For the past three years or so, I have been dealing with some serious loss of music/creative morale.  I’m not sure if that’s such a term, but if not…patent pending!

This came about due to the loss of my close friend and musical partner-in-crime.   I could write for hours about him, but I don’t know you people that well yet.  The point is that losing a best friend is tough, but when they also interact with your most intimate creative thoughts as a valuable critic and contributor, you not only deal with the personal loss, but are reminded of that void when trying to express yourself.

Mostly this expressed itself with a significant enthusiasm gap.  I would be extremely excited about a new song I’d written or playing a show and then it would just die on the vine.  Before my pal died, I had completed an album and I have now spent the past three years listening to it and getting incredible depressed and thinking, “This sounds like shit.”  It’s gotten to the point where I’ve asked some friends to listen to it just to give me an outside perspective because I don’t trust my creative self anymore.

The endless back and forth of the unreleased album and the anxiety about putting a guitar on and playing out again has really really depressed me.  My inability to commit to my art has made me perceive every obstacle as a point to throw my hands up and be done with it.  Just sell all my guitars, amps, and other instruments and fuck it.  It’s a corrosive bitterness when you cannot tap into the creative part of your soul.  That coupled with still doing work on the industry side of music has given me a rather bleak vision of music where everything seems to be completely focused on pimping and never focused on music.

I think about my friend a lot.  When I had hit a pretty rough patch in my life earlier, I did sell just about everything.  My Twin 65, my Rickenbacker 330, and a slew of great equipment.  Before I got read of my Telecaster and my Marshall, he intervened and said, “Let me just hold on to this for you.”  He was right and I was wrong.  We went on to write and play a lot of great songs together.  I know he wouldn’t want me to give up and, ultimately, I think stopping my creative life would be extremely damaging to me.  So, I’m trying to be more proactive about this whole rock thing again.

The thing to do is Start Over.  And I guess that starts with saying goodbye to all that came before.  I’ll be releasing the last album he and I ever did even if it’s just on Tunecore.  Here’s a preview track:

The rest is just to shed any expectations I previously had about my musical aspirations and just enjoy this.  Enjoying things is not my greatest strength. I’m much better at brooding and letting things fester, but things have been festering too much in this area of my life for far too long.  It’s time to remember what I enjoyed about playing music in the first place and reclaim that and get on with this part of my life.

Thanks for reading.