Journal Update: Recording

Sorry for the lack of updates. I've had work to do while I've had work to do, so that's made me too busy to sit around and be all reflective and type things. It's odd how your perspective of time changes as you get older. I can blink now and a month is gone.


I'm editing vocals. My vocals. It's tedious to say the least, because there is no greater critic of my voice than me. This will be the sixth record I've produced, not counting those garbage Orizon demos from 2003, but it will also be the biggest record I've produced. TCC has an incredible production standard to live up to, and I'm doing my level best to meet it. We started recording this record in January, and it is now April... this is the longest I've ever had to sit on a collection of songs in the recording process. I like this part of it. I have time to dream about what the songs are missing and to try to make them whole.


I'm heading off to Orlando this Saturday to mix the record with an old friend (producer of Albatross, The Silver Cord, and Vagabonds). With the success of our Kickstarter campaign there is even more pressure to make this album good. Having Elvis involved in the project takes a huge weight of my shoulders, as I trust him to always sort out my madness in the most insightful and inspiring ways. 


If you've supported our Kickstarter, you're part of the reason why we can afford a great person like Elvis to mix it. Your dollars are actually going to make our record sound better... it's sort of poetic, and it feels only right. The quality of our art is tied to the quality of our supporters, who happen to be the best quality supporters in the world. So, for the opportunity to make our songs better, I'd like to say THANK YOU.


Can't wait to finish and release these songs!


With love and gratitude,


Matt

Journal Update: Time Flies

I can't believe I've been writing on this web page for over two years. Time is a strange thing, it moves even when we don't, yet somehow we think we own it. We think we can carpe diem our way to the grave, seizing every moment and milking it of it's potential value. The older you get, the faster it goes. I didn't believe it either, kids, but it's true. Time flies.


The rate at which we grow slows, but time keeps flying by. There can be less difference between someone who is 30 and someone who is 50, than between someone who is 15 and someone who is 20. I think the late twenties are about figuring out what happens when all that expedited growth stops. I now have time to sit back and think, "What have I become?" "What did I allow to shape me?" The good news is I was shaped, molded, and I came out an adult with a half-decent head on his shoulders. The bad news is that my putty is much more dry than it used to be, so in order to change the shapes I dislike I'll have to work harder. I'll have to deliberately make better choices, consistently.


Health class in high school was what we called an "Easy A." We were taught a bunch of things we already knew about sex and disease and pregnancy, but I think administratively they were responsible to cover those bases, to bring everyone "up to speed" as it were. Mrs. Sahagian was our health teacher, and a fun one at that. She was bubbly, and would ease our adolescent awkwardness by saying "PENIS" really loud with a smile. "PENIS PENIS PENIS!" She'd say, "Now you try it... it's not a bad word so just say it and get it over with." I did a lot of eye-rolling in that class. I was so advanced, I thought, and all this stuff was too cheesy for me. Misses, which is what we called her, had hung a lot of inspirational quotes around her classroom, many of them about doing the "right thing." I remember a giant saying that wrapped around three walls of the classroom. I remember thinking how stupid it was. It read "THE CHOICES YOU MAKE TODAY EFFECT THE PERSON YOU ARE GOING TO BE TOMORROW."


Hindsight is 20/20. That quote could not be MORE true. It didn't ring true back then because I could change on a dime, I felt different from one day to the next, constantly experiencing and growing and changing. But my choices, especially in my late teens, have dictated the last decade of my life. My choice to move to Seattle, to join a band, to marry my wife, are a few major choices that define my surroundings as I sit and type this ten years later. They define who I spend my time with, what I do for a living, and what I'm qualified to do in the future. They define where I live, how much I make and who I know. These are the big choices, but there are millions of tiny choices that can have great bearing on your life. Those little choices can become big in the long run.  They define how I resolve conflict, how I love and serve, and to what capacity. They can decide for you whether or not you're going to be honest, or whether or not you're going to be addicted, or whether or not you're going to be GOOD. Tiny little choices that seem harmless in your present day can completely alter your days to come.


Back to this blog. After a few years, I realize the choice to start writing it has changed me. I guess I feel more comfortable writing, but I feel like I can form my thoughts better as well. I edit and proofread less than I used to, but I think that's because in the beginning I was naively fearful that someone would discover how fallible and normal I was. Along the way I think realized, among many other things about myself, that I am pretty normal so gave up trying to sound ridiculously smart. I'll admit though, the pull is there to reach for the thesaurus and find the most ostentatious locution to delineate my postulation (e.g. this sentence). I never went to real college, so the thesaurus has lent me a much broader vocabulary than my A.P. English teacher did.


Looking back at the last two years I also realize that I am the same in ways that I'd like to be different. I still have similar fears when it comes to failure. I have the same anxieties when it comes to my art and how it is viewed, who likes it and what it's monetary value is. I struggle with those things the same way I did two years ago, and maybe even more-so now. Maybe it is a constant battle, something that I'll fight for a lifetime, but I never want to settle. I never want to look back and say, "I was better then." I want to be the best now that I've ever been, as sappy and as sensational as that sounds. If time flies I need to grab ahold of it. If the choices I make today define who I am tomorrow then I need to make wise choices. Simple right? It never is.


I'm glad for you who read this. You have helped me in ways you'll never know. The recognition that your eyes are following these words across the screen has caused me to be honest, it's caused me to think deeply about my life, and I hope these lines have caused the same for you. Thank you.

Good Mourning, Good Knight

I shop at H&M just like everyone else. So it should be of no surprise to you that sometimes, just like everyone else, I can't fall asleep.


I love when I can't sleep, because my mind starts going places it normally wouldn't go during the day. In the dark of my quiet bedroom, away from the noise and distractions of the day, my imagination can tend to run a little wild.


A few nights ago there was a lunar eclipse. I don't know if that played any significant role but I couldn't sleep. It was 3:30am and I was writing a song in my head. A silly, Celtic folk jig about... well, I typed it all into my phone so I'll share it with you. I hope you laugh as much as I did the next morning.


It goes like this, 6/8 feel, kind of like an old Christmas carol:


Chorus
Good mourning, good knight
Suffer well, suffer right
There's no telling of what they might say
In sackcloth and ashes each moment that passes
Is all the more reason to pray


Verse 1
You had no idea of what would occur 
when you left for the war on that day
They came from the forest and took your Delores 
and sailed with her countries away


Verse 2
And on your return you were chagrined to learn
That your lover was stolen away
By privateer merchants two years ago
Searching would be of no use anyway


(Chorus)


Verse 3
On the day you wake up with no pain in your gut
You must set off to seek your revenge
And may you never rest til you sever the heads
Of the men who had taken your love


(Chorus)


Profound, eh? No? I agree, it's funny. I even demoed it out in the morning with three part harmonies and picking acoustic guitar. I think I'm going to add an accordion to it to give it that circus-folk feel. I can picture drunken Irish sailors swinging steins of beer, belting out this song with thick accents. New demographic perhaps?

I'm a driver, I'm a winner. Things are gonna change I can feel it.

It's cold and wet in Seattle and I feel blessed. 2010 has been a tough year for our band, a tough year for my voice even, but sometimes I get these moments of clarity. These moments where the veil is lifted are when I truly see what I have. I am thankful for so much.


I'm a screw up in so many ways I'd rather not divulge... but for some reason I get to live this awesome life. I get to be a musician, an orator, a conduit for a higher experience, a mechanism to help lift the veil for others. I get to vent my emotions in a medium that communicates deeper than any other in the world. Who decided that? I didn't, I'm just blessed by it. I should never complain again.


From a band perspective, we live in an industry where great bands die everyday, for reasons not alien to me, yet we're still here making music. People still care, they still come to shows, they still walk up to me at the merch booth and tell me what our music means to them. They still respond with tears and smiles. In a world where good bands die every day ours is alive and kicking, and for that I am blessed.


From a relationship perspective, I've been given the most loving, intelligent, and sacrificially supportive wife a man could ask for, not to mention she's the most beautiful thing I've ever laid eyes on. Not many people have what we have. We're blessed.


I'm young, and my best is ahead of me. My best art, my best interactions, my best experiences. My best as a man, a husband, a friend. I've learned a done a lot in my short life, but the best is yet to come. Sometimes I feel old, worn out, beat down, jaded by life, used up... but I think those are lies to keep me from growing and pursuing more and better things. So it is with wisdom that I say that I am still a fairly naive youth of twenty-seven years and my best are ahead of me.


May you experience the same truth, whatever your current age is.

Tapering #2

A Journal Update:

I'm in limbo again (see blog post "Tapering" if you love redundancy). We leave for tour in four days and it's becoming exhausting to even think of doing anything that might cut into my sittin'-around-time. I spend most of my days in a vegetative state on the couch, the symptoms much the same as explained during my last "Tapering" session. It's the calm before the storm. Any pending projects seem daunting and unnecessary. I am not prepared in any way to leave for tour because let's face it, that's days away and I live one day at a time. Either way I've done it a million times (packing) and I've got it down to an art. I could live out of my backpack for weeks. Even though I'm unprepared to leave, I'm not productively staying either. I'm stuck between where I was and where I will be. "Here, where the future meets the past," to quote lyrics from a song written by a much more naive version of me (did I just quote myself?). Of course, the connotations now are much less positive. When you live for the moment and the moment is overwhelmingly boring, life can tend to suck a little. The good part of my day starts when Kristie gets off work. She's pretty fun. I know, I know, life isn't always fun, but I've been conditioned to believe that every good day should be filled with laughter, creative expression and intoxicating conversation. Every bad day lacks at least one of these.

At least I've been reading some. I spent the last few weeks wishing I was a fiction author. I even wrote two lines of a story before I deleted without saving, glancing over my shoulder to make sure nobody had spotted my feeble attempt at doing something else with my life. This music business is all consuming. How do those renaissance people do it? Those cursed prolific creators who seem to have the time to be productive in multiple fields at once?

The road I look forward to. I thrive there. It's not for everyone; its difficult, taxing, and often redundant, but I seem to get better at it the older I get. We've been around this country a hundred times and still I look forward to exploring more, to meeting more people, to playing music for a living. How spoiled am I! We are truly living the dream (See "Living The Dream" for more redundancy).

I need to work out. Although it's not very creative, its a way to express angst and tension through perspiration. But then I'd have to shower... and well, that just seems like a hassle right now. However, I will commit to a walk with a book in my hand and music in my ears. That sounds delightfully inspiring. 

See you on the road!

Matt

My Old Journal

I've never been a prolific writer. Most of my writing has come in waves, separated by long dry-spells. That's why it dawned on me today that probably my most prized material possessions are my old journals. It can take me years to fill just one, so if I ever want a snap shot of things I went through, things I dreamt, hated and loved, I just have to open one of a hand full of books. 


Reading one of my old journals this morning I thought, "This is why I need to journal more in 2010." It's really fascinating to hear myself talk to myself, it's sort of like traveling through time. I feel sort of like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol... I'm reading along thinking, "This guy is really messed up... I'm glad I'm not him anymore." 


I laughed really hard when I read this one from a few years ago:


9/18/07 12:51 AM (Don't ask why I mark the exact time, its a habit of mine)


Today I ventured from the apartment for the first time since I've been home. Home... it doesn't really feel like it. I've been hiding out, on vacation, doing absolutely nothing spectacular. My wife and friends are out working all day, furthering themselves, or perhaps just expending energy in some constructive way. Today I ate breakfast, ran, showered, played guitar, broke a string, ate lunch, re-stringed my guitar, finished a song, dabbled on the internet, got mandatory renters insurance, printed some bank statements and watched TV. Still, after all that activity, it was only out of sheer boredom that I took the elevator ride to my faded-red '89 Civic Hatchback, which was a hand-me-down that my younger, more successful brothers so graciously handed back "up." I took it to Walgreens and bought anti-fungal creme for a red spot in my under-arm that I think might be ringworm, which is most likely the result of sleeping in a van in the heat of summer. I diagnose myself these days, as doctors and health insurance are much too rich for my blood. I'm no MD, but I do a pretty good job. Did I mention people like to use my bed as a toe-jam cleaner? Probably why I've had ringworm twice in the last year. By bed, I mean pad-that-I-sleep-on-in-van. I'm still getting used to the stationary bed from which I write this. To qualify my laziness as of late, I'm stopping this entry due to a cramp in my wrist. I'm apparently not conditioned to write a full two pages.

40th Anniversary

It's been over a year since I started this blog. I'll admit that some of my posts have been stronger than others, and some have been longer than others. I apologize for the length of some of my ramblings, especially in some of the more emotionally charged topics. This will be my 40th post. I'll keep it short.


We've been through a lot together, haven't we? We've debated a numerous amount of political, social and spiritual topics, and I can honestly say that I've been enlightened by many of your comments. I don't have a corner on the Truth by any means, but I have my ideas and it's an honor to be able run them by you. Maybe someday I'll use the subjects we've discussed here in a more extensive format, like a book, or something. I know it seems cliche (musicians writing books), and I definitely don't believe that I can give a fresh voice to any topic, as everything is borrowed, but something deep in me sees that challenge on the horizon and wants to meet it. It's a bucket list entry.


2010 is going to be a different year for this blog. I spent most of the last year at home, in my head. On 4/6/10 TCC's new record is coming out, which means I'll spend quite a bit of time on the road. I know I've done some journalling on here, but I want to do more of that in 2010 with updates from the road. Being home for awhile has made me miss the road, and I've also been shocked at how much I don't remember from different towns and places and experiences. I think when you're out on the road for 3 years straight the experiences tend to run together. I want to document more, because I realize I will probably look back on these years as some of the happiest of my life. I'm putting this in writing so I hold myself to it.


Thanks for reading, commenting and challenging the things I say. You all have played a significant role in my development as a human being.


Matt