Thoughts From 39,000

Last month I got a emotionally heavy. Getting those feelings off my mind is good though. I need that every now and again. Like a sad song, these thoughts can build inside of me and need to be processed out even when I'm in a good mood.

And life has been good for me. Though for you guys it might look slow, I don't know if I've ever been this productive before. 

Right now I'm on a flight back home from LA. Cramped up in the middle seat between a sleeping wife, she's is the best part of this, and a large guy who never learned how to share or not invade personal space. Best not to look towards the aisle... Then there's the window. The sky. The miles of desert between Texas and California.

After exploring the city; traveling without working is one of bigger life goals; meeting new people, amazingly talented people my brothers and I are so excited to be working with; the beach; the freak-show; a really great recording studio; it's been unbelievable.

So I'm in the air. Going over it in my mind. Holding on to it. Listening to the engine. 

Dreaming...

---

Of days when we traveled in a used conversion van. Four captains chairs. Little beige mini-blinds on the windows. Rope lights everywhere.

I was 21 and hungry for everything.

We'd loaded up with the four musicians, suitcases, and gear, cutting up IH-35.

"What's comin' up?"

It was getting hard to stay sitting for so long. "Could use a stretch," I added.

I was eager to get to Ohio, Dan and his studio; but after switching my weight back and forth for the last four hours as I switched between each leg falling asleep, and I needed out.

We were only a jump northeast of Dallas into Arkansas at a small convenience store; I stepped out of the van for the first time since we left San Antonio. And already in a different world. Hope.

It wasn't exactly what I imagined leaving Texas would look like, but it was a start.

New horizon. New trees. New air bursting in my lungs pushing me to the edge between life and dream for a nobody from nowhere. I had spent years as an invisible. Wanting. Waiting. Sometimes my childhood felt like a slow fall to death. Knowing the world was busting with life happening everywhere else. And I only had to find it. But I was stuck.

---

"Would you like anything?" The hostess whispered over the belly of my sleeping neighbor.

She was in her late 40's, well dressed with a floral scarf around her neck like this was a jet off a Mad Men ad.

"Diet Coke," I said automatically. It's my junk. My vice.

"More crackers," Rachel said softly to me, still with her eyes closed.

"And more crackers," I passed down the message.

The hostess slashed a couple tick marks on her paper then moved across the aisle.

Rachel shifted her head gently against my shoulder.

Maybe because it was our first trip, or maybe because it was so strange, but I remember this rest stop well.  Better than the hundreds since that I couldn't tell you a thing about.

---

"Hmm," the lady behind the counter looked me over as the bell rang over the gas station door. 

I nodded politely. 

"You look exotic," she said without pause or hesitation. Somewhere between surprise and apathy. 

I didn't know how to answer her with anything other than a smile and another polite nod. A real Texan.

The lady kept an eye on me from behind the counter, as an orange and black calico bounced out from around her feet, rounding the lotto ticket display, cutting thru my legs, and down a small row of protein bars to the back of the store..

I followed heading towards the refrigerators.

"Where you from?... You look different."

"San Antonio," I answered checking back over my shoulder with a quick look at her. She was still staring at me. 

I could feel her examining everything about me, detached and scientific. I felt naked. I felt embarrassed.

I tried to keep focused. Sprite. Coke. Mountain Dew. But that feeling of her eyes just burned the back of my neck.

My heart jumped when I felt a light touch brush against my leg, but it was just the cat. Pushing it's face into my jeans. Wrapping its tail around the other leg.

"She don't like nobody around here," the cashier yelled at me.

The cat sat down to watch me too. It's eyes frozen on my face.

I could hear the lady shuffling behind the counter, "She must think your different."

"Maybe she's a Texan too," I laughed but I don't think she found any humor in it.

The women's stare turned from cold to angry, "wouldn't surprise me."

She rang me up quietly.

Coke. Trail mix. Money.

The cat ran back behind the counter as someone else came in.

She held the change above my hand, "born in Texas?"

"Yeah," I had my palm open. Waiting.

Her eyes looked me over back and forth, "nah, you look too exotic." She said finally dropping the coins.


---

"Here you are Sir," the softness in the hostess' voice pulls me out of Arkansas and into the air. She's holding the drink out to me and searching her tray for Rachel's crackers.

"Hey, coffee too," my sleeping neighbor butts in. His voice cutting low against her ear as she reaches over to hand us the bag.

The hostess flinches for a second then holding back her anger, she softly says, "A hello first," and she does it so gently, and with a sweet laugh too, the man doesn't even notice the poison behind it. 

He mumbles something between a grunt and a hello.

She's calm but her eyes were ready to kill, "and welcome back Sir. Would you like me to get you something?"

The man smiles unashamedly, "Yeah... coffee."

The hostess flashes a brilliantly white smile and flips around towards the back of train. 

My neighbor is back into his fully laid back and slumped position. A real throaty wind sound is gurgling in his mouth right now as I'm typing this.

Thankfully we will be landing soon. And I'll have another week before I take off to New Orleans to start a tour. Cutting north up to New York, looping back west through Canada, south along the mid-west and ending back in Arkansas.

It feels like I've been here before so many times. But each time I leave I have no idea what to expect. No idea what'll be at the end of this flight. Or waiting for me in Arkansas. New air. New people. New horizons.

-rene

Where Is This Going?

"Where is this going?" 

My words hung unanswered in the dark of the van.

The road felt endless that night, the last few miles to the club was a beat up gravel track down a red brick alley, getting narrower and narrower.

'...beep....beep...' our GPS was freaking out, endlessly beeping and saying '...reconnecting.'

Abe drove focused on the narrow beams from our headlights as we inched past a set of dumpsters and bounced into a pothole with a full thud. The stacked cases in the back of the van rattled and slid before resettling.

"It was supposed to be a mile and a half. Should be... somewhere... here?" Jaime said from the passenger seat, "maybe?"

'...reconnecting...'

"Looks like it's just warehouses out here... I don't even know if we're close," I said mostly to myself.

The rain was soft. It didn't even feel like it was falling, but the air was incredibly wet and the heat from hours of sitting inside the van had fogged the windows.

"There are no signs... no names... ughh... this street sucks," Abe pulled to a hard stop under a lone streetlight, beside a chain-link fence that poorly guarded half of a parking lot.

'...beep... reconnecting...'

"Annnd we're lost," Jaime laughed, while Abe fought to get the GPS back.

There was a long silence as Abe restarted the GPS again. 

I thought about grabbing a book, but my eyes were exhausted from staring out the road and the words wouldn't sit still.

'Where is this going?' I thought again, but this time just in my head.

Click...Click... 

Someone tapped softly on Abe's window. 

Almost out of instinct Abe re-locked the doors before lowering it a crack.

"Looking for something?" a woman asked from the side of the van. I tried looking out my back window at her but couldn't see anything. 

Abe told her we were a band. 

"Club's down there," she pointed into the fence, "other side of the lot. Black door."

Abe thanked her then turned to Jaime, "it's gonna be a weird one," he said as the tires sloshed through the dirt and a small shaded figure with a flashlight stood by my window as we drove past her.

'...reconnecting...'

The club was a warehouse cut into four uneven rooms. If I walked in from the front door and stood in the middle of it, 2 o'clock would be the largest room and the stage with a narrow hallway that went towards the green room and the bathrooms. 

At 10 was a small sheet metal bar pushed against a wall, only selling beer bottles and well drinks. A handwritten, neon sign flashed in the corner advertising a PBR and an unnamed shot for 3 dollars, probably the brightest thing in the building.

Between 7 and 8 was a small area for a pool table, an old cigarette machine, a wall rack with most of the cues missing, and one of those big 20 something inch bulky TVs for sports.  

At 4 was the smallest room with a couple couches for people who were drinking and didn't want to watch the show. And even though it was only a mid-sized place it was too big for the night.

When I get to a new club, I try hard to read the room. The decorations. The lights. The stage. The equipment. The posters on the walls. How clean the bathrooms are. How sticky the bar tops and tables are. How clean the restrooms are kept. The feeling in the air. It's hard to judge an empty room and I've been wrong before, but I walked in and felt Abe was right. This was gonna be a weird one. 

I stood backstage looking out at a mostly empty room thinking again, 'Where is this going?'

Two guys were at the pool table playing their second game, drinking their fourth round. 

Three college-aged girls sat at the bar waiting for drinks. 

The sound guy was talking to a couple of regulars, and I know he really didn't care about us or the night having rushed through sound check while muttering things like, 'doesn't matter anyway.'

The bartender checked his phone with a look on his face like he just realized this wasn't the night he was hoping for.

The first two bands were outside smoking on the patio together with a couple of their friends.

And then I saw the stage set up with our gear. 

Unlit. 

My bass rested on its stand, ready to play. And it didn't care. It didn't worry. Just a machine ready to work.

I think those are the moments that can define a working musician. Separating the ones who want to play and the ones who just want attention. I'm not saying it's good to play those shows, or you have to play one as some sort of right of passage, or that you should be happy to walk out to sparse clapping. What I mean is that if you are in a band, you will probably have bad nights, a lot of them. It's part of being in a band, and when it happens, how you handle it will prove who you are.

"Time to go," Abe said grabbing four waters from our ice chest.

Slowly, into the dark silence, we walked out. 

No one moved yet. 

I kept looking down at my shoes. Not embarrassed, just focusing on the job, going through my check list:

Bass in tune, amp on, flip a pick between my fingers (if I think about the pick too much, it starts to feel wrong in my hand... There's a way the point turns into my palm, cause I use a short edge, where the pick feels like it disappears and it becomes part of me and I can play anything I need to, and I never think about it again).

The bartender yelled to the sound guy, "Ryan! TIME!" His voice cutting through the room and grabbing everyone's attention. 

With a disappointed nod, the sound guy finished his drink and headed to his console. 

The girls moved closer to the stage. 

The guys still finishing their game, looked up for a moment at the stage, then kept playing.

Finally the sound guy gave a thumbs up.

Jaime tapped his heel, and I could hear the high-hat whispering the beat. 

'Where is this going?' 

We were three songs in and I was already sweating from dancing around, singing, and the bright red stage lamps.

'Where is this going?' 

This set. This tour. This cycle. This music. The next string of shows. My life at home. A doctor's bill I had to pay, and a lonely merch table. Questions that could fill an empty room or crowd a sold out arena, bounced in my head.

'Where is this going?' 

An industry seemingly collapsing on all sides. People groaning about how bad music is today. How there used to be real bands. And what am I? Or how good it was before I was born. How people don't care about live music. None of which I believe by the way, cause music isn't about any of those things for me. And if it ever was, the purpose of writing, the purpose of playing would be lost.

I keep writing to make better songs.

I play cause it heals me. 

I sing to save myself from suffocating.

I dance when it moves me.

It should be an honest reaction. In this small of a show, there's no pretension. No reason for the girls to dance. No reason for the sound guy to clap after a song ends. No reason for the bartender to send a round of beers to the stage. No reason for the game on the pool table to be left unfinished. All that happened honestly.

And I look out to the empty room, to watch them watching me. Not because I need the attention, though attention is nice, but because I am amazed to reach anyone here. In the middle of nowhere. When everything should have gone wrong.

'Where is this going?' 

Sometimes I find that question stuck in my head. Usually on nights like this. When I'm loading out. When the 8 people who saw the show come together at the merch table for a drink. When I am re-stacking the gear into the back of the van, and my shirt is soaking wet from sweat, and the humidity makes me feel disgusting.

'Where is this going?' 

I didn't start for attention.

I didn't start so anyone would like me.

So I don't let it bother me. 

Not when there's 2 people, not when there's 2 million. I haven't gotten nervous yet, knock on wood. Reminding myself why. Asking. It helps me keep my way, as long as I keep asking.

-rene

After The Last Note

After the last note, I took a breath.

Two big lights came on above the audience pointing in on us: the band, the full stage, our gear, the interview chairs, the desk with the famous blue late-night coffee mug positioned at the edge. 

A camera swung between me and the audience. It had only been one song. A few minutes. A few heartbeats. Not even long enough to get nervous.

It's so much easier for me to take any big performance, show, festival, TV, if I can focus on one spot. One person. One object. My Drishti. Play there and only there. Let the crowd disappear. Let the room disappear. Let my focus disappear, till there's only me and the song. I had found my spot early that morning during rehearsals. The camera to my left. One singular mirrored eye. I watched it watching me. Sang to it. Ignored it. Came back to it. Tried to win its affections. But that was over now. 

After the last note, I had one breath before the world returned; a brief respite. I looked through the audience for anyone I knew, but they were too far away and those two bright lights came on right at my eyes. I remember hearing a good applause. And the cold. The studio was so cold my left hand hurt. I have an old injury that makes my middle finger cramp up in the cold. I tried to take this all in, holding it as long as I could. But once David Letterman was walking over to me with his hand extended out to my cold, knotted joint, I had to exhale. I had to come back.

"Take Me Back To Texas!" David laughed and the band played. Quick as it began, it was over and the camera swung away. Dave was off talking to Jaime. The stage crew began moving our gear off stage, the audience was funneling out, and I was led to the exit to meet our label guy Grover and publicist Mary who were waiting for us.

"You did it!" she yelled, "Your first TV appearance... and you were dancing and everything!"

"I did dance... didn't I?" I look back at the little stage, it is very little, that sacred ground, that space between the house band and the interview chairs for David Letterman is unexpectedly small and immediately powerful, and all evidence of our band was gone: our amps, drums, the cables and microphones all gone.

"Get your stuff, and we can meet outside," Grover said quickly.

I opened the door leading out of the studio floor... or was it open already? No, Abe was ahead of me, and I'm holding my bass slung over my right shoulder as we get ready to go to a narrow hallway back to the dressing room... and at the door is Bruce Willis. Unexpected as that.

Smiling like he is saying, "Yes it's Bruce Willis."

Just as I'm thinking, "Is it really? It really is Bruce Willis," and "man he is way more handsome than I could have imagined.

The guy seriously looks flawless and is I-don't-know how old... but instantly captivating and tall or was he standing on something... I remember him being tall... it's no wonder he's a movie star. He might have said 'great job' in a low-mumble-action hero way, but by the time I get past by him careful not to hit John McClane with my bass, I don't know how well I was paying attention. Maybe I just made it up.  Maybe it was just a grunt. I never tell people Bruce Willis said 'great job' cause I'm not sure, but I will tell you absolutely without a doubt, that I want to think he said it.

It's two flights up a metal grate staircase to get back to the dressing room. 

One flight above the studio was make-up, where I'd stopped before our performance. Each of us was sent down from our dressing room one at a time. The lady was talking to her friend when I arrived and sat me down on her barber chair without stopping her conversation. She immediately started across my face with a brush, doing her thing. She didn't ask me what I wanted, but that's probably best. I wouldn't have known what to say other than make me look good? 

The make-up room was incredibly bright and small. Spartan. Not even close to what I imagined from seeing movies. A chair, a small vanity shelf with her tools, bright lights, and one of those awful magnifying mirrors designed to show how much more sleep I needed but didn't get. But after a few minutes of her magic I'm looking better than I'd ever seen myself. She was packing up her brushes as I made my way past again. 

"Thanks again," I shouted as I made my way up.

The next flight, and the top of the staircase, are four dressing rooms. 

The first one was for Amy Adams; I only saw her in passing, I almost wish I had a cool Amy Adams story where I was charming or clever and made her laugh, or she was charming and clever to me and made me laugh, or how great would it be if she were not only beautiful and smart but also viciously mean? That would be a great story... but I don't have any idea what I would've said to her other than 'hello.' So it's alright with me we didn't talk.

The second room was for a film crew that followed, Paul Jr. and Sr. for American Chopper who were occupying the third room.

They'd briefly come into the fourth room, our room, before our performance. They said something like "Rock it guys!"

I think our room was a little disappointing for them, maybe they heard a rock band was next door and expected a rock star party going on, but we were just a couple kids in a mostly empty room. I had a bag with a change of clothes.

When I came back to the fourth room to get my bag everyone else had long cleared out. Just a few members from the film crew packing up gear as I snuck over cables, grabbed my stuff, and went back down the stairs. With the heave of the exit door. Out of the cold of the Ed Sullivan, I jumped down into the humidity of the loading alley.

And then I was alone.

On the same street we'd loaded-in from just a few hours before and feeling desperately indescribable. I had energy enough to run and no where to go. I had the feeling of accomplishment and change. But to what? Why? This big moment in my life. A fantasy, and it all seemed to have slipped out of my life already. Like it had left with that last breath, after the last note. Now there was only an echo. This alley. Leaving me with only a profoundly microscopic shift I felt in my heart. A wonderful anxiety. That I had only begun. That this was only a start. 

There was a me before and after.

The morning to afternoon. You could superimpose a photo of then and now and see I still looked the same. The day was as grey and clouded, though only a little hotter. Waves of people still moved busily along Broadway, though you could count more of them. And a musician still waiting outside the Ed Sullivan theater, though this morning he'd never played on this stage before.


-rene

Bar-flys, Broken Strings, and The Best Of 'em

"I've seen'em... all of'em... right here," the boulder of a man never closed his mouth. When he wasn't talking he was breathing, but always a big open hole for words to come out and beer to go in. 

His lips were too thin to be seen under his two day salt and pepper. At once mesmerizing and hard to look at. Three thick busted fingers pushed against the bar with every one of his words, "I didn't even hav'ta leave... I live," his eyes seemed to drift apart like they couldn't decide where to look as he pointed first to the door then to the back wall, "I live, down the street... Just walk here and see the best, best shows, you could imagine... the best. Ya ever play somewhere like this 'ene?"

I didn't know what to tell him... I had, I mean I've played historic places, I've played bigger places, I've played nicer looking places, and smaller, uglier ones too. It was another stop. But you can't break a guys story like that, you just can't. He stands his life on his stories, we all do.

"...never man. This place is pretty great. Should be a good show."

"No, 'ene," I don't know if it was the beer or just the fact that he couldn't pronounce Rene completely, but it was kinda endearing, "this place is the best."

...

I couldn't imagine the best shows being in Minneapolis. Nothing against the city, just never imagined it. 

The stage was much smaller than clubs that hold half the number of people. Maybe it was all our stuff, but it seemed small even before we loaded in. It looked impossibly small when I was standing at the front of house looking at all the amps, guitars, two drums, congas, a giant open triangle, and the lights: 

These giant metal flower shaped lights, towered over our gear, blasting down waves of heat. We'd started the tour with two lines of l.e.d.'s, but high-powered lights mixed with a high-volume band had more than few audience members passing out during our sets; so somewhere along the way we picked up these giant flower shaped meat warmers, and I was sweating buckets every night, but at least they looked great, and the fainting stopped.

The rest of my band was off in the city; I finished an afternoon drink, paid my tab, and left my new friend to go explore the stage. I had seen this club in videos, but everything looks better on television. In person, there was no room to walk. I couldn't believe this was the same stage so many big names had played before. This was the same place the bar-fly came to night after night to see music.

And there amidst a tangle of wires, was my corner of it. My amp. My bass. My Mic. My moment. A slice of time where I would share apart of this. My chance to make a mark. 'How was I going to do anything worth seeing in this small space?' I could already feel this stage was going to affect me, and it didn't feel good.

That's me,  all blurry on the right trying not to fall*

A few feet off the stage from me was an old monitor console that looked like it had been through every single show, all of them manned by this same guy who was just as beat up. 

He was thinner than the bar fly. His long ponytail was white and streaked with black. His blue eyes circled by rings of milky grey. He carried a cigarette behind his ear, ready for his break, and his favorite tool, a roll of black gaff on his belt.

He moved quickly back and forth across the stage with a quick two-note whistle/wheeze every three steps. Without a second thought, he went about plugging in cables, positioning speakers around our gear, taping down loose wires. Never talking, especially to me, except for the occasionally grumble into his walkie-talkie.

The older crews don't really talk to the younger bands. They're some of the toughest critics, having seen too many shows to be fooled by cheap gimmicks and fads, it's not easy to impress the older guys. I can't blame them. It's also one of the biggest compliments to have one of them say they dug your set.

....

When it came time to play, I was on the side of the stage waiting to go on. Warming up my fingers, practicing a few bass runs,  watching the opening act. Maybe it was a little bit of adrenaline, or the drinks, or maybe it was a trick of the lights, but the club started looking a little different to me. This didn't look like the same empty club I saw early today. For one thing, I hadn't noticed how tall the stage was. I had only seen it as narrow and cluttered. Now that the crowd had filled in to just shy of capacity, and they were pushed together, right below stage level, I could see how they saw the show. They were all too low to see the mess of cables and power outlets, they only saw musicians, well us above our shins, the faces, the gear, the lights.

Second, the club dropped a curtain down between acts, adding to the mood. Even though everyone knows what's going on behind the curtain, it does have a Wizard of Oz -ness, making the show feel powerful. Cause when the lights are dark, the crowd goes quiet, and slowly the curtain rises, its about to happen.

And that gets me amped. 

Suddenly I felt this was not just another show, but a moment. A moment for me. And for the kids who have never seen a show before. And the ones who were on dates with would-be lovers, or friends trying to find a good time. And the barfly, and the sound guy, and all the old guards who've seen it a million times before and still come hoping to be delighted and moved with something new and creative. It does still happen. 

All those thoughts were in my head when inch by inch the curtain was raised. And to my right was the worn face looking down at his monitor board, with a new cigarette tucked in behind his ears for after the show, giving me a thumbs up. 

Higher up it went, and there were the bright faced teens, the men and women with arms around each other, all fighting for a better view.

The curtain was almost at the top, and somewhere in the back I knew there was the wobbly-eyed boulder knocking back the last of his drink before turning to the stage to watch. To see this moment. 

I was ready. Everything is silent. The lights flash. Drums. Guitars. Our singer is off, and with a snap at the bottom of my right hand, my string breaks.

 

-rene





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A Line Of Strange Thinkers, The Man of No Direction

Let's start on a grey evening, driving into a new town from miles of highway. Every night: show, pack up, drive, unload. City through mirrored city. Slowly watching the past polished out into a reflection of television suburbia. Shelled out. Some cities hold well, the small ones better than the others.

When I was 15 at Boerne High School, small town dreaming of roads and places to go, I didn't think it would be this way. I wanted everyplace to be new and different. I wanted to see the quirks. The strangeness. But I see that all going. More and more are cities become the same.Exotic America survives in novels, photographs, songs, everything we keep in tucked away in our big community sock drawer. Maybe that's why I love coming back to the hill country, with all its character and love. Anyway, I'm not too messed up about it. The best parts are safe, hidden away in every town, deep inside the minds that people them. Never completely lost as long as there are thinkers hungry for living on the outside. Unhappy with what-is, and turning out the could-be. People ready to explore. Here I give a vignette about us, the line of strange thinkers.

This night, our band had a show in a small hold out town in Colorado. We'd just set up our amps and drums into a corner dive called The Firebird with a few hours before soundcheck, so I took off walking. Usually there's not a lot of time for sight-seeing in rock'n'roll, but we had time that day, and I needed it. My head was drowsy from lack of good sleep and thoughts of a warm night at home, people, food, real food cooked over a real fire... and a neck bent out of shape from crowding against a 15 passenger van window. Suddenly I feel a walk could be medicinal. I needed change to shake off the tiredness. The routine of motels and fast food.

The streets wet from a day I didn't know, tell me I'm stepping into this town's history - that's a great fact of travel. The outsider should be cautious, it does us well to know we don't belong. Observing from a distance. My headphones drowning out the slides of rolling tires, and the shuffle of people unloading at a bus stop.

"What are you listening to?" rings out. She's young. We were both young, but I was college young and she's high school. And those are oceans across. I pretended not to hear, but kept walking to her and she saw me through bright red swept bangs as she stood by a steel city bench. I like to keep my walks to myself, especially with my headphones in, but she seems sweet. Little sister sweet like she will follow you for blocks, trailing behind a step asking question on question, until you give some time. And anyway she stood right in front of me, so how could I ignore? She tapped her finger to her ear, and looked straight at me, "What are you listening to?" Again.

I lifted my phone to show her saying, 'I Got A Right.' Iggy was yelling half-way through - yeeeaaawww.

She took out her iPod, showed me '1970' and swore it was synchronicity. The girl had a laugh she couldn't control, and kept the history of Iggy Pop written verbatim in her head. Her blue eyes up the clouds like she's reading her lines of our conversation on the clouds. I couldn't have interrupted her if I wanted. She said, "You know... of course you know," as she described what she was listening to. "He sings with his whole body. Every part of him... it's more than performing. Every part of him believes." And she laughs again. "You know?"

And she's right. I know. She never asked who I am, or where I'm from, or names, because music was enough. Music connects. I knew she's a girl who listens, and she knew about me, all from a phone or an iPod. As we were talking, I remembered my beginnings. When I was her. The times I was eager to talk. The times I built my friendships on taste. When I looked for those who listened because only they understood. All the regular chat can be saved for a chit-chatting with estranged relations. This is real talk. Music's enough. Until it was time for me to head back to the bar. I waited for a break to smile and pull out my phone checking the time. Not that I wasn't having fun. It was just time. I've got my hands back in my jeans, my thumb hovering over the play button. "Gotta get ready for the show."

"Firebird? " she asked sliding on earbud. "Of course you're going too." Laughing again as she picked up her jacket.

I said "Let's walk," and step out of her way. Side by side like two siblings we walked back up the street quietly for a few steps before she flips her hair to say, "I'm writing about the show for my school paper. I love The H...'s - the other band not mine - so glad they finally came here." She said 'here' with all the frustration of being stuck in one place. And I saw in her pocket a well-worn notepad with ideas scribbled on it from past shows. Her dreams. Her words. Collected bits of Exotic America drifted in to her town with each band, and show. She's recorded them, made them her own.

I say something cornball like "hopefully it'll be something worth writing about," and left her in line outside of the club as I go in, with only a wave good-bye. I didn't see her again that night or after, though I looked for her face in the crowd. Never finding what she wrote, but I hope it was positive. Never telling her I was in the other band. But what a set we played. Jaime's bass drum rattling my leg on a tiny stage, nearly fell over twice. The monitors were so bad, I couldn't hear a note of my voice over the amps. The whole time, with the heat of the stage lights and the sweat on me, I thought of what she said. And Iggy Pop. Believing. And trying to sing like every bone in me had something to tell. Like I could make the words come alive. And give what I got out of music, to someone else. Someone who is really listening.

At the end of the night I was packing up and moving out. Having connected. Having given something to that night, and the city. Having received a memory. No longer tired of show after show, I felt good about cramming into the van again. Sometimes people can do that. Resuscitating a love. Taking me to the start. Feeling again in the lull of a long tour, a right to sing, a right to move, and more importantly the need.

-rene

The Man of No Direction

pacing summer streets
I think I saw him pass twice

across the mirrored bar-front

Waiter says he drifts in all the time

when he has enough for a drink

then out again

Who knows where?
 Some strange compositions 
he dreams of things beyond?

Growing beards of perseverance

Plastering eyes in purposeless anger

Giving a laugh at every pretty girl
Crossing streets careless in danger

he is gone
and he'll come back knowing
even more

I wonder, walk, drink

placing my own in his step
a swirl of directionless frustration

it's never the amount
money, accolades, creation
that becomes so infuriating
step after step, I tell myself

till I've turned alley
circling back the mirrored bar-front

where a man of no direction
waits for me

A Natural Life or Speak Like A Horn

I threw a melody to the new morning sky
It lifted through the street faltered and died
This place is not for you, this city's rotting inside
I picked up pieces carried her home
held her tight, reset the bone
told of places, where wild melodies roam



There are some who are born to live in cities. People who thrive on the numbers, who glide on asphalt. Whose hearts beat with the flow and hum of traffic and speak like horns, the only way to be heard. Going hours without seeing the sun, maybe days. It is possible. I'm not speaking against them, or modernism, or technology...though they could hear the words with a choke in their mouth and a bit of guilt throbbing in their chest, and I wouldn't try to deny them the feeling. But I am a man of the fields and wild. I live for solitude. It's where I get recharged. It's where I get inspiration. Jaime pointed out, that Natural Life is a song where a world is created. The song sounds like it's name, it sounds like the lyrics, making it a very complete picture of the open country of home. If you've seen our instagram you could check out what I mean.

*

In the Natural Life
Where it's sunny and bright

I find inspiration in my home, the chaparral. A borderline desert of short oaks and cedar. My dad calls them trash trees cause they're not good for anything really. Only the mesquite is really good for cooking with, and a lot of those have been taken already by previous inhabitants. The cedar does give off a nice pollen perfect for heavy seasons of allergies. We also get cactus by the acre and anything that can tolerate 100+ degree summers and about the shortest winters imaginable. Fine with me, that's about all the cold I can take. I guess what I'm saying is there is as much good as there is bad even in the natural world, but what I find to be inspirational, and what I can't get out of the city is volume and tempo.

The chaparral is quiet enough and slow enough to hear the music that already exists around me. It is everywhere. Old songs. Wild songs. Strange songs with the discordant sourness of death. Dark songs painted in cold isolation. Sunset choruses, and verse falling like rain and drying in the limestone. This is not some idyllic harvest land, but just the way it has always been and will always be. People didn't invent music, we invented rules and patterns. The same way we can find images in clouds, music is inherent in the universe. Songs played for millenia, as ignorant of us and we are of them. The city doesn't give me that. The city is rules and patterns. It is a scream to me, and requires a different ear to pluck out its songs.


Listen to a live version:

Natural Life is not about the songwriter, but a protector and a keeper of the music. In an era where ownership is value, it's hard to say I don't really make music, but truthfully I find it. It might be time to admit there are some things that can not be owned. Somethings we have no basis to claim as our own. Amazingly it is technology that is allowing us to see the continuum in one frozen flash. All of history contained in one source where we can see that art/ideas didn't just pop-up out of nowhere, but emerge from an evolution of thought that is occurring all around us. Luckily, I don't have to go far to find it. This is something inherent in wildlife. The chaparral doesn't just exist on it's own. It wasn't invented or planned, but was inherited. It is a genealogy on to itself, tracing back to the beginning of beginnings. Music is the same.

There was music before and after me, and would have been fine if I never decided to participate in the first place. It is another completely independent genealogy. But also like the wild, it is fully accepting. Music may have an indifference, but it will not turn anyone away. I am completely free to try my hand, to move inside it's line, to participate. So just because I do not own or claim it, doesn't mean I am not apart of it, or vital to it. Just like any single plant, animal or organism, any song, group, writer, can exist in the landscape and even change it in drastic ways. I can walk outside, and be reminded that. The world barely notices me, but also waits for me, continually living and singing. We are simply free to join in whenever we want.

Eaters of the Dark

waves lap and fall
bodies turning
pile and fall
what does it mean to be young forever
Who wants to be an eater of the dark?

-rene


*Photo from: http://musicofnature.com/chaparral_concerto/