Category: thoughts

2020: The Year in World Providing

Everyone doing all right out there?

This is a crazy time, to be sure. Like everyone, I’ve struggled with isolation. I’ve seen people I once looked up to turn into covid-denying lunatics, and I’ve seen way more people–hell, I’ve seen myself–becoming paranoid, chronically fearful and prone to public outbursts of moralizing. But whenever I’m tempted to sink into self-pity (which is fairly often), I remind myself that everyone is in the same boat, and in fact many are much worse off than me.

So, this year is a bit different as far as WP activity.

I didn’t do any shows this year. A number of my friends did distanced outdoor shows in the summer, while others organized live-streams. I’m just not in a rush. I miss performing very much, but I can wait it out–for now at least.

Montreal supergroup There is Still Time… Brother, performing at Vices & Versa this January to an audience unsuspecting of the plague to come…

I barely even saw any shows this year, although the few I got in before the lockdown were great at the time and have only grown in stature given the circumstances: Montreal all-star soul cover band There Is Still Time–Brother at Vices & Versa and The King Khan & BBQ Show with The Gym Teachers at L’Escogriffe in January, Eliza Kavtion and Stefan Christoff at La Sala Rosa’s basement space La Sotterenea in February, and Michael Feuerstack and Alex Nicol at Ursa in March. As I told Mike, if that had to be the last show I attended before the apocalypse, what better way to go out?

So it was a quiet year on the music front, but I did do a number of interesting things.

I started contributing a monthly guest DJ set to one of my favourite radio shows, The Free Kick Show on CKUT. My next appearance is on Sunday, December 13, doing an hour-long roundup of musical faves from this year. The show airs Sundays from 11am-1pm on CKUT 90.3 FM in Montreal and streams at ckut.ca. 

The What Is This Music?! logo, designed by Todd Stewart

I started my own podcast, What Is This Music?!, in which I attempt to unlock the mysteries of why we love the music we love (and hate what we hate). 

I recorded an original Christmas/holiday song, “Winter Blues” (with my brother Nick Fraser and longtime collaborator Steve Raegele contributing their stylings) by request of Chilly Gonzales for his ICI Radio-Canada holiday special. The broadcast, on December 23 at 8pm and again on Dec 25 at 2pm on ICI Musique stations all across Canada (updated to add: if you missed it, scroll way down to the special on this page until Jan 31), is a “soft launch” of the song which will not be available anywhere else for a little while. 

And, I also recorded an album’s worth of WP demos. I hope to start the recording in earnest on these soon, and have something to share with you all before too long.

I also wanted to mention that 100% of WP merch and music income this year is being donated to Parc Ex Mutual Aid, a community association in my neighbourhood, which has been hit very hard by the pandemic. Check out the options on our Bandcamp page.

My favourite song of the year, and honestly in a really long time, is from Tim Heidecker’s record Fear of Death. I was suspicious when I heard that Heidecker was making a sincere songwriter’s album, even though I’m a fan of his conceptual anti-comedy. Or maybe because I’m a fan of it: I feared being the victim of an elaborate prank. Anyway, the record is good, but the last song “Oh, How We Drift Away,” sung by Natalie Mering (aka Weyes Blood) who collaborates on the whole record, just knocked me out.

The song grabs me right away, being in one of my musical comfort zones–a kind of California 70s mellow country mixed with orchestral pop. The singing begins right off the top–no intro–bold. The first two verses post the awkwardness of small talk as a melancholy microcosm of growing apart from old friends (“I wish I was as clever as they think” is a sobering, poignant statement from such a comedic talent), but then the third verse takes a turn:

20,000 years ago — can you even imagine?

In the Chauvet caves, women painting on the wall

Pictures of their memories, pictures of their stories

Pictures of their love affairs, pictures of their worries

I wonder if they ever dreamt of us at all

Oh, we stand on their bones and walk on their souls

And the children who lived grew into women and men

And painted over their mothers’ work again and again

I don’t know about you, but this kind of profound reflection on the meaning of art and life really hits home with me, and Mering’s incredible voice puts it over the top. I’ve had this song in my head for weeks, and it brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it.

For anyone reading this, I’ve made a decision to transition my writings from this old-school blog format to an email newsletter. Just keeping up with the times. If you would like to keep up with news and reflections from me, sign up for the newsletter here.

I hope you’re all taking care of yourselves and each other, and I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible on the other side of this.

Pete Seeger’s Animal Folk Songs

By request of my kid, I’ve been listening a lot to Pete Seeger’s children’s record, Birds, Beasts, Bugs & Fishes: Animal Folk Songs. Originally released in 1955, it’s a collection of traditional folk songs for kids, many of which his stepmother Ruth Crawford Seeger had transcribed from Library of Congress field recordings. The songs get me thinking…

I think of listening to it with my parents when I was a kid.

I think of how hard it is to pull off kid-friendly songs without being corny, condescending, or cloying, and how effortlessly he does it.

I think of how, considering that he was singing already-old songs in the fifties, it’s amazing how the songs don’t have any racial stereotypes or other objectionable content (other than a certain comfort level with talking about death, which it seems was part of the culture back then, as it may come to be again today).

I think of how the songs’ strange magical-realist rural imagery evoke the Anthology of American Folk Music, the early folk anthology that permanently blew my mind when my friend Taylor Savvy introduced it to me in the late 90s. (In fact, the Seeger record and the AAFM share one song, “I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground,” one of my Anthology favourites). 

I think of how Pete Seeger was a dedicated socialist his whole life, and was indicted for contempt of Congress for having refused to answer questions at the McCarthy hearings.

I think of him singing “This Land is Your Land” with Bruce Springsteen at the Obama inauguration (and I want to cry when I think about that moment vs. this one).

I think of how much I regret not going to see Seeger when he played in Montreal sometime in the late 2000s. What the hell was I thinking—that I would see him next time he came?! He was in his 90s, and died not too long after.

All these thoughts have a thread—the times that are gone, that will never return.

But my five-year-old son doesn’t know any of this—he just listens, sings along, and asks us to play it again and again. There must be something to it.

Musical Delights

There’s a lot of music out there, so much that you can’t keep track of it and invariably miss out on most of it. I wanted to take this space to shout out a few artists who’ve recently released music I’ve found inspiring. Almost all these artists are people I know personally, but I’m not here to blow smoke up my friends’ asses. I just have good taste in music and in friends, that’s all. Maybe this will be a series, I dunno. But I enjoy these and I hope you do too.

Sheenah Ko

Photo: Vivien Gaumand

I’ve said it before, but Sheenah is a ray of sunshine cutting through the grumpy, cynical miasma of the Montreal music scene.
File under: Mellow synth grooves spreading good vibes.

Julien Beillard

Some of you may recall that I wrote a book a few years ago on Ottawa indie rock pioneers Wooden Stars. When I interviewed singer/guitarist Julien Beillard for the book, he professed to being basically done with making music, so I was very pleasantly surprised to hear that he was recording again. And the result—produced by his longtime collaborator Geoffrey Pye (Yellow Jacket Avenger) and even featuring a Mike Feuerstack lap steel cameo for all y’all Wooden Stars completists—doesn’t disappoint.
File under: Heavy-duty songwriting interlaced with some noisy explorations. 

Triples

I’ve known these young sisters since they were little kids, and I’m thrilled to see them making such cool music. I watched the Kurt Cobain documentary the other day (verdict: OK—be sure to take it with a grain of salt, or Buzz Osborne’s review) and I couldn’t help but think, certainly not for the first time, about the horrible influence that Seattle grunge had on mainstream rock. If false grunge is best embodied by Nickelback and its ilk, and its platonic ideal personified in the Melvins, Triples represents its long-neglected sweet side.
File under: Heavy riffs, nice melodies, and introspective lyrics.

feu doux

Stéphane Lafleur is not only a cool musicien (Avec pas d’casque), but one of Quebec’s most interesting filmmakers (Continental, Tu dors Nicole). As an occasional filmmaker myself, I have a special jealousy for people who make music and film (especially when they’re actually good at both). This project is a collaboration with longtime WP friend and collaborator Christophe Lamarche-Ledoux (Organ Mood, Chocolat, Rock Forest) and it’s really great.
File under: Eerie and exciting, ambient soundscapes with meat on the bone.

2016: The Year in World Providing

After a quiet period, mainly due to the birth of our son, the WP started to get back in action this year. In the spring we released our latest EP Always. Produced by Murray Lightburn and featuring a song co-written with Mocky and a cameo from Chilly Gonzales on piano, it’s been called a return to the “classic” WP sound and, well, what more can I say? I like it, and I hope you do too.

We also put out a video for “Hey Joanne” directed by Montreal artist and musician Bryce Cody.

And we got back on the road! It was a short jaunt, but we had a lot of fun. In Toronto, we were backed by a one-off supergroup featuring three of my favourite musicians and human beings in general: Charlotte Cornfield, Adam Waito and Matt Collins. Here we are performing the title track from Always:

In Montreal, we were joined by our longtime collaborators Gordon Allen and Warren Auld, along with Tim Kingsbury (Sam Patch, Arcade Fire) on guitar. In Ottawa, none of my wish-list guests could make it, so Warren, Gord and I played as a power trio with Stacey’s vocals on top. And that was fun too.

In the fall, we had the opportunity to play at Montreal’s best film festival, the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, at an afterparty of sorts for our old friend Adam Traynor’s new web series Le Ball-trap. Murray, Warren and Gord filled out the lineup, and José Garcia did some amazing visuals. Here we are performing “Avalanches” from History of Pain:

And to cap the year off, we were included in Sean Michaels’ list of the best songs of 2016. What an honour!

IN OTHER NEWS…

I didn’t see a ton of shows this year, apart from some great bands we shared the stage with such as Triple Gangers, Muelkik, EXE, Douce Angoisse and Sheenah Ko. I did see one show, however, that was very memorable. It was a triple bill of Napalm Death, Melvins and Melt-Banana.

They were all awesome, but the Melvins show was really life-affirming. They have always been one of my favourite bands, but I hadn’t seen them play for years. I noticed that they had a new bass player, and he was giving off a really good vibe. You know when a veteran band has a new, young member who just seems really overjoyed to be onstage with these guys? It was like that, but as I looked closer I realized that this guy wasn’t that young. But he had the energy of a young person, just really getting into it and enjoying himself onstage. Eventually he was introduced and I realized it was Steve McDonald from Redd Kross. I can’t really express how motivating it was to see the enjoyment he was having and putting forth to the audience. The fact that someone can still be that energetic and positive after many years in the music game gave me a much-needed renewal of faith.

The other big thing that happened this year was that Gordon Thomas, who we made a documentary about years ago and stayed friends with for years after, passed away just shy of his 100th birthday. I wrote a few words about him and the experience of visiting him just before he died.

I also wrote about:

I didn’t do a ton of freelance writing this year, but I was happy with this review of gay Québécois wrestling icon Pat Patterson’s autobiography.

2016 was a tough year for a lot of people, and I fear that the next few years may be just as hard or harder. I don’t know what to say or what to do, except to try to be a good person and engage in my community as much as I can. WP-wise, I’ll be working on some new material and a new stage show which I hope to share with as many people as possible.

If you’re reading this, I thank you for your support, I wish you all the best and hope to see you soon!

A Song For You

Leon Russell died this week, yet another addition to the long, sad list of musical legends who’ve moved on this year (not to mention the potential end of the world as we know it, but I won’t get into that right now). I can’t say that I’m super familiar with his oeuvre, but one song of his has been a longtime favourite of mine.

I first heard this version by the Carpenters. The cheese is laid on pretty thick (there’s even a sax solo), but the beauty of the song cuts through, both in Karen Carpenter’s inimitable voice and the strength of the song itself.

I saw by looking on the record that Leon Russell had written it, but I wasn’t too aware of his career. Later, my friend Matt Collins made me a mix CD that had his original version on it. I always felt that his vocal affectations were a bit over the top, but it is his song, so he can sing it however he wants, and if you don’t like it… that’s what covers are for.

 

My favourite version is by Willie Nelson, a version I discovered some years later on a country mix from Montreal’s DJ Luv.

Why do I love this song so much? I’m not sure. In the Carpenters version, I always loved the sentiment in the closing line, “And when my life is over, remember when we were together, we were alone and I was singing a song for you.” But in the Willie Nelson version, the part that always hits me is when he sings “…if my words don’t come together, listen to the melody, for my love is in there hiding.” In the Carpenters version that line is delivered with a very schmaltzy flourish, but Willie brings to it his famously subtle and understated phrasing, and it really drives home the beauty as well as the melancholy of the sentiment expressed in the song. When he adds a simple melody to the word “melody” itself, it’s slightly corny, but somehow perfect…

Because it’s a song about songwriting (normally a bad idea) and the inability to capture a feeling perfectly with lyrics (“if my words don’t come together, listen to the melody, for my love is in there hiding”), it strikes a chord with me as a songwriter, aside from how I might feel as a listener. And ironically (or appropriately?), this expression of being unable to capture the feeling is, in itself, the perfect expression of the feeling. If that makes any sense.

RIP to Leon Russell, Sharon Jones, Leonard Cohen, and the American Dream…

Note: some of these thoughts are taken from a response I sent to Carl Wilson for his Crying Over Art project. I’m not sure if my words were ever used for that, so I thought it was probably OK to repurpose them here.

On Facebook

I got this image from endoskeptic.com. Not trying to make any statement, just thought it was funny.
I got this image from endoskeptic.com. Not trying to make any statement, just thought it was funny.

I was talking with some friends on the topic of things that annoy us about Facebook.

One friend cited people who just use it as a venue to show off their luxurious lives and possessions. I couldn’t relate. I know a few wealthy people, but they’re pretty discreet about it—even, in some cases, a little embarrassed.

Someone else mentioned people who are always posting about their boring, normal lives. I stayed silent. I guess either my friends are all really interesting, or I don’t find their normal lives boring. (I could go on about the phenomenon of contempt for “normals”—near the top of my list of things I can’t stand about my own community—but I feel that would be off-topic.)

It was my turn to chime in. “What about people who do nothing but post angry, embittered left-wing rants, all day, every day?”

Nobody else had any friends like that. I’d say that describes about two-thirds of my Facebook feed at any given moment. I’m not sure what that says about me, but I like my Facebook friends anyway.

Speaking of Facebook, if you are a fan of the WP, please come and give your Likes to The World Provider Facebook page. I’ll be honest with you, I simply need to boost my number of followers to impress the kind of people who are impressed by this kind of thing. I promise not to over-post or do anything really annoying. It’s all a part of my grand strategy to build the WP’s slow-building rise to world domination…

The Undead Format

CD

Recent figures show that digital music sales have overtaken physical ones for the first time. Some might be surprised that it didn’t happen years ago, or that physical sales still exist. We’re constantly told that the CD is dead, physical formats are dead, the future is digital. And yet the CD persists. The record stores (another thing that continues to exist despite declarations of its death) are stocked with new CDs. The programmers on campus radio (again, still exists) prefer CDs to the trauma of fishing through the sea of harder-to-manage-or-archive digital files or streaming options.

But there’s no doubt that the CD occupies a weird transitional space at this particular moment in time.

In 2008, I swallowed whole the gospel of post-CDism and released an album as a printed booklet with a download code. I called in favours with almost every artist I knew, and my designer and I put a lot of effort into to making the booklet look nice.

But when it was on the merch table at the release shows, all I’d hear was “where’s the CD?”

I’d be like, “the CD is dead, man, what do you mean?”

At the release show in Montreal, some guy was like, “Why should I pay $10 for a piece of paper?”

My argument that a CD is merely a piece of plastic was unpersuasive. The fact that I’d spent thousands of dollars of my own money on recording, mixing and mastering the album as well as printing the paper, equally so.

As I was preparing to release another album in 2011, the question of format was vexing. Among the hipster community, it’s self-evident received wisdom that vinyl is the only format worth releasing (or, even further underground, cassettes—which is a whole other topic).

But vinyl is expensive to produce. A guy a know from a once-prominent Montreal indie label told me that they had to sell every single vinyl record they produced to make a profit. And that was a label with over a decade’s experience and a solid reputation.

When the publicist I hired told me that I’d need a certain number of CDs for promo, I thought, fuck it, I’ll just produce CDs.

I had 500 made and used about 100 for promo. The second box of 250 is still sitting in my office, opened only recently. When I give them out to people as gifts, they’re regarded as a quaintly obscure item—at best. Recently, I gave a CD to a friend. She seemed perplexed and explained to me that, since the new Mac laptops no longer have a CD drive, she actually had no way to play it.

The only people I know who regularly buy CDs are my parents. I sometimes suspect that, aside from the format’s continued importance in the promotional arm of the music industry, the continued commercial relevance of CDs is attributable entirely to the boomer demographic, whether for themselves or as gifts for their children or (no doubt bewildered) grandchildren.

But then, in the spring of 2013, I interviewed Marie LeBlanc Flanagan of the music blog Weird Canada about their initiative to start a record distribution centre. She told me that the CD was experiencing a renaissance in the underground scene, as vinyl and cassettes had before. This was so counter-intuitive to everything we’ve been told, it left me speechless and stammering (which was inconvenient seeing as it was a live radio interview).

But the “backlash against digital” she described made a lot of sense: people like something they can put their hands on. Digital culture is so overwhelming, there’s a certain relief in the simple pleasures of a physical format.

Still, as it is with the recording industry, as long as manufacturers keep prices high, releasing stuff physically is going to stay stratified between those who can afford to do it properly, and those who don’t mind doing it in a sloppy DIY style.

Is there any love for the CD out there? Enough to bother manufacturing a batch for my next record? Or should I just burn a few CDRs from my laptop for the remaining market?

At the very least, I’ll burn a copy for my parents.

Montreal and Toronto

401

A few friends of mine have recently announced plans to move from Montreal to Toronto. These friends include the great Miranda Campbell, as passionate an advocate of the Montreal lifestyle as there ever was.

I’m all in favour of people making changes and blazing new trails, but something about these friends moving made me sad. Not just because they won’t be around—there’s something deeper that I can’t quite put my finger on.

Moving from Montreal to Toronto is a thing people do. They get tired of the bureaucracy, the corruption, the endless language wars, and above all, the difficulty of finding work.

I moved from Toronto to Montreal in 2001. When we announced the move, I would say 9 out of 10 Torontonians replied with a version of “Oh, I wish I could move to Montreal—but I can’t because of work.” I thought this was a weird thing to say, particularly when coming from people in their early twenties who had their whole lives ahead of them and were a little young to be shackled to a job.

But there’s no doubt that Montreal is a different economy.

When I lived in Toronto, I would routinely go grocery shopping without even looking at how much items cost.

Now, I’m like “Three limes for a dollar? Fuck that, I can get a better deal at the other place.”

The first time I paid for my groceries with a sock full of nickels and dimes, it was kind of romantic. The last time I did that, which was more recently than I care to admit, it just felt shameful.

In my early days in Montreal, I used to sometimes walk past the cafés of Mile End with a wistful sense of longing. I couldn’t even afford a cup of coffee.

Now, things have changed. My bills are paid, my debts are at a reasonable level, and I have money to spend on the odd indulgence. I’m able to buy a coffee, usually.

But it’s still nothing like the Toronto days, when I would go out for dinner several times a week, drink an entire bottle of wine with dinner every night, and buy new clothes whenever I felt like it. Today, none of those things apply.

A friend of my wife’s once told her, “In Toronto, people brag about how much they have on the go. In Montreal, they brag about how little they’re doing.”

It’s not quite like that anymore, but some of that spirit still remains.

In Montreal, I know several people who pay around $500 a month in rent. People whose rent is in the four digits tend to have really nice places in good neighbourhoods.

In Toronto, $1500 is considered a good deal for a high-rise apartment in the suburbs. In Vancouver, that’ll get you a one-room basement apartment.

That seems crazy to me, but I’ve been in the Montreal reality for over a decade now.

I once spent a few days in Kelowna, in the B.C. Interior. In the less than 36 hours I was there, I heard no fewer than three people say a variation on “Yeah, Kelowna sucks, but where else are you gonna go?”

I thought that was lame and might have even said so. But today, I find myself feeling similarly about Montreal. It’s a trap, a vortex. It sucks, but where else are you gonna go?

I live in a city of lost souls.

People get trapped here, they can’t imagine an alternative—or it’s too late, they couldn’t function anywhere else. They barely function here. But in this town, functioning is overrated. It’s considered bourgeois.

Montreal’s dysfunction is part of its appeal somehow. If it ran more smoothly, it would lose some of its ramshackle charm. Like a lot of its inhabitants, it can barely hold itself together.

The reasons to live in Montreal, especially as an anglophone, are not logical per se. But like romantic love, or religious belief, the attraction to Montreal is irrational at its root. It comes from the heart, not from the brain. My brain is constantly listing reasons why I should leave. My heart won’t budge. I fear it might stay here even if I moved on.

 

 

Trends With Benefits

I went out to a show the other night. A bunch of local bands. I don’t get out to this kind of show as much as I used to. It would be convenient to blame my advancing age, but my interest in whatever is going on at the moment has always gone in waves.

When I do go out, it’s usually to support a friend. A few people I know were involved in this bill, but more than anything there was something about the show that made me curious. As it turned out I was not alone in this; it was the kind of show where “everybody who’s  anybody” was in attendance.

The much-vaunted “Montreal music scene” is very driven by trends. No doubt that’s also true elsewhere, but it’s particularly acute here. With four universities and a very particular culture that isn’t for everyone, it’s a city with a lot of turnover. (For the purposes of this piece, I’m being diplomatic and not addressing the fickle tastes of the local hipsterati).

Clearly this particular night was very of the moment. Last time I checked (there’s a good probability that I missed one or more trends in between), the tendence du jour was towards excessive orchestration and spirited group singalongs. Today, the hot new thing is a kind of dark, lo-fi synth pop, ideally with a singer on a goth/Kate Bush tip, slathered in reverb.

A lot of people are cynical about trends. And that’s understandable. I sometimes feel the same way myself; it’s hard not to. But there’s something that fascinates me about them too. What is it that makes something so virally desirable at a given moment? Obviously if anyone knew, they’d bottle it and sell it—and so much lame and futile effort is put into trying to figure out that elusive formula and take it to the bank.

As I stood at the show, watching the bands doing their thing, I could already imagine the dismissive comments from several of my more cynical friends (and, sometimes, the voices in my own head). At the same time, everyone there was genuinely enjoying themselves. Musically, maybe there was a bit of a conformist impulse going on, but maybe people just found themselves doing a similar thing and joined forces.

I remember the feeling of just going along, doing my thing, then suddenly realizing that I was part of something bigger going on, that suddenly a bunch of people were paying attention—and having fun. Eventually people move on to other things and the moment passes. But when the moment is happening, it’s kind of beautiful.

A few years ago, some music critics on the “poptimist” tip advanced the notion that if certain songs or genres were only relevant to the moment, not destined for immortality, there was nothing wrong with that. At first I found this idea quite provocative and odd. Making art for the ages, not for the fleeting moment, is such an ingrained part of the artistic mentality. (Plus it’s a handy way to justify what you’re doing when you feel unappreciated in your own time).

But the idea has started to grow on me. After all, what is there but the present…

 

Music, business (Part 3: The Reckoning)

A little while ago I was complaining to someone about my lack of success (in a long list of other things that were/are wrong with my life). In the course of this I mentioned offhandedly that I loved playing music, and she interrupted me:

“Do you love it?”
“Yes,” I said. It seemed like a strange thing to ask.
“Well, isn’t that success?”

I chewed on that one for a while and finally had to conclude that no, that is not success. But it is happiness, even if only in brief, occasional little bursts.

At this advanced age, I’m unlikely to become an overnight (or any other kind of) sensation (although Robert Pollard was my age when Guided By Voices broke, so a guy can always dream).

But I have to ask, what is the absolute worst-case scenario? Probably something like: I have a minuscule audience and barely break even on my expenses. (I hope you will forgive me a moment of self-pity when I say that this is not drastically different from the actual scenario).

What then? It’s not like I would stop writing songs, recording or performing. I don’t think I would be able to even if I wanted to. (Whenever I do harbour the notion of abandoning it all, as in The Godfather III, just when I think I’m out, it pulls me back in).

It might seem self-evident, but the fact that my music doesn’t make business types see dollar signs when they hear it, and that it doesn’t fit into whatever the latest micro-trend might be, doesn’t have anything to do with the music itself.

As my brother, a wiser man than me, said in this interview, music is its own reward. It’s so easy to lose sight of that in an atmosphere where a few (very few!) artists’ genuine, hard-won success has filled the community with delusions of grandeur.

Truth is, there are only three kinds of people who can “make a living” in the music biz:
1. Trust fund kids
2. People who are comfortable with a quality of life one step above that of a homeless person
3. People who are really smart and serious about the business side of things.

If you, like me, are none of these, then it’s probably best to separate your artistic pursuits from business concerns.

I have a lot of respect and admiration for my more business-savvy friends. But the fact is that if I look at my own music career as a business, it is not a successful business. If I look at it as something that I do for its own sake, it actually seems worthwhile.

Earlier this year I was unexpectedly offered a job. It was kind of a no-brainer: being chronically broke is a lot less romantic in your late 30s than it is in your early 20s. I took the job, putting my dreams of rock glory on the back burner for the time being, going back to being a guy with a job who plays music for fun.

And strangely enough, I feel better about my music career already.