Opening salvo

I am momentarily riding a plateau in my life, having just traded the chase of one particular brand of future for another, and basking in the level of difficulty it took to make that change. Lemme splain. I'm 34, which is neither here nor there as far as the categorical value of age goes - you hear "34" and unless you're a Lakers fan (I'm not) you don't instantly think of youth or middle age. More or less you're just thinking, well I guess that's still young, but...uh, lemme see a picture or something. Not having yet given in to the elder times, I look and dress (and, when I feel like it, act) younger than I really am. Most people would think I'm in my late 20's before I drop the truth on them.

So it should come as no surprise that also for nearly 20 years continuously I was in one form of rock band or another, culminating with this last project (Phrenik - http://www.phrenik.com) where I was the lead singer and a main songwriter for one of the most popular Sacramento-area bands of the past couple years with aspirations of much larger things...and quite a few people ready to either give us those things or simply deem us ready for them. Really, that's a musician's dream - to be part of something people want to see so badly they will fork over their time and their hard-earned money to follow you around town to scream along with the lyrics, thrash about wildly, disrobe, go nuts in another world you create for them 30-45 minutes at a time...a regular crowd of anywhere from 50-300 fans ready to rock out at a moment's notice...with all eyes on the prize of the band securing a big-label contract, MTV, touring, the works...

And I quit.

(pause for reaction)

Okay, now that you've thrown yourself about the room in a tizzy going why...why..WHY...how could he DO this? Doesn't everyone want to be a rockstar, and you fuckin walked away what sounds like a golden chance at a future shot on Cribs? Yes I suppose they do, and yes I suppose I did. But you didn't hear...the REST...of the story...in addition to being this mythic-sounding performer endowed with magical powers of audience persuasion, I am also a husband (married 5 years), a father (one daughter on planet and another tot-of-unknown-sex due in October), a homeowner (bought my first house in Feb. 2003) and a computer programmer who quite frankly already makes a decent living. So really, adding "rockstar" to the list is spreading it so thin that my figurative self would make Calista Flockheart look tubby. And that's nasty cause I don't go for the scrawny thing.

I am originally from New Jersey (more on that story to come, I'm sure, I don't mind lording it about), but when I first moved to San Francisco in late 1995, I made the decision that I would work to become a pro musician, but at the same time I would also find a career that suited me and begin working on it...not so much as a backup plan, but more as a matter of preventing myself from continuing to flounder around in poverty while I waited for that call from Tommy Mottola. I promised myself that if I ever reached the point where either career was wholly interfering with the other, I would have to make a choice.

Well, needless to say, that choice was the root canal of all choices - it took nearly six months of over-exertion, marital stress, work lapses, lectures from the band (and band manager) and just general exhaustion to come to terms with the fact that I could no longer do everything I wanted to do, and something had to go. I was on the precipice of a VERY hard decision, but fortunately my love for my wife and my daughter made it easy for me - as I said to someone last night out at the Boardwalk in Orangevale, "it's like...imagine there is someone in this world who loves you SO much that every time you leave the house they cry their eyes out and call for you to come back...and you're always leaving..." I found that a part of me had grown up enough to want to reciprocate the love my 2-year-old daughter was trying to show me by acting like that. My wife had always tried to understand the lack of time I had being in bands, but eventually that wore on her too. So to them the decision was a relief, but to me it hurt like a bitch and so making it I went kicking and screaming full-on into parenthood.

I guess the natural reaction of most people would be to resent their wife or their daughter for "making them quit"...but in truth, I really don't. If I really and truly 110% didn't want to quit, I would have stayed in the band. But in so doing, I would have had to leave my family, sell my house, quit my job and really go for it. No, I made the choice based on a love for the life I'd built outside of music, and the desire above all to see that other life succeed and flourish....and in order to really make that happen, I'd have to be in that other life rather than away touring all the time.

So to sum up, you're getting in on the ground floor of the new life (minus the period of depression that followed The Decision) - you've seen the crossroads, you may get some of the back story, you may get some of the continuation, hell...you may not get any story at all, I have the attentive ability of a fruit fly. But at least you know a little about the storyteller, eh?