Chicken Soup

Right around this time every year, I get sick.

Emboldened by the new year, I’m always hard charging into new projects, and this is the universe’s way of saying slow down, get a plan, or at the very least drink some water you imbecile. 

So, that’s what I’m doing, all feverish and pajama-clad - catching up on movies, drafting emails, and generally calming myself down, realizing there’s a fine line between not having a plan in a fun, spontaneous kinda way, and not having a plan in a low-key self-sabotaging kinda way.

My birthday’s in a couple weeks, and as I’m about to turn 76, it’s encouraging realizing I’ve got a lot to learn about myself, and that I’m not mortified by the prospect. 

Botox Standard Time

Carrying over from yesterday’s post, here’s another thing that makes me happy:

I typically don’t check my inbox before 1pm. Yes, practicing self-care first thing and making time for what’s important and all that, but really it’s a decision based entirely around food. 

At 1pm Music City time, it’s 11am Botox Standard Time. The trend right now amongst the hyper go getter types is skipping breakfast, but whatever abomination passes as coffee’s been guzzled, and whatever soul destroying traffic they were stuck in while listening to a self-help podcast at double speed’s subsided. They’re now in their office, caffeinated and comfortably at 68 degrees, having already forgotten the all-caps subject line email they sent demanding my IMMEDIATE ATTENTION in favor of fantasizing about lunch. And as we all know, fantasizing about lunch is better than sex. Perfect timing for their inbox to go “ding.”

At 1pm Music City time, in Music City, people are just getting back from lunch, or about to head out to lunch, or indeed have been out to lunch their entire lives. Either way, they’ve justified the brownie, surreptitiously scarfed while in line at the Turnip Trunk, on account of their choosing a beet salad with some fashionable animal’s cheese crumbled on top. They’re zipping back to their office on a Lime scooter, emboldened by and giddy with denial. Again, perfect timing for a “ding” from their favorite “who’s that again?” client.

At 1pm Music City time, it’s 2pm in the Big Apple, which means all the Music City stuff’s happened and they’ve moved on to fantasizing about eating tiny food at a happy hour. It’s also an hour closer to the show they’ve been comped at, where they’ll drink all the band’s booze and take up the entire dressing room, thwarting the drummer’s attempt to shower (hypothetically, of course). Anyway, your friend Trevor’s infinitely fascinating email hits them during peak daydream, and their laugher echos down the hallway of the shared work space.  

Routine

I’m asked quite a bit about my daily routine.

I’ve experimented with being super regimented, but nowadays I’m a fan of keeping things fluid and flexible. In this line of work, assuming a priority’s not hurling yourself off of the tallest man-made object in your general vicinity, there’s really no other option. 

I have also, as I imagine most of you have, wasted god knows how many hours “researching” rich and famous people’s schedules, bio hacks, and FOMO-inducing nonsense. Everyone’s life is different, and if you’re a professional creative, I’d wager quite a bit different even to those who fancy themselves as different.

That said, here’re a few things I’ve noticed that, on balance, make me more tolerable company:

I don’t wake up at a specific time. I’m lucky that my lifestyle allows me to start the day whenever my body gives the green light, and I’m trying to own that good fortune. Sometimes I’m in bed by 9pm, sometimes I’m out until the wee hours, like last night, throwing my 30-something body around the mosh pit at a hardcore show, the kids no doubt surprised, what with this being the last place they’d expect to see someone who looks like the family accountant. I can do the marathon work thing, and the straight to stage from the airport, jet lagged out of my gourd thing, but when I’m calling the shots, I like sleeeeeeeep. I’m more creative, productive, and stay debatably more sane.

I like doing 20-30mins of yoga in the morning. I’m not as spry as I used to be, and have gnarly scoliosis (I’m single, ladies), and gentle movement first thing draws my attention into my body before my racing mind takes over. I write better songs as a result, and generally make better decisions throughout the day.

If I don’t write music more or less first thing, I get cranky. I pick up a guitar and fish around for however long until my mind starts wandering. That’s usually a couple hours or so, unless it’s not. And I try to do the same thing later in the evening, harnessing the unique energies of both phases of the day.

My first meal’s almost always vegetarian. I’m not vegetarian, but I get depressed if I hit my system with too much schmutz before I’ve at least gotten a verse and chorus that’s not cringe-worthy. Today, it was quinoa, lentils, beans, fresh peppers, and tomatoes, with a touch of curry powder. Quotidian, but tasty.

I try to listen to some amount of music everyday with headphones. I have music on all the time, and I’m all about passive listening, but I’ve found deep listening, for lack of a better term, to be inspiring meditation. 

Reader Question

I’m sent a fair amount of questions via the MoaT, and I’m ashamed to admit that I haven’t answered many of them. Here’s one I received recently:  

Are you happy with your career? Does the success you’ve achieved make you happy, or is it just another monotonous job?

Over the past couple years, I’ve realized that success (money and stuff), doesn’t make me happy. Making good art does. 

I’ve been a professional musician my entire adult life and, thankfully, it’s yet to become another monotonous job. When I felt done freelancing for the Seattle Symphony, I stopped, and when I noticed myself burning out on the Allen Stone gig, I stepped away and threw myself into being a bandleader and generally learning new skills. Over the years, I’ve been pretty good about checking in and staying light on my feet.

Learning how to do new things makes me happy. And being successful is sort of an indefinable thing, anyway. I’m aware that I’m lucky, in that I’ve been able to travel the world playing music that, for the most part, people seem to like. It’d be easy for me, say, to start an instrumental guitar/funk band, and more palatable for Al Stone fans. However, my new band’s closer to Tom Petty meets the 1975, but it’s the music I want to make, and I’m pretty sure that in the making of it, I’ll be happy. 

If I felt like I was as successful as I could possibly be making music (which doesn’t have a lot to do with money or acclaim, but rather getting better as a writer and performer), then I’d probably go do something else. Luckily, most of the time I see how far what I wanted to create is from what I actually made, and that’s enough to keep me chasing the horizon.  

Move Diligently

It’s been a strange year so far. 

Granted, we’re only five weeks in, so there’s time for course correction, but I hope that doesn’t happen. It’s like my neighbor Big Country diving into Reptilian conspiracy theories when we first met - strange, and vaguely terrifying, but the lunacy is the highlight of my day, and each day without it feels hollow.

I’ve been absorbed in writing and recordings songs, and the hugeness of getting a new project off the ground. It’s feels good, hunkering down and creating, my life turning into to a long-running battle between me and a blank page, between me and what happens next. 

Thankfully, writing this newsletter for 403 straight days has brought out a doggedness I’m proud of, and having answers, or even pursuing them, feels inauthentic. Better to put my head down and move diligently through a world that seems brighter when you’ve created something that wasn’t there before.

Ecstatically Lost

I received a good amount of playful flack after referencing Guy Berryman from Coldplay the other day, but it’s encouraging how many readers are taking his Synchro Sunday idea to heart and making the time to listen to, if not an entire album, at least some amount of music with headphones, or through decent speakers, and really digging in. 

It’s inspiring what you pick up on. For example, I’ve listened to “Something” by the Beatles countless times, but I’ve never zeroed in on Ringo’s drums, and low and behold the groove during the bridge is a revelation. 

In Radiohead’s “There There,” Jonny Greenwood plays this gnarly, barely audible farty guitar line that I’ve missed for seventeen freaking years, and I couldn’t help but laugh out loud, eliciting dagger-like stares from industrious hipsters designing websites at the next table.

I’m lucky to be involved with music at a level where there are managers and booking agents and labels and all that, and fan as I am of well-intentioned and occasionally edifying adderall-fueled rants, it’s easy getting bogged down with stuff that has nothing to do with music. Shutting out the world, closing my eyes, and getting ecstatically lost for three and half minutes does wonders for the soul. 

Know Your Vans

For the past week or so, I’ve experimented with writing the MoaT at the end of the day, thinking it’d be a nice way of tying the bow on an inevitably smooth and inspiring romp through the bouncy castle of delights that is professional degeneracy.

My days are long, and filled with equal parts self-assuredness and blithering idiocy, so I’m usually tired right about now and not in the best state to be sharing thoughts publicly. So, back to morning writing it is.

Thankfully, I have talented friends like Tommy Siegel to carry me through these brain dead moments, and his hilarious daily cartoons bring me joy every single dang time.

Hieroglyphics

Songwriters, I encourage you to document everything. Record it, notate it, etch it into hieroglyphics, really whatever.

It might feel like a waste of time, spending four hours banging your head against the wall, tearfully pleading to whatever higher power will listen to please, PLEASE give you a “Let It Be.” But oh no my friends. Because the day will come, like it did for me today, when you get to use a riff you wrote fifteen freaking years ago in a brand new song that’s actually two songs, written five years apart, stitched together, and you’ll perform a happy dance that’s entirely improvised and, mercifully, not captured on any video you’re aware of.  

And you’ll play that song for and with friends, and they’ll like it, and you’ll resist the temptation to tranq dart the one who reaches for the accordion, initially out of respect for their having brought Chick-fil-A to the session, and later because said accordion actually sounds pretty damn good.  

And you’ll listen to the voice memo on your drive home, marveling at how you can’t imagine your life without something that didn’t exist just a few hours prior.

Synchro Sunday

Every Sunday for the next twelve weeks, at 8pm UK time, Guy Berryman from Coldplay is picking an album from his collection and listening to it from beginning to end. He’s calling it Synchro Sunday and encouraging people to listen to the same album at the same time, creating a group listening session and appreciating an album in it’s entirety, which in many cases was the artist’s intention.

Say what you will about Coldplay, and insert whatever jokes curry favor with the editors at Pitchfork, but I think this is a cool idea, and I’ll be following along. The first record’s “Abbey Road” by the Beatles - not a deep cut by any stretch but such a beautiful and nuanced album, worthy of uninterrupted headphone time. 

Follow along on Instagram at @guyberryman.

Ok, now back to the Super Bowl, where it’s 3-3 as I’m writing this and the chicken wing-fueled groans from the next room are borderline orgasmic.

Flowers

Just a short, simple offering on a busy day spent reconnecting with friends, nature, and the idea that, on balance, I’m really not such a calamitous bastard.

Believe

In addition to the MoaT, I keep a morning journal. It’s writing I don’t typically share, not because it’s controversial (though decidedly more profanity laden and therefore objectionable to my mother), I just like this newsletter not degenerating into a full-on Trevor therapy session.

That said, I thought I’d share today’s early AM thoughts. Picture me on a Japanese futon (I can’t suggest this highly enough for those with back problems), sipping instant coffee (I know, I know), and whatever else requiring parenthetical clarification.  

“Just go ahead and believe in it. Hope and believe it’s going to magically work out. Starting a band and putting out music is objectively insane, and that’s what’s so goddamn marvelous about it. It’s ok to have hoped for it and wanted it and it not working out. Better that than spending the next however long dwelling on any number of cynical things, that no one buys music or goes to shows or whatever, and never enjoying the moment while it’s happening. A creative life shouldn’t be about failure and broken promises. Defining it as such only denies me the experience of ever enjoying the thing that fills my heart.”

The Damn Thing

Last night’s Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness show was predictably awesome. I’m entering a bit of an ambiguous life chapter, and as I’m figuring out how to release music while keeping decades of insecurities at bay, it felt good being back in the controlled chaos of a busy show day, sipping mezcal with my friends, reminding myself that yes, this is what I know, and where I belong.  

It felt good recognizing the drawn looks after a heavy press day, the nervous energy as set time approaches, and having the good sense to say break a leg and watch the show from the audience rather than occupying valuable real estate side stage (managers, take note).

It felt good knowing how draining playing for two hours can be, that all you want post show is to stretch and drink water and pray to the road gods that it’s just a case of the sniffles and not Hand-foot-and-mouth disease. You love your friends, and love them even more for not hitting you with the “let’s hang!” text at midnight. 

To Andrew and team, and the myriad other bands and artists paying their bills on the road right now, stay safe out there, and keep doing the damn thing.

Maybe, You Know, Sleep

I’m excited to see my brothers in Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness tonight at Marathon in Nashville. Their new production’s amazing, the latest record’s stellar, and it’s inspiring watching Andrew and team leveling up the old fashioned way - releasing music consistently and playing shows that make sense.

I met Andrew in 2012 when Jack’s Mannequin took the Al Stone project on tour. He was humble, gracious, and a fucking riot of a human being, the perfect introduction to the big leagues, and when it became obvious that sweet baby jesus were we ever not in Kansas anymore, or at least not the Seamonster Lounge in Wallingford, Andrew was a patient mentor. 

Back in 2012, we were young (ish), green (very), and haphazardly charging in the general direction of something that felt like music. Lots of fun, but entirely unsustainable, and we would’ve burned out fast if not for Andrew and Co saying hey, maybe switch to club soda and, you know, sleep.

Reincarnation

One of life’s great joys is going out to eat solo. You’re seated before the parties of yuppies, grumbling all well-to-do and aloof while you slurp down tasty noodles in salty pork broth that make right everything in your benignly troubled world. 

Like all artists, I pride myself on living a life more or less devoid of actual responsibility, and whenever I’m yanked from my idyllic little bubble I tend to get discombobulated and doomsday-ish. So today, as I deal with rudimentary by any definition tasks that most high school kids are capable of handling, I self-sooth via porky, soupy deliciousness, thinking about how laughably easy my life is.

And when I think about how laughably easy my life is, I reflect on how getting out of my own way’s something I’m much better at these days, but perhaps my kind-yet-hyper-disciplined monastic vibe needs dialing back a notch, and as much as a walking top hat and monocle’s capable of cutting lose, I probably should. 

And then the thought of my “cutting lose,” ie reading in public with like a whiskey or something, makes me laugh out loud, and I dream of being reincarnated as a member of the year 2300’s Mötley Crüe.

All Along

Just wrapping up a full day in the studio with the Klein bros, working on new tunes and plotting and planning for the future. Today, I’ll offer simply that making music should be fun, it should be effortless, and it should be empowering. If it’s not, it means you’re making music with the wrong people, and that’s ok. The right ones are out there, just as eager to find you as you are them, and when you do finally meet, you’ll release every set back had a purpose, and you’ll thank them for guiding you to where you were meant to be all along.

Ska Music

I keep this Post-it Note in my laptop, a gift from tour manager Ryan “Bear” Drozd during last fall’s tour. 

Ska music is happy-go-lucky sorta suburban-y pop/punk with horns. Ska music fans will no doubt take umbrage with this description, fans like Bear, who listens to ska music while buried in his laptop, doing the job of seven people. 

Whenever I’d notice his eyes becoming coal black with rage, or exasperated sighs interspersed with profanity outnumbering sips of water, I’d check in. “Ska Music?” I’d ask. “Ska music” he’d reply. 

Ska music, in Allen Stone parlance, became the consolatory battle cry while tackling all things asinine and tedious, and reconciling one’s self to putting one’s head down and getting shit done. Sound check delayed because the house crew’s tripping balls? Ska music. Bus breaks down? Ska music. Amp blows a fuse minutes before our set in NYC? Ska music. Always followed by a shrug of the shoulders and shot of the good stuff. 

There are certain things that don’t warrant belaboring over - even if you did stumble upon a meaning, it’d be half-assed and underwhelming, kinda like the “pyro” I was promised at the WE Day event in Seattle a couple years back. One single freaking sparkler. In an arena. 

Sometimes, it’s best to hunker down and power through, especially if it sucks, and I’m grateful for the daily reminder. 

Widdly-Wah Stuff

Every morning, I sit down with the guitar for about 30 minutes. I’m usually listening to a podcast or otherwise letting my mind wander, but I like checking in first thing - how does the instrument feel in my hands, and maybe go fishing for a cool lick or two as the first cup of coffee kicks in.

I’m carrying a lot of tension right now, in my forearms, picking hand, and lower back, and in addition to a couple hours a day of instenso stretcho yoga (that’s the technical term, right?), I’m trying to play as relaxed as possible, focusing on closing my eyes, breathing deeply, and slowing down.

As a recovering shred dude, my security blanket’s fleet-of-fingy widdly-wah stuff, which is great for Instagram videos but precious little else. Voluntarily limiting myself to simple rhythmic motifs and unhurried melodies is a weight lifted, and it’s encouraging noticing intentionality returning to my playing as opposed to “well, it’s another show, I guess I’ll do the thing that makes people take out their phones.”

Counterbalance

Sharing songs, for me at least, is pretty emotionally draining, so the day after releasing new music I typically go dark(ish) - emails can wait, no staring at screens (except to write this, of course), and for the love of whatever you find holy in this world NO FUCKING SOCIAL MEDIA. Instead, I like surrounding myself with good people (going to the Ripe show again tonight) and getting stuck into some quality reading, always fiction, the more absurd and fantastical the better. Courageously baring one’s soul isn’t efficaciously counterbalanced by Tim Ferriss injecting stem cells into his genitals.

A nice number of people bought “Neverland” today and yesterday. Thank you. If you like, you can check it out here. I donated my share of the proceeds to MusiCares, an organization that helps music people in times of need, and will continue doing so. It’s a humble offering, but makes me happy.

Neverland is Out!

The first single of the year, “Neverland,” is out today!

It’ll be available everywhere in a week or two, but consider giving it a first listen and spending one single hard-earned dollar through my Bandcamp profile.

Bandcamp’s business model is transparent and artist friendly, and it’s a great way of directly supporting independent musicians.

The first song of many! Enjoy, spread the word, and crank it up LOUD.

And shout out once again to Calamity Sam for the stellar artwork.

Neverland

I’m finally breaking out of here

I can’t go back to their secrets and silence

‘cause to sing’s the currency of kings

and I don’t owe a thing to anyone

made crystal clear when I was young

there’s no heart or home with hopeless romantics

play it coy, we’re all misfits in the noise

believe that there’s a voice when there is none

who is left?

pray for us here in Neverland

the dream is all on fire

don’t know my way around here anymore

pray for us here in Neverland

a fool with try to break a diamond heart’s mistake

my waking dream’s to disappear

become the rumor whispered when no one is around

stronger lost than found

bound and then unwound in sheltered sun

who is left?

pray for us here in Neverland

the dream is all on fire

don’t know my way around here anymore

pray for us here in Neverland

a fool with try to break a diamond heart’s mistake

Reworked for Chicago

Playing live’s an ephemeral thing - what doesn’t land in Cleveland can easily be reworked for Chicago. Nothing’s locked, nothing’s settled, and the show’s free to evolve over the course of weeks and months until, in last fall’s case, a soul/funk band closes out their tour covering Rage Against the Machine, fronted by a tour manager in a rainbow suit.

Making records, or singles in my case, you actually have to make decisions with a degree of finality, knowing there’s a 100% likelihood you’ll listen back and think dammit, I missed it, but it’s too late, it’s in the internet’s clumsy hands now, and I’d best get down to the business of crying myself to sleep in my cold, lonely bed, without romantic companionship or the faintest suggestion that’s even a possibility.

So it can be grim releasing new music, but this time around, while the absence of romantic companionship rings painfully true, I’m feeling pretty good about my place in the world.

First single of many comes out tomorrow.