*Jonesing*

I hesitate to call myself a musician because it didn't come natural to me. I really had to work at it, especially since I started so late - 19, and because I think a musician is someone who knows his/her instrument better than most and can read and write music. But for the sake of this conversation I will refer to myself as a musician and I will hope that any real musicians that read this won't be offended by me calling myself that. Here is a brief story, a "musical journey", if you will.

I bought my first bass guitar about a week after I picked one up for the first time in my life. I had been aching to make music for a couple of years I just didn't know what instrument to play and the bass felt right. Really, the only reason I actually went ahead and bought it was because a couple of friends had a band that I used to get high and listen to at their practice space. After their bass player got committed to a mental hospital and gave up music I saw an opportunity to learn to play and play in a band. To my amazement it worked out.

We started off as a really bad punk/cover/grindcore band. We did it just for fun mostly but then started feeling good about it. We played our first show and it went so damn bad that it literally broke us up for a week. Everyone quit the band that night in the parking lot. It was funny. The next day though we were on our way home from the show in the van and the guitarist, Baeden,my best friend, and I started writing this song with our mouths....meaning, he made the guitar riff sound and I did the bass line . It was so weird and amazing. We got really excited about it again, the band I mean. So excited that when we got back to the drummers house we set up and played the song....Just like we did with our mouths....We later named that song Tomorrow's a Big Place
because the day before we asked this hot chick to come to the show and she said," I don't know, tomorrows a big place."

But that's part of the reason I am writing this...It was like that. Writing songs was so easy and they all had stories behind them....Anyways.

A month or so later we got another guitarist...His name is Jay. After we got Jay we took off. Around here we were the band. We just had something. Of coarse, at the time, I didn't think so. I never felt we played as well as we could have, but that is because I'm a fucking retard.




The shows got better, more and more people came out to see us. We recorded a few records, did some tours - mostly the southeast but we did do one U.S. tour and a tour of Japan and had a 4 month tour of the U.S. planned and a tour of Europe before we broke up.




Fast forward to today. Continent, the band I started with the drummer after The Ladderback, my first band, broke up, recently parted ways...or actually I quit the band. I quit because I am in school and don't really have the time to dedicate to band. This is bad. This is really bad.

It is impossible to convey how important making music was to me. It was my psychologist. It was my medication. It was my escape and my release. It was the one thing that even though I wrote with other people, I could actually say was all mine. My band mates were my brothers. It was much like a marriage. In fact, I learned more about interacting with people and working as part of team in the band than I ever did elsewhere. Man, it was just everything to me.

Now I'm in a weird place. I feel like I am missing something. There is this big hole where something really vibrant and spiritual and emotional used to be. The fucked up thing is, I made the choice, and I felt, and still kinda do feel, I made the right one. It was time to move on... not quit...move on. I really want to believe that. I want to believe I make a better fan than a musician. But I don't.

I feel like I have so much more music to make. I constantly have ideas and feel like if I stood on my head gallons and gallons of music would pour out of me. I have this heavy feeling like there is something I need to get off of my chest. It breaks me down everyday. I NEED TO PLAY. I just wish I had the time. I wish I could find the people. The people that would make me a whole musician again.



I want to be inspired and inspiring again. I want to feel the way I felt when I knew we played our balls off and made everyone their feel like they just saw something special. I want to come home from a practice space this winter with my ears ringing and totally excited about a new song we wrote that people will lose their shit over. I want to feel all of that again.

I never wanted to become one of those adults that thinks of music as something to have on only in the background. Something insignificant or unimportant. Its not. There is a song that you remember for every fucking major episode in your life. Songs are mile markers...They are like the rings of a tree. They mark a certain part of your life and stay with you forever. Something like this will never be unimportant to me. I understand that there are things that mean more to people and should mean more to people....but it goes beyond that with me.

Its a total headfuck when I see bands on M2 or Fuse that my band played with....or hear my friends band mentioned on those channels. It could have happened to me, but it didn't. I was close, but not close enough. Don't get me wrong, I did a lot more than a lot of people get to do and I am satisfied...I just want more.

Its just so damn depressing to be sitting here when I actually do get some free time...I'm constantly thinking that I should be playing....and trust me, I feel the need. When I had a rough day at work it was all that kept me from breaking stuff. I mean, there is nothing more therapeutic than screaming at the top of your lungs into a mic over loud ass heavy music. The vibrations from my amp, the ringing ears, the beers....It all just made so much sense. It felt so good.

shut up, Danny...