Without Faith To Plug The Hole Belief Will Dissipate

In 2007 my life sucked.  I had made a series of bad decisions that started in 2003, and within 4 years I had really fucked shit up.  I was living in a mobile home in Edmond Oklahoma.  Opossums were living in my air vents and when the unit would kick on the smell of their feces and dust from their fur would fill the house.  I had just been fired from my job for not being a Christian.  I found out that the law allows faith based organizations to discriminate in that way.  I was struggling to raise two children, and losing the fight.  I have never considered suicide, but that year I started most days with the thought “If I die today it would not be a bad thing.”  In 2007 my life sucked.

Buddha said something about to find yourself you must lose everything.  Maybe that is true, but it seems more optimistic than what I experienced. Being somebody that desperately wanted something in which to believe, losing everything killed what little bit of faith I had left.  I had previously believed there was always a ray of hope, you know, goodness in everyone.  After 2007 the world has always seemed a much darker place to me.

I wish I could say that I pulled it all together and got things back on track, but it’s not true.  I drank heavily.  I eventually lost my house, and then custody of my children.  I would later get custody back, off and on, but things were never the same after that year. 

The only point to any of this is to say that by the end of 2007 I knew that everything that had happened in my life was based on my decisions.  Though I was previously ignorant to the fact, I now knew that I have control over my life.  The only problem was that I wasn’t exercising that control. I had never considered myself a victim, but none-the-less I was living my life as if I were one.

Months earlier, in late 2006, Billy and I started recording music together.  It was sloppy and without direction, but it was how things got started.  We would do things like record without a metronome, and then realize the timing was really bad and scrap the song.  Of those recordings only two survived: Magical Purple Hair, and The End Seems Strange.

We were both dreamers with impractical expectations.  We thought Frankie Sharp from Sharp records was going to knock on our door and say he heard us performing in our house from his limo and wanted to sign us to a record contract.  The thought seems like a really juvenile cliché.

Despite the ignorance of thinking that way, via the internet our music did get heard, and without playing a gig a record company did express interest in what we were doing.  We were at the right place at the right time. Everybody from major labels to indie labels were combing the internet for raw talent. Magical Purple Hair was released in 2008. 

The record label promoted it and within a year it sold over 10,000 downloads from various sites such as Myspace, iLike.net, etc.  So as much as I laugh at people that believe such things will happen for them, I often forget that it did actually happen that way for us.

The truly naive thing was that we thought we were a snow ball rolling downhill: we were only going to get bigger and bigger.  Instead we rolled about ten feet, hit a tree, and stopped. Our next two releases did nothing.

In 2009 my ex introduced me to a very awesome singer named Bria Nicole.  I asked her to join us and we gave the band a name.  Prior to Bria joining us the songs had just been released under my name.  Bria is a spectacular spirit and with her being a part of what we were doing both Billy and I felt a surge of optimism.  We began working on our first LP.

On that album we released the song "If You."  Though the album was not well accepted, the song "If You" got us a lot of positive mention.  It also earned us the attention of a couple of publishing companies.  I think they genuinely believed they could sell the song, but nothing ever came of it.

I am of the opinion that music is now expected to be stuck in a box. Though we all claim we want something new, people trying to be different are more often spurned than praised.  I remember when the album Soup was released by the band Blind Melon Rolling Stone Magazine criticized it because the songs didn't have a verse chorus verse structure.  They criticized it further saying that most the songs didn't even have a chorus.  That album would later be accepted for the genius that it is with catchy songs that don't need a chorus yet they still have hooks. 

The album Abby Road by The Beatles, everybody likes it.  Nobody pays attention to the fact that side one has the song Come Together, and Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.  Come Together being one of the heaviest songs The Beatles ever recorded while Maxwell’s Silver Hammer is a cabaret song which could easily fit in a Shelly Winters performance.  Today if somebody did this they would be accused of having “a lack of focus” and of being “inconsistent.”  Those are some of the words that have been used to describe us.

During the making of that first album we had many discussions about whether or not to include the Country song Thank You Lord For Willie Nelson.  The Rolling Stones did it with songs like Far Away Eyes, but today bands are expected to be stuck in one genre.  Making the decision to include the Country song on an otherwise Rock oriented album led to us also making the decision to call the album Go Fuck Yourself.

We never told anybody that the title was intended toward music critics.  Without even asking the meaning of the title, music critics could focus on nothing else.  Almost all the reviews we received ripped the album apart consistently using the name of the album as the anchor for their decision.

Go Fuck Yourself was released in 2010.  Before the album was finished, Bria made the decision to quit the band.  She never really said why but I am sure I had a lot to do with her decision.

In the movie Harvey Jimmy Stewart's character said "my mother used to say to me... In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant. Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant."  Unlike Elwood I don't know if I have ever been smart but during my awaking, as I became more aware, I fear I forgot how to be pleasant.

In 2007 the world began to become a darker place to me.  By 2010 I was determined to exercise my control over my life.  It is possible I went too far.  I was telling music critics to go fuck themselves, and I was telling my band mates things were going to be my way or the dirt road.