himself in Alabama to be near the missus, so look for some regional dates on my calendar.

So, the good news is I like it here. The bad news is, I’m going to have to stay here to make this work. Everyone, and I mean everyone, has reminded me that the only way to get to where you want to be, career-wise, in this town is to be persistent. One engineer/drummer told me it took seven years to get the gig he wanted, and now holds. Jason Lehning, one of my favorite producers in town, and a member of one of my favorite bands, The Silver Seas, told me it took him ten years to get to where he really wanted to be. But everyone has told me that it can be done, but you can’t just talk and dream, you’ve got put the pestle to the mortar, as it were. Just watch me.

Meanwhile, I’ve been keeping a revolving schedule of periodic homebody-ing followed by peripatetic and automotive tomfoolery. I’ve found an excellent fromaggeria to buy rich smoked cheeses and rosemary ham. I’ve drunk gallons of coffee. I went antiquing with the roommates, and found granite-topped armoires and mounted deer heads out of our price range, and a crystal whiskey decanter which wasn’t, and so it now sits on my kitchen counter illuminating the Rittenhouse Rye within. It’s been three years since I lived in Boston and I must say, it’s good to be back in the city again.

Currently on the docket is making preparatory accommodations for our first in-house fire (in the fireplace, of course), working with Harlan on our book of Retro-sexual miscellany (my proposed title: The Man-ifesto. Get it? Also, as a preview, our hall of illustrious alumni includes Capt. Myles Standish, Abraham Lincoln, Ernest Hemmingway, Cary Grant, and George Clooney) and opening a wine store (it’s a long story, but check out http://www.n2yn.com for delicious hints for the rumor-mongering). Pestle to the mortar, indeed.

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times

Whoa, reflective-ness! What a perilous, occasionally narcissistic, but gosh-darn heartwarming exercise thinking back can be. I’ve been trying to rein myself in all day, but thoughts of the past few years continue to creep up, and in my continued job-less and friendless state of parsimony, I’ve little to do but sweep the kitchen floor, pluck at my guitar, and find innovative ways to combine peanut butter and bread. And so, creep up they do, these thoughts, and I am powerless to stop them.

Living in my hometown in Ohio, as a post-collegiate without crippling student-loan debt, I lived cheaply, and thus was afforded a great many benefits. I traveled widely, I toured frequently—often to far-flung places where we made little to no money—and I ate and drank as if at a kegger thrown by Dionysus. In my humble little hometown there still exists bars where one can buy a drink for, no joke, one dollar and twenty-five cents. Frequently, my only night of the week out on the town was Tuesday, when I would throw my guitar in the trunk and head downtown for the revelry, imbibing, and occasional music-making of an old-Irish-guys music session, where we’d gather in a half-circle of dilapidated chairs around the equally dilapidated upright piano, pound out the jigs and reels, and where I’d drink Guinness and whiskey (usually Jameson, as my preferred Powers was mysteriously absent from what was advertised as the only “Irish Pub” in town) for free, all night. It was a fool’s paradise, some might say, but I still found an abundance of misery.

But, oh, the travel. While music, girls, and drinking (coffee, tea, beer, whiskey—anything caffeinated or alcoholic) are things I take very, very seriously, traveling may be the only thing of which I would never, ever, tire. It’s become something of a feedback loop for me, building onto its ever-widening wavelength, spiraling outward uncontrollably like the slow rumble of thunder echoing across the open plain. These past two years I’ve been very lucky, in ways that only now, broke and overwhelmed by the necessity to ingratiate myself to a new community, I’ve begun to appreciate. There is a handy little application on Facebook called “Where I’ve been” which has the ability to inform you of your travel-related worth by tracking your “stats”; apparently, I’ve been to 13% of the world, and I don’t know if I should be pleased or dissatisfied. But in the past two years alone, in part because of the touring, which escalated nationally in scope for The Princes of Hollywood, and also because I was itching to get out of town on all my other spare moments, I managed to go. A lot. From Boston to Los Angeles, Key West to Seattle, I hit the airways and interstates of this expansive country and caught passing glimpses of it’s history, both past and in the making. At one point I brazenly drove the full expanse of highway 90, which starts near the Boston Harbor and ends just east of Puget Sound and downtown Seattle. I surfed in Hawai’i. I sipped coffee and pastries continental in San Francisco. I think I was in Mexico once. I hazily remember an alcohol-related swimming pool accident in Charleston, South Carolina, a whiskey-fueled, late night bluegrass session high in the mountains of West Virginia, and almost getting arrested for playing a mandolin in a Fredericksburg, Virginia Seven-Eleven at 4 in the morning. Let the record show, please, that I have no regrets, and plead innocent on all charges.

Now, let it also be noted: this is not a compendium of braggadocio, but a fond walk down memory lane, and I only share because it brought me joy, and I wish you the same. Currently, however, I’m recalling these things with a tad bit of sadness, since my lifestyle change, while necessary for the sake of science and the progress of humanity, has momentarily forced me to put my wanderlust away. I know I have work to be done here, and it feels good to be where I am right now, and, really, that’s all you can hope for. I’ve got job interviews to attend, auditions to schedule, and people to meet, but I will be back with more, music-specific updates from music city later this week. But first, I need to go buy a map of Tokyo and start dreaming.

The End of the American Dream –or-- What’s a Generation To Do?

There is something deeply troubling brewing in America today. For a generation raised on the prosperity and hubris of the 80s and 90s, the turns we are taking in this country are a bit hard to stomach. Not only has corporate America and the rise of Yuppiedom raised our lifestyle standards to unprecedented and unsubstantiated levels, it’s also made it so that we have, ironically, very little choice about the lifestyles we can lead here. Gone are the days when one could make it as a jazz musician, or a poet, or even an independent proprietor in Manhattan, once the center of the bohemian movement in America that fostered the creation of great art, and music, and literature. Similarly, the beat poets and hippies and other counter-culturalists that once found a home on the streets and cafes of San Francisco must look elsewhere if they hope to keep their lifestyle alive. I, for one, believe that this is a tragic turn of events in the history of American culture.

This country was built upon the idea of the rugged individualist, a place where you—any free person—could claim your plot, dig in your heels, and make a life for yourself on your own terms. At one time, rejecting the status quo only made you an outsider; now, it makes you an endangered species, a dying breed with nowhere to turn. What does a generation such as mine do when faced with a future of crippling debt, a shrinking job market, and an increasingly homogenized culture? Honestly, I do not know. What was once the American dream has been transformed into the American burden—no longer a dream but a standard, a prerequisite, a requirement—and what’s left in its wake is a society without options and choices, only obligations. We’ve started to become everything we feared communism represented during the cold war: a country without opportunity or individual freedom, two of our loftiest American ideals. Think about this: once the American dream was finding a place in our society where you could be the person you wanted to be, own your own house and car, and raise a family in the secure confines of a community and society where your children could grow into the people they dreamed of being. Now, those things have become what we deserve, not aspire to, and its what we do after we have the job, the house, and the family that makes us who we are. Our expectations of what we deserve are destroying the idea of the individual, and with it, the sprit of what has made this country so great, and so pioneering.

Why do I bring this up? Because here in Nashville, I’m meeting people from all over the country who’ve come here because it’s the only place they can afford to live where they feel they can be a part of a large-scale creative community. I have friends in almost every major city in America, from Chicago to Los Angeles, New York to Seattle, Boston to San Francisco, and not one of them can truly afford to live in the fashion we’ve come to expect. And my friends are, for the most part, not in the arts. They are engineers, or chefs, or accountants--smart, well-educated, ambitious folks barely scraping by on salaries that would have made them flush if they had grown up when their parents did. And forget about the main pillar of the American dream, namely property ownership—trying to find an affordable mortgage in California is like trying to find clean in a bucket full of shit.

Great art has always been inspired by a social context, and historically, hotbeds of cultural and artistic innovation have grown in the tumultuous and frenetic landscape of the city—think of how contemporary American music was born in New Orleans at the turn of the 20th century; or of the birth of the American cultural identity in Boston with the rejection of the imposition of British cultural and economic policies. Now, all you can do in cities is try to keep your head above water and work your way to the corner office. Cities are no long fortresses and ports where communities can be grown and ideas hatched, but mere gulags of luxury. We are losing our cities and our dreams, and with it the things that have made America great.

And, simply put, there is no way to have it all back. What the next frontier will be for cultural human evolution is unclear, and the kind of place in the world that the 21st century thinking individual will be able inhabit is yet to be seen. But before we get there, I’d like to take a moment to say a few last words for the American dream: it was a good run, while it lasted, and we’ll miss you.

Tornados, and hail, and music, oh, my!

So, as the dust had partially settled in my house after a hectic weekend of unpacking and situating, I decided it was time to head out on the town to get a little of why I’d moved here in the first place: music! Ignoring the fact that I was broke and still jobless, gig-less, and generally prospect-less, I hopped in the car and headed over to what may be the hippest bar for music in town, The Basement, which is helmed by the witty music patron Mike Grimes, who also owns the adjoining Grimey’s New and Pre-Loved Music, which Rolling Stone declared to be “the best record store in Nashville”. Tuesday is generally “New Faces” night at The Basement, where an assortment of up-and-coming artists and acts play short sets back-to-back. When I arrived, a Nashville-via-Texas songwriter, Mando Saenz, was having a CD release show. He was good, and his tunes were catchy and moody in the right ways, but the real highlight for me was that he had veteran country/roots-rock guitarist Kenny Vaughn playing with him that evening, who I hold in very high regard. Kenny’s regular gig is with Marty Stuart, but he’s played and recorded with a veritable who’s who among the alternative-country scene. This is also very indicative of the kind of thing that happens every night in Nashville: show up someplace, and you’re likely to see, unexpectedly, somebody very good and relatively famous playing for free. Also likely: half the crowd will be folks whose records you own. I think this may take some getting used to. Another thing indicative of the scene in Nashville: yes, there are thousands of extremely talented people making great music. And for every one of those talented people making great music, there is another not-so-talented person making, well, rather passable, unmoving music. Just like anywhere, I suppose. After a number of sets that were enjoyable, but perhaps not particularly memorable, I caught a set by a former Bostonian, who I remember from his Soda-Pop Records days (this won’t mean anything to anyone who hasn’t lived in Boston, but it was a very cool little institution for Boston area music in the early 2000s), named Brett Rosenberg. His attitude and songwriting were spot on—his two most memorable tunes were “Illegal immigrant Girlfriend” (refrain: “she’s my illegal immigrant girlfriend, doing the jobs American girls won’t do”) and “Divorce” (sample lines: “I put regular coffee in the decaf carafe, now that its over she wants half” and “I put the futon mattress on a hard wood floor, she’ll keep banging the guy next door”).

The most interesting part of the evening came when they turned the bar TV to the local news channel so we could all watch the massive thunderstorm system that was sweeping towards us across the state, tornados and massive hail in tow. Proprietor Grimey suggested that we’d be safe in his club since it is located--you guessed it--in a basement. So there I sat, drinking the local Yazoo beer, enjoying some music, expecting that when I returned home the roof would be gone from the house and I’d go back to living in the Extended Stay America where I crashed when I first arrived. Upon leaving, I found my car still in the parking lot, and generally the city looked as it did before I had “gone underground” in the subterranean music club. My house was fine, and generally it appears as though Nashville came out relatively unscathed from the tornados warpath. From the looks of the news coming in from Memphis and Arkansas, they were not so lucky.

It appears I’ll be heading out tonight for some more tunes, and it looks as though I’ll have a similarly full calendar next week—but, hell, that’s why I came here, ain’t it?

Greetings From Nashvegas, Tennessee

The dust has settled, the sweat has run, and the electricity has been turned on: yep, that’s right, I’ve moved to Nashville. I’ve had the dumb luck of renting an amazing apartment, sight-unseen, simply because I ran out of options on the virtual eve of my move, and it has been the beginning of a streak of good luck that I’m assured is due to the fact that God has fallen asleep at the monitor bay of the universe (imagine a room, as in the movies, where they watch the security cameras for a large building…except with God), and is currently unaware of the imbalance of good fortune that has befallen me. In the weeks leading up to this, I’ve had misfortune left and right, ultimately peaking when my car crapped out the day before I was supposed to move; the head gasket went bad, and engine coolant began to leak, and my local mechanic assured me that my engine would seize up and die if I tried to drive it to the grocery store, let alone Tennessee. Even as I crossed the Tennessee border, heavy rain commenced to fall, leaving us to move in to the new place in the pouring rain.

But look at me now, Universe!

So, I think I really like this town. I love my neighborhood, which rests comfortably between the 12th Avenue South and Hillsboro Village centers, where cool shops and good eats abound, and is cradled by the academic and co-ed hotbeds of the universities Vanderbilt and Belmont. Just today, while perusing the cereal isle of my neighborhood grocery market, I bumped into none other than legendary Americana songwriter John Prine (I went for the old fashioned oats, as he appeared to be choosing between versions of Raisin Bran).

The house has been a lot of work to get into shape, and we are still lacking a severe amount of furnishings, but the canvas with which we have to work is astonishing. We have two “living” quarters that we’ve agreed will have decidedly different themes; the first room, also the entrance, has a wonderful working fireplace, and will be “The Parlor”, which will house the wetbar, the phonograph, the bearskin rug, and will be the gathering place to watch the fire, imbibe spirits, and discuss matters of political and sexual consequence; in the next room, to be dubbed “The Key West Lounge”, we have our wicker chairs, steamer trunks, and posters from the Pan American Airlines, in case we need to take a little vacation. Also worthy of noting, Harlan and I have dubbed our shared bathroom “The ManSpace”, complete with hula-girl Christmas lights, a Mexican-tile sink, and “The Man Pod”, a shower with a cylindrical casing, which resembles the kind of thing one might climb into in order to be teleported or perhaps cryogenically frozen; it will also be the Center for Research into Advance Shaving Technique and Etiquette and Other Sundry Retro-sexual Grooming Apparati.

Also, if anyone in Nashville has leads on a locating bearskin rug, please let me know.

In Defense of Music

I’ve not been fully truthful with you already. The last blog I posted here was admirable in its scope and enthusiasm, if a little arrogant, but in many ways it failed to address the more current and personal issues that are fueling my move to Nashville. I’ll spare you the heartache and the heavy-handed mysticism (at least until you buy my albums), but I will be very, very real about one thing: music.

I’ve encountered many folks, some of whom I truly respect, who hold the view that Nashville is “the place where music goes to die” (this was actually said to me backstage by a very kind and talented artist from another town in Tennessee shortly before I informed him that I would be moving to said music-destroying city). In many ways, I can understand why so many might feel this way: the blood-curtling sameness of the last two decades of popular country music; the idea that musical decisions could be made preemptively for the sole purpose of effecting sales; that songwriters could be working with the mission to hit on the lowest common human denominator in order to sell music to Wal-Mart-shopping meatheads who wouldn’t know the difference between a guitar and shovel. I know, sometimes the world makes things suck.

But let me suggest this: regardless of your place in the world—whether you can hop in your SUV and blast the new Sting record on your way to the Yuppie Organics Marketplace or you’re spending twelve hours a day wading knee deep in rice paddies and you’ve never seen a TV—we’re all just trying to get by and find happiness, even if we don’t understand what that means. Give professional artists a break. We can’t all get by on our eccentricities and be critically lauded for wearing monkey suits onstage and being utterly, disarmingly stoned off our rockers the rest of the time in our chic London apartments. We all, whether we acknowledge it or not, have to compromise. For example, aforementioned stoner-rock-star-artist-savant is likely to die young, leaving behind a trail of failed relationships and a catalog of music that is unlikely to outlive his or her tabloid persona. That sure sounds like a compromise to me.

Or how about this: one of my best friends is a chef in the greater Seattle area. If it were up to him, he’d be challenging diners every night of the week, giving them reason to think outside the box, to be open to new and unusual ingredients, or to take the time to appreciate simple, classic comfort food in a new way. Unfortunately for him, and for the rest of us, most folks don’t like to be challenged. It would be nice to think that we could relax, and trust, and learn—as we surely could from someone who has spent the better part of their adult life learning the intricacies of this one tiny part of the human experience—but no. Some folks just want the same well-done steak or chicken Parmesan. Let me put is this way: why would you bother to take a history course in college if you assumed that you knew more that the professor who had spent years studying his or her subject? Do us all a favor--next time you fork over thirty bucks for a meal, suggest that the chef cook you something of his or her preference; the knowledge and passion that will go into that meal just might help you to learn something.

Let’s get back to music. I have another bone to pick, and this is a rather large one. The number one reason why I’m moving to Nashville is the people--the thousands of uber-talented practiced, enthusiastic, and professional people who are there to make music, and understand that compromise is sometimes okay (and in this world, essentially necessary). I need to emphasize just how professional they are, and not because they are talented and gifted and knowledgeable. They are professional simply because of their attitude; because they are willing to relax, to trust, to learn; because they realized that music is bigger than they are, than their egos, than their misguided hopes for immortality. Does this sound a bit like Kundera’s “Unbearable Lightness of Being” (see previous entry)? Well, it is.

Do you want to know how not to get work in Nashville? Have a big ego. Think that what you do is important, and that someone else couldn’t do what you are there to do. You’ll find yourself at home, the phone won’t be ringing, and thousands of other talented, knowledgeable, and humble people will be out there getting your work.

Now I’m no music veteran. I’ve been playing professionally for almost nine years now, which I suppose is respectable for someone who has yet to turn twenty-four, but certainly I’m not alone in the regard. However, I’ve have had the simple good fortune to be put into situations time and time again with people older, better, and more professional than me that I learned these things fast, and while I was still young. I was never given the opportunity to think I was special, or that the gig or the world wouldn’t keep on rolling without me. I’ve tried to be in many bands in the last nine years, and in Ohio, especially in my tiny little town, there are a lot of talented, well-intentioned folks making art who have not had the opportunity to learn these lessons. Want to know what hell will be like? Try starting a band with a bunch of undergrads weaned on their parents coddling and a steady diet of tabloidal MTV and Rolling Stone magazine tales of musical illustriousness. If I have any advice for musicians, young or old, it is this: like a diner at a fine restaurant, or a traveler to foreign lands, learn to relax, and trust, and learn. Music is bigger than you and me, and it is worthy of your attention and humble dedication.