Grey Velvet Sky

The pitter patter of rain from a grey velvet sky underscores polyrhythmic birdsong, and hey, wouldn’t you know it, I’m back in the Pacific Northwest. 

We’re rehearsing at a secluded lodge just outside of Spokane, and it’s peaceful and calm at a time when the Al Stone organization could use a healthy dose of both.

We’ve got a couple subs on this run - both friends of ours, thankfully - and it’s been the perfect environment to reconnect, take woodland strolls in artsy-farsty rumination, and zigzag our way through a tight and utterly ridiculous thirty minute set.

Tomorrow, we meet up with the bus and head across the mountains to the White River Amphitheater, where we shall entertain with gusto a sea of day drunk forty-somethings and commence a multi-month Dungeons and Dragons odyssey that’d make even the most resolute nerd try out for the football team. 



Honesty

One of the biggest lessons the MOAT has taught me is if you want to stick to your habits, you have to commit to telling the truth. 

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been catching myself kinda phoning in this newsletter. Writing something everyday is therapeutic, helpful in codifying thoughts and organizing the mind, but lately I feel the exercise has become a little too vague.   

Writing to fill a quota was never the spirit behind the MOAT. In asking myself why the newsletter’s felt like a chore, I realize I need to rededicate myself to carving out consistent, uninterrupted pockets of time, sharing fragments of my mind by way of good, readable sentences.

I want to write well, not because there’s an audience (which is kinda miraculous, thank you thank you thank you), but because doing a shitty approximation of a thing makes me feel like a chump.

For a while, it was enough simply to get better by doing, but now I need a strategy and to start tweaking.

 

Trains

I’m writing this on a train, headed from a densely populated area to one slightly less-so, excited about the upcoming Train/Goo Goo Doll tour and reflecting on travel’s changing role in my life.

Early in my touring career, in the whacky reality of pipe dreams becoming less pipe-y, every sunset, ovation, and brush against the walled garden was MINE. Essentially overnight, I found myself with this prismatic and, I’d later appreciate, deeply confusing life, and I left my previous one swiftly and unsentimentally. 

I was, of course, running, from the failure I perceived myself to be and timidities too numerous to count, and finding yourself, such as it is, out on the proverbial dusty trail is a fool’s errand.

You can leave the bubble, experiencing and questioning and living your best life, but the bubble remains unchanged when you get back. At some point, you have to look at yourself in the mirror and see if you like the SOB with the side parting staring back at you.

And, questionable hairstyle notwithstanding, I’m proud of the progress I’ve made. 

 

Nice Teslas

I’m sitting in CTS headquarters, and we’ve just wrapped tracking for a famous person whose named I’m not allowed to disclose, but rest assured their Tesla’s very nice.

I hope we become a massive band in our own right, but we're carving out a nice lil niche for ourselves as a production team, and as Gideon and Gabe argue over which guitar parts get reversed and how long the trail on the vocoder delay should be, I’m drinking a peanut butter stout, listening to my doubled acoustic guitars ping-pong around the room, curious where my meandering career takes me next. 

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Deadlines

I’m writing this in between vocal takes at the Climb The Sky headquarters in Gallatin, TN, aka Gideon and Gabe’s studio. I’ve successfully procrastinated in writing lyrics to this particular song until, well, now, which is impressive given I’ve mumble rapped the tune live twice. 

But deadlines are a beautiful thing, and in a departure from my usual fine tooth combing, I’m challenging myself to free associate, jotting down whatever lyrics come to mind as the instrumental’s pounding through my headphones.

It’s fun. I’m reminded that many of my favorite lyrics - the entire Nevermind album, for example - are made up of nonsensical-yet-poignant gambols with the truth, and maybe I’ve been trying a little too hard lately.

Remember Us

THE YOUNG DEAD SOLDIERS DO NOT SPEAK

Archibald McLeish

The young dead soldiers do not speak.

Nevertheless they are heard in the still houses: who has not heard them?

They have a silence that speaks for them at night and when the clock counts.

They say, We were young. We have died. Remember us.

They say, We have done what we could but until it is finished it is not done.

They say, We have given our lives but until it is finished no one can know what our lives gave.

They say, Our deaths are not ours: they are yours: they will mean what you make them.

They say, Whether our lives and our deaths were for peace and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say: it is you who must say this.

They say, We leave you our deaths: give them their meaning: give them an end to the war and a true peace: give them a victory that ends the war and a peace afterwards: give them their meaning.

We were young, they say. We have died. Remember us.

Jimmy Buffet Approved

I hope all of you are spending Memorial Day weekend relaxing in some Jimmy Buffet approved locale. 

Tragically, I am not, though I am uncharacteristically ahead of the game preparing for the upcoming Train/Goo Goo Dolls/Allen Stone Electric Ensemble tour and, in theory, have Parrot themed shirts waiting for me in Spokane. Small victories.

Anyway, I took some time this afternoon to dig into a podcast with Tim Ferriss and Kevin Systrom, co-founder of Instagram. 

I, like all of us, have a love/hate relationship with social media, but it was interesting learning about Instagram’s origin story, acquisition by our benevolent overlords, aka Facebook, and Systrom’s philosophies regarding entrepreneurship and autodidactism. 


 

Mosaic Brainchild

Each day of the creative process resembles a puzzle piece - sorta whacky looking out of context, but gradually revealing the mosaic brainchild as they’re connected.

The key is not to dismiss a particular puzzle piece because it isn’t pleasing, in and of itself.

One writing session might feel like the most cattywampus and disheartening couple hours of putting pen to paper - and if you stopped there, things would, in fact, stink.

But persevering gets you to the next day, which gets you to the day after that, and before you know it, there’re no more pieces to fit into place.

Tequila Over Ice

During this time of year in Nashville, when it’s not yet stiflingly humid and the breeze is just enough to disrupt the immaculately quaffed, it’s impossible to be truly productive, so rather than fight the inevitable, I sit here, mustard-stained shirt and billowing shorts and all, sharing my unfounded judgement of the gainfully employed with several thousand dedicated readers. 

Days like today aren’t meant for Gary V style hustle porn. Days like today are meant for sipping tequila over ice and daydreaming, and when that gets boring, maybe writing for a bit, and when that gets boring, maybe reading for a bit, all the while replenishing said tequila over ice until the mosquitoes rear their irksome proboscises. Somehow, work gets done, and I’m about as far removed from the actuarial sciences as possible. 

Some days, I doubt every decision I’ve ever made. But not today, and on the occasions when there’s a break in the proverbial clouds, it feels good celebrating the road less traveled. 

Puzzles

There’s something about a cloudless, eighty degree evening that makes the careening anvil of life sorta rubbery and unobjectionable, and so I find myself sipping tequila over ice and writing songs, for no reason other than connecting whatever melodies and chords might be into that sorta thing.

Lyrics aren’t coming yet, which is ok - when I force things, I get a tad self-indulgent with the ol’ diction, so I’m content slinging glorious gibberish until that one word, that one phrase, pops up for air. 

It can take hours, but I’m happy putting in the time, self-soothing through meandering creativity, giving myself permission to sit beneath whispering trees, to grieve, and trust that, when things are unfolding as they should, they’re emphatically puzzling. 

Warhol

Writing a daily email newsletter, or almost daily newsletter on account of food poisoning in New Zealand, is a tremendous exercise in accountability and consistency, but lately the MoaT’s been a bit of drag.

Maybe that’s a bad thing to admit to a dedicated readership, and know that I’m apologizing as profusely as is appropriate in a public place, surrounded by the immaculately bearded.

In moments like these, there’s an Andy Warhol quote I reference:  

“Either once only, or every day. If you do something once it’s exciting, and if you do it every day it’s exciting. But if you do it, say, twice or just almost every day, it’s not good anymore.”

I’ve read studies purporting that things acquire a degree of “specialness” when they’re done either every day or once in a blue moon. When it comes to creativity, the once in a blue moon thing tends not to work for me - “specialness” is replaced by crippling over-thought - but every day keeps the perfectionist gremlins at bay. 

And, ultimately, I’m dedicating a few minutes each day to mindfulness, which is the whole point.  



Where the Light Shines

The Allen Stone Electric Ensemble played a corporate event at the St Regis in Punta De Mita yesterday, and the client mentioned seeing us back in 2011 at the Independent in San Francisco, opening for Nikki Costa.

I remember that show well. It was, in fact, the very first show on our very first tour, and I wore a cookie-monster-blue button up shirt for the occasion (shudder).

We sounded exactly like what we were: a group of barely-acquaintances who piled into a van with zero plan. And while we were pretty much unlistenable, there was something visceral and punk rock about those early shows. They had heart.

And through the endearing blunders and innumerable fashion catastrophes, that heart transcended, ultimately paving our way to this beautiful place.

I’m grateful for the reminder to make good art, share fearlessly, and go where the light shines.

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Thank You Scientist

I’m procrastinating on a dreary, rain-soaked afternoon, watching Thank You Scientist on Audiotree Live. 

A YouTube commenter compares the band to “Snarky Puppy on cocaine,” which is pretty accurate, and at their show at the Exit/In last night, the number of Dream Theater and Coheed and Cambria t-shirts took me back to a wonderland of romantic underachievement, unironic double XL sweat shirts, and the glorious freedom unapologetic nerdom affords. 

Thank You Scientist are a great band. It’s A LOT of notes, but kicks ass, and they don’t take themselves too seriously. And I just love what they stand for - buddies who met at music college and stuck to their guns, never succumbing to the pressures of the mainstream music biz. 

It’s the Vulfpeck model, which all of us involved with labels and stuff are not-so-secretly jealous of, and a reminder that fans are out there, and no manager, A&R person, or ephemeral hype can make manifest the music in your heart. 

Building Blocks

At the beginning of this MOAT project, I wrote about identity based goals, how identifying as someone who writes a thousand words a day, say, potentially opens the door for anxiety and perceived failure, whereas being someone who simply puts pen to paper daily welcomes both productive and unproductive sessions as what they are - foundational building blocks, glorious in their imperfection and oh-so necessary.

It’s fun scrolling through past entries. Terse, sardonic commentary, intermingling with verbose and clumsy explorations of James Joyce inspired fantasies, and, every once in a while, kinda useful and heartfelt stuff. 

Since starting this project, I’m a better lyricist, better melody writer, and the gremlins in my head purr rather than snarl. I’ve lost weight. I can run non-pitiful distances. In professional situations where I wish we’d hurry up and pull our heads out of our collective ass, I’m able to channel patience rather than vitriol. 

This newsletter reminds me that tiny changes, over time, yield massive and, most importantly, sustainable results.

Tool!

Many of you know that Tool is one of my favorite bands, and they’ve been debuting new material during their current mini-tour (!).

For the uninitiated, Tool hasn’t released a record since 2006, and their fanbase is, to put it lightly, rabid, so this is big news.

I’ve impressed myself twice this week by resisting temptation to ignore my adult(ish) responsibilities and check out their shows in Birmingham and Louisville at objectively ludicrous expense.

Provided Adam Jones doesn’t garrote Maynard James Keenan with the E string of his guitar, I assume they’ll tour in the fall, and you bet your ass I’ll be there, head banging along to dirges in 7/8 about sacred geometry.