As the New Year approached I made plenty of mental notes. Last year (2009) ended up being the sort of arrival point I had hoped for, and in some ways it far exceeded anything I had planned. That of course wasn’t without its struggles, reroutes, or reevaluations. Far too many events went down in 2009 for me to tackle making a list of my top 100 moments. I made mental notes because the last 6 weeks of the ’00 decade grabbed me by the collar and didn’t let go until Christmas Eve. There wasn’t time to call people back, let alone reflect or plan for what’s next.
Does anyone have a clear definition of “career” anymore? Is that a completely outdated concept? The resumes in my day-job industry (digital media) usually cover the last 6 years and usually have about 3-4 employers. It’s a combination of innovation and technology, but also restlessness and one-upsmanship. Add the sales thing into the mix, and the fact that most sales people change jobs to temporarily soothe their fear and hatred of rejection, the resumes get dicier and dicier. So is my job my career, or is my creativity my career, or is the sum of my job, creativity, and family my career? I still think of career in terms of a never-ending, minimum 30-year epic. Or life sentence.
The truth is, I’m still figuring out what the hell it is I want to be when I grow up. The fact is, I’ve had to grow in ways I never imagined in the meantime. Growing up still feels like trading in your balls for pleated khakis, squeezing your It Factor into some faceless suit. Yeah, fuck that noise.
November forced me to reevaluate just about everything in my life, and it came out of nowhere. I wish I was savvy enough to orchestrate whatever the hell happened, because by December 1st it felt like a glitter bomb went off in my life. Like God filled all of my slacks with confetti and party string, and that was just in terms of The Work Stuff. Aside from being fairly maniacal about setting personal goals and working steadily to attain them, I never felt like I was aiming for the bleachers. Like most people, I just felt lucky to have a job in 2009.
This is where it gets interesting in terms of my personal history, and wherever it is that I’m going in the coming years. Around December 7th, (which was the last time I had time to make an entry on this site) my friend Ed Hamell and I made plans to have him come to Akron for a visit. Ed has gone from one of our all-time favorite songwriters and performers to a close personal friend in a period of 6 months. Never would’ve thought that could happen in Akron of all places, seeing how he lives outside NYC. On December 18th he pulls into the driveway, gets out and our first words are “wow this is awkward.” Only because we had talked on the phone just about daily over the last several weeks, mostly about deep spiritual stuff, and of course everything music: his touring with Ani Difranco (another long time hero), writing thousands of songs, playing everywhere every night, the history of Rock, and on and on and on…. Over the next 36 hours we recorded 20 new songs, 5 of which were used to put out a last-minute digital Holiday EP on the site I built for him. (If you’re looking for the EP, it’s already gone. It was a limited release).
Over a period of 3 days I went from not remembering how to get a new session started in Pro-Tools, to engineering and co-producing 20 new Hamell On Trial songs, some of which get me more excited than any of his classic Mercury Records stuff that changed my life back in 1996. The whole weekend was an insane musical and spiritual vortex. By Monday I had mixed, mastered, marketed, and distributed the EP for direct sale on his site, which was a whole other level of art/commerce/digital media converging for me. It wasn’t easy to do at all, but the tight time frame forced me to keep any inner naysayers or my perfectionism in check. I just went for it, and made us a lot of extra spending money in the process. Re-writing and recording on a Saturday night, seeing downloads from Sweden and New Zealand by Monday evening, and then Righteous Babe records with freakin RADIO REQUESTS for Hamell’s XMAS EP by Tuesday afternoon. By Thursday Ani had downloaded it and was apparently psyched about it. That week was quite unusual and spectacular SPECTACULAH!!!
Next up are the 15 new original tracks, which will be out and for sale by Mid-January. To cap it off, we sold another original painting of his site last night. I’ve never had any intentions of being an art dealer, but I gotta say, it’s pretty freakin cool. Once we sold the first 3, he sent Gayle & I an original piece he did back in 1999 for the inside jacket of one of our favorite albums, “Choochtown”. It’s called “The Long Drive” after one of the songs on the album.
It feels like my old soulmate Music grabbed me by the ears and said “I’m not done with you yet fool.” Better yet, where we are looks nothing like it did back in 1996. The labels have folded, live music has taken a shit, and everything is shattered and downsized. Whatever I’ve gotten into feels like the beginning of some new alternate route to long term success for artists. Hopefully I’ll be one of them. 
There wasn’t time to do anything the last few weeks, except figure out how to do what needed to be done. Watching the PayPal grow and thinking about how the next round, and the next round will be an exponentially tighter ship. Aside from taking a cut of site earnings, I’ve harassed Hamell about teaching me his songwriting process. The dude has read thousands of books on rock and every artform, and is pretty much Mr. Miyagi when it comes to writing. This has proven to be exactly what I’ve been looking for in my own music, without fully realizing it. I’ve been mostly comfortable hanging back and focusing on the digital end of things since 2007.
At some point in the last couple weeks, I’ve decided that it was useless to plan my year (and the decade) prior to today. It just wasn’t going to happen. Instead, I’ve given myself the full month of January to figure it out. I’ve ordered a ton of new reading material, started 2 new journals and a planner. It definitely seems pretty nerdy. Hahahahha.
Part 2 of starting the new decade: Everything that came before this moment in time is gone. I’m a clean slate. You are a clean slate as well. I am grateful to have prepared to the best of my abilities. I will continue to become, but in so many ways I’ve mobilized all of my resources and my power for this moment, and who knows what the hell the future is up to. I’ve cut ties with any disappointments or perceived failures, and more importantly any skewed dreams that were shackled to struggle and toil.
There is only my love of this life, open sky above, and open sky below.
