Sessions

As a working musician, you go through whatever door’s open to you, and as Allen Stone world’s been quiet lately, I find myself playing on a lot more sessions.

Sessions work a very different muscle than my typical day job(s). In Al band and Trevor land, I’m heavily invested artistically, care deeply about all involved, and am proud of the thing I’ve helped build via sweat equity and inordinate stupidity. 

In session world, I’m a guy hired to do one specific thing, and it’d be much appreciated if I bathed beforehand. The challenge, and therefore fun, lies in faking it til I make it musically, and endeavoring to find things in common with people who hold, ummm, VERY different political opinions than yours truly. Me, a bespectacled, lefty democrat, is sitting next to a bass player who is, as my mom would put it, “farther right than Genghis Khan.” An all-too-real thing here in Music City.  

Minimal faux pas so far! Just a few quick words today, more thoughts on sessions tomorrow…

Meticulous Accident

I’m allowing myself to luxuriate in my birthday this year. It marks, after all, another year further away from doe-eyed anxiety, and if that isn’t cause for popping a bottle of bubbly, I don’t know what is. 

I have more energy now than ever. I’m a better musician, a better songwriter. I’ve developed a love of talking on the phone. I’d even go so far as to say I’m the kinda guy you’d want to share a bathroom with. Strange, the passage of time. 

I’ve been described as an old soul, that a certain part of me’s made of tweed, and that I was born wearing a monocle. I’ve now taken enough laps around the sun to appreciate these are compliments.

I stayed out until 5am yesterday, bouncing around between honky-tonks, dive bars, jazz clubs and thrash metal shows, accepting celebratory shots (and pretending to shoot them) from friends exuberantly toasting my not being a total jackass. It felt good.

Back to reality tomorrow, with an all-day session booked and several projects I’ve fallen behind on demanding attention, but it was important shutting things down for 48 hours and celebrating this absurd life I’ve stumbled upon, entirely by meticulous accident. 

Fawkes and Hownd

My dear friends Phoënix Lazare and Justin Kelley, aka Fawkes and Hownd, released their debut EP yesterday, and I’m about to swing through their EP release show, which starts in approximately 32 minutes. So, a short post today.

Their music is haunting, nostalgic, and so courageously them. It makes my heart burst.

You should check it out, and maybe catch a show.

A Young Ronald Reagan

It’s my birthday!

I wrote a song while eating jelly beans, and am reflecting on how much of a relief it is being marginally less of a blithering imbecile. A good day all around.

It’s also Justin Bieber’s birthday btw, so adorn your shrines accordingly. I know I have.

And thank you, Swatkins, for sending this.

Souped-Up Muscle Cars

It’s my birthday tomorrow, and I figured I’d share a few thoughts on being one year closer to yelling at “those damn kids” from my front porch, aka the dream.

When I was in my early 20’s, I thought life right about now would look a whole lot different. 

Of course, I was barely a human being in my early 20’s, and considered anything less than sold-out stadiums an abysmal failure. Which only spoke to what most people in their early 20’s lack - healthy relationships, general stability, and the self-awareness to retire that Kermit the Frog t-shirt.

With the Allen Stone project, I’ve traveled the world, playing music born from positivity and fun. In my early 20’s, that was an alien concept. I’m grateful for the Al Stone world providing the counterbalance that, prior to joining the band, I didn't realize I needed. As my focus shifts to this new, as-yet-unnamed band (we’re working on it), positivity and fun informs every decision we make, and I’m not sure I would’ve gotten there without this remarkable soul/funk detour.

While the fancy music biz stuff’s cool, and I’m grateful for being invited to the party, albeit as the hapless, Charlie Brown character, what I appreciate most is realizing how little all that matters compared to waking up everyday and dedicating myself 100% to creativity. 

I’m not rich, but have more than enough to live the humble lifestyle I prefer and focus on the work that makes me happy. It’s a pretty monastic vibe, but within that I’ve learned patience, compartmentalization, and sustainability, in the process stumbling upon something that feels more like a career than a souped-up muscle car, careening out of control. 

Selfies

I received lots of nice feedback from my staying in the game post a few days ago. Thank you.

I was asked by several readers to share my thoughts on social media. Mine’s not a particularly controversial or awe-inspiring commentary, but here ya go:

I don’t have a huge social media following. I’m just not that good at selfies. And whenever I start thinking about deep diving into algorithms, hashtag strategies and all that, I feel an overwhelming sense of impending doom. I also have scoliosis, so thirst trapping’s not an option.

That said, I post quite a bit - I enjoy sharing what I’m up to with those who are inclined to want to find it. I like following friends and interesting people. It’s also helped develop something resembling a healthy truce with technology, not checking my phone while standing in line, or when friends get up to use the bathroom at a restaurant, that kind of thing.

What I do know with 100% certainty is, as living, breathing human beings, it always feels best connecting via stuff that’s, for lack of a better word, real. Playing a show’s real. Going to your friend’s show, buying a t-shirt, and singing along’s real.

Being confused, vulnerable, confident, and elated amongst people who generally find you agreeable, and being there for them in all their discombobulated glory, is the best place to call home.

Foreign Travel

Today’s been crazy - a good crazy, but the kind that leaves you dizzy and ineloquent - so I’ll offer just this little thought, courtesy of Neil Gaiman:

When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. As far as I can tell so far, it seems to involve lots of foreign travel and not having to get up too early in the morning.

Stay In The Game

I’m often asked whether I’ve thought about quitting being a professional musician.

Of course. A whole lot, actually.

This is a tough business. You’re rejected near as makes no difference 100% of the time. You’re commoditizing the things about which you’re most vulnerable, often feeling like you’re shouting into the void. How could you not entertain a kinder, gentler reality?

But there’s a difference between thinking about quitting, on a particularly bad day when they’re out of your favorite donuts at the Red Bicycle, and actually throwing in the towel. 

I remind myself all the time that, at the macro level, I’ve never not wanted to be a professional musician. No other lifestyle’s spoken to me more eloquently, and I can’t imagine waking up everyday and not dedicating myself to creativity, the craft, and our community. 

At the micro level, I’ve gone through chapters of teaching guitar lessons almost exclusively, doing freelance recording work almost exclusively, and touring with hipster R&B/Funk bands almost exclusively. All three iterations couldn’t be more dissimilar, and possess varying degrees of sex appeal, but they’ve kept me in the game, which is the only guaranteed path to success.

I’d hazard a guess that you’re not wanting to quit, per se. Maybe you need a break from the road. Maybe it’s time to take the plunge and start your own management company. Maybe you need to turn down hired gun work and focus on your original music. 

But stay with us. Your voice is important, truly. Give yourself permission to be a different type of creative for a while. You don’t actually want to go back to school and become an accountant, do you? DO YOU?!

Turning Down Work

A reader sent in a list of ten good reasons for turning down work:

• Requests free work, work 'for exposure', or any other type of work that doesn't provide value to you. 

Yes. Budgets are always tight, no matter who’s backing a project, but there should always be agreed upon compensation for your work and time. 

• Asks for an impossible solution, product or asset.

Coming up with solutions to seemingly insurmountable obstacles is part and parcel of this zany business. That said, ours is a culture of overwork for low pay, and by not establishing firm boundaries and clear delineations regarding who’s responsible for what, we allow ourselves to be taken advantage of. 

• Requests for you to work below your normal rate.

I encourage people to be fluid and flexible when it comes to their “normal” rate, and to read the room. Yes, the soul destroying major label country session can afford to pay union scale, and that’s what you should expect. But the cool independent artist, with a heart of gold and inspiring tunes, can’t. My preference is working on good music over money grabs any day. I’m not saying don’t pay bills, but be aware of pricing yourself out of burgeoning relationships.  

• Offers to pay in the form of project proceeds or other services.

This can get muddy really fast. Generally speaking, I believe in compensation that’s commensurate with the job you’ve been hired to do. If you’re a session musician, you should receive an agreed upon session rate. If you’re a songwriter, you should be credited as such and participate in back end. It should be clear what job you’re doing, and how/when/where you’re getting paid, before the ball starts rolling. If you’re unwilling or not able to compensate people in an appropriate, agreed upon manner, then your project shouldn’t happen. On the flip side, you shouldn’t expect compensation you’re not entitled to.

• Keeps expanding the scope of the work without extra pay.

This is super common. Before a project gets going, I’m always careful to outline exactly what service I’m offering, how it looks, and at what point extra money gets involved. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been hired to track guitars on one song and been pressured to play on a bunch more “since we have you.” 

• Wants you to work on areas outside of your expertise.

This one appeals to the ego, but is for sure a red flag. For example, I play piano, debatably well enough to pull off a gig. It’s fun trying new things and pushing boundaries, but if I say yes to a session on piano, I’m going to look like a dumbass, and the person hiring me’s likely not on top of their game. 

• Owes you money.

100% agree. Often, there isn’t anything nefarious going on, times are tough and budgets are tight and money dries up, but it’s important stepping away until everything’s square. Professionalism begets professionalism 

• Has unclear objectives.

This one’s become more important to me as time’s gone on. It’s impossible keeping moral high and inspiring people if they feel like they’re throwing time and talent into a black hole. Clear communication, at all times, should be paramount, and is a reasonable expectation.

• Has unethical or illegal requests.

Of course. These people suck. 

• Is uncomfortable signing a contract.

These can be tough conversations, but you should never feel bad about asking for something in writing, and the person doing the hiring shouldn’t take offense or equivocate. Again, professionalism begets professionalism, and if it doesn’t, run for the hills. 

Day 451: Free Solo

I’ve just spent the majority of this evening cursing and sweating profusely.

I know I’m late to the party, but “Free Solo” is fantastic, easily my favorite documentary in recent memory. It’s also inspiration to get back into the climbing gym, though scaling 3,000 ft sheer granite cliffs without a rope won’t be in my future, or literally any other human’s (besides Alex Honnald).

I rented it on YouTube, but I’d recommend seeing it the theaters. During the last twenty minutes, you could’ve washed clothes in the sweat coming off my palms, and that’s through a laptop screen. I don’t think I would’ve survived the IMAX experience.

Day 450: La-Di-Da-Di-Da

I’m writing this during a break in my morning songwriting. I can typically hammer out something resembling a song without too much difficultly, but whether it’s good or not’s another thing, and lately I’ve been writing a bunch of crap. 

Yes, that’s part of the process blah blah blah, but coming up with schlock over and over again gets demoralizing, and sifting through all that mediocrity only highlights the fact that I’ve been playing Triple A ball. 

Picking up a guitar and going la-di-da-di-da fills up my phone with voice memos, but it’s not a song until there’s a story - lyrics tend to be what I put off the most, and today I finally grabbed a few lines out of the ether. The happy dance was jarring, but mercifully undertaken in private.

I find good ideas tend to die on the vine if I don’t get at least a rough draft finished quickly, so the next couple days will be about deep focus, and getting caught up.

Day 449: Vaguely Designer Sneakers

Whenever I’m out and about, it’s interesting observing the cross section of music industry types. Here’s a small sample size:

- The over-eager person in their early 20’s, pulsating with pent up nervous energy, a decade at least away from resembling a fully fledged human being, thrown, baptism by fire style, into a hyper-competitive and constantly evolving industry and trying their best not to burst into tears.

- The benignly smug person in their mid to late 20’s, who’s stumbled upon a little success entirely by accident but thinks they’re John Lennon. They’ve been comped enough meals and drank enough Kool-Aid to be convinced not that they’re invincible per se, but they’re not run-of-the-mill mortal either. 

- The person in their early to mid 30’s, who’s had a few things break through, a couple more come close, realizes it has nothing to do with them, and finds that fact inordinately comforting. Dressed in a nondescript hoodie, jeans, and vaguely designer sneakers, all of which they got for free, they’re content hanging near the exit, the line between realism and jadedness perhaps a little blurry, equipped to say more or less the right thing at more or less the right time and generally not ruin anyone’s night. And, thank god, still not a fully fledged human being. 

I used to be the first two, currently represent the third, and have deep affection for anyone brave enough to throw themselves into the maelstrom that is this whacky business. 

Every Single Day

A quick thought on practicing.

I teach guitar lessons over FaceTime/Skype (if you’re interested btw, reply to this email), and I encourage students to set a practice goal they can realistically hit every single day. It might be 10 minutes, and that’s totally fine, probably even ideal. 

If the goal isn’t crazy, the sense of accomplishment becomes addicting, and before long you’re slaloming triumphantly through unfettered creativity for hours on end. 

But it starts with 10 minutes, and it has to be every single day.

If the goal is quality, you’re building compassionately and sustainably, which results in better work 100% of the time. 

If the goal is quantity, doing something seven days a week, 365 days a year, adds up to way more volume than sporadically red lining and burning out.

And take it from someone who’s written a newsletter for 448 days in a row - it takes a deceptive amount of discipline doing a little bit of something literally every day.

Independent Mastering

Today’s post will have limited interest to non-musicians, so feel free to click over to this Best of Cute Golden Retriever Puppies Compilation.

For those of you still with me, check out this link instead.

Eric and Don at Independent Mastering in Nashville are absolute wizards. They work fast, have reasonable rates, and pride themselves on giving independent musicians a stellar product. They’ve also won, like, Grammys and stuff.

It’s a cliché saying mastering engineers are the unsung heroes of the recording process, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

The purpose of mastering is to unify the sound of a record, maintain consistency across an album, and prepare for distribution. It’s the icing on the proverbial cake, aka the best part of the proverbial cake, and what kind of icing do you want? Some sugar-free bastardization (aka a mastering plug-in), or the tooth-rotting real McCoy (aka the dual-headed Yoda that is Eric and Don)? This analogy’s lazy and ill-advised, and I apologize.

Hit up Eric and Don. Let them be amazing. LET THEM ICE YOUR CAKE. You won’t regret it, trust me.

And you’ll get to meet Chaco.

Richard Dreyfuss

I launched my new project about a month ago. We’re already soft releasing singles, booking tours, planning an EP release, shooting videos, and have a record’s worth of tunes in the can - objectively pretty solid work for four weeks - but I can’t shake the feeling that we should be further along. 

I understand why. A month on tour, for example, can mean a couple dozen cities, thousands of fans, a multitude of interviews, hurried post-interview selfies, and homogenous hotel rooms after creaky tour bus bunks after neck-spasm-inducing, Bloody-Mary-encouraged middle seat power naps. 

It can mean famous landmarks, museums, turning down face drugs from people you recognize from billboards, and accidentally spilling coffee on Richard Dreyfuss. It can mean staying up all night drinking absinthe in Paris and performing at the US Embassy the next morning. 

Being on tour is idiotic, unsustainable, and wholly disorienting: in other words, just about perfect.

So, it can be a challenge, tempering one’s desire to live like a freaking pirate with realistic, aka boring, goals.

But I’m figuring it out. The second single’s being mastered tomorrow, and I’ll probably post it on Bandcamp later this week, just because I can. Making music and releasing it however you want feels pretty darn good.  

Pain-Free

For the better part of a decade, I’ve been in chronic pain. I know, I know, right outta the gate with the chuckles.

I have a fifty eight degree curvature in my spine, which sounds like a lot, because it is.

Most people don’t realize I have scoliosis at all. Typical curvatures are isolated to the lower or upper spine, whereas mine is a long curve that leaves only a couple vertebrae unaffected. The end result is I don’t look like Quasimodo, but my muscular system is, in the parlance of back specialists, all jacked up. And as a touring musician, every day consists of all the things you’re 100% not supposed to do with a back like mine. Over and over and over again.

It’s been rough. I hide it as best I can, but when you’re in mild, irritating, or excruciating discomfort 24/7, your life starts to fold in on itself.

So, when I got home from this recent Allen Stone run, I finally decided to ditch my bed in favor of a Japanese futon (here’s the one I bought).

I was skeptical at first, but several specialists assured me this would improve my alignment and provide better support than a conventional super-duper-ultra firm mattress. It was also significantly cheaper, which, as all professional musicians will echo, is a welcome thing.

I’m almost a month in, and woke up today, for the first time in a long time, with zero back pain. None. Floor sleeping, combined with 20 mins of yoga in the morning and ditching free weights for body weight exercises, and I’m a new human. I almost can’t believe it.

I’m not completely out of the woods - I’m at about 75%, and chronic conditions never truly “heal” - but in four weeks I’ve reversed the course of something I’d essentially reconciled to controlling my life.  

The Art Spirit

A wonderful, and less comedically snarky, unintended consequence of writing everyday is swapping emails with interesting people, and my buddy Greg Robinson sent me these quotes from The Art Spirit by Robert Henri.

I played in a band with Greg back in Seattle, and through him met Heart’s drummer Ben Smith, who connected me with the Seattle Symphony, who in turn hired me for a bunch of freelance work. Those gigs covered my bills during a critical time, and I’m indebted to Greg for inviting me into his world, on keys no less! 

“Art when really understood is the province of every human being. It is simply a question of doing things, anything, well. It is not an outside, extra thing.”

“Art cannot be separated from life. It is the expression of the greatest need of which life is capable, and we value art not because of the skilled product, but because of its revelation of a life's experience.”

Unintended Consequence

An unintended consequence of writing everyday is reuniting with long-lost friends and their being entirely unimpressed to see you.

Them: You over that cold?

Me: Wha?

Them: Yeah, you know, and how was spending Valentine’s Day alone in your underpants?

Me: I haven’t seen you since 2005.

And so on.

My favorite, though, is when someone came up to me at the 5 Spot in Nashville recently, looked me squarely and unflinchingly in the eyes, and said “your name is Trevor Larkin, and you low-key hate yourself.”

When I start doing a thing, that people might actually follow along never really occurs to me. Yes, I’ve enjoyed some hard-earned lucky breaks, but mostly my career’s been defined by working to the brink of a nervous breakdown, with the resulting art being resoundingly ignored.

Which I’m ok with, by the way. This is a tough business, and I like that it weeds out the faint of heart. And I have, to be fair, been responsible for some wholly unremarkable art.

So it brings me great joy that people subscribe to a thing I started on a whim, with zero ambitions beyond it being fun.

I’ve written it many times, and will continue writing it until my fingers resemble the tree from Sleepy Hollow:

Thank you.

Pie Charts

To all my fellow single people out there, know that you’re loved, infinitely fascinating, and should someone be so lucky as to strike up a conversation with you in line at Starbucks or something, and should you be so wise as to curtail your Dungeons and Dragons habit in order to be with them.

He or she’s out there, somewhere, just as eager to find you as you are them. And when you do find each other, ears shall ring with mellifluous rapture.

At least that’s what I’m telling myself, writing this in my underpants.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!

Alice In Chains

I just finished watching Alice In Chain’s MTV Unplugged from 1996. 

Layne Staley and Jerry Cantrell have one of the most captivating vocal blends in rock history, and despite their being visibly junk sick, it’s a moving performance. 

Layne sits zombie-like and detached on a bar stool, barely opening his mouth as he hits iconic note after iconic note. He misses a few cues and fumbles a few lyrics, but it’s still there, that spark that all legends have, not yet fully extinguished by the demons that would turn him into a recluse two years later, and claim his life in five. 

I used to live a few blocks from the building where Layne died. I was in my early 20’s, with no real problems other than trying to reclassify garden-variety growing up as heroic loneliness, like most people in their early 20’s do. 

But then I’d walk past Layne’s building and be reminded of loneliness that hollows you into nothing. I was dissatisfied with a great many things back then, chief among them my lack of sexual magnetism, but I had never felt the way Layne must have, and knew I never would.  

So, I watched Alice In Chains Unplugged tonight, mourning the loss of tormented souls, and grateful for the gifts they left behind.