Learning To Read. Pt 1

You probably know by now that I love to read poetry. It's the reason I got into writing in the first place. 


And in the short time I've been reading publicly, I've been lucky enough to find so much encouragement (btw thank you for all the kind words. they mean a lot to me). It's become such a big part of my life, that I decided to talk about how I learned to read and hopefully get more people to try.

Quiet a few years ago, a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company visited my school and read On The Eve of St. Agnes.To tell you that it was an important moment for me would be an understatement. It changed how I wrote, how I read, how I understood poetry. 

And while I am nowhere near on that level, I am better for what I learned from that experience. More about that specific reading later but here are some things that have stuck with me since then.

⸓

Part 1

Poetry People and Poetry Is The Message

Let's start with an uninspired, blanket observation: poetry isn't for everyone. And while that's true for almost anything, I have found such a hot or cold reaction to Poetry that I can't help but try and theorize why something I love so much, can be so hated as well. So I'll move to my second cliche and move to the beginning of these experiences.

Most of the time, when people find out that I love poems, I'm met on some scale between confusion, annoyance, distaste, or anger.

Rarely.

                 Vary rarely.

I meet someone who enjoys poetry too. 

It's not impossible. But I find those encounters to be outliers. And of those few encounters it's even harder to find someone who enjoys the same kind of poetry I do. Maybe this is do to my geography, or the small circles I keep, and maybe this would all be solved if I just got out more?... but this has been my experience.

So younger me, often kept poetry as a solitary subject. Something not to bring in to conversations with my friends. The times I remember best, ditching class, to have time alone in a corner of a library, or in my room, or on the university lawn, or hiding in the front seat of my car with the windows down. Quietly absorbing every line. Taking in the page as a secret passed thru history just for me. And I was fine with that. In fact it was exactly what I wanted. A way to enjoy my lonerism.

After all, poetry wasn't about making friends. 

Still isn't. 

Poetry is something I do for me. I read and write cause I want to. It's my desire that is it's own reward. There's no monetary value. No good job or high five. No reason other than a desire to read and write. I can share a moment with a writer's thoughts, see if they speak to me, if I like it or not or if I want even want that message in my life. And everything about Poetry, hinges on me. And while yes, sometimes it's another author who wrote the piece, the conversation is strictly internal. They were merely the fuel for my own imagination. I hold the conversation. I dictate how it ends. 

And I imagine this true for you, if you are a poetry person.

Maybe that's where the disconnect occurs? Maybe some people don't understand why they should put so much work or thought into a poem when it takes so much effort to understand and they receive no tangible reward. Poetry is slow. Its practice requires calming that internal itch for fast and easy and waiting for a longer, personal reward that may not reveal its purpose until years down, when a reader can recall a succinct and poignant line.

And while poetry is personal, at its origin, it's meant to be communal. Meant to be spread and shared. That was a big lesson for me to learn from the Shakespearean Actor and my wonderful Romance Professor. What's the point of writing, of publishing, if not to spread out like a virus thru time, infecting futures with the strange ramblings of your mind? 

Poetry, like all writing, is the message. Every poem has one. From the author to the reader. From reader to listener. And often that message is simple, though sometimes it is obscured in difficult layers of representation. *(More on this later)

That communication is the most important part of reading. Even if you're alone in your room, on a recording, in bed with a lover, or on a stage in front of a room full of people, or live on Instagram, the point is to uncover the message. 

Bring it out. 

Give it warmth. 

Slowly make it live. 

Only the reader can do that.

A good reading should help the message emerge. A great reading should bring the author's voice off the page and into our reality. Into the moment.

Sometimes it takes a lot of time and re-readings to ever get to a comfortable place and say - I know this poem well enough to read it.

I hear a lot of people read unconfidently. And this is probably because they aren't precisely sure what they are saying. 

So take time. 

I never read aloud the first time. And I never perform without many, many re-readings. I imagine this was equally true for the Shakespearean Actor who read at my University.

Read unfiltered, then Re-Read asking lots of questions like:

What did the author mean? What is actually being said here? What should the reader get from this? Why is the poem divided up the way it is? Are the rhymes and rhythms supposed to be emphasized or is it just a background mood? What is the tone of this poem? Etc.

There are a million questions and even more answers, but with every answer you find (different readers will and should find different answers) you should get closer to understanding your message.


 This is the work of reading. It's not easy. 

And the reward... that's even harder to define. 

Maybe here we can revisit this Love/Hate problem. 

Why work so hard for words? Why go slowly over an idea, again and again? Why obsess over someone else's thoughts? If you see no value in it, it is the equivalent of eating a chunk of rubber tire. Hard. Distasteful. Unrewarding. It's easy to understand why someone would hate the thought of it. Or think it strange that other people enjoy it.

I think that's the inherited attitude of our High School understanding of Poetry. And for that, I won't blame them.

But if like me, you are a Poetry Person, you know there are universes of ideas to escape to. Dreams to make. Experiences to feel. Each one has made my life so much deeper. Has taught me to appreciate others. To Think. To Feel. To Love. To be cautious of the words I use. To be mindful of my form. To be something more than I could be without Poetry. 

Human. 

So I challenge you to find a poem, record yourself reading it the first time, then read it over until you find some new insight into the meaning, and record it again. Hear the change that comes with understanding.

Much love

-rene

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pps. Let me know if you liked this and I can do more.

Late-Night Drinking

I'm writing this a little late, and more than a little foggy in my head. This has not been a good week for sleep. Sorry to my wife for all my restlessness, but those things come in waves. Just the consequence of living for music.

The last two weeks have been non-stop, so I took yesterday evening with the guys and stayed out late-night drinking, having talks that were way to involved, books, writing, race, all those fuzzy speeches, that spill out of late-night podiums from pseudo-philosophers like myself.

It's too much I know. But I can't help it sometimes.

I can say being that guy is all terrible. A lot of good ideas come from venting. Pushing out all the weird ideas I carry and letting them go.

It was when I got home, the house completely quiet and dark except for the light over the sink, that I took a long breath. 

It was good.

I threw off my shoes. Made a snack of cheese, hummus and a slice of bread, not very creative but delicious none the less, and ate standing over the stove top, humming a song, and thinking this was a really good place to be. And I didn't just mean snack-wise.

The tracks with Larry are sounding amazing. We will be finishing the last song on Saturday, before the Mixing phase. 

Idyll Green is putting together a song to give away which will be out soon along with some really cool visual stuff. 

Tuesday night we recorded the first episode of the podcast that I think came out great, and I have a lot more to do. 

So much that it is intimidating. 

And exhausting. 

And fun. 

Through all of the work. This whole experience of collaborating, building, and creating Idyll Green has been one of the most fun projects that I have done in a long time. And that's a lot to be thankful for. 

And last night I found that, in the dark of my house. Alone. Tired. Content.



until next week



-rene



ps. as always like, share, subscribe and if you want to talk you can reach me on this blog, facebook and twitter

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

Our First Offical Meeting with a Record Label, Whats It Worth

for what its worth
 

My brothers and I had driven up to Austin from San Antonio early in the morning. Feeling high. Feeling invincible. Though the traffic was bad. Though the sky was ready for rain. Though we had a hard time parking. All I was thinking was, 'this is happening... this is really happening.' Our first official meeting with a record label for at a small hotel along the river.

Abe checked his phone for the last text, "He's in the brunch area..."

"brunch area?" it sounded so un-rock-n-roll to me.



The concierge pointed us down a long narrow hallway towards the back of the hotel. And while the lobby was impressively modern with polished marble floors and pillars, gold railings, an automated computer check-in, a contemporary jazz pianist under a chandelier and large art installations, this part of the hotel seemed surprisingly neglected.

Going through the hallway was like walking backward through time, a chronological collection of the hotel's past hung on the faded yellow paper in plain wooden frames moving us further and further back. 

The carpet was stained and worn thin, the pattern of a dull brown with endless blue diamonds. Abe leading the way, no one said a word as we approached the end of the hall towards a dark carved wooden door.

Maybe we were all thinking how strange this was. Maybe we were trying to get our negotiation faces on. We had no idea what to expect. The closest idea I had was a mixture of crime movies and music documentaries. Old guys in big suits and cigars. Guys who swung around in big leather office chairs and laughed while they answered vintage rotary phones, and always pointed a fat, gold ringed finger when they shouted to make their deals.

Through the door came a blast of sunlight and cold air. I felt it push down into my chest, or maybe that was my nerves? We walked into a small room, converted from a patio, the walls were amber tinted glass that sloped up and over our heads.

On a good day it would've been a nice view of downtown, but on a rainy day like this, the windows were steamed and the sunlight barely came in through the foggy blur.

"We're here to meet our uh," I said to the captain trying to think if the reservation was under his personal name, my name, our band name or the name of the label. 

The twenty-something blonde girl with her hair pulled back tight into a ponytail didn't notice my fumbling. She seemed to be expecting three teenagers in western boots and jeans, "Right over here," she interrupted. Saving me from murdering the rest of my sentence as she took us to the corner of the room and a small table set for one.

She swept her arm across the air, towards four chairs crammed in the small area, "Should I send three more plates?"

Without looking up from his plate or the smear of eggs below his nose, he waived her away with a grunt.

Her eyebrows jumped quickly as if taken back by his answer but left politely.

"I'm almost done."

Here he was. The guy with our future in his hands. And the first look at him, the look on his face, put me off. And I wondered if the captain had the right idea.

His eyes were tired. Not the good kind, from lack of sleep or last night's party. Not the tired I felt having built up so much excitement in my 19 year-old brain. His tiredness came from deeper in his soul. The kind that permeates bone and changes the nature of the body. To know genetically the beat, battered, exhausted feeling of struggling with yourself. The dark circles, the peppered uneven beard, short sandy-blonde hair, the yellowed-white Hanes and stained jeans, everything about him was worn. 
 

After a quick introduction, and some complimentary waters, we stated really talking...

"Things are bad. Not just for me. I'm actually one of the better ones. I'm talking across the board. Bad... F***** Bad. Man, if this was a few years ago... if this was the nineties... you know what I mean? We'd be going. There's no doubt you guys have talent." 
 

I didn't know what he meant. The nineties for me were spent watching cartoons, hanging out in the library, little league games, and listening to the radio. I wouldn't know what he was talking about for a long while. At the time I felt like he wasn't coming down on us. And by the serious looks on my brother's faces, they thought so too.

I watched him eat as he talked, his plate, his knife sliding against porcelain, the yolk bleeding out and around crashing into the toast. The fork rising to his lips, and the cracked lips taking in every bite.

  

"Forget albums... Albums are dead. You think anyone makes money on albums anymore? Like I said, if this was the nineties man... Back then albums made f***** money. If you'd get on the radio, get some buzz going, you've practically got your own printer going. I could develop... artists like you, you know... but now, f*** I don't know. But the thing is... and I know I'm back and forth on this... What are you guys gonna do? You gotta have an album... I mean what good is a band without an album right?"

At first I thought this guy was just a downer, or brushing us off, maybe both of those are true but he was still telling the truth, it really felt like he was being honest.

 

But it would take us some to time to learn how things were changing. It took us time to learn what his advice meant. That's the thing about being on our own. We had no management. No directions to follow. We were stumbling our way through this. Teenagers trying to solve a incredibly complex puzzle. Learning as we go.

It takes time.

I always had this feeling that I never had the complete picture.  He wanted to be truthful, but you can't do that and keep a secret right there at the surface. I could feel it coming up, wanting to tell us the bigger picture, but with each bite he pushed it back down.

But I understood that things were changing. Big things. Behind the curtain things. And this big change in the industry wasn't a surprise, the industry had seen it coming for a while. It wasn't a burst, but a serious of small cuts. Slowly bleeding out from the larger body from all sides, without one centralized place to take stock. With out one vision of how to stop it. But there was the question. And the feeling like someone just needed to come up with the answer. What is the value of music? What is it worth? If you could figure it out. If you could answer that, you could stop the bleeding.

 

I stretched out my neck with a snap. I hadn't realized how long I'd sat nodding my head quietly. This meeting was too much to take in. Too much to understand. I had no idea what the industry transition meant for us, because I didn't know where the industry was much less where it was going.

 

"I've never seen a band look so happy," he leaned back in his chair, "you guys are doing things, s*** you shouldn't even be doing. I mean no one writes songs like this anymore. You know? The guys I work with, they're never as happy as you guys."

The waitress came by to get his plate.

 

"I just don't know right now, about a band that's never played a show. Doesn't have anything. It's just not how it's done... I mean, it's been done. But now... every thing's changed. Those big money days are gone. But right, I wasn't in it either... I've gotta worry about my s**** now and tomorrow. What does it mean to even have a band? F*** it's like I said guys: What's it worth?"

So many things I wanted to ask. Or say. But they didn't come to me. I watched my glass of water, the falling condensation run against my finger tip as his words washed into me. 'What's it worth?'

Music is worth everything to me. An album, a song, a melody. They are an expression of my being. My life and place in the world. I'd give it to anyone who'd listen. I'd give it to no one. To the air. To the sky. I'd give it the animals. The trees. And emptiness. And the stars. That's what I wanted. Help getting our music out there. We weren't thinking of trying to make a printing press. We were thinking about music business. If money was my goal, I'd probably have done something else for a career. What is it worth? What is an emotion worth? An idea? A philosophy? A move? A life? A song?

But don't think I am some artist who is against return. I'd love to get paid more for what I do.  I'd love to not have to worry about rent and food and bills. And like I said, I've learned a lot since that meeting. The me of today, would have answers, and a different view. Confidence. That meeting would be so different. But life moves one way. So it's about the next one, not the first one.  I keep trying to make it better. More accessible. More vibrant. Trying to answer the question: What's it worth?

It's up to the business minds to figure out how to monetize it, the label, manager, and most importantly the artist because they are the one who can set everything with direction, it takes a team, but the artist is the captain, the leader, the vision. Any artist concerned with success needs to have a business mind, or know someone else who has one. 

It's up to the artist to create desire.

Desire is worth.

But it's up to a society to set the price. They are the regulators. The hidden force that says. This is how I listen to music. This is how I want to buy it. This is what I will pay for it. This is who I will give my money to.

And so the question is for all of us. Cause I believe that people want to help people. Artists want to give to fans. Fans want to give to artists. And more importantly, fans care more about the quality of the work than any dollar amount. That's why I pour everything into every word I write. My songs, poems, this blog. What I put out matters more, than what comes back. And hopefully what I put out will help what comes back.

He didn't stand when the meeting was over. He shook our hands from his seat, and ordered an afternoon beer, "I've got lots more people to see today gentleman. Later."

It was a quiet walk back to the van. Back through the hotel. The hallway back to the lobby. And the pianist was on break, the morning check ins were done. Everything was quiet but the slushing sounds of cars running through the street.

We left the meeting without a deal, without answers but only a strange optimism to find my solution to that ever present question, "what's it worth?"

"What do you guys think?" Jaime asked.

"I think we should've gotten a plate," after a few hours I hadn't realized how hungry I was, "I mean we drove up here. We should've at least gotten fed."



-rené

The Ocean and Then This

I didn't want to move. I definitely didn't want to go back to the party. I was alone on the beach, and I mean surrounded by the splendid multitude of nature, only absent of humans. 

I'd walked far enough from the neighborhood where I could see the lit up windows, and all the talking, smoking, lies and music were overtaken by the heavy breaths of ocean. So loud and powerful, the wind and wave, yet not near as exhausting as talking to the party crowd. 

Example:

Apparently there was an underground band in the 90's and nobody went to their shows. Yet everyone had a story about seeing this band play to literally an empty room. Also, it was repeated to me many times that I had to hear them, but I probably couldn't because the band only made one rare cassette that's nearly impossible to find... but if I could it would be amazing... L.A. voice, "I mean it was like me and my boyfriend and the bartender... that's it... gawd can you believe it? They're just so good...so good. And then we broke up and the ba***** took all my tapes."

I'll admit if I'd passed by the window, having never been inside, I'd probably be envious... I'd probably want to be mingling and drinking and making up stories, but not now. Not once I've sat on the floor breathing in smoke from vanilla cigarettes, waited for an hour to use the bathroom while people took care of their noses, or drank any that awful metallic punch.

So I left. 

Oh beautiful ocean. I love the things you say. The stories you tell. Now the party is only filled by distant shadows and I'm safe to take off my shoes and socks. To sink in. It felt so good my shirt came off too.

"You are what I came for anyway," I said to the beautiful mouth of the Pacific. It's not hard to understand how it got it's name.

Travel mile after mile of field, desert, mountain. The pain. It must've taken a lot of pain to be the first settlers to get here.
 

Then this...

The moon watching from above like a loving mother. The soft sand pulling in at my feet as if it wants me closer, and the ocean. The great mystery. That perfect embracing vastness. I felt the wind. Pushing hard against my bare chest. And the motion. My world was stillness and motion. The blackness, the space, and me. Listening to the freezing waves come from the dark-beyond, rolling across the sand, over my feet.

I fell on my back, spread myself out across the sand, and closed my eyes.

Open. The water's up to my shins, soaking through my jeans. The night was colder and darker than before. The lights from the party were gone.

"Had they all left?" I picked myself up, dusted off a layer of muddy sand. It wouldn't be the first time the band went back to the hotel without me, but getting lost in Spain is another story. There was laughter in the wind, but from whom, I couldn't say. Maybe people further down the beach. It was too dark. 

I reached for my clothes along the sand brushing my fingers around me... can't find anything. My eyes slowly started adjusting to starlight. I could see the tops of waves coming in from the black waters. And the laugh again from nobody.

It was like a bump. I felt something buried just under my hand. The end of a rope about as thick as a quarter. Slowly I began pulling it towards me and the rope went on and on.

The water was singing. Washing out, hi-hatting in the night, keeping time with the deep bass thud of crashing wave. Striking an old song about the great loneliness in life, and separation. From shore to shore, longing. The laugh came back but this time it came accompanied by a girl.

She was dark and thin, and her hair was long constantly lifting with the wind like the way movies fake it. "What are you doing?" She asked.

I said I wasn't sure, but I had pulled so much I wanted to know what was on the other end.

She laughed. 

Further down the beach her friends were calling her back, but she bent down beside me.

"What if it's supposed to be left alone?" She asked playfully, or maybe she was serious and her sweet accent made it sound gentler, I don't know.

"I'm a little late for that," I didn't let her stop me, and kept pulling the rope out of the water, hand over hand.

"What if the other end holds something you don't want?"

I stopped pulling for a moment and the sounds of droplets falling off the rope, hitting the surface of the water caught my ear.

"Or what if the end is right behind the surface, just underneath where it is falling in now, you could get it with one more good pull."

I tightened my grip and started pulling again.  

It was not the end.

"Or then again," she said, "maybe it just goes on and on for miles covering the whole ocean floor with no end." 

"That's ridiculous," I said coldly before trying to soften up, "I mean it's a rope... it has to have an end." 

I think I offended her, cause she got up to go back to her friends. "You know," she yelled as she turned back to me, "Don't be so sure. There are lots of people pulling and pulling without ever getting anywhere."

-rene

Manifest Focus, I Dont Throw Lightning

I've spent a good amount of time (year and a half maybe?) at home songwriting/recording our next project. And if that sounds like a long time... it is... especially for us. This is actually the longest time we've had to work on writing music since we started the band. After the release of our first record, we've been running non-stop touring, writing, recording, touring, and so on. We wrote the next two albums each with about three months prep, and under one week to record everything. ONE WEEK EACH. *

Usually tracking two songs a day, for four days, and two more to do all the vocals. Usually leaving the studio straight to the stage to perform the tracks before they were even mixed. That is incredibly fast. It's 1964 fast. 

When you have a great producer and engineer, like we did, and a tight band, great things happen with a little time. Most of our songs were recorded in one, maybe two takes. A very exciting and creatively volatile atmosphere. There's a lot to be said for this sort of pressure cooker creativity: plenty of spontaneous bursts of ideas but overall it's not a lot of time to dig in and create.

While we were in the studio for a song that eventually became Don't Turn Out The Lights, our producer Dan Auerbach was unhappy with the working chorus. We played the demo. He made some notes on the groove. Did a practice run then went back to Dan to get his thoughts.


Dan leaned back in his chair, and with a sigh and a look of tiredness worn like a comfortable shirt, Dan announced he was going to take a coffee break,  'I want a great chorus by the time I get back.'  He is a man of few words, but he means every word.

Dan has always pushed our band. I don't know how he works with other artists, but for us he always asks for more than I thought we could do. Can you do it all live? With Vocals? Can you sing it better? Write it better? Play it better? And I'm grateful. His drive has taught me a lot about myself and what I'm capable of, so when he asked me to write a better chorus and walked out of the studio without a single word of direction, I knew he was testing me, and I knew I could succeed.

I sat down on the floor of the studio live room armed with an 60's flat-top Gibson and a legal pad, and started running through the song's chords. Repeating them. Listening to the notes. Playing variations on tempos and octaves, listening for a melody hidden inside. Feeling the clock and trying not to worry, I focused on the music. Strumming. The vibrations. Visualizing the notes, the waves bouncing against themselves in the air. Strumming. The subtleties, the patterns.


Then the melody came in focus like a distant image on the horizon. Closer and clearer. Walking to me. In no hurry. Just traveling at its own pace.


I leaned in closer to hear. Pressed my jaw into the shoulder of the wood and felt the chords ringing through my head. I shut my eyes. Closer the details formed. The shape, the feel, the words...

It was about ten minutes when Dan came back with a half emptied mug and sat back in his chair. He was perked up. Everything was done. I gave him the legal pad to read along as I sat on the couch playing the newly written idea to everyone.


Halfway through my performance, Dan put done his mug, whispered to the engineer and when I was done, he clapped loudly and we were ready to get back to work, "Yeah Son, that's right!"


That chorus was born out of a time crunch. I needed a chorus at that moment. And with focus, it manifested, it came to me. So I hope I don't sound like I'm complaining when I talk about now and the amount of time we are taking. I want to try working a record with a different feel and pace. I wanted to know what we could do with a little more. 

A little more time to write. More time to practice. More time to do takes, and mix, and sing. And it all adds up to a lot more time in the long run but that was the plan.

We could've easily retread the same musical territory we've run before. Could've put out another album like Shakedown, our last, but that's not what we're about. Since then I've learned a lot about writing and playing where I feel we can improve technically, but I've also changed emotionally. But most importantly I want to be a man in the present, not history.


This has been a crazy year for me and the band. Our family has grown and shrank. On the industry side, we've had so many highs and lows, from the top of the world to the lowest slugged out tracks of the gutter, that it makes my head spin just thinking about it.


All of that gets filtered into newer and newer songs. It was almost too much to keep up with, leaving me with used notebooks, forgotten computer files and recordings, filled with songs, ideas, and fragments at every level of completion.

Those albums are past. Artifacts. Preserved moments of time. A memory, and I'm not yet at a place to be nostalgic for our own work. I like to build off of the past, not recreate it.

Anyways I've been enjoying my own bed. My own city. My own life. And on my own time. These precious things pass by quickly, but they are the riches of life. So I have no guilt about seizing the chance to wake up to the sounds of my neighbors riding their lawnmowers, my son babbling, or my wife heading to work; not highway truck stop engine revving, hotel cleaners, lobby check-out calls, or a tour manager nervous about the next gig.


I love walking Boerne streets, looking at the changes in my city. Business come and go while I'm gone. I recently came back to find one of my favorite restaurants gone forever... oh well. I love being home for the longer days of summer staying up watching movies, reading books, and playing a violin concert in the afternoon to myself. I like becoming a better person and musician, not just a more popular band. I love writing and writing and throwing it all away and starting again. I love working a song and trying it with just a shade of difference. And those things can't be done while touring.

So day after day I drive a short road between my house and our studio, lock up with my brothers, and think of words/melodies, approach/delivery, style/substance, all in an attempt to move our band forward.


As I'm writing this to you, I'm a few feet from our speakers, listening to songs come together in the final stages (We've been mixing all day which means generally balancing the track. This is close to composition/color/balance in photography) and I've got this feeling... somewhere between anticipation, nerves and ecstatic craziness.

Anticipation because I've been bouncing these ideas in my head for a so long and this'll be the first time I get to hear a result in full. The culmination of hard work. A birth. Finding out if the songs were as good as they were conceived to be. That brings me to Nervousness: working so long on an idea puts the creator so close to it, they are never able to see the faults. But creation isn't easy. It comes with a lot of hurt. I'm not too worried though, I've got much more of the Ecstatic Craziness burning in me and I'm really digging what I hear: the best test for a song. This last feeling comes directly from my state of trying to do something I haven't done before. Challenging myself to go further, the way Dan always has; Challenging myself to dig deeper into myself, be more vulnerable than I've ever let myself; but mostly because I feel like we are pulling it off.


These songs will be of home. Of love. Of this moment. Of loss and change and growth. My reality. The life that grows outside my window. I'm happy to be out of the past, and more than willing to take as much time as I need to get there.

I don't throw lighting

I make no thunder

no way to transcend bone

No ambitious dagger

poison truth, no
shimmering hell for home

Devils play for bigger
game, starry seas

tomorrow and her works

Leaving me stolen strings
breath of body and
all good places of earth

-rené





*photo source: http://i.ytimg.com/vi/nB0-1IjSlxY/maxresdefault.jpg