Well friends, it looks like 2017 is going to be the year where I finally get back to this music thing in earnest. Following the release of my first new single in awhile, Only the Good Lord Knows, a couple weeks ago, I am looking forward to hopefully a few more things coming out this year and beyond. That song was I think my first solo release in about a decade. Wow that’s a long time right? Almost like I had completely given up on music perhaps? Well that isn’t really what happened. Oh sure it felt like it sometimes, but that wasn’t really the case at all.
You see I was pretty busy during those years. Starting a family, trying to keep food on the table, and writing songs. So many songs. A few of them might even be good. I hope? Of course I didn’t exactly disappear from music entirely, it was just my solo career that went on hold for awhile. In 2010, a friend from college and I started a long distance band over the internet called 2 Hour Drive. In 2014, I reconnected with another old friend and began recording a folk Americana project called Dropkick Possum with an EP title Chainsaw Fight released in the Fall of 2015.
No this article is more about changing perspectives and dreams being put on hold so they can reemerge at the right time. Yesterday I was discussing with a friend how my music career has never really gotten much momentum up until this point. He pointed out that the life of a full time musician isn’t always compatible with family life. He couldn’t be more right. I’ve watched so many of my music heroes go from soaring popularity to complete obscurity and leave the music business. Or they’ve stayed in it only to have their family fall apart or they lose their faith or get sucked into a world of drug abuse. Those things don’t befall all musicians of course. Some survive the music industry relatively unscathed but I also see people my age who are late into their music careers but are just now making the time to start families. None of those scenarios are something I would have wanted for my life.
Younger me, would have loved to be recording albums and touring the country straight out of music school. I was NOT ready but I couldn’t see that at the time. A few years later, I thought my pop punk band had a chance to make it. We had an album produced by a big name producer and we were getting booked for a lot of gigs. But my band mates had college and I was starting a family. It wasn’t the right time either.
So this is me in 2017, hoping that this is the right time to start building momentum with my music career. Will it be? Maybe. History is not an encouraging thing to look at in this area. All I can do is my best and push forward and hope that the path I am on is the path that God has laid out for me. And if not, that another will be revealed.