If you make music or do anything creative, you probably experience at least the occasional loss of confidence. I’m sure it happens to everyone, but in the world of independent music, you have a lot of reasons to lose confidence. To quote Rocky Balboa, “It’s racket where you’re almost guaranteed to end up a bum.” You create your music despite all imaginable forces against it for a world that doesn’t actually need it. I found that with the wrong mindset, I didn’t even need “the world” to sabotage my efforts. I could do it very well on my own. In recent years, I’ve trained myself to monitor my mindset constantly. Now, instead of wasting energy on defeating myself, I bask in the energy of “owning my thing.”

Your “thing” is whatever it is you do. Whatever you’re passionate about. For me, it’s making my records, performing and writing. The wrong mindset would enable me to ruminate on the possibility that it doesn’t matter to anyone but me whether or not I ever play another note or write another word. Or worse, there’s always the What if they hate what I do? thing. (First of all, who’s they?) There are innumerable ways to drain your confidence without interacting with a single other person. All of them probably have something to do with trying to control what can never be controlled, like other people.

For me, the correct mindset is that no one can do my thing. No one. Since I can’t control the response to it other than letting everyone know what I’m doing, I have no choice but to embrace the vocation I’ve chosen, to find every possible way I can to see it as beautiful and miraculous, because it is.

The thrill of having created something or succeeding in something fades eventually, but you owe it to yourself to stay in that place as long you can. Since it may be all you get from your thing, and you can’t control anything else about it, never cheat yourself out of that feeling. It’s what I call “owning” it. Having done something that’s very important to you, you have the right to glow in it. You have the absolute right to “own” it. Wow. That seems more important, doesn’t it?  How many rights do you have in your life that you routinely pass on? If you exercise your right to own your thing, it will resonate with others. If you have no reservations about what you do, and you do it to the absolute best of your ability, the response takes care of itself.

So, spend the energy removing reservations and doing your best work. (Here’s another confidence building fact: The quality of your “best work” changes all the time. Yesterday’s best might be different from today’s.) See what you do as the miracle that it is. Never pass on your right to own it. Your passion has no choice but to come across and inspire those who are inclined to be affected by you.

Some musical examples of “owning your thing”

Feel free to offer other examples, but mine will be musical. 

 Kiss

They must be first. One of my all time favorites, but that doesn’t matter. I show them here on a carousel in their movie, Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park. Deborah Ryan, who also appeared in the movie in the role of Melissa, was featured on a recent DVD release of the movie (Attack of the Phantoms) doing commentary.

She described working with the band outside of their superhero personae and how she didn’t know about Kiss in the 70s when she met them (preferring stuff like Al Jarreau). Because she was not a fan of the band, one of her comments truly inspired me to this way of thinking. She described how impressed she was with the way the band completely “owned” those costumes, looking completely comfortable when so many other people would’ve felt ridiculous. In 1977, it was easier for them to “own” their thing, but I can’t even imagine what it took to own it in 1973. They must have just thrived on rejection. Very inspirational to me.

Jon Bon Jovi

I can’t say I was ever a fan. It had been a while since I’d thought of why, but I remembered the other day. A Bon Jovi tune, “Born To Be My Baby,” came on the radio in the car. As I listened, I remembered that it Jon’s phony bullshit pronunciation that always turned me off. It wasn’t baby. It was buyeeba. He did it in every damn tune. It wasn’t you give love a bad name. It was you give love a buyadd nuyame. I tried to describe my annoyance with it to my wife. The best I could come up with was that it was so… gay. If I produced those records, I’d have told him to knock it off.

Guys I knew always hated Bon Jovi. There were plenty of reasons. Here’s another perfect example of owning it. Jon wanted to be Bruce Springsteen. He loved the Jukes. He would never be as respected, but it didn’t stop him from owning what he did. If he would have been influenced by what my friends in New Jersey used to say about him, old Jon wouldn’t have achieved such great success. He could never have controlled what we thought of him. I’m sure he learned that not everyone will like you. You just have to do your thing.

Led Zeppelin

In this one instance, they were definitely owning it against massive resistance. I never thought Led Zeppelin would ever have had a problem like the one they’re having here. Here, the band is playing in France on what looks like a television show, but their target audience definitely seems absent. The only thing missing are the crickets, but the band doesn’t hold back. They never stop being Led Zeppelin. Plant screaming “Communication Breakdown” at old women in pants suits sitting with their hands folded. Every time I see this clip, I feel queasy because I’ve been in this situation myself. You’re doing your act for the wrong people and they just sit there like oil paintings. When it happens, I feel like crawling into a hole somewhere, but no matter what, you can’t. You’ve gotta own it.

My earliest memory in rock and roll is when I was five years old. It’s 1976, and I’ve received some money for some occasion, some holiday or a birthday. It’s the hefty sum of about ten dollars total. Over the last months, some kids in the neighborhood have been playing an 8-track of an album by a band called Kiss. The album is called Destroyer.

These kids told me all about this band and how they wore makeup and spit blood and breathed fire. The guitar player (who I’d find out later wasn’t the guitar player at all), Gene Simmons, was the devil. Another guitar player was from outer space. He was called Ace. The drummer, who looked like a cat, had had his life saved by a tiger and took on the persona as a tribute. There was another guy, named Paul, with a star on his eye, but that’s about all they knew about him. All of this folklore, which was the highest form of misinformation, had lit something in me when I heard the tape they played and I was completely transfixed. Who were these people? They were the scariest/most exciting thing. They named their band for their devotion to the devil. KISS stood for Kids In Satan’s Service. (I’d later find out that this was also bullshit.)

I beg my parents to let me buy this record. I’m obsessed with it. The songs were in my head all the time, especially "Shout It Out Loud."

“Could we go to the record store? Kiss. They breathe fire and have a guy from outer space and another guy who dresses like a cat because he was saved by a tiger in the forest.”

My mother has no idea about Kiss. She tells me that we’re going to Two Guys this morning and I could look at the records there. I’m so excited that I go back to my room and put on my new orange sneakers and wait. After an interminable delay, we pile into my father’s ‘66 Buick Special and make our way over to Two Guys in East Hanover. I don’t know where the store is, but I’ve been there. My older brother by eighteen months, Dan, has some money too, but he wants to spend it on something sports-related. Maybe a new football or something. Whatever.

As soon as the four of us get into Two Guys, I start asking if I can go to look at the records.

“Can I go to look at the records? C’mon, it’s right there. See, it’s right there!”

Having been unrelenting in my pursuit to get right to my purpose, my dad agrees. My mother heads elsewhere with my brother, but I don’t care. The record department is a special white platform near the center of the store that’s about a foot higher than the regular floor. Music is blasting out of the speakers that rest atop the record department racks and I can hear the music as I approach. It’s electric guitars, but it’s not Kiss. Record racks form walls around the perimeter of the platform and they tower high over my head. In the center of one of the walls is an opening with a single step in front of it. My dad and I step up.

We step onto the gray tiled floor and I see posters mounted on cardboard, hanging from the ceiling from what looks like fishing line tacked into the white porous ceiling tiles. The posters turn slowly and randomly, perhaps shifted by an oscillating fan in another department on the main floor. On one of them is a close-up image of a girlish looking boy with long blond curly hair, wearing a shiny blue satin shirt.

I remind my dad of the record I’m looking for. I’m not tall enough to browse any more than the first row of the racks that surround us. He locates the record and hands it to me. My heart jumps and I stare at the colorful cover grinning wildly at the comic book style painting by Ken Kelly. It features a fiery Kiss logo and the word DESTROYER beneath it. The cover depicts the four mysterious members of the group in full battle regalia and face paint standing on the rubble of a steaming and smoking wasteland. Some of them have their hands clenched in fists either in front of them or over their heads like victorious mythical warlords. Ace, the one from outer space, hides his thumb behind the back of his hand, extending four fingers the way I did when I told someone how old I was last year. I can’t contain the thrill that I’m finally going to have a Kiss record, the one I’ve been hearing on 8-track up the street and in my head every day for what seems like an eternity.

"Is that the one?" my father asks.

I nod, not looking up and turn the record over to look at the back cover, which is more wasteland and some writing.

"OK, let’s go find your mother."

I hold the record tightly and try to walk and stare at the cover at the same time. When we meet up with my mother and brother, I am more relaxed because the mission of acquiring my record is nearly accomplished. I care about nothing except getting home to play it. Just then, a siren wails outside and I hear it over the music in the record department. Near the register lines, I see through the glass out into the parking lot.

A fire truck! Wow! A real fire truck going to a fire! I can’t see!

I run past the registers and away from my parents over to the window near the automatic Exit door. The lights atop the truck outside spin and hurl red beams of light onto the wall inside Two Guys.

"Hey kid!"

"Chris!"

I reach the window and stand on my toes, trying to glimpse the truck or a fire or fireman.

 I can’t see anything. I still hear the sirens! Where’d they go?

I lean my forehead on the glass, which begins at about eye level for me. If this window would open, I could look down further.

Maybe they’re next door!

My dad comes up behind me and touches my shoulder.

"You can’t go past the register with that until we pay for it."

I snap out of the place I’m in and see in my dad’s face that he isn’t necessarily angry. He turns me around and I look down and see the record still clutched in my hands. Oh yeah, my record! I look up to see a girl in a brown and tan smock with a Two Guys logo near the lapel, glaring at me from the register. My mother is standing on the line with my brother and looking about nervously. I’m embarrassed because I’ve completely forgotten myself. Now I feel like everyone in Two Guys is staring at me. I hear nothing. Though I’m flushed with the humiliation of the moment, I manage to say aloud to my dad, and coolly and indirectly to anyone from Two Guys who’s mad at me, that I wasn’t going to steal anything, I just wanted to see the fire truck.

~

Here’s a reproduction of the Destroyer album cover, autographed by Ken Kelly. It’s hanging in my studio. When I look at it, I often think of the day I bought my first copy of  the album. My piano tuner saw it one day. He said, “Hey cool! Which guy signed it?” I told him that it was actually signed by the artist. “Wow! Even better!” he said.

As you know, I’m working diligently on a new album, but to get me out of the studio, I’m playing regularly with Brian Fitzpatrick and the Band of Brothers. I’ve done a bunch of gigs with them already and it’s getting tighter all the time.

At the moment, I’m playing keyboards and guitar and singing the occasional tune. The band just added a bunch of dates for the next month, so I should be pretty busy and “at large,” as they say.

Check out the Performance Schedule and please drop by to say hello if you’re in the neighborhood!