Really Behind the Music...

I wish VH1 was following me around these days. Well, I don't really. And neither does anyone else. It would be pretty boring. All you'd see is a good deal of me eating stale christmas chocolate, playing Xbox 360 and staying up all hours to watch dvd after dvd of "24" (it's like crack, seriously - I got addicted in Montreal a few years ago, kicked the habit, but now I'm back on the drug again). But if they focused on the musical aspect of my life...well, that's different.

Let's be clear about this: I've never made a record before. Nor has anyone in my band. However, the band and I have been given a substantial amount of money from the government to make a full length record. We've made two EP's before (which are very short records, despite the fact that the acronym stands for Extended Play), but never a full length record. And never with so much expectation, never with so much at stake and never with so much desperation. And as we plod through this process with a very intelligent, very patient and very experienced producer, we're learning what to do and when to do it.

And so, step one: play all the songs for the producer. Easy, right? Wrong. We started that step about two months ago. And we're still on step one. And step one will probably drag on for another month. Always the non-traditional rock and roll band, we started discussing tunes for the album and we had about 15 in mind. After further discussion with smarter people, it seemed that perhaps we were being close-minded and we expanded that repetoire to include 22 songs. And then aliens abducted us and we wrote some more increasing the song total to 26, then 29, then 32 and as I write this morning, we're sitting at 33, but I'm thinking of drudging up a 34th and a 35th.

The kicker is that I only like 3 or 4 of the songs. I can tolerate another 7 or 8 and I wish we could sell the other 20-22 for stock options, fresh chocolate, Xbox 360 games and seasons 3-6 of "24". I got to chat with Danny Michel a few months ago (he's a fantastic canadian musician/songwriter and if you don't know who he is, please find out now www.dannymichel.com) and it was a real thrill for me. I saw him play in my first year of University and he's one of the reasons I picked up a guitar and put some words down on paper. He told me that he was sick of his new album...in fact, sick of all his albums (he has at least 7) and I didn't quite understand. Well, I get it now. I thought music was all fun and frolic. I was horribly, horribly wrong. It's an agonizing, perpetual, terribly slow method of torture. You and four of your friends immerse yourself in a sea of fire and then beat the hell out of each other while submersed in the flames (maybe it's lava, i don't know). After you break each other and burn all the bullshit away, you surface, you take in some air and you go back down a few more times, just to be thorough. Leave no bone intact and no muscle strung together. This can - apparently - go on for months and months. And after we've inconvenienced the people we love with our partial (or total) absence, we pull ourselves back together and we stagger home looking like we've been to hell and back (which we have, several times) and try and convince those people that this is really, really, really what we want to do.

Am I being a baby? Absolutely. No one dies if I have a bad day at my job. No one gets hurt, no ones life is shattered and no one will starve in the street. But it's hard. It's really, really hard to realize a dream. So many people have to be temporarily pushed aside and so many realities have to be juggled to make a dream come true. Just because the record is paid for doesn't mean we get paid. Probably not for years. And that's a very sobering thought when you're eating kraft dinner for the third time in two days (although we'll happily take a Kraft sponsorship). There's no magic lamp, there's no Greek gods and there's no wishing well. There's just days and weeks and months of hard work and questions and doubts and frustrations. But then I think about all the lives that could be changed if we keep working; all the comfort we could bring, all the commiseration, all the joy. And the sense of purpose that making these songs give me. And then I realize that I will do this for the rest of my life.

I don't really know where I'm going with this. I guess I just wanted to leat anyone who reads this know that I'm alive. However most of what I have to say these days is going into the music. My brain has never been so full of ideas and so eager to get them the hell out; be it an audio recording, video recording, canvas, play dough or interpretive dance (I'll probably skip the last one for everyone's benefit, but then again, you never know). I suppose what I want to say is this. To all those who love me; please be patient...I've always been somewhat obsessive about work I love and this is the pinnacle of that body so far. To all those who don't like me; you will...just give me another six months.