Though I’ve most recently dedicated my efforts to recording my material and helping others play their music, I’ve begun to turn a portion of my energies to performing my own material live. There comes a time when I spend too much time in the studio that I simply must get out and make a sound outside of my own head. There’s something very oppressive about recording music in that you are always chasing the definitive version of the composition, striving to capture magic in the performance of it, since it presumably will live forever. After a while, trying to play everything perfectly at all times gets so stale. For magic also happens when you spread your wings musically and take chances, risking mistakes or train wrecks for the possibility of finding something new in yourself or the music.

I figured that it was time I put a band together to play the music I’ve been working on so I can finally let everyone hear it. The problem, however, is that making music as an adult carries with it more headaches, more entrapments, more catches. When you’re a kid, you make music with your friends. You dream together. No one has anything and no one has anything to lose. My adult performing career has been largely solo, so I’ve not butted up against the differences much, but beyond a certain age, musicians of any quality become more scarce. As they age, musicians play for different reasons than simply to become their heroes. They balance music with other responsibilities. They work less for a collective good, such as a band, and even less for a “solo artist” for fear of being exploited. That leaves me with some challenges, since my latest efforts feature full arrangements. Only a band can do this stuff. What’s worse, I’ve become more keyboard-centric, experimenting with different sounds and more complex arrangements.

I’ve written repeatedly about how I’d be quite content simply playing bass. It’s what I got into this for. If I’m going to play my music in a band, I’ve got to be the bass player. But how do I handle all of these keyboards? Keyboardists are very hard to come by. Hence the reason I’ve gotten more calls for keyboards than anything else in recent years. It’s too early to hire a keyboard player outright, though that’s probably what will have to happen if I’m going to get the music to sound right. What to do?

I have a drummer who can sing backup, an old friend of mine. I’m courting guitarists at the moment. After that, I’m putting all of my runaway versatility to work. I predict that when you see me play live, I shall go “all Geddy Lee on your ass.” Anyone who knows Rush knows that Geddy Lee plays bass, keys and guitar and sings too. He often uses his feet to get things played when his hands aren’t free. Good enough for me. I shall be playing keyboards and bass, sometimes in the same song. I have decided that I don’t give a damn. I’m gonna be the bass player or nobody is. I’ve set up my synthesizer so that I can play bass parts with my left hand when I need to have a keyboard in the arrangement. I’ll also be singing lead. I’ll also be working my ass off! :~) However, I’ll be joined by a stampede of unicorns, all wearing necklaces of hen’s teeth. If I think my music is different and special, why shouldn’t it take some heroic measures to perform it?

I toyed with the idea of using a sequencer for a bit. I got together with my drummer friend to give it a whirl. When you play with a sequence, it usually means that the drummer must listen to a click on headphones, so he can be sure not to lose time with the computer. Computers don’t listen to what everyone else is playing, so you’re a slave to their petrified renditions. We got through the song, and yes, I was playing bass and keyboards were coming out of the speakers. But it felt like tracking a record. When my drummer suggested we play through a different song that I hadn’t prepared with the sequencer, I roughed it out alone at the keyboard. Even though I hadn’t split the keyboard to cover the bass parts and it sounded like it had holes in the arrangement, it felt more like music than what we had played before. I had made my decision. I must bring my full abilities to bear and do something risky.

As I prepare for this undertaking, I’m finding it so stimulating that I can’t wait to get at it. I’ll absolutely have something that is worth watching. Let’s see how much damn music I can make with 3 people.

I’ve been extraordinarily busy. I have been busying myself with being busy. It’s a terrible way to live. I’ve gotten into a wonderful habit of imagining a problem and then obsessing about the solution. It’s a great way to spend an afternoon, if you hate yourself passionately. Never do that. I’ve been overwhelmed by the things I alone have decided that I must do. Sometimes there is so much to be done that the completion of one single activity could never represent any measureable progress, so it’s hard to get started. Absolutely pathological. I must break the habit.

In that spirit, I’m proud to announce that I took my own advice for once and delegated. I’ve written previously about how web site design is a great way to procrastinate. It’s always a great way for me not to do what I’m more ideally suited to. However, I was growing tired of the previous look of my site and I wanted to change it. It started out very well. I had a few ideas. I had some breakthroughs in understanding and those ideas became achievable. In realizing those, I got a few more. It was very promising for a few days. Then, the days turned into weeks. Suddenly, I was working on a web site and not music, again. I needed to get out of it, but I’d invested so much time that the only way out was forward, not back. So I made a list of what I still needed done and headed to Elance.com. I posted a job and had four bids in about 20 minutes. I hired someone qualified and this headache was off my plate. Now I can just write, which is what I wanted to be doing in the first place. What a great thing! I highly recommend delegating. Could I have finished the site myself? Maybe. Should I have? Definitely not. I must learn to live this way all the time.

The sad irony of designing a great blog theme is that if your readers subscribe to your feed to get regular updates, chances are they’ll never see your theme. Wild.

This month I began obsessing about how I might stage the musical extravaganza that is my next album. After all, I have to gig on this stuff or there’s no point. I thought I had it figured out, but then I lost a key musician, already. I’m regrouping and trying to solve that problem. At least I’ve lined up a drummer on whom I can depend. He also sings backup, which makes him a damn unicorn where I come from.

In his book about excuses, Wayne Dyer had an answer to an excuse I could very easily warm my hands over. I can’t achieve my goal because I don’t have anyone to help me. To re-center, I often meditate on his affirmation. “The people you need to help you are already here, and are on their way.” That feels so much better to me than complaining about the pool of New York area musicians. Wayne’s right on, I think.

Being an independent musician means coping with countless unknowns, innumerable situations in which the outcome cannot be guaranteed. It’s a challenge for musicians like me, who are in control of most everything about their music, from conception to recording to management and so on. As soon as others are factored into the plan, things always get unpredictable. The key is to re-center constantly and resist the urge to control when control is impossible.

So, today I have a single task to accomplish. Love the music.

Peter Guralnick wrote an exhaustive, two-volume biography of Elvis Presley. I read Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley when it was first published, but I’ve only gotten to the second one, Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley, now. Unlike many people, I enjoy the 70s Elvis more than the early one. I know he was troubled and I know now just how troubled, but I just like the music and the show better late in his career.

Since the guy was said to have died by the time I was in first grade, I only know of the Elvis show what I’ve seen in the few concert movies that exist from the 70s era. I love the theatrical aspect of it and I just love the sound of that glorious band, raw in their sophistication, if you can dig that.

However, the more I read of this book, the more I’m struck by how different Elvis had it than I do. Sometimes, I just have to laugh. I know the guy was super huge and everything, but if you put that aside for a minute, as a recording artist, the guy had it so easy.

The book is full of references to recording sessions during which upwards of 24 masters were recorded. 24! How many times did I read stuff like this? “In August, a recording session was scheduled for which RCA hoped sides would be produced for the gospel album, a pop album and the four singles Elvis was contractually obligated to provide.”

All the guy had to do was go to the studio and sing. The band was assembled. He’d pick songs that he liked and they’d run through them if he felt like it. Other times, he would just give karate demonstrations to the musicians and then go back to Graceland. If he cut a tune that they hadn’t planned on, their guy would hustle to arrange the publishing particulars. Or, it would be, “Hey publishing guy, what kind of material do we have available to record?”

Good Christ. That’s gotta be a tough life.

I write songs, play and sing all the parts in the studio, engineer and mix the recording, review the test pressings, oversee the production and then promote and sell the records myself. That’s what a majority of recording artists have to do now. There’s very little money and you have to know how to do pretty much everything if you want to see your vision through. And it takes a little longer than a single recording session.

Sometimes I see singers in bands and I say, “You mean all the guy has to do is sing?” Elvis wouldn’t even do that sometimes. At Elvis Presley’s level, it was all the bread changing hands, but in the rest of the world, in the modern age, I have no idea what breeds that mentality when it exists.

I’ve had to train myself not to do everything. I came up knowing that no one would ever hand me anything and that if I wanted to make records, no one was going to make it happen but me. I’ve never felt that I had the right to claim something was outside of my expertise. Deep down I thought, “Who the hell are you to think anyone else would do it for you just because you can’t?”

It’s a slow process, learning to let go of certain things. It began with me saying that I don’t have to play the drums. I Ebayed my drums some years ago and got a nice new Telecaster, which in the distant past would have been an indulgence I’d have never allowed myself, since I had one Tele already. I’ve regretted not having my drum set a few times, but I still think I did the right thing. The other thing I’ve tried to loosen up about is graphic design. I’m not a designer, but I did my own album covers, because “who the hell else is gonna do it?” I’ve since tried to leave that to some designer friends.

I don’t want to get to a point where all I have to do is show up and sing. Of that, I’m certain. But for all of the legends surrounding Elvis Presley and the way he’s been deified over the years, I can honestly say that I know a ton of people, myself included, that he’ll never have anything on. Pfft… you mean all he has to do is sing?

That’s kinda cool.