Well, it’s a long story. I thought it would be an interesting exercise to put down a summary of what has happened in my music “career” since Blue Laws, 9 years ago. I released my last full-length album of songs, Blue Laws, in 2001. Since then, there have been 3 EPs - 2002’s Pollensongs, 2006’s The Soft Drugs In Moderation, and 2008’s The Soft Drugs Get Back (Side A), as well as my contributions to David Bazan’s records and technical assistance or production on hundreds of others.
How We Spend Our Days (1999) had come very naturally. It was simply an extension of my process of making recordings for fun, and both the positive and the negative aspects of that way of working come through. It was just a hobby. But Made In Mexico offered to put it out. Blue Laws (2001) was a little bit more deliberate. This was due in large part to the work of Frank Padellaro, who skillfully co-produced with a great ear for arrangements as well as a lot of patience in the studio. It was also due to the fact that I had become involved in David Bazan’s work, and through him, I had met several high-caliber musicians and songwriters who inspired me to evolve and improve. I toured as a member of Pedro the Lion in 2000, and opened all of the shows with my own songs. It was a huge learning experience. With the new material I was trying to record, I did not have much confidence, but I had a slightly clearer vision of what I wanted to accomplish. And I suspected that even though Made In Mexico had gone out of business, someone might want to release my new record. Truckstop Records put it out…and went out of business shortly after.
A lot changed after Blue Laws. I had my first son, 9/11 happened, and I was laid off from my job during the purchase of my first house. I think my state of mind is apparent on Pollensongs (2002). It’s slow, painful, and while technically kind of interesting, it’s aimless and uninspired. I was reaching for things beyond my abilities, and I was writing with someone else’s voice. My Pal God Records kindly released it. It was the first of my albums to appear on iTunes, so unfortunately it’s many people’s introduction to my work.
Over the next couple years, I never stopped writing and recording. In fact, I did more of it than ever. I explored many different directions. I learned piano better, and I experimented heavily with sequenced music, samplers and synthesizers. I wrote dozens of songs, finishing some and abandoning many. But, artistically, I had really lost my way. I was unhappy with the work and I was trying to be someone else. I continued to occasionally tour with Pedro the Lion, which helped fulfill some of my creative impulses.
During this time, I half-heartedly attempted to do some freelance recording engineering, ultimately partnering with an old friend in a studio in Jamaica Plain, a Boston neighborhood. My heart was never really in it. The studio was large, so I had steadier access to the means to record drums and loud instruments. I accumulated lots more demos and ideas, some of which are very good, but were never completed to the point where they could be released.
In 2003, after about two years of wandering, looking for focus, I decided to move my growing family (now with 2 sons) to Washington state, with the hopes of getting a proper music career off the ground. I was 28 years old. Confident that Bazan would put me on the payroll and get me involved in what he was doing, I uprooted my family, and risked everything by moving to Silverdale, Washington on the Kitsap Peninsula. Silverdale is about 1 hour away and across the Puget Sound from Seattle.
This move put a huge strain on my immediate and extended family. However, I was focused on the task at hand, which was to help Bazan achieve his goals in art and music, and to live my dream of being a professional musician. It was off to a rocky start. Within the first couple weeks, he had already fired one band member and hired another. Within a few more weeks, he had fired another. Every day I was playing a different instrument. We brought different guys in, trying out several lineups. It was very disconcerting, and I often wondered if I had made the right decision. We started recording songs, just Dave and I. He informed me that he would be playing all the instruments and I would be there as technical support, doing some of the engineering. This ultimately changed, but it was a difficult process.
During this time I remained focused on Pedro the Lion. It demanded a lot of attention and Dave insisted that I did not take a day job. It was hard to make ends meet, and I felt that we didn’t have a solid musical or business direction. We were making demos, essentially, and at a slow pace. The label wanted a record immediately and gave us an ultimatum. We threw Achilles Heel (2004) together quickly from what we had and we hit the road, trying to make some money.
We went through a lot of live lineups. I was moving around from instrument to instrument, so every tour, I had to re-learn the catalog. There was always something to do, so I didn’t have time to write songs. We played a lot of shows. There was downtime, but I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to be creative. Perhaps I also thought it would be unfair to Dave for me to have my focus on something else. I did, however, very slowly accumulate some songs. In late 2005, we spoke about putting together a project as an outlet for my songs. This was around the time when a new project was coming together. Ken Maiuri was in Pedro the Lion at that point. We had already recorded one of my songs for Achilles Heel (Start Without Me), and I had contributed music and lyrics to some other songs. So, we recorded a song of mine called “Badge” with me on bass, Ken playing guitar and Dave playing drums and singing. It came out great…it seemed like there might be potential for the project.
For some reason, the nature of the project changed. Dave had always wanted to do a synthesizer-based band, so focus switched to that. We were poor, and I was simply focused on whatever could improve our standard of living. It seemed likely that another project with Dave writing would be more successful than my material. Dave started writing this material, we signed a contract with Suicide Squeeze, and a deadline was set before any songs were written. Dave would write on his computer during Pedro the Lion trips. He hired Frank Lenz to play drums and Jared Hankins to engineer, ostensibly so I could focus on helping him write the material, but his working methods did not leave any room for me to effectively collaborate, and my skills would have been more appropriately utilized drumming and engineering.
Dave wanted to call the band Telegram, but someone else had a claim on the name. I was around for most of the recording of the Headphones (2005) record, but I had little to do with making it. I was very disillusioned and confused. Dave’s relationship with Ken was breaking down, and Ken was thinking of moving back to Massachusetts.
We fumbled through the next year. We toured as Pedro the Lion and as Headphones. Headphones lost money on the road. Meanwhile, we came up with a ridiculous plan to create a THIRD project…one intended as an outlet for my songs. I decided to call it The Soft Drugs. I had already arranged and demoed most of the songs. Jared and Lenz were still available, so we made effective use of their talents, and I seem to remember that everyone had a good time working on the EP. I played guitar and keys, and Ken played bass. Dave was not directly involved, but he helped fund it and contributed some great composition and arrangement ideas.
The Bazans decided they were going to move to the Seattle side of the Sound. If the band were to continue, we’d have to move too. We moved to Edmonds, a northern Seattle suburb, sometime in 2005. Ken was done with the whole thing and moved back to Massachusetts.
One musical project that I really enjoyed during this era was working with Crystal Skulls. I helped engineer their two full-lengths, and I felt like another member of the band. I learned a lot from them, and those records have informed everything I’ve done since. I also enjoyed playing bass and producing a record with my old friend Jay Cox and The Sea Navy.
As for Pedro the Lion, it became clear to me that the band (which now consisted solely of me and Dave) was imploding due to the financial problems. Dave wasn’t generating material quickly enough to sustain two families, and I was tired of navigating the strange and perilous landscape he worked in. Dave had fired so many people in the past 5 years that I knew firing me was a last resort, but it was inevitable. I saved him the trouble in order to salvage our friendship, and I quit.
I finished The Soft Drugs In Moderation (2006) at my house. I recorded one song with Casey Foubert (Brand New Name) and mixed and mastered it in my basement while I was working at McGraw-Hill in Bothell, WA. I had it pressed up and sold a few copies on the Undertow website. I had unrealistic expectations about what kind of interest from listeners there might be. It was my best work to date.
So, I was living in Washington without a band, working a day job. We bought a house in Shoreline, a little closer to Seattle. I was originally supposed to be the drummer and musical director for the Undertow Orchestra tour with one of my idols, Vic Chesnutt, but I couldn’t go because of my job. I became disillusioned with life in Washington without the band, and we moved back to Massachusetts in early 2007. I was 32.
I had lost headway in my professional career due to the long Washington detour, but I found a good programming job. To get my head right, I decided to put a band together. I ultimately decided to give it a shot with some very old friends of mine. For about a year, I tried several combinations of friends on different instruments. Eventually, we settled on a five piece band with me playing drums and singing. Ken Maiuri, Mike Murray, Jason Cammarata and John Beck joined up and the first proper “band” version of The Soft Drugs came together. We rehearsed weekly and played shows pretty regularly. We accumulated enough material for an album, and scheduled some recording. At the last minute, the engineer had to cancel the session, so I scrambled to find a studio. I got one day at a questionably equipped studio in Lowell, MA for $300. We recorded 8 or 9 songs live in the studio, minus vocals.
I started mixing at home, and put together the 4 finished songs to play for the band. It sounded really good as it was, so we decided that would be Side A of the LP. We had it mastered by Carl Saff and we sent it out as a promotional tool to let people hear what we were doing. A new “internet label”, Chasing Lions, seemed keen to release the finished album. The guys running the label didn’t have any experience, so I was a little unsure, but they were smart, friendly and had good intentions. We all decided to officially release Side A as advance promotion for the album. The Soft Drugs Get Back (Side A) came out as a free internet download in June 2008.
I had been doing side work mixing and mastering records for years, but I decided to ramp it up in order to make extra money and open a door for a possible backup career down the road. Projects were few and far between, but it was picking up slowly.
Things seemed on track, and we set about finishing the rest of the record. We split up our band time, one night a week, between rehearsing and working on the album. I’ve had tinnitus (constant ringing in the ears) since I was a kid. I’m not sure when or why it started. It got slightly worse over my time playing in bands and touring, but it was never much of a problem. During one rehearsal in 2008, I turned the wrong knob on the PA system, and I was deafened with a loud and painful burst of feedback, as I was right next to the speaker. The next day, the volume of the ringing in my ears had quadrupled, and it has remained about the same ever since.
Getting the band to work in overdub/production mode was difficult. They all enjoyed playing the songs, but the guys didn’t seem to enjoy putting the finishing touches on these songs in my home studio. Beck finally decided that he was going to go to grad school and he wouldn’t have time to play in the band. He quit suddenly. I decided that I wasn’t interested in auditioning keyboard players. The band had been a close-knit group of friends, and I didn’t want to bring a stranger into that. I was beginning to feel burnt out, wondering what my motivations were for hanging on to rock and roll. I was also very concerned about my ear problems, and I didn’t want to exacerbate the tinnitus. I dissolved the band, leaving the album unfinished. We played our last show in October 2008, the same month my daughter was born. The band temporarily reunited for a couple special occasions in 2009.
My relationship with Dave was still a bit strained. When I learned he was making headway on a new album, I offered to help, hoping that it could heal some of the acrimony between us. He agreed to have me mix and possibly master the record. He made a trip out to get the work started. Curse Your Branches (2009) was completed around January 2009, and it was a success artistically and at healing our friendship. You can read about the process here.
Although I was still dealing with the ringing, I was getting more and more mixing and mastering work. The logical next step was to invest some money in better equipment. I purchase a minimal but solid setup of professional mastering equipment, which has helped me get better at the craft and to attract higher quality work. I worked on approximately 100 releases in 2009, while keeping my job. I still work as a programmer during the day and work on records at night and on weekends.
I haven’t written many songs since The Soft Drugs broke up in late 2008. I’ve had my hands full with working, mixing, mastering, and being a family man. I’ve often considered quitting music altogether. I certainly feel that my days of performing live are behind me. But recently, I’ve been more inspired. I’ve been writing and recording demos, slowly accumulating new material. I plan on compiling an album, hopefully completing it this year. We’ll see how it goes. My music has always had limited appeal, but hopefully those fans will still be interested when I finally get it together.
