Ah, fuck it.

I wonder how many blog posts share this one's title.

I wrote the one below on my MySpace page, and so I hedged a bit because while few people actually read it, I know them, or they live in my town. In the swirling anonymity (I cannot, for the life of me, pronounce that word) of the greater (re: extra-MySpace) internet, it's easier for me to proverbially pin the ol' heart to my sleeve.

I ran into Jackie on Saturday, for the first time in over a month. I'd say five weeks to the day, maybe even. We had a show, and she came to it. I was rattled for a good four songs.

Now granted, I was also rattled for a couple other reasons. See, the show was an annual reggae party we play. I can't call it a fest, because it wasn't all day in some fields and no one was selling shitty bead jewelry or Bob Marley flags. It was two bands and a DJ/MC combo (said combo was called Mcpullish feat. The Judge, and it was awesome). Darth Vato occupied the middle slot.

As such, the stage was backlined. The headlining band, Pablo and the Hemphill 7, has six members (funny, right?), and since we're only a three-piece, it just made more sense for them to have everything up there. What this meant for me is that I didn't have to lug my bass cab up there, an opportunity I am nearly always on the lookout for. But since Jackie's arrival had already kind of knocked me into a self-exacerbated dither, I made myself susceptible to just about anything, and using their bassist's (Matt Hembree, so you know) rig definitely fits within that parameter.

A word about Hembree: he's one of my favorite bass players in town--his runs are a little unusual, and I'd love to figure them out, and the guy is as precise as he is animated. While watching a shitty Fall-Out Boy performance on SNL, a friend remarked, "I don't know how they actually play notes with all that spinning and jumping." I immediately thought of Hembree, who always demonstrates that one can be rock solid while occupying space a foot or two off the ground. I forget what head he uses, but he uses a 410 SWR cab. Since this might not mean a lot to you, here is what that means to me:

SWR bass amps are endorsed by (among others) P-Nut from 311. Now I hate 311, apart from exactly five songs, and part of the reason why is P-Nut. Here's why I don't like P-Nut. First of all, his name is P-Nut, which I find neither funny nor cool. He's a phenomenal bass player, and his tone is best described as growly thunder. Unfortunately, while that sounds like it might be something I'd like, he has a very funky, spanky style, and while this tends to impress a lot of other people, I just don't care for it. That's the other reason why I don't like him. But his tone is cool, and from what I gather, he gets it from using SWR rigs and Warwick basses. If you've ever gone to Guitar Center and seen some black dude (yes, sorry to stereotype, but this guy is at every Guitar Center, and he's almost always a black dude, and he's almost always awesome) wanking away on what looks like a walnut coffee table, chances are it's a Warwick. As I am a Fender guy (despite the fact that my J-bass has been a bit of a lemon--and it's an American, for fuck's sake), I can't stand Warwick basses, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that they look like walnut coffee tables. Anyway, P-Nut gets that particular growl from a combination of his skill and his gear. In fact, I would say that his gear brings out the best in his skill. When you're as on-the-money as he is, an SWR rig sounds great.

I, of course, am not nearly as on-the-money as P-Nut, or Matt Hembree for that matter. And I swear, even though I used my own amp (which I love as if it were my own child), his cabinet grabbed a hold of every inadvertent pop and squeak and held up it for the crowd to see. It felt like getting pantsed in front of the whole class. My bass rig (an Ashdown ABM 500 EVO II run through an Ampeg SVT 410 cabinet) is geared for warmth, not spank. It's a perfect for a guy who learned to play from listening to Scientist and Sly and Robbie. But Hembree often plays with a pick, and he needs gear that gives him a brighter sound.

So that also had me rattled. And I had to take a crap, but before I got there, someone managed to back up both the men's and women's toilets, which left me, almost literally, up shit creek, sans paddle. You try getting amped up about playing bass with a torpedo in the tube.

But yeah, Jackie, man that was weird. As you may have guessed, I'm not exactly over her, which explained why I called her the next night and poured my heart out. While it was weepy on both sides of the phone, I doubt it changed a whole lot. I'm happy that she is doing well--she just got a teaching job and loves it; I just wish I was there by her side.

--The Robo-Pirate

See? Don't you wish I'd gone to the gym?

Anyway, if you read the post below (or is it above? Sometimes MySpace does weird shit like that), I have had something of an interesting November. At the risk of sounding like a teenager, I have experienced steady sets of emotional waves that swell and crest and break with very few breathers in between--some I have caught and ridden as far as they would take me, and others I have tried to duck under and hope for the best.

We recorded our new album during the first two weeks of the month. This experience was markedly different than our other sessions. Sure, we had a pretty big budget (for us, anyway) , so we we got to try some new ideas and weren't too worried when a bass take took longer than I'd normally prefer. And we don't have a release date, so we weren't constantly watching the clock. Our other three recordings (two EPs and an album) were made a little bit under the gun, so being able to relax a bit was a welcome departure from having to race through tracks to put out something we weren't totally proud of. Better still, we had our longtime friend and producer out for actual pre-production, and he got to mull the songs over in their rough, garbagy phase before putting them to ones and zeros. That made a big difference, and I feel like the result is much more focused, determined and even funnier than all our other records combined. It's like some of those old songs are masks, trying to be something we aren't, and while I don't hate them, they tend to embarrass me on occasion. I am finally confident that we captured who were are as people with these songs. And if, in March, when this album hopefully comes out, people gripe that the songs are darker, sadder and grouchier, well life isn't always free tamales and days off.

So our recording process was a lot of fun. And then it was over, and I realized a couple days later why I could hardly bear to sit at my desk through the day. I felt funny thinking this, but I honestly experienced post-studio depression. After all, I saw one of my best and closest friends for a couple weeks, vented a lot of frustrations, reached some new heights, and flexed my creative muscles with very little strain and head-thumping--going back to work was bound to pale in comparison. I guess it's gone now, but being sequestered in that environment made me feel like a different person, and I enjoyed being that guy a lot more than the one who clicks on a computer all day.

I am trying not to think of our two weeks spent recording as a vacation from my real life. Obviously, playing music is my career of choice; computer clicking is a means to make that a reality, and I try not to think of it as two weeks away at a Rock Band Resort (and really, since I only took two days off from work, it's hard to even call it that). Unfortunately, at this stage, as I sit with no out of town dates booked, no record to hock, no salacious stories or tales of woe to tell, music still feels like an escape. My hope is that in 2008, we'll be able to do everything we can to make our band a life rather than something to do on weekends.

If you think that's depressing, I'm sorry. I don't mean it to be, but I have to be a realist. We're getting older, after all, and the bills pile up and the responsibilities mount, and no matter how much I've tried to keep permanence at bay, it still inexorably stacks in the background like a cinderblock fence built by a contractor you don't remember hiring and workers you can't even see. But whatever. I still have a van and the debt gets paid on time, and 30 is the new 20, according to ephemeral Yahoo! Lifestyle articles , and so doesn't that make me 19? Right? Right??? That's okay. I'll keep telling myself that anyway.

But yeah, permanence, it's there; I can see it, and these days, I don't sprint from it like I used to. Shirking responsibility used to be a blatant source of pride for me, but in the past year or so, it's been like I inconspicuosly sneak around the corner, hoping it doesn't notice me. It's like, "hey, don't tell the boss, but I'm going to duck out of here ten minutes early." Thing was, it used to be twenty minutes.

So the record is a big deal, and maybe, just maybe, the contacts we've made will matter (or even exist) this time around and actually come through for us. We work as hard as we can, and I've always been one to immediately mistrust these dickheads who promise us hookups that likely don't exist. Unfortunately, where we are, we need a little lift from someone who is legit. If you're a band that can tour at the drop of the hat, you don't need these people; of this I remain forever convinced. But we're not that band. We haven't gone on a real, multi-state tour in over three years, and it's been life's looming, concrete shadow that has kept us from hitting the road longer than a four-day weekend. So while we will continue to work our collective tails off, it would really help if someone could give us a leg up. And it's not like I want to hear myself on the radio or live in a mansion; I just want to tour and for the other two guys to be able to pay their bills.

Is that whiny? Yeah, probably. In light of little perspective, I almost want to delete this whole post. If I could find my gym ID card, I wouldn't have even started it. Such is the result of getting up early with no place to go. Fact of the matter is, this isn't all that's been bothering me, and really, it's nothing new; I've been bitching about this stuff for three years at least. But it's all I'm willing to write about in this semi-public arena. I could go on with what's actually got me down and then mark it private, but what's the point of that?

--Steve