The Burden and Beauty of Basements - my experience in Bloomington, Indiana during the mid 90’s
I came back into consciousness feeling foggy-headed and woozy. The last thing I remembered was The Band singing about Bessie Smith, but now they were crooning about not having sugar cane. The second record had begun, but I was in the digital age now and hadn’t needed to change it. The multi-CD player had quietly made the transition for me.
I had a massive headache and opened the door to my bedroom, if you could call it that. In reality, it was a coal cellar in a basement of a house rented by college kids, musicians and drop outs, with a large wooden door and a thick wooden latch, the kind you'd imagine in an old cabin in the woods of a horror movie. As I stared at that huge latch, thinking hazy thoughts of scary movies, a realization appeared: I had forgotten about oxygen. Even minor amounts of paint can cause fumes. I had accidentally huffed myself out of consciousness.
The cellar must have dated back to the 1920 or 30s, when it was actually used as a proper coal room for heating the house. The “room” was about 7 feet long by - at most - 5 feet wide, its wood walls and upper brick both stained black with decades of coal dust, even tinting the metal hatch that let in a sliver of air and light at eye level. Through it, you could peer out onto the gravel and weed strewn driveway, where one of our cars had been left to rot, now one with the weeds of summer.
The sounds of the night, cicadas and crickets, competed with the obsessive, endless lineup of music I was intent on learning, enjoying, and discussing with friends. It never stopped, like a flood into your ear. There was always music, and always a band you didn’t know, wanted to know, and were somewhat suspect if you didn’t know, in the often competitive, latently passive-aggressive young male ego world of 90s rock music scenes, albeit performed in a laid-back Midwestern manner.
It was truly thrilling just to hear so much great music as a music fan, to discover it for the first time or the fiftieth. Beyond the social aspect, music was, and always has been, saving me. Finding something that speaks to you is a life raft, as many of us know and experience. Music had moved me to such deep recesses of emotional reality that I’d decided to dedicate my life to it at age 13, and later dropped out of college after my first year, playing any and every gig I could in bars, frats, venues, and lawns.
From live Otis Redding to Hank Williams Sr., Gram Parsons, Guided By Voices, The Band, The Make-Up, old punk, new wave, country slide guitar, big band jazz, shoegaze, post-punk, and the lo-fi movement - it was all coming at me, layering on top of the records and songs I knew from my childhood, playing constantly throughout high school, mostly in cover bands to hone my chops. Perhaps I put too many eggs in one basket, as I began to feel something different over the past couple of years. I was starting to feel like I was being pulled under, and I wasn’t sure how to swim out of the current. I certainly wasn’t talking to anyone about it—it seemed off-putting to complain when everyone else thought what I was doing was a dream job. In some ways, it was. And it was also a hard knock on you, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, if you were not pointed in the right direction. I had dropped out of college after my first year in Bloomington, Indiana, and was trying to earn my way to an actual bedroom again. But for now, I was in the cellar.
Basements have always had a significant meaning in my life. I grew up in a basement that was a wild place full of imagination and amalgamation. In the northside suburbs of Indianapolis, a large swatch of farmland had been converted into split-level homes called North Willow Farms. Our home was where the pigsty had been. The basement was carpeted in what could only be described as a vomit-colored 70s patchwork, tight, scratchy fabric barely masking the concrete underneath. At first, it was filled with toys, not band equipment. And of course, it was where we would all go if there was a tornado, a place you would go to survive.
At some point, we struck a peace treaty with my father, a man who liked things neat and orderly. Long white-painted shelves were installed with bins, and as long as our toys were tossed into them, he considered it clean enough. By the time I was in elementary school, my brother (five grades older) and I had built up quite a collection of toys and odds and ends. A spaceman’s foot might be stuck on a Star Wars character’s hip joint, the Hulk’s green arm fused to a naked Barbie that may have arrived via a neighbor. Mutant toys, endlessly mixed and reassembled. I never saw them as sad, I figured they were happy to have a more unique replacement part. There was even an errant giant dildo, a relic from some 1980s adult gag Dad birthday gift that had somehow migrated into the bin. My parents were not prudes. It was always good for a shock laugh when a new friend reached in, expecting a toy, and came out holding that instead. They’d look at us wide-eyed, and we’d just shrug, “Welcome to the basement.”
When my brother was in high school, he was in a really amazing cover band who also wrote some great original music. They became good very quickly, and one of the members had an older brother who was even in college and decided to play guitar with the high schoolers. The basement in my home, once filled with the sounds of my brother and me performing “weird shows” and “puppet show” and throwing darts at blow-up dolls and friends, would now suddenly be filled with the strange but exciting sound of amplified rock and roll. The carpet was so confusingly multi-colored in 70’s muted and bold tones that if the guitar player dropped his pic you literally could not find it with the naked eye. You had to run your hand over the floor to try to find it and often came back with a different pick then when you started.
When my brother’s band played, it was like cooking a soup of emotions inside you, turned up and amplified as your molecules got rattled and rolled by the music, classic music—The Doors, Led Zeppelin, U2, The Pretenders, Talking Heads—great music that sounded even more amazing played live. And often I was hearing a song for the first time, but beautifully loud and powerful. Makes a much bigger impression than hearing it on the radio.
And when they would take a break and leave for dinner, I would sneak downstairs and look at the gear and listen to the subtle warning and potential of the electrical hums when they would forget, or choose not, to turn off their amps. I marveled at all the gear, at all the potential, so many pieces that seemed to come together to make this amazing mix of beautiful, scary, impressive excitement and intensity.
That got sealed in when my brother and some of the guys in the band picked me up from middle school in my brother’s first car, a Honda 1980 avocado green stick shift that looked like a turtle had sex with a Volvo. He drove us all wildly to a Billy Idol and The Cult concert at Market Square Arena in 1988. I had seen Neil Diamond in my first concert at that same venue the year before with my parents. It was okay, a laser of a seagull at the end and people sitting in seats and clapping along to "Sweet Caroline." This concert, we were on the floor.
When The Cult came out to their album Electric - an underappreciated throw back, hard rock masterclass - the crowd got rowdy and nuts. The guitarist smashed his guitar at the end, which I had never seen yet, and it shocked me to my core. I had been trying to save up to get the gear, which was not cheap, so seeing it destroyed in fits of violence and release was an epiphany.
When Billy Idol came out, a puff of smoke rose over the crowd, and at one point a friend of my brother’s fell backward on me as we were all standing on the chairs, spilled beer on me, and burned me with a lit cigarette. I was hooked. The chaos and freedom and sense of mystery and togetherness was overwhelming and amazing. They say your first time is special. Well, this was like nothing I’ve ever experienced before or since.
As I got my own bands together, we struggled to sound as good as my brother’s band, but we had faith. Just keep at it and something will click. My goal was to eventually just join my brother’s band, so that we could focus on making original music. Theirs was very good ever since high school, but the output was slowed with their busy and fun schedule playing covers all over the Midwest. To do that, and with our age difference, I needed to catch up musically in the meantime. I joined show choir and jazz band and took lessons and competed in state drum shows just to get better and be allowed that chance.
“Want to go for a walk to visit my girlfriend?” I asked my new freshman college roommate and soon to be new band mate.
“Sure,” he said casually.
“She’s in a sorority,” I said apologetically.
“Oh, still, let’s make the walk.”
My girlfriend since high school was a grade above me and had joined a sorority, much to my chagrin. I know it’s great for some people, but I wanted nothing to do with it. I saw the Greek system as something that would haze me, and I had an issue with authority and taking anyone saying they could control me. I was a rock and roll kid after all.
We had made an odd living quarters choice and chose a dorm no one seemed to want. It was filled with a lot of stereotypical jocks, burlish bully types who would not be able to discuss art and philosophy, and kids who were not jocks but seemed to like the abuse the jocks gave them in some weird emotionally abusive connection. We didn’t fit in at all. We lived across from the trash chute, so the dorm floor began calling us “Trash Chute Boys.” As in, “Hi, my name is Mitch.” “Oh yeah, you are the dudes who live next to the trash chute. S’up Trash shoot boys.”
The desire to live in our own house was only intensified on that first day of college walk. We were literally alone, no one else out in the early evening. A good 100 yards away, we could hear a car driving parallel from us, but it was turning onto the main road of the frats and sororities, the same road we were about to cross to reach my girlfriend.
As we began to cross the road at an angle, it was going to take longer to cross, but it was just our path. This lone car peeled onto the road in a wide turn. We kept our pace walking, but it became clear this car was hitting the gas and was trying to play chicken with us, roaring its engine. It seemed like an average older 80s suburban car. The timing was somehow lining up, and we had to look at each other and speed up to get out of the way as the car swerved toward us, and two young men hanging out of the back of the car yelled, “FRESHMEN!”
That did it. We never wanted to walk this humiliating walk again. I wanted my own space, never to be on this road, where we could be free to be ourselves and free from stupid stereotypical movie dynamics. Instead of getting almost run over by guys like this, we’d take their money and have them happily pay us instead. My brother’s band was already doing it with their high school friends who had gone into frats, and they had gotten a house for themselves. They made a killing playing gigs at just these very frats and sororities. That seemed like a smart idea—to get better at playing music, maybe earn enough to get new gear, and have a bit of a revenge tour as well.
In fact, me and some good friends in high school had been planning on playing music together anyway and joined forces. I had an idea to basically imitate my brother’s band’s marketing materials so we could get in on some of that easy Greek money. We were nowhere near as professional-sounding as my brother’s band, but I figured we were younger and could add some of that “new” 90s grunge to the covers, and we looked the part.
We took it further, and in a two to three set gig, playing for about an hour each set, we would sneakily play covers for the first one to two sets, then play whatever we wanted in the last set. Originals, jams, songs we liked. Anything. It always went great because the party was super drunk by the end. They thought they were really seeing these bands live, they were so blitzed. Then we would sometimes walk into their kitchen and take food from the frat as well. They would buy huge bags of meat, and we’d grab that and have a cookout all week on them. Then they would pay us well on top of it.
It took off faster than we expected. Once you are plugged in as one of those types of “cover” bands, you are there to eat up the tons of scheduled parties these frats have over the year. When I first went to negotiate a price at a frat that was friendly to us, and I kept my cost down, they told us we may as well ask for another $500 to $1,000 as there is money in the budget that will just not get used otherwise.
We played many frat and sorority shows all year, all around Indiana and the Midwest. Some hilarious ones, where I hired the cheapest sound guy I could find, only to discover before a gig he was kicking the speakers to get them to “work,” before we had to help him figure out the cabling to a dance that was delayed two to three hours. Same gig, we got lost à la Spinal Tap in the back halls of a giant old hotel trying to find our way to the dance. We got trapped on the south side of Chicago because we were short a dime at the toll booth.
We had a lot of fun and made more money than we really deserved. But it was also becoming a concern how many gigs we were getting without having any, or many, of our own songs written.
We broke up after a year when I got into a new original band, which was my biggest goal. All of it was hard while trying to study for school, which for sure suffered on my end. I wanted to focus on music full-time before I wanted to become a good student at some other subject. I had denied a chance to try out for the jazz music school, as it was one of the best in the country and reduced many to ashes when they were done. I wanted to play rock, and the jazz program was notoriously hostile to that as well. They even called to recruit me, as our jazz band in high school had been so good. I tried a jazz camp and it was not for me. Talk about competitive.
We had stayed busy almost the entire first year in college playing many gigs, and to be honest, it was kind of out of hand. The experiment went too well being a cover band. But we didn’t entirely feel it was us they were even cheering for, or if we wanted to be there. So we broke up once I got into Velo-Deluxe. The bassist became the drummer for The Prom and Brando, and the guitarist played with Margo and the Nuclear So & So’s and Stay Sparks. I was in Velo and more Indiana bands after that, so we all got into original music in a big way after our foray into making money first—only to never make much again, but with more cultural significance.
Financially speaking, I needed this basement room unless I wanted to live on a couch as a freeloader. There were already some stray friends from here or there who were essentially living rent-free in the house. It wasn’t fair to those of us who paid rent, and it often led to unpredictable energy and eventual confrontations. As one of the founders of this generation of the house, I didn’t want to be below ground with my financials, so I needed to go below ground to be in the black economically. I needed this room to have a roof over my head and a safe, stable place to sleep when I came back from tours that were roughly one to three months at a time, on and off, in somewhat unpredictable fashion or comfort and quality.
But if you want to “make it” as a professional musician, especially one who is trying to play original music, you cannot say no to a touring opportunity. However, you also make very little to no money, something of a badge of honor in Gen X anti-corporate consciousness. The fact that I was on an independent label that got national distribution on the contract of a songwriter who had signed a deal years before meant I was one of the super lucky musicians. Many bands and players wanted that exact experience. Many also did not seem to understand what I didn’t either: that essentially, I was a day rate player and my only contract was the nonexistent one of the handshake verbal and implicit agreement between musicians that you are in the band.
Locally and colloquially, that gives you a lot of cachet. But financially, and from a standpoint of internal dynamics, control of the process, and your life, it can give you next to nothing other than a potential stepping stone to the next opportunity—none of them guaranteed to be musically or financially successful. The implication and assumption, outside in the media or rock fantasy world, is that as a band member, you get paid for recording the record and make money somehow in the band. The reality is you are paid nothing for the recording and should be happy for the opportunity, which I truly felt.
The glory of young musicians playing for all the spirit of it, and the legacy of financially disadvantageous arrangements made under those pretenses, is well known but hard to stop due to the circumstances and structure of things in the music business. And without the internet then to research or a mentor, you knew only passing stories about percentages and points—but those that know often don’t bring it up. Get my name out there, get to live the dream of touring, cross the pond and play in England! I had dreamed of this and idolized England my whole life. I even once had my mom sew a shiny Union Jack to a whitewashed jean jacket in middle school. Much like that experience, what I thought would be cool was only to a degree as cool as in my dreams.
I was 19 years old, just starting my freshman year in college, when a musician and songwriter almost 10 years older chose me for a new band after making a name regionally and nationally with a prior couple of bands—now a new name, new sound that we built organically. If things went well, we could tour. Who knows, it could go anywhere! So who cared if I had no points (only matters if the record sells anyway). If we could tour, and I could be that much closer to being a drummer in a rock band and doing this for a living, I was happy to accept the opportunity.
And tour we did, in England mostly and some bits of Europe. That sounds like success to folks in the Midwest not on tour. I was broke, which was not a big deal to me yet, but I was also not feeling good with the connection of the band members. In fact, one out of three members had quit out of homesickness and disagreements over agendas, so I could tell this wasn’t a stable band despite a strong recording and start. The songwriter also seemed to be at a bit of a loss for how to continue this version of genre mashup and sonic volatility. He was hitting a wall writing new material that fit the approach we had taken, and did not seem that open in this band to ideas from me or others. He ended up writing songs more in a country-influenced range, which was also an influence but really the start of a whole new band—starting over after all the work we had done.
Often, I was coming home from tours in some credit card debt, as I stayed behind to explore the areas a bit more without a schedule of shows, staying at hostels or with friends or new folks I had met while on tour. I had an amazing moment with Eugene Kelly from The Vaselines when I swung by his home in Glasgow. He was becoming famous for Nirvana covering Jesus Doesn’t Want Me for a Sunbeam and brought new attention to his work with The Vaselines and Eugenius. I was a big fan. His mom had just returned his very first guitar he purchased when she found it in an attic, and I was there to marvel at it with him in boyhood wonder—similar to what I felt when I was in my basement in Indy with my brother’s band’s gear in there.
Besides meeting some people in bands I truly admired, there were lots of less admirable folks around as well, of course.
Touring England was something I always wanted to do, but I did so without studying up on English geography or history. Turns out England is pretty neatly cut into three types of towns: a larger city or city center, a college town, or a post-industrial wasteland. No fruit, no sun, lots of beer, constipation even with the beans, and plenty of racism and skinheads. I had to routinely dodge antisemitic groups—be it clusters of young, shit-starting skinheads out at night, groups of football dads during a match who would try to start something, or just mean hotel clerks or menacing kids on late-night streets.
I had long curly hair and no glasses, so my Semitic nose and hair made me look like I had just stepped out of the desert. I now knew, in a small way, what it was like to be Black in America, or a female alone in any situation in public for that matter. I almost got pulled out of a taxi in Liverpool by two insane skinheads, barking and raving like rabid dogs at me while we were stopped at a light. We had a bunch of us in the taxi but were all in shock. “I think those guys are yelling at you,” one of my band mates said. The light changed just as they were starting to get out of their car, presumably to try to pull me out and beat me. The cars started to honk, and our driver was able to pull away. It was not something I had experienced yet in the States, although times are changing.
Once, I went out on my own to get out of the hotel and do something, anything. I went to a bar someone told me about, got mixed up, and spent the money I needed to get a cab back on a beer. We only got enough per diem to get one beer and a meal, or two beers in a day. Important choices when you are young. The rest came from the venues or your own purse. I now had to try to walk back to my hotel, and I didn’t have a great sense of direction. I heard some hooting and hollering from young men in the streets and prayed I wouldn’t end up near more skinheads. Our tour driver had the “skinhead kiss” to prove it was not fun to tango with them. That’s where they put your teeth on the curb and stomp on your head, causing your front teeth to fall out. He would take out his fake teeth to show us often.
He was a horrible little man. He masturbated in his van when we were away, even as we pleaded with him to stop. We often needed to watch him to prevent him from spotting any drunk young women—any age really—and trying to rape them if they fell unconscious. It was not fun to be around someone so vile, and yet cheeky. The other guys in the band would often count off in a sort of “three, two, one, not it,” and I would get stuck with him, being the youngest, or maybe just the most willing not to challenge the situation—which I should have done.
Once, I needed to get back and had to run an errand with him since he had the van keys. He made us stop off at his “wife’s” home. She was a pretty and young Indian bride who seemed to need to do this for a green card. He made me wait as I had to listen to him basically have sex with her, when it was clear he disgusted her. It was awful being there, trapped with this man, sensing her anguish—trapped with him legally and with a child.
Eventually, a tour happened without this horrible man on the road with us. It was a tour on a shared double-decker tour bus with a selfish, arrogant, and derivative band. The Chippendale male dancers had the bus before us, so each tiny bunk you could sleep in smelled of body lotion and suntan cream. When we got a hotel, my band mates would pair up, leaving me again to fend for myself. I decided to find the one member from the other band who seemingly didn’t fit in. He was the nicest and most quiet of the lot, with short dreads and a stoic but kind face.
We became friendly, a sort of safe haven from whatever was going on in our bands or between them. We didn’t like one another’s bands, theirs being cocky in a very British 90s way, and ours being Midwestern, keeping our sentiments under wraps to showcase our cockiness on stage. The other band once trashed the bus, staying up partying all night. Even their own roadies couldn’t stand them. We all came up with the idea to collect the trash and fill their guitars with it, taking off the strings and restringing them afterward. They tried to play the show with the trash inside their instruments and when it failed to produce a nice sound, the look on their faces when they realized what was the issue was worth every effort.
Once they wanted a drug deal so badly, they annoyed dealer to the point that when they finally got the goods, it was mixed with Ajax. I watched two very tough looking London gangster types berate the singer and he squealed in pain from snorting what he thought was the drug. “Never contact us like that again!” He didn’t. There was no love lost between the groups, and I detested their completely over-the-top confidence—especially because I didn’t think their music justified it—and how they treated my roommate friend. I found out later, when I got back to Indiana, that at some point after the tour, he had stepped in front of a train and killed himself.
I once rounded a corner tightly and slammed straight into a group of young men. I began feeling myself get shoved around the circle instinctively. To my delight, I began to realize they were African-English teens. I was so happy they weren’t skinheads that I think I freaked them out, smiling and chatting as they tossed me around, confused at what was happening. They lost interest in me, as I had no fear or animosity. I was grateful.
I then got lucky again. A cab driver, a Jamaican with a great accent, took pity on me and gave me a ride back to my hotel for free. He lectured me like a father would to a young son. “You always need to know where you are going at the end of the night. Know what you need and how to get home.” He was right, and it is always the kind gesture of a stranger at a time of need that you remember as one of the truest forms of kindness.
When I would get back to Bloomington, the house was still throwing huge parties a few times a year, with bands playing at one point maybe monthly. One of the best was the week I discovered Sly and the Family Stone. It was everything I wanted in a funk band. Amazing songs, great driving drumming, diverse in sound and look. Stand is a great party album, and I played it all night at a party with no bands that just became a sweaty dance party in the basement. Those times were great, especially with a 20-year-old liver that could handle the next day with some sense of ease.
Often the party would just be the housemates and a gaggle of people who always came over, endlessly playing Euchre card games and drinking. I refused to learn how to play cards so that I could have time to try to create something meaningful that was my own, as I was increasingly feeling frustrated creatively and personally. I was always helping others get their songs realized, often with quite straight ahead rhythmic concepts for their material. Rock and roll and pop-based drumming can do that sometimes. Very basic 4/4 rhythms. At least that made it easy for me to try to do, and once you try to find a simple groove, it actually becomes very hard to nail it. But it was not complex is what I mean. It was hard to make it more creative and often not encouraged for simplicity and authenticity sake - I guess. I do like simplicity and directness, even if it got boring. But it also felt like I was not being challenged. I was there to lay down brick after brick.
I would join the socializing mostly when we would make frequent stops to see bands at our local club, which was on a second story (literally the name of the club) and was above a gay bar blasting dance music—often very uncrowded below, although I’m sure it got crowded at some point. I loved seeing some familiar faces and listening to good local bands, and often national bands who would come through town, often with a chance to hang after if they wanted to chat. Often, I really just wanted time by myself to read or play my acoustic guitar in the basement when the shows were over.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good party and can often stay up and shut a party down. I enjoy cutting loose and having a good time and did so. It’s just that I was beginning to have issues with thinking that always having a good time meant this. Celebration, to me, was perhaps best when it is a break from meaningful work, but I felt I was at times celebrating nothing other than being around friends who were celebrating. If you were in college, you could celebrate being away from class, while I was just waiting for my next gig, where people would celebrate more as an escape from something else. Other than the music itself, it was beginning to ring hollow.
Touring has a weird effect on your mind and body. You are moving through space and time at a different rate than the rest of the world. You adapt, or you don’t. I would try to describe it sort of like getting seasick. Once it gets a hold of you, it takes time to recover from feeling out of sorts, but the timing is more like days and months instead of hours. More and more, it seemed I wasn’t adapting well. I tried to recoup myself in the coal cellar and read books and catalog vocabulary words when I was home, fearing I was losing some level of brain acuity being on the road so much.
It took me years to realize that when I would get home, I rarely attended anyone else's house parties at that time, only the ones in our basement. I just didn’t feel like meeting more people, also knowing I would not be staying around to maintain anything easily. I felt in limbo and didn’t feel connected, to my housemates, my band, my family, my college or local music friends—keeping myself in a state of feeling alive emotionally by mostly writing soul-to-soul letters to potential love interests I had back in Indiana or that I had met in my travels. No immediate back and forth as in today’s digital world. This was weeks and months of long-winded, pining, day-in-the-life–type emotional verbal wordplay and teasing. Masochistic romantic notions to the core.
This house had been passed down from one older sibling or friend to another for ultimately four generations in the essential college town of Bloomington, Indiana, going back as far as having friends swear that they knew (for a fact) that Michael Stipe had stopped by for a party when R.E.M. recorded Life’s Rich Pageant back in 1986. The house had become differently named each generation, but this era it was in rare form. The parties had grown more consistent and intense and the commitment to enjoying most things other than any concept of school or adult responsibility.
It became known as the “House of Sin” after a housemates’ mom scolded him for skipping a weekend at home, saying, “You just want to go back to your… your House of Sin!” He felt a little guilty but admitted she wasn’t wrong. He couldn’t wait to tell us, and the name stuck.
Word of HOS parties in the mid 90s approached legendary for going hard. Endless music, whiskey, dancing, basement shows, some captured in audio recordings that were at times well recorded. Almost anything-goes level, except the revelry was always affordable as we were college kids or college dropouts. Once, when a band I was playing in performed in the basement, word got out to the high school punk and goth community and, like a flash mob of moths, they literally swarmed our home—bursting at the seams with black torn denim and black-shirted men and eye-lined, white-makeup ladies spilling out of windows and packing the basement. You had to exit windows to move in and around the house safely. While I was trying to enter my own home via a living room window with a drink in my hand, a goth girl ashed her cigarette into my cup as I tried to balance myself getting inside.
Being a punk must be fun, I thought, you just do everything you are not supposed to in polite society. My band was playing in the basement and we did our set to a completely jammed sardine-level basement. It was kind of scary, as it was almost impossible to move easily to the one stair exit. Beyond a whiff or two, we clearly weren’t a punk band—just inspired by—so they never came back.
Many other bands also played in our basement space, which was just one larger area, 20 x 8 feet maybe, and the coal cellar off to the side, door closed back then, used to store music gear. The rest of the area was unfinished and filled with scattered dendrite of generations of house dwellers, spiders, and random discarded or unloved music gear.
More than anything at that time, playing drums live was one of my favorite experiences. I lived for it. It was the other 23 hours of the day and night I was struggling with. I was not one for showing off much. That did not bring me that much joy in performances. I did love to feel like I was inside a great song. Like literally inside the waves and molecules and grooves. Keeping the rhythm to a song that the rest of the band synchronizes around feels like being inside some type of mystical equation. Better yet was when I felt like I could get lost into the vibrations and sound waves. I was able to channel all my frustrations out as well. The style of drumming that was burgeoning was a more physical style that worked great for my current approach and emotional outlet. I was lucky things were linking up stylistically for me in that regard.
At this time, texture in sonic noises—particularly guitar noises—was what people were exploring. I personally loved it. My brother is a keyboard player and I do love the endless soundscapes synths can provide, but there was something more aggressive about guitar playing and guitar tones that really worked on me. A growl turned into a warble, or in our case, sometimes sounded like a sonic vacuum cleaner. The interplay between songwriting and sound exploration was part of the experience. A good song provides a backbone to supply the audience with a very clear narrative structure, sonically at least. Drones and repetitive sounds are more abstract and less narrative driven, not necessarily going anywhere clearly. I liked the tension between the two, particularly if I could get into a song to the point my muscle memory would take over or I could be spontaneous and know the song well enough to just land on the right in-and-outs of a song, coming up with something new.
I especially loved when a song did explore repetitive cycles, even if just for a few moments. It felt like a trance and hearkened me back to the rituals ascribed to music for centuries in many cultures, where ritual and sound would help the listener transcend into a different state of reality. Add the sonic power of amplified guitar tones and drum mix and you had, at times, an overwhelming experience that took you to another world.
There it was again, my desire to transcend this reality. To escape it or move beyond it. I was not that motivated to write songs. I wanted to be inside a good song and I guess hoped others would set that up for me to take it there in the final version as a drummer. Eventually, I would want to write them, as at times the songs you play are not directly speaking to you anymore. They are not hitting the soundscapes and energy that you are feeling or want to feel, and maybe you have a specific emotional energy or mood or idea you want to convey on a sonic canvas.
You may also have the ability to hear music and parts that others aren’t aware of, but as a drummer, they might assume you don’t hear them or can’t. They might think you don’t have other sonic ideas, or they may want control over the group’s direction and to receive most of the credit. There are many issues of collaboration, respect, and community that can get derailed by attempts to individually control, guide, or reap social or monetary rewards in music. Some people have shared the spotlight and are ready to be front and center. But does that work for everyone in the group?
I was there to be a drummer at the start, and I was going to respect that role as mine, while also being allowed creative freedom within it. Even though rock songs are generally straightforward in how they are written, meaning the guitar strum often dictates the rhythm, there’s also an austerity and purity in some strains of Midwestern punk and indie rock from that time. I respect its clarity and efficiency—songs only need what they need. Don’t do more. Yet, playing that over and over again isn’t always interesting. I don’t mind and enjoy serving the song. I just wish more of the songs presented to me had more range at that time. But that was getting into session drummer territory. I would need to brush up on music notation and still ran the risk of playing music I didn’t love as much. I was happy the songwriters I was working with could write songs I really enjoyed, but struggling with the notion that I could only contribute so much.
I was seeing the writing on the wall. I was a hired-gun drummer – and lucky to be one - who would have to tour forever to make a living and risked playing on music I did not enjoy with all my heart. It was already happening and I was barely scraping by. I was lucky to be playing with great musicians and get hired to play some studio sessions by people I admired, but they may not write songs I love. What would that do to the experience I enjoyed so much of getting lost in the music? Without money, I can handle—but without being excited with the passion for the music would then be a killer.
So far, my time touring was not that good for me mentally and financially. I needed and wanted more stability and to connect more with those around me, but had no idea how I was going to do that. Movies made me feel connected to the world somehow, with a good splash of irony that it was done in solo spectator fashion. I would begin to write script ideas and scenes just to see what would come out and eventually quietly applied to a film school in New York, and helped get me out of the basement and this world I had constructed and seemed to be stuck inside.
If you are going to be a musician in southern Indiana, one benefit other than the basement house parties and music school and college town was the access to real Nashville-level session players if you knew where to look. As rock began to explore some country roots in the 90s, it led some of us to discover The Pit Stop bar and dance hall. It was a small country bar that had ex-Nashville session players in the house band, playing on a stage about the size of a small kitchen table. Every Saturday night they would play a couple of sets surrounded by an audience dressed to the hilt in satin and fancy colored dresses and cowboy hats and boots. Couples in their 70s doing country couple dancing all night. It looked like an amazing ritual to keep up into old age: going out, getting dressed up for one another and the little bar, dancing and moving to music.
They hosted a karaoke night and we had grown slightly familiar to this little crowd and felt bold enough to go for that evening and try our hand. There was a much smaller crowd than when we went on Saturday night as outsiders to check out the scene. We went in a group to feel more bold and comfortable but in hindsight it also looks a bit like a challenge. I immediately got a beer and signed up. Instinctively I chose James Brown's "Sex Machine," just to be funny and get in some dancing. As soon as my song went on and the all-white classic country crowd heard James Brown and me, a Jewish kid with long hair dancing wildly to the music, they collectively ALL stood up and left the front room where karaoke was being held, and ALL moved to the back, in clear protest to "that" kind of music. Whelp. You can admire other cultures, but I guess they don’t always admire you back.
Playing music live was always a very supportive environment in Bloomington. Meeting folks who would eventually create record labels and community music archives that are still standing 30 years later. Impressive, passionate, dedicated, loyal. All great qualities of the region’s music scene that happens in smaller communities, especially ones in "flyover" states. There was often a great crowd to support local live music. This was on full display at the annual Culture Fest and held significant meaning to me as that was one of the first times I got to see my brother's band perform in B-town when I was in high school and saw the jump they made musically.
I was to be performing on the stage in the same place in Velo-Deluxe, my current band that had just come back from an tour. At Culture Fest, being outside is totally different. You really don’t feel the energy of the crowd the same. And as I was playing, my bass drum kept moving forward. I have a distinct memory of having to stop the band, wade into the creek behind the stage, pull out a large rock, cradling it like a large baby, and place it in front of my bass drum, like a creature emerging from the Black Lagoon. The band was wondering what the hell I was doing wading in the creek after asking them to pause the set. That was when we were in a honeymoon phase after or right before the first tour.
A little-known fact about this performance was that the minds behind Secretly Canadian attended that Culture Fest before moving to Bloomington after seeing an article about the great music scene here. Our band was not named, I assume perhaps because we were on tour in England. One of the founders told me that when he saw us perform live it helped him decide that B-town was filled with good music and would be the place to build a record company. SC has done amazing work and I am sure many bands and musicians contributed to their decision, but it was meaningful to me to hear that we were a part of that.
Other times Velo played when we were in the divorcing period with one of the original three members. Some major party happened before this Culture Fest and some bad batch of mushrooms or something had gone around. As mentioned, I didn’t really hang out with other band members that much, as when you are on tour together you get your fill, and thankfully on this day, as one of them performed the entire show on their back, staring up at the sky. And that was not the first time that would happen. It was an overcast day with an ominous vibe. Felt like the beginning of the end, despite us finding a replacement and touring a few more times for many more months. Our start had been very successful. We had gotten a good reviews in Rolling Stone magazine, and the NME in England. One of my favorite memories had been playing a sold-out show at Second Story after our first English tour. After working so hard it was great to play a sold out show playing original music and was probably the show that made me feel closest to a hometown hero for a hot minute I was lucky to taste what it’s like—the energy of a sold-out show playing to an excited and proud home floor.
Holding a job while being back from tour and not knowing when you would be on tour again is tricky business. You don’t want to commit to a job that takes too much training as you would likely get fired or have to quit once the employer knew you were not going to be reliable. I tried everything to earn money easily. I was a test subject at IU for unknown research. Mine happened to be shock treatments to test memory, finding out later I got paid less for hours of that than a friend who just answered questions about alcohol use in his family tree. I was a waiter and fry cook. I got fired from a family video store and eventually a sandwich shop.
Being underground and without light and needing work, I quickly took up a hint of work that a friend from another band mentioned to me. There was a video store specializing in B to D grade film rarities that employed musicians and didn’t ask too many questions. It sounded ideal and when I went to check it out, just accepted that—of course—it was also in a basement level, not much of any daylight seeping into the small video room from the light squeezing in from the railing and stairs that led down to what was essentially one man’s obsessive, private collection of hundreds of B movies. Genres like horror, every kind of exploitation film, soft-core porn, monster movies, cheesy fantasy, kung fu, and sci-fi. It was called Plan 9 Video after all, after the most famous Ed Wood movie.
I was always interested in film and had been writing some scenes and plot ideas to stay creative and pass the time while touring. So in theory, I could also "study" these films. It proved to be true I could watch 1-3 films per one of my work shifts, often with very few people coming in. But there were some extreme quirks. First off, there was no actual organization to the store. There were no signs or labels on the walls and things were not alphabetized, not in order of date or release, or really anything. For one type of customer, it was okay: the wandering, curious college student or local who just wanted to see what’s going on in this dark hole. There were plenty of film titles and covers that would titillate or cause a funny or strong reaction, so easy for them to find something to rent or just feel happy to learn of a film titled "Electric Naked Amazon Women and the Gate of Severed Hands" and leave the store happy.
However, it was NOT ideal for the second kind of customer: the local neurodivergent, oddball film connoisseur, often with a charming obsession with giant insect movies or an OCD professor in a black leather jacket and manicured mustache with a list of exact horror films from a director I didn’t know from 1973 that he wishes to find at this exact type of establishment. If I couldn’t find "Jumbo Head Cheese Gore Factory Children" from a particular director, that client would pretty much be as indignant as if the coffee shop didn’t have cream or sugar. I would have to tell them that despite me being employed there, I had no idea how this was organized or how to find their film.
Eventually, upon questioning, I learned from others I had to call the owner. I knew the owner as he was at almost every rock show I went to at Second Story, and I went a lot. It seemed he’d been doing that for the past 20 years. He looked like a lost Ramone mixed with a bit of Fred Flintstone, but one who had a big drinking problem. Until I knew he owned this store, I wasn’t sure if he could string together many sentences back to back. Turned out he was an obsessive collector. The good news of that was he was often home at any hour, recovering from a hangover. The bad was that as hangovers are prone to do, one does not often want to wake up or answer the phone.
I would often have to let the client know they were free to walk around and look for the item, but I had no computer system or cataloged list to see if we had the item at all, nor any organizational system to ensure it would be in a particular area of the store. Essentially, this was a private collection, similar to perusing a friend’s record collection but one they just dumped into a basement. If you could find something interesting, you were welcome to check it out for a few days, but you could not wake that friend for the life of you to find something specific or ask questions.
That was a frustrating issue for the clients, but not so much for the employees. It gave us even less responsibility than usual to hold onto a job. Indeed, I did get to watch tons of amazing movies as I am a fan of kitsch and absurdity whether through intention or lack of resources or lack of planning, effort, or capacity. I found maybe the perfect "job" while home from tour. There was no work schedule more than a month out. You just let the owner know the month before if you were free that coming month to work, and that week you sort of worked it out with him and the other "staff" who was coming in when.
The issue I soon discovered as to why this amazing gig didn’t work out was that after you worked the month you agreed to do, there was no schedule or system in which you got paid, of course, cash under the table. After the 5th and 6th week of waiting, I needed to pay my coal cellar rent. When I asked my friend who told me about the job when we get paid, he said, "It’s unclear, often it takes him 3 months or so."
Quitting that job was nothing new. I had been fired or quit a few jobs and held onto others as long as I could. I waited tables and was a part-time fry cook, but had to compete for tables with a pregnant woman, which felt strange and wrong. I worked at an above-ground family video store that wanted me to cheesily smile at everyone and say a greeting. When I stated I would be warm and welcoming to everyone but felt fake smiling and saying the corny greeting, they fired me. I worked at a sandwich shop owned by a dysfunctional couple for a summer—which did allow us to make food to keep at home until I was caught doing so.
The best job I had was still playing covers. At times, my brother's band would have a rotating cast of drummers, and I’d occasionally get some gigs, but it was infrequent. Since I was on tour often, it was difficult to sustain anything, as my schedule was unreliable at best. It was nearly impossible for a musician to tour unless they were on a stipend or had a dream job that allowed for endless comings and goings.
On top of that, my brother’s band and I were growing apart in terms of musical taste. I’ve always been drawn to a raw, loose, soulful, and authentic sound, rather than something that sacrifices that for shine and attempts at perfection. Even as a kid, I gravitated toward Keith Richards and Iggy Pop’s solo records, which had a raw, unpolished edge. By this time, I was fully into Guided By Voices, The Stooges, early Who, Pavement, and early Flaming Lips. My brother and his band, being nearly five years older, had been more influenced by synth-pop and the perfection of ‘70s and ‘80s radio hits—bands like The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, and Simple Minds. While those were great bands, they didn’t align with how I wanted to perform. I wanted to be authentic, not fussing over recordings. I will never forget once sneaking into the house I now lived in when my brother lived here and sneaking a listen to something they recorded. It was a demo that still to my ears and memory was one of the most beautiful songs I’ve heard. It was so vulnerable and raw and beautiful despite being recorded on a 4 track. I heard them try to recapture that magic in the studio so many times and although it sounding nice, never quite having the magic of that first version. The early capture often can have the most authentic performance. Bands like The Beatles just made it seem perfectly normal to record a song a hundred times and retain some sense of being real in emotions after so many takes and recording changes. They get not enough credit for that and I felt my brothers band tended more in that direction that I had patience for.
They had a recording session at the House of Sin, and I wanted to approach it with a loose, relaxed style, but they were aiming for something more tight and controlled. I played many songs – probably some of them a little tipsy to aim for that feel, but only one song was selected on the album. It was about television as escapism, which felt fitting for me at the time. I didn’t own a tv, but I was big on escapism. I was hurt that the other songs I played on didn’t get discussed or used, but I understood. They had different ideas around recording. Their high school drummer was a wonderful guy I bought my first real drum set off and he took me aside briefly once to let me know he thought my song was one of the ones that had emotion in it on the record. That helped my ego mend. My approach and style had evolved differently, and that would become clear in the songs I eventually wrote and recorded in 1996 as Getta Grip under the moniker Bustin Mustin, a joke childhood nickname as my middle name is Mustin. All 4 track and just about one take. It was just ironic that the group that demonstrated to me the best case scenario of people respecting each other and getting along, who inspired me to play drums and take it seriously were also were not my best fit musically as a band. I could fill the role, I enjoyed their company, but it was not me.
In the meantime, I redeemed myself with a studio session generously provided by a producer/engineer friend. The recording was intended as a demo for a major label artist, who had the freedom to express herself artistically in the studio. The four demos I recorded ended up making it onto the official album, even though high-level studio drummers were brought in to redo some parts. They said they couldn’t capture my unique feel, so everyone agreed to leave my original parts as they were. The album was released by Dreamworks, and I was advised to join the Musicians Union. I would receive checks quarterly—usually between $1 and $20 for a while. The record didn’t sell well, despite sounding great, and those checks weren’t going to cut it. Beyond that the work I was getting or trying to get to make ends meet didn’t always work out on the music side. I once rehearsed for months for someone’s songwriting debut. We went into a decent studio few days with everyone having bee promised to get paid after the session. The songwriter then showed up crying at my houses front door with a jar or pesto in her hand. She tearfully explained that after all this work, the financial backer was found to be a fraud. She had no money to pay the musicians, the engineer or the studio. With the little money she had she would probably have to pay the studio to get the tapes of what was recorded and now could not pay me. So she made me fresh pesto.
Finances were hard to come by, but that wasn’t the most important thing. I could get by. My sense of belonging was now compromised every way I looked. I was with my band and not with them. I was with my college house roommates and not with them. I was with my brother and husband and not with them. I was individuating from my parents and not with them. I was without any strong romantic connection to offer support or ease things. My sense of purpose was floating adrift after focusing on being a drummer in a band as a life mission and now feeling it wasn’t making me happy in a sustaining way at least without other avenues. My sense of value was now caught in simply performing music - both as myself and as others wanted me to - but it was no longer bringing me the type of more complete respect I wanted. I was fulfilling others’ visions in creativity or music more than my own. My sense of meaning was challenged to the point where I now had to put it all into my emotions when playing a song, not even sure if the audience felt how I feel, because I had little else. And when that ended, I was floating around again - feeling undefined, feeling undeveloped, and underwhelmed with my prospects - when I knew this one life was a gift and had tremendous potential. I had gone off into some tangent somehow, after chasing the thing I loved the most: being in a band and making music. I knew I needed to find a way out. To shed this and develop new skills and then maybe return to drumming later.
I came back into consciousness with crashing and shattering sounds, and it reminded me of playing drums, but there was much more violence. The crunching of plastic and metal, and the distinct sound of broken glass. I was seeing flashes and stars in my eyes but realizing I unconscious again, and coming to so suddenly I didn’t really know where I was or what was happening. There were yellow, red, and green lights. My hands were on some kind of round object and my foot on a pedal. I realized I was in my car and still going straight, up the road towards my home and the basement to sleep, hoping this would be erased like a bad dream.
I was arrested at my home and brought back to the scene where another car at an intersection had assumed I had a blinking red as they did, but I had a blinking yellow. I was unconscious at the wheel, however. I had been out with friends, trying to get out and make connections with band mates. We had watched a movie and had some beer. I forgot to eat. Went out to Second Story and had two shots, mostly because there was a girl there I wanted to speak to, but was shy to do so, and she seemed to like to drink. Next thing I knew, I was not feeling well and wanted to leave. At that point, I must have blacked out and acted without being conscious or consulting with friends, just started to drive home, to get back to my coal cellar and pass out. The problem was, I was passed out at the wheel.
The driver was taken to the hospital with head injuries. His driver’s seat window was shattered. I asked if he was okay, and they told me they didn’t know. Being the son of a physician who lectured me constantly on the dangers of head trauma, I knew anything was possible, and I could have killed a man. I was told I needed to go to jail overnight until I could be released.
I refused medical attention as I felt overwhelmed by my actions. I was working to accept my new reality, which was in stark contrast to the one just 10 minutes before. I had been accepted to a new school to study film out of state. I was now in danger of being convicted of drunk driving manslaughter at worst, a lifetime of guilt, and derailing any plans, let alone the lives of others. I was overwhelmed with horrible feelings. Beyond that, it felt as if a dark blackness was filling me up. I assumed it was my guilt and anguish. It did seem to get achier and achier.
Of course I did not sleep, I just sat racing in my mind at the horrid thing that had just happened. How had I let it come to this? At that moment, a piece of my soul was scarred, when I thought I hurt someone else or killed them. It was a darkness like nothing I’ve felt before or since. I decided right then I never wanted to feel this again, and when my life came to an end, I wanted only to hopefully, if this man was okay, to be associated with helping people, never hurting them. The pretense of escaping life in a musical trance seemed like child’s games. I needed to be sure I worked to help others and have a meaningful life in that regard. My attempt to do so in music was really only appeasing me and some who enjoyed it. It seemed small and not meaningful.
I felt a scary connection to anyone who lost someone or who took someone’s life. Anyone guilty of a mistake and anyone who ruined their lives. It was a spiritual shift that radically altered my consciousness, and I still feel the scar. Not in a bad way. To palpate a scar is to come to terms with it.
As I went home in the morning, my chest felt like a black heaviness. I assumed it maybe was what people called “whiplash,” and that my spine and bones were achy. I called an EMT friend to ask him, and he immediately said he was coming over to drive me to the hospital. Turned out, the pleural lining of one lung had ripped off the wall of my chest in the impact, and I had a collapsed lung. The hospital acted very quickly when they saw me. I had no idea, but when that happens, if you wait too long it can be life-threatening as the space in your chest shifts and your heart can move, and the electrical impulses can be disrupted. That dark heaviness I had felt was in fact the beginning of something potentially fatal. Turned out, I was also lucky to be alive.
Ironically, I had set up to play a show outdoors, in the HOS backyard for a canned food drive for end-of-summer fun. It was the last show I would play with my band in Bloomington. We played with other bands I admired like Mysteries of Life. Velo played our set outside, seeming to signal a new era, then my friends drove me to the county jail to be contained in a cell again, this time not of my own doing.
When I got there, I was told to shower and stripped of my clothes and put into one of those orange jumpers. They make you carry a basic blanket and pillow into jail blocks A or B. I would not get a cell, but since I was there just for a night, I would get a cot located on the side walls in between the other cells. As they paraded me around, it was clear there was no room in cell block A. I had long curly hair. I look quite ethnic without my glasses and with my hair wet. As I was leaving, one of the prisoners said, seemingly jokingly, “Oh, don’t make him go. He’s got perdy hair,” to some laughter from other prisoners. Keeping a straight face, I thought to myself, “Jesus help me.” I am Jewish, but needed someone to help quick.
Upon arriving in cell block B, I took not more than a few steps inside when I heard, “Mitchell Motherfuckin’ Harris!” in joyful exuberance. I looked around to find an acquaintance’s younger brother I knew from high school. They were both tough-nosed kids, left to their own lot in life and often in major trouble in high school for fights and theft. He was in one of my homerooms, and he thought I was funny, so we were on good terms. He was a few grades below me but hung with much tougher crowds. His friend and he decided it would be funny to rob, at gunpoint, a pizza delivery guy. They got $17 from it and he got caught. “If you are going to rob someone,” I told him that afternoon, “be sure it’s for more money.” I didn’t want to lecture him on his life choices. But if he was going to be a criminal, make it pay and don’t hurt anyone.
I played basketball that evening with the prisoners in these slippers with paper-thin socks. To say I got a blister is like saying the Hindenburg had a fire. I was limping for weeks from that blister. The prisoners were friendly to me, as my high school comrade enthusiastically introduced me as if I was someone he respected. I thanked G-D for cell block B. Interestingly, in prison everyone rooted for the cops when they watched the show Cops. “Get that sucka!” they would yell as the police chased down someone running from the law. I was surprised by that. But everyone also told me their stories and seemed to have convinced themselves they were innocent. I imagine some may have been, but very few beyond me and my friend admitted we were guilty.
Three times a day you had to go into your cell for an hour or so. I had to go to my cot since the cells were full. A reminder that you were not in control of your life, and the space around you. It was hard not to think of my coal cellar. The cot was in the bigger cell block area and was actually less depressing than my home, I recalled. They had a book cart, and I glanced around and found Edgar Allan Poe’s Mask of Red Death, which I had not read. In it, a prince tries to wall up his castle to protect himself from a plague outside. He furnishes his home to the hilt and decides to have a party. A guest comes that gives him the creeps. It keeps stalking him until it turns out he is found dead. He tried to wall himself away from the world, and the world found him.
I am keen on synchronicity and this seemed like a strong one. In jail, I find a story by one of my favorite authors about the dangers of trying to isolate yourself from the world, as the world seeps inside no matter what you try. You have to be careful if you try to isolate yourself. Life will bring things to your doorstep, friendly or not. Reality will arrive.
Over time, I matured and realized this capsule in time is built into my memory and the music of that era. I made a record of songs I crafted while on tour with an acoustic guitar and set them up as lo-fi rock songs on a 4-track, playing most all the instruments. Half turned out well, the other half were lessons in writing. I was proud of it but did not release it, as it was really more to prove it to myself. People start telling you what you are and what they expect from you, and it takes self-determination to prove to yourself that you have more inside you when you feel it. That is what this recording was to me. It could have earned some respect from others to prove to them what I am capable of in music making, but it was beside the point now. It was time to move on and develop further.
Instead of a physical death, a safer but challenging route is a personal identity shedding. I needed to stop being just the touring drummer in a rock band that I had worked so hard to become. My life was showing me I needed other things. I was learning some things are truly necessary and some things we cling to out of not knowing or desperation. Oxygen, human connection in family and friends, sunlight, artistic expression, being true to yourself, paying attention to what’s working and what’s not, and finances to a point, all are essentials. Being a specific identity in life is not. Music is a privilege and a love, but I had to stop it to force myself to develop in new ways I was craving.
I never totally quit music, but I forced myself to move on. I stopped playing drums in bands for over 10 years, went to undergrad for film, then grad school for Traditional Chinese Medicine, where I learned about how to care for the body and spirit, and importantly, how caring for others gave me purpose and meaning. I was still building little home studios, dabbling around on various instruments. I still do. Now I have a home with a basement just outside Chicago. It is a classic Midwestern basement filled with earth around it. The kind you could make music in and no one would even hear you next door. There is little light, but I make sure to get some in my life. It is a place where I can bring in all the positive aspects I do love about music. Continuing to meet new musicians and friends to play with, recording ideas for self-expression. And now, helping my son learn how to do the same and top it off with dollops of the harder lessons I learned. There is really no way to understand yourself and your path except through it.
Life is a challenge for everyone and we all know quite hard sometimes. Things that can seem like a dream, in ways you don’t appreciate from the surface, can turn into reality checks on your actual needs and desires for a healthy and fulfilling experience. I was given a chance to explore and many amazing things I dreamed about as a kid. I am very grateful for that time and those who helped me find them. Every opportunity was a chance to see what lays beyond it and life is often not exactly as clear as it may seem when you dream it up. People need support systems and self care in place but that’s rare for young people to come to terms with. If I came back in time to speak to myself I still probably wouldn’t have listened. But I would say sound may be how creation started in some myths and sound can be what pulls you together. It adds to your life, but if you confuse it with life itself, you will miss the boat. The imbalanced perspective is very evident in the sad loss of so many young musicians.
Music is an outlet, and it can create great meaning. But also the more you search for answers inside it, the more intensely you may play or scramble to get it right. My drums were my way of saying - “I don’t know!” as well as “Isn’t this amazing?!”. We are all in an unknown. And at the same time a moment can happen that brings meaning to that meaninglessness. Boom! The drums snaps us to attention. The melody and/or disharmony causes hairs to stand up straight and our nervous system stimulates into the moment. Searching for meaning. We feel we find it in music - but it also doesn’t always work. Regardless, when it does it’s a beautiful thing. And when the music is done. Silence is the reality. And somehow can feel even more silent if no other meaning is there for you.
At 50 years old, I now make music on my terms, and release my own music and music with friends and my brother. Now that I know and have established my own sense of meaning, and where things may come and go within that fluid framework, it will be a lane to explore where music is a beloved form of expression again, but not mistaken for life itself. So much depends what gifts you have and where they land. And if they don’t land right, in terms of timing or fit, trying to get alignment before the distortion takes too great a toll. Music again now adds vital meaning to my life. I built a studio, write music, record, help others, and create just for the joy and need to be creating and share when and what I can on my own terms without concerns. It is wonderful. I am hoping to help my son find the same connection I did in music, with more awareness on how it is a compliment to life and does not need to be everything all at once. It allows my life to deepen, instead of depend upon, being alone with the burden and beauty of basements.
