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.

Well, at least if you’re a musician engaged in self-promotion. I’ve come to believe that the philosophy of the “artist as open book” is terribly flawed. If you pollute your mind with the prevalent electronic chatter about the new music business made possible by “direct-to-fan” solutions, social networking and all that rot, you might be led to believe that using technology to get as close to your “fans” (what an awful word) as possible is the goal. Though I use these tools in the promotion of my music and recordings, I’ve been thinking about how it can blow up in your face too.

Two bands I’ve written about here, Led Zeppelin and Kiss, would have ruined their careers by becoming too intimate with their audiences. Yes, perhaps things are different now, but what would these two bands have been if the lives of their members had been documented in a readily accessible resource by the members themselves?

In the mythology of Led Zeppelin, you had deals with the devil, obscure symbols to represent the members of the group, drugs, disasters, groupies, and music that was, according to a documentary I saw about them, “Howlin’ Wolf meets the Loch Ness Monster.” I don’t believe a single one of these particular entrapments was ever addressed directly by the group. I don’t think they ever published an informal piece to “set the record straight.” The audience was left to imagine just about anything. The myth grew and grew. It was anything you wanted it to be, except like you. There were no limits to what you could discover in Led Zeppelin. It could not end because it wasn’t real in the first place. Opening the book would have blown it all to hell.

Even Led Zeppelin album cover art kept the band at a distance. They seemed to live on a planet designed just for them, a mystical place that featured monuments to gods whose names you dared not speak and rolling green Celtic geography that was literally hell and gone from Main Street USA or Times Square. They managed to perpetuate an image of dark magic, without saying a word about it.

If it existed, what could Jimmy Page’s blog have said that wouldn’t have ruined everything?

“Had a costume fitting today. I hope they get the dragon right this time. I like dragons.”

“I took a plane to Los Angeles after the show to meet this 13-year-old model I’m just mad about. I know what it looks like, but she’s just incredible.”

“I want to thank all you guys for coming out to the show tonight. Percy, Bonzo, Jonsey and I had a blast. We can’t wait to come back to Pittsburgh.”

“I’m thinking Peter needs to lose a few pounds. I’m worried about him.”

“I’ve got such a headache today. I must send Coco out for some more aspirin before we leave for soundcheck.”

“Sorry I haven’t blogged in a while. I’ve been soooooo busy with the new album. We can’t think of a good title for it though. I want to use freaky drawings and a tarot card for the cover, but Jonesy thinks it’s a stupid idea. Maybe it could be a contest! Leave your suggestions for the name of our fourth album in the comments. If we use your title, we’ll send you a signed copy a week before it’s released to radio!”

“I can’t stop thinking about burgers! Damn this heroin!”

I’m pretty good with the language, but I can’t think of an appropriate superlative to describe the lameness that would have ensued. Good Christ, Jimmy Page wasn’t human like us! He didn’t eat breakfast or get up for school or go to the dentist. He just made otherworldly sounds with guitars and laser beams went off behind him in all directions when he did it! A blog would have ruined him. A superstar must be a mystery. Maybe that’s why we have so few of them now.

Kiss might have blogged in character, which could have worked, but judging by those fake letters in Kiss Alive, the blogs probably would have been written by someone in the Glickman/Marks office and sucked.

Insert palaver about being rich and famous, hyper-sexual, demonic, from another planet, and something about cats and junk here.

It was so much better to wonder who they were under the makeup. Were they murderers? Was Satan involved? Was the drummer really rescued from death by a panther? Again, the mystery of Kiss made it work. Gene Simmons has stated since the 90s that Kiss were trying be the heavy metal Beatles. They never said it in the 70s though. On planet Kiss, the Beatles did not exist. Get it?

Kiss was best served by others writing about them (provided they could nudge the writers in the right direction). Every time Gene was pressed to explain the meaning of the fire and blood tricks, he could never make sense of it, even when he was in character. A personal blog would have muddied the waters even more. Without the distance, Kiss could never have been superheroes.

So, since I’m at least as interesting as Jimmy Page and Gene Simmons, I have to be careful when I blog. I could ruin everything. It’s a good thing that I do this telepathically. And since I’m getting off of all those pills it’s going so much faster now. Thanks to Satan and his hounds, Myra and Otis, I’m well protected here. I can almost see Earth, though these lasers cast quite a shadow across the great billows of rainbow smoke that surround the palace when I awaken. Regardless, at all times, music flows from me as breath, surrounding you with love.

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.