My Thoughts on Michael Jackson’s “This Is It”

I refuse to use an older photo of him on general principle.

On June 25th, the day Michael Jackson died, I was in the first week of my West Coast tour. I was driving through Denver, CO when a cousin of mine in Brooklyn, NY called my cell phone to inform me of MJ’s death. I’d already received texts from various friends with different stories about his physical condition, but was waiting for confirmation from a more official source. My cousin is by no means a journalist, but the fact that this phone call was his first to me in YEARS was more than enough confirmation. Our brief conversation consisted mostly of me reciting the pat responses that this year’s relentless onslaught of celebrity deaths had forced me to unconsciously memorize: there will never be another like MJ, we should appreciate our heroes while they’re still here, we should cultivate a new generation of heroes, etc.

As true as my words were then, it took a while for their significance to fully sink in. MJ’s death sent instant shockwaves of grief through millions of people around the world; for me, the grieving process was more of a slow burn. My first sincere response to his death was to renew my own commitment to giving the best performance possible on every night of the tour. This commitment was in danger of waning after the dismal show I played in Lakewood, CO the previous night (note to booking agents: sandwiching me between two nu-metal bands will never be a good idea), but I took new inspiration from the fact that MJ died while readying what would be his final and most colossal run of shows. If he could die pushing the limits of his talent and ambition, then I could certainly live doing the same. That night, I played a great show in a Laramie, WY coffeehouse to an audience of 20 people. (Economies of scale are funny things.)

My first palpable pangs of grief came during the last week of my tour, when I spent two days in Los Angeles, the city where MJ died. While hanging out with my friend Juli between shows, we watched his “Live in Bucharest – The Dangerous Tour” DVD, and I found myself holding back tears while singing along to “Heal the World.” Even then, my grief was tempered by trepidation. As I drove around the city and saw rows of stores selling tacky bootleg memorial T-shirts, I realized that the exploitation which marked MJ’s life had already marked his death; when store owners tried to charge me for taking pictures of their shirts, I knew this exploitation would intolerably intensify. (Mind you, this was BEFORE MJ’s father decided to resubmit his “Worst Celebrity Father Ever” application to Satan.)

Once I shook off my post-tour depression, I set time aside to listen to every solo MJ album from “Off the Wall” onward, to focus solely and specifically on his music and how it affected me. What I discovered was one of the most deceptively consistent discographies in pop music. Every MJ album boasts at least a handful of classics, and even the songs that aren’t are characterized by naked vulnerability, constant attention to detail, and/or a steadfast allegiance to the groove. There isn’t a song of his that isn’t executed well; there isn’t an emotion expressed in his lyrics that I can’t feel when he sings them; and there isn’t a single beat of his that I can’t dance to. There’s an undeniable slope in quality between “Thriller” and “Invincible,” but it’s not as steep as most people assume, and “Invincible” STILL surpasses most contemporary pop. I reiterate that I focused specifically on the music; his skill at dance and multimedia warrants their own respective paragraphs, but I’m trying to be concise.

MJ was the most famous man in the world, so famous that even when absent from the stage and the charts, he was ubiquitous enough to be taken for granted. Even as he directly appealed to us through his music and interviews, we magnified and dissected his pathologies and controversies enough to mask the human being who actually had to live with them. We focused on his arguably garish physical transformations, even after he told us that they were influenced by disease and his father’s mockery, and ignored the fact he still loved himself enough to continue identifying as Black. We focused on his admittedly unsettling fondness for children, even after he was tried and acquitted of molestation charges, and ignored the fact that he had his own childhood stolen from him. We focused on the so-called “freak show” and forgot why we started paying attention to him in the first place: his supernatural talent and perpetually open heart.

(A personal note: my deceased grandfather, too, had vitiligo. The slow, scattershot disappearance of his pigmentation made him a scary sight in the eyes of most children. As much as my grandfather loved children, if he had MJ’s money, I’m sure he’d have bleached his skin too if it meant he wouldn’t have to convince them to hug him.)

All of this was precisely why I wanted to see “This Is It,” the recently released film which was cobbled together from footage of MJ’s final rehearsals. Even though I know the film is clearly a way to recoup some of the money his estate lost from investing in the tour, I also knew that it would be my last chance to get a somewhat unfiltered view of his creative process, to finally see the artist and human being at work. I can honestly say that the film itself satisfied me in every way: considering the circumstances behind it, “This Is It” couldn’t have been done more tastefully and respectfully. The film makes no acknowledgment of his pathologies or controversies; any hagiography that occurs comes from the words of his own crew. The film remains focused on MJ’s art at all times.

On “This Is It,” I got to see just how involved MJ was in every part of the creative process, gently yet firmly directing his musicians, dancers, technicians and visual artists. I got to see how eager he truly was to share the spotlight with his collaborators. I got to hear him use phrases like “a little more booty” and “let it simmer” to describe his music. I got to hear him miss notes, omit lyrics and ignore cues. However, at no point in the film did MJ move or sound like a shell of his former self. MJ went out firing on all cylinders, and I left the theater convinced once again of his ability to exceed even his own standards. “This Is It” is a work of blatant commodification that, ironically, humanizes the commodity by spotlighting his artistry. Not only that, but there were more than enough moments of magic and levity to distract me from the knowledge that I was watching MJ during the very last moments of his life.

When I got home from the movie theater, though, I immediately retreated to my bedroom and released four months’ worth of dammed tears.

Imperfect Sound Forever: What Pavement Means to Me

Every time I sit down to write about my life, the blank page overwhelms me.  I’ve let so much of my life pass undocumented that I can never decide where to begin.  I think that it’s best for me to start with the recent past and go from there.

By now, everyone who has ever used the term “indie rock” in a sentence knows that Pavement, one of my all-time favorite bands, announced last Wednesday that they’re doing a reunion tour next year.  I’m almost embarrassed to say that the announcement compelled me to finally shake off the depression that has plagued me for the last three years…but, then again, when hasn’t the power of music been enough to save my life?  I’ve already written about the roles that the Beatles, Hendrix, Prince and Guided by Voices played in my development as both a musician and a human being, but for some inexplicable reason I’ve never written about Pavement.  Now is the perfect time for me to do so.

I discovered Pavement at around the same time I did GBV.  I was a 13-year-old kid just learning to play guitar, immersing myself in the music of every band that MTV’s 120 Minutes program and Spin magazine could possibly clue me into.  Hearing their song “Cut Your Hair” for the first time was a revelation: there were “lots of details to discern” (to quote a later song of theirs), paradoxical quirks that confused and intrigued me.  The intro, a brief snippet of studio chatter (“Stop it!”), felt like a small window into the band’s life: what tomfoolery took place in the studio seconds before the first chord?  The song’s wordless, off-key chorus was catchier than the common cold, and the singers’ imperfect pitch was more charming than annoying.  Front man Stephen Malkmus began the song singing about a haircut, only to drop the subject and rant about the music industry instead.  The high-pitched, frantically strummed guitar solo stood in stark contrast with the rest of the song’s lackadaisical jangle.  Even after that climax, Malkmus seemed unsure of whether to speak, sing or shout at any given point. 

All the musicians I love most are (at least partially) driven by a desire to reflect their authentic selves to others through their music, and in turn enable others to see themselves in it.  I could listen to the Beatles’ discography and see how their views on women, drugs and spirituality changed over the years; I could feel Hendrix’s and Prince’s yearning for freedom from societal constraints; I could step into the surreal world that GBV’s Bob Pollard constructed to both transcend the daily grind of his domestic life.  It has always been easy to explain why I see a bit of myself in those artists.  However, I didn’t truly understand my relationship with Pavement until the last year or so. 

After experiencing communication breakdowns with various loved ones that made me feel as if Mercury was permanently in retrograde, I realized why I love Pavement’s music so much.  To me, it’s a reflection of the struggle to communicate, a soundtrack to those moments when I have something to say, don’t know quite how to say it, but feel compelled to say it anyway, regardless of whether or not I choose the right words.

Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, the album on which “Cut Your Hair” appears, is one of rock’s most gorgeous monuments to ambivalence, ambiguity and imperfection.  The album begins with a fumbled solo and ends with an incomplete sentence; the songs are full of missed cues, dropped tempos, voice cracks and bum notes.  There are songs with multiple titles (“Elevate Me Later/Ell Ess Two”) and multiple subjects (“Stop Breathin’” is about tennis AND the Korean War); songs that veer back and forth from sloppy jamming to anthemic riffing; and songs that make little, if any, linear sense. 

Yet, despite the album’s occasionally frustrating nature, it rewards patient listeners with beautiful melodies, strong hooks, clever wordplay and creative interplay.  Eventually, the mistakes and nonsense become integral to the listening experience.  Malkmus’ fumbled solo during the intro of “Silence Kit” ends up making the riff he plays when the rest of the band kicks in sound even cooler.  When the musicians slip out of sync with each other on “Fillmore Jive,” it underscores the weariness in Malkmus’ voice as he sings of sleep deprivation and emptiness.  The songs have a buoyancy and spontaneity that would be absent if they were played entirely in time and in tune (a hard lesson I learned from Terror Twilight, the band’s worthy yet divisive swan song).    

As I gave the lyrics more attention, certain lines began to stand out and supply context.  These lines often appeared in the middle or toward the end of a song, like theses read long after the average professor would give up on making sense of the paper.  When I was 13, I didn’t really understand what Malkmus meant when he sang “Songs mean a lot when songs are bought/and so are you” on “Cut Your Hair.” “What the hell does that have to do with a haircut?” I thought to myself. After a while, though, I realized that the haircut is a symbol of many musicians’ futile desire to contort their images to suit the marketplace (“Darling, don’t you go and cut your hair/Do you think it’s gonna make him change?”).  Just because Malkmus didn’t elaborate on the metaphor didn’t mean that he wasn’t making sense.

Of course, there are many Pavement songs in which Malkmus merely sings whatever comes out of his head at the moment.  Sometimes it’s hilarious (“I’ve got all this Harvard LSD/Why won’t anybody fuck me?”); other times it’s just awkward (“One of us is a cigar stand/and one of us is a lovely blue incandescent guillotine”).  However, slivers of pensive imagery (“You’ve been chosen as an extra in the movie adaptation of the sequel to your life”) and hard-won wisdom (“It’s alright to shake, to fight, to feel”) are always around the corner.  Even when I can’t get a handle on what a Pavement song is actually about, it elicits an emotional response from me.  Their songs make me laugh and cry in ways that more lyrically direct bands often fail to do.

Likewise, there are many Pavement songs on which the musicianship stretches serendipity to its limit, toeing the line between imperfection and lameness.  Even after being accustomed to the band’s modus operandi, it took years for me to get past the bad drumming on “AT&T,” the cracked vocals on “Type Slowly,” and the clumsy soloing on “Fin” in order to appreciate the greatness of the songs themselves.  However, Pavement’s knack for melodies and hooks eventually saved the day: even their sloppiest and most abrasive songs are easy to sing and/or shout along with.  If the listener ends up bettering the band, it merely reinforces the humanizing, democratizing, empowering effect that all punk-infused music should have.

Pavement’s music permeated my adolescence so thoroughly that even some of my friends and relatives became Slanted and Enchanted with me.  My little brother was born in 1994, the year Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain was released; three years later “Stereo” (from Brighten the Corners) became the first song he memorized in its entirety.  He made me play it for him daily for a year, and would get sad if our mother and I didn’t sing it along with him.  None of us got sick of it, though.  My mother even developed a small crush on Malkmus after seeing the song’s video, calling him “the cute white boy” whenever any of us would mention him.  That same year, I put “No Tan Lines” (my favorite Pavement B-side) on a mix tape for my friend Niema, the only person I truly confided in at the time.  She too fell under the band’s spell, and two years later we saw what, unbeknownst to us, would be the band’s final Austin show.

The nearly sold-out show, which took place on the outdoor stage of Stubb’s, exceeded our expectations.  As Terror Twilight proved, Pavement had become, for better or worse, a well-oiled touring machine, such that what few mistakes they made on stage became glaringly noticeable, instead of merely being par for the course.  When Malkmus bungled the central guitar riff to “Frontwards,” he dramatized his failure by throwing up his hands and sulking into the microphone.  For Niema and me, it was a confirmation of the slightly bratty nature that many journalists alluded to when writing about him.  It was refreshing to know that the band was still capable of making mistakes.  In retrospect, though, Malkmus’ tantrum was an expression of the built-up frustrations that caused him to dissolve the band later that year.

Pavement’s absence has left a gaping void in music over the last decade.  Many bands have mimicked Pavement’s loose musicianship and cryptic lyrics, but very few of them possessed their melodic gifts and unexpected profundity.  Malkmus’ subsequent records with his current band the Jicks boasted increasingly proficient musicianship, but they also veered closer to jam-band territory than Pavement ever could.  Preston School of Industry, the band that Malkmus’ foil Scott Kannberg (also known as “Spiral Stairs”) formed, squandered its post-Pavement goodwill on dire stabs at alt-country.  Rumors of a reunion circulated for years, slightly stoked by Kannberg only to be shrugged off by Malkmus.  As far as I was concerned, though, the writing had been on the wall ever since the Matador label’s deluxe double-disc reissues of Pavement’s albums started generating more interest than either front man’s solo work.

As inevitable and unsurprising as this reunion may be, I still can’t overstate how much joy it gives me.  I think of every time I struggled to sing something just slightly out of my range, or to play something just slightly above my skill level, only to discover after mastering it that it sounded cooler with the mistakes left in.  I think of the bonding moments I had with my mother, my little brother, and my old friend.  I think of how genuinely flattered I was when a British reviewer said that my music was “the black version of Pavement.”  Last but not least, I think of every single time over the last few years in which I was too tired, confused, and scared to locate the exact words for my feelings, yet too emotionally constipated to remain silent.  I simply drowned my sorrows in Pavement’s music until I felt happy (or at least okay) again.  I lacked the courage to simply let the words spill out of my mouth, on to the page, and let sense arise from nonsense on its own. 

I can’t afford a ticket to any of the shows they’ve announced in New York, but if they come anywhere near Austin, it will be on like Donkey Kong in my life.

BEYOND BUTTERSCOTCH: RETURN TO COOKIE MOUNTAIN

I apologize for neglecting this blog so soon after starting it. For now, all I can say is that the past month was a trying one that often rendered me too busy and exhausted (physically AND mentally) to write. I fully intend to finish posting the memoirs of my West Coast tour, and develop this ‘blog into everything it was intended to be. Right now, though, I need your help.

IN ORDER TO REMAIN FINANCIALLY SOLVENT, I’M HUSTLIN’ COOKIES.

My roommate and I are trying to stay caught up on our rent until the lease to our current apartment expires at the end of October. Our current living arrangement is unsustainable for two reasons: the rent is steep in proportion to our collective income, and the location is too far away from our jobs. I have to ride the bus for two hours EACH WAY to get to my job, which leaves me with little free time and energy to do much else but work. I’m already putting in overtime at my job, and my roommate’s considering getting a second. Our ultimate goal is to find a cheaper, more spacious and more centrally located apartment – and to be able to afford it.

IF YOU BUY MY COOKIES, YOU WILL HELP ME & MY ROOMMATE CRUNKIFY THE UNIVERSE.

We cannot do this if we are overworked, broke and/or homeless.

HERE IS THE MENU:

Butterscotch Oatmeal (my specialty!)
Chocolate Chip
Oatmeal Raisin
Snickerdoodle
White Chocolate Macadamia Nut

HERE IS THE PRICING:

$1 per cookie (postage paid in the US), but you must order at least 10 cookies, and multiple flavors must be broken up in increments of five. For instance, if you order 10 cookies, you can get them all in one flavor, or five cookies each of two different flavors; 20 cookies can be broken up into 20 of one flavor, 10 of 2 flavors, 5 of 4 flavors, etc.

HERE ARE YOUR PAYMENT OPTIONS:

Paypal me at lovesickrockstar@yahoo.com OR e-mail me for a snail mail address. When I mail your cookies, I’ll scan my postage receipt and e-mail it to you. If you don’t get this e-mail from me within seven days of placing your order, I will refund your money, no questions asked.

ALL COOKIE ORDERS WILL COME WITH A PROMO CDR OF THE NEW COCKER SPANIELS ALBUM, “SOMETIMES YOU’VE GOTTA FIGHT TO GET A BIT OF PEACE.”

PLEASE HELP ME OUT. Your tummy & ears will thank you!

Sermon: Skip Your Ass Outta My Gate With That Bullshit

Why can’t my judgment be trusted when it comes to racism?  You’d think 28 years of life as a POC in America would enable me to discern when someone’s being racist.  Apparently I’m mistaken, because every time “the R-word” leaves my mouth or my fingertips, someone abruptly appears, like an ethereal genie from the spout of a just-stroked magic lamp, to debate me by suggesting every other possible motive for the questionable word or deed.  (If you haven’t instinctively guessed by now what race said Great Debater tends to be, you need not proceed any further.)  Such challenges usually carry the implication that I haven’t gathered all of the facts; that I’m being impulsive or hypersensitive; that I waste mental energy looking for ways to ascribe racist motives to every white person who has ever conflicted with a POC.  I rebuke that implication: I’ve smelled enough shit to know when something stinks.

I recently made the following statement in a public forum about the infamous confrontation between Dr. Henry Louis Gates and Sgt. James Crowley: “I refuse to believe that an unarmed, outnumbered, elderly and disabled man could pose enough of a threat to a cop by merely raising his voice to justify arresting him.”  Almost immediately, a commenter chided me for accusing Sgt. Crowley of racism and ignoring Dr. Gates’ irascible behavior, and questioned whether I’d read Crowley’s police report or Gates’ interviews about the confrontation.  This commenter conveniently ignored the complete absence of racial indicators in my statement, as well as my acknowledgment that Gates yelled at Crowley.  What this commenter didn’t know is that my opinion about the confrontation is based predominantly on the official police report.

Yes, I overcame both my (healthy, justifiable) distrust of the police AND my (healthy, justifiable) ambivalence toward white people to examine Crowley’s version of the story, and the most charitable interpretation I could come up with is that he arrested Gates for embarrassing him in public, not for breaking an actual law.  Having to break into my own home would be enough to put me in a bad mood, let alone having to then prove that said home was actually mine.  If I were in Gates’ position, though, I’d have calmed down once Crowley left my porch: I wouldn’t have followed him outside, and I definitely wouldn’t have yelled at him.  However, my calmness would be rooted not in respect for the law, but in fear of its enforcers.  I don’t have the Ivy League or the President on my side, and I live in a city where POCs get tazed for asking cops not to yell at THEM.

Gates assumed that his class would trump his race, a haughty yet (mostly) correct assumption: all charges against him were dropped, and President Obama spoke out on his behalf, neither of which would’ve happened to me if I’d have gotten that crunk with a cop.  However, I refuse to use Gates’ behavior as a smokescreen for the fact that he still got arrested without breaking an actual law, something that happens way more often to POCs than it does to whites.  I don’t wish to brand Crowley as a cross-burning white-hooded demon; however, it surprises and confuses me that an officer responsible for diversity and sensitivity training in his department would be “surprised and confused” by Gates’ behavior.  Gates was merely doing what most lower-class POCs are too scared to do when wrongfully apprehended by white cops.  Crowley responded by trying to use his power as a trump over Gates’ class, and for that he should be reprimanded.

I guess there are advantages, though, to not being upper-class: I can write things like the previous paragraph without worrying about a mammoth backlash…unlike President Obama.  Obama was right to say that Crowley “acted stupidly,” which made his subsequent decision to “recalibrate” his words very disappointing to me.  However, such recalibrations are mandatory for even the richest, whitest politicians (except, it seems, for Bush Jr.), and Obama’s nothing if not pragmatic.  To me, Dr. Gates is just this year’s Rev. Wright, a man whose arguably hotheaded rebellion against white supremacy is being used as a distraction by “R-word” people to derail Obama’s goals.  If Obama became the “ride or die” dude I wanted him to be for Wright, I’d be using the words “President McCain” right now; if he does the same for Gates, I’ll never be able to afford a physical again in my life.

How the West Was Wrecked: Preamble (Part Three)

Two-and-a-half weeks after leaving my previous job, I was interviewed by the owner of a landscaping company for a position as his accounts receivable and payable clerk. To be honest, I wouldn’t have lost much sleep if I hadn’t been hired, as it took two hours to get to the interview by bus, a tough commute by any standard. However, I impressed the owner so much during the interview that, three days later, he invited me to have dinner with him and his wife (who is also the company’s head accountant) at a pricey Southwestern grill. During the dinner, he offered me the job and asked how soon I could start. I told him that I was unsure, as I was scheduled for an interview the next morning with a company located much closer to my apartment. He then offered to compensate me for the length of my commute by beating the hourly wage I was paid at my previous job AND allowing me to set my own hours. I told him that I’d cancel the interview and start the next morning, and we promptly got our grub on.

I knew that the owner expected me to make a long-term commitment to his company – a commitment I thought I’d have to renege on in order to tour the West Coast. By this point, almost half of the tour dates had already been booked. I tried to reconcile this dilemma by adopting a cutthroat state of mind: I’d get my two or three checks, I thought to myself, and then bounce. After all, no company I’d ever worked for up to that point cared about my art, so why should I care about their business? However, this state of mind grew increasingly difficult to stay in once I actually started working at the landscaping company.

Even though I only planned to stay for a few weeks, I threw myself fully into the job. I took rigorous notes on every task that the owner and his wife taught me, mastered as many of them as I could, and made many welcome suggestions to streamline them. I embarrassed myself by attempting rudimentary conversations in Spanish with the company’s drivers, few of whom speak English. Within my first two days there, my owner’s fondness for me grew at an astonishing rate. He turned one of the empty rooms in the building into a personal office for me, and bought a brand new desktop for me to work on. He then confided to me that his wife was pregnant with their first child, and would need me to assume her job duties when she took maternity leave.

It was at that point that the alarm of my conscience could no longer be tuned out. I remembered that my boss and his wife were human beings just like me, and that quitting so soon would adversely affect them in ways that I wouldn’t appreciate if I were in their position. I no longer wanted to quit my job, but I still didn’t want to cancel the tour; the former choice would compromise my character, but the latter choice would stifle my spirit. When I got home that night, I prayed for wisdom to make the right choice. My answer came in the form of one of my own lyrics, from “Two Weeks’ Notice” (a song that appears on “Sometimes You’ve Gotta Fight to Get a Bit of Peace”): “I’m tired of the either/or…”

The next day, I arranged a private meeting with my boss. I told him about my music, about the album I just finished, and about my plans to support it with a West Coast tour. I also told him that I didn’t intend for the tour to conflict with a full-time job, as I’d started booking it while I was unemployed. I then told him that if I couldn’t go on this tour and still fulfill my duties for the company, I’d cancel it…but if I COULD, I’d be eternally grateful, and do my absolute best to ensure that I didn’t fall behind on my duties. His immediate response was, “I’m sure we can work something out! Just give me a copy of your album, and try not to book any other tours until [my wife] has the baby.”

I thanked God for instructing me to be honest and bold, and for sidestepping the binary choice that pessimism convinced me was inevitable. I’d finally escaped the “either/or,” and could finish booking the West Coast tour with a clear conscience.

(My next post will discuss how booking the tour nearly cost me my mind, and how close it came to not happening @ all. Stay tuned!)

How the West Was Wrecked: Preamble (Part Two)

After four years spent stuck in the Lone Star state, the mini-tour I went on with Alex Dupree and the Trapdoor Band this past April renewed my wanderlust. I realized just how much I missed traveling to unfamiliar cities and meeting new people. I also realized that, as many times as I’d gone east to perform, I’d never been further west than San Antonio in my life. Thus, upon my return to Austin, I started researching venues all over the West Coast. My memories of the mini-tour helped me endure my last two weeks at my previous job, and my plans to launch a larger tour eased the uncertainty that my impending unemployment would bring.

The week after I left that job, my roommate Stef and I were fortunate enough to see My Bloody Valentine live at the Austin Music Hall. (This show, by the way, was the SECOND time we’d seen MBV live, proof that I live a miraculous life.) Our friends Anthony and Chanelle traveled from Houston to join us for the show. While we were hanging out, Anthony invited me to perform at a show he was organizing for Juneteenth: a screening of “Afro-Punk” director James Spooner’s latest film “White Lies, Black Sheep.” Anthony had already asked a few of his other friends – all Houston-based Black artists whose music ignores racist notions of genre – to perform, and figured that I’d fit right in. I accepted his invitation, and decided to make Juneteenth the first day of my West Coast tour.

(Please allow this momentary digression: Houston hip-hop heads know Anthony as “Fat Tony.” He is, without question, my favorite MC in the city. His flow is mellifluous; his beats are beautiful and booming; his lyrical outlook is hedonistic but far from hollow; his shows are concentrated crunk; and his work ethic is second to none. Expect to see a post devoted specifically to his music in the near future; in the meantime, check it out now and thank me later.)

The first hurdle I leapt in order to pull the tour off was a lack of transportation: I’d relied on public buses to get around for the last year. My Daewoo Lanos lingered in a mechanic’s backyard, after I had to choose between paying another hefty repair bill and putting a security deposit down on my apartment. Even if the car was in my possession, I wouldn’t have trusted it to withstand a cross-country tour. I lacked a credit card and car insurance, so renting a car would’ve been even more expensive than repairing my Daewoo. I’d heard many stories about artists touring via Greyhound, but my own horrific experiences with the company ruled that option out. Fortunately, my friend Ryan (who also makes excellent electronic pop under the name Love Field) volunteered both his car and his company for the tour, as it would fall neatly between his semesters at law school.

The second hurdle was a lack of time. There was a two-month window between the day I decided to tour the West Coast and the day I hit the road, which really isn’t enough time to book a tour. Even well-known touring acts with booking agents plan their tours at least three months in advance. I’m a relatively unknown artist who does his own booking, so I had to move much faster and work much harder.

The third hurdle was a lack of employment: I still needed money to get me through the next two months, and my previous supervisor screwed me out of most of the vacation pay I was supposed to receive upon my resignation. Despite the recession, this hurdle was the one I worried about least. Since moving to Austin, I’d never been unemployed for longer than three weeks, and I had faith that this record wouldn’t be broken.

(My next post will discuss how I cleared the third hurdle.  Stay tuned!)

How the West Was Wrecked: Preamble (Part One)

In the fall of 2005, I toured the Midwest and East Coast to support the Cocker Spaniels‘ first professionally mastered and pressed album, “Withstand the Whatnot.” This tour came to an unfortunate end when a burst timing belt caused my Daewoo Lanos to break down in the middle of Kentucky. I had the car towed to the nearest auto repair shop, and checked into a hotel across the street from it. The towing and housing costs sucked up all the money I’d made on tour up to that point.

I’d planned to visit my mother in Beaumont, Texas for Thanksgiving after the tour’s final show. However, the scarcity of replacement parts (Daewoo had stopped manufacturing the Lanos three years before) left the mechanic unable to fix my car before then. Because of such, I spent what little money I had left on a Greyhound ticket to Beaumont.

Shortly after Thanksgiving, the mechanic in KY called to tell me how much it would cost to fix my car. Of course, I didn’t have the money, nor could I get it quickly enough to return to my job and apartment in Austin, TX before getting fired and evicted. Consequently, I spent the next 10 months living at my mother’s house in Beaumont. These 10 months threw me into a depression that I’m still recovering from.

I worked various temp jobs to scrape up the money I needed to retrive my car, but quickly grew frustrated with the limited options the city’s poor economy offered me. I played guitar for a music ministry, but developed a similar frustration with the church’s avarice, sexism and homophobia. I had conflicts with my mother over money: she thought I wasn’t giving enough to support the household; I wasn’t sure how much I could give without sacrificing my own goals. I had no social life, due to a lack of peers who shared my interests and didn’t already have families of their own. I foolishly courted a clinically depressed woman in Dallas who wreaked havoc on my self-esteem and peace of mind.

I finally returned to Austin in the fall of 2006, when a group of friends invited me to live with them in a co-op for cheap until I could get myself together. While living there, I started recording the next Cocker Spaniels album, “Sometimes You’ve Gotta Fight to Get a Bit of Peace.” Most of the songs on that album are based directly on things that happened during my wilderness period in Beaumont. While working on the album, I also started playing drums for my then-housemate Alex Dupree’s ensemble the Trapdoor Band.

Now that you have this backstory, allow me to fast-forward to this past spring. I had a job at a non-profit organization that paid a decent wage, gave me comprehensive health insurance and boasted a liberal vacation policy. I was living in a cozy two-bedroom apartment with my best friend Stef. Alex Dupree and the Trapdoor Band’s first album with me as a member had just been mixed and mastered, and after an extremely protracted recording process, “Sometimes You’ve Gotta Fight to Get a Bit of Peace” was also on its way to being mixed and mastered.

Despite such progress, I was in my worst mental state since my wilderness period in Beaumont, due to a combination of bereavement, escalating debt, and a new heartbreak that reopened old psychological wounds. Alex offered relief just in time by proposing a mini-tour with the Trapdoor Band, with me serving as both drummer and support act. Together, we booked shows in Dallas, TX (Alex’s hometown); Cleveland, MS; Greenville, SC; and Memphis, TN (Stef’s hometown). This mini-tour would not only be a brief escape from my troubles, but also a great opportunity for us to promote our upcoming albums.  These shows would also be the first I’d play outside of TX in two years.

I needed two days off from work to go on this mini-tour, which I didn’t think would be a problem. After all, I’d accrued over 90 hours’ worth of paid vacation time; I’d finished my responsibilities for the month at least a week early; and I’d convinced two of my colleagues to cover for me while I was gone. Unfortunately, my supervisor – a passive-aggressive control freak whom I’d already been at odds with for months – denied my request for leave twice, even after the CEO intervened on my behalf.

I was faced with a choice: abandon the mini-tour, and end up hating my life even more; or go on the mini-tour, and risk unemployment in the middle of an increasingly grave recession. Though I didn’t make the choice lightly, I knew in my soul that there was only one to make. I submitted my resignation letter to the CEO the day before the first show, and he allowed me to work my final two weeks upon my return from the last show. The mini-tour proved to be both fun and lucrative; although it didn’t make my problems disappear, it gave me the spiritual recharge I needed to reckon with them for a little while longer.

(My next post will discuss what compelled me to tour the West Coast this year, and how I set the tour up in the first place. Stay tuned!)