Tall Tale Tuesdays

In the previous post I wrote about Cafe Coco. The above video is one of my Cafe Coco, "open mic" performances and was captured using a Sony Webbie.

There's a lot of stories I want to tell about my time in Nashville. I've told a few of them already...like the one about when I gave my CDs to Kevin Costner. There's the time I served K.T. Tunstal and she asked me where the bathroom was and whether I'd recomend taking a cab or walking back to her hotel. My best interaction with a famous person happened recently...I got to hang out with Eddie Montgomery and play him and his guitar player a few of my songs. The amazing thing about these guys is that they are still so excited about music and songwriting. There wasn't a shred of "coolness" surrounding these Kentucky boys. They just play music for a living because they love it and they'd be doing it even if they weren't making a living at it. There was also the time I sat a couple of seats down from Miranda Lambert, whose gravelly, Southern voice makes me a little bit quivery, and I swear she gave me the "up and down" look. Now she was with her fiance, Blake Shelton, so maybe I just had a boog hanging or something. Or maybe I'm just that handsome... I prefer to think the latter and I'll appreciate it if you don't correct me.

There's a lot of celebrities in Nashville and I have to admit that I still get a little excited when I see them. I may not even be a fan of whatever a particular person does but it's kind of cool to see these people in the flesh. Most of the time though it's the non-celebrities that make Nashville an interesting place to live. People have moved here from everywhere and a lot of them are trying to be musicians. Some of them ought to go home and some of them should have come here years ago. I think it takes a certain kind of person to pack things up and move to an unknown place in pursuit of an intangible, hoped for dream of a possibility. There's an above average number of these kinds of people in Nashville because they've all left wherever they hail from and are now scattered throughout Nashville, Murfreesboro and Franklin. They work in coffee shops and bars and restaurants and book stores and most of them live with a bunch of room mates and except for the ones who work at Starbucks, they all stay up 'til 5am every night. The Starbucks crowd have to get to bed early because their days start at 4am. Nashville may not be New York City but with all the hopeful artists here it's certainly a city where there's something going on 24/7.

In Nashville, I've played music to people from all over the world. I've played for the average joe and I've played for celebrities. I've worked the night shift and had my share of those 5am days. I've worked the day shift and had my share of days that start at 6 am and end at 4am the following day. So I've been tired a lot in Nashville. I've gone to watch bands that I've been listening to since I was a kid and I've been blown away by artists I'd never heard of before and just happened to be in the right venue on the right night. So after living here for a little over two years I'm starting to realise what a rich time of life this has been for me.

The night that the above video was taken was a Tuesday and I met Joel Crouse and Nick Zini that night. We talked about music and preachers and girls and snow and after I heard them play I invited them to play a gig with me next month. The open mic nights at Cafe Coco aren't particularly prestigious but there's something about them that makes them kind of cool to me. It reminds me a little of some of the places I used to play back home. Even though I want to tell the stories about famous people I want to capture the Tuesday nights too. Because those are the nights I met the Joels and Nicks. Those are the nights I remembered why I came to this town in the first place. Those are the nights that make me feel alive inside.

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I borrowed the title of this post from a song written by Adam Burrows, a fellow I've had the pleasure of playing a couple of shows with. I think he's one of the most talented artists I've met in Nashville and hopefully we both will play high profile shows in time. But until then we have our Tall Tale Tuesdays. I'll be playing a show with Adam and another Nashville artist, Joe Dunn at Drifters in East Nashville on March 4th. Please do come and show your support if you happen to live in Nashville.

I'll also be playing at Casablanca Coffee on Saturday, February 12th with Joel Crouse, Nick Zini and Anna Johnson. Mark your calenders and please come support.

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What You Do Becomes You

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What you do becomes you….

I can’t get this idea out of my head. I’ve been attaching it to email messages and telling people about it for the past couple of weeks. You can’t call yourself a meat cleaver if you don’t in fact cleave meat. However, no matter what you call yourself, if you cleave meat on a daily basis, you will inevitably be a meat cleaver and you will inevitably be recognized as a meat cleaver. What you do becomes you.

There’s a lyric in a song by The Avett Brothers, “decide what to be and go be it.” That sentence encapsulates what is required of anyone who wants to be anything. You have to make a decision and you have to go do it. It can seem fairly overwhelming along the road to becoming something but that statement really does hold true. Just go and be the thing you want to be and don’t let anything stop you. Especially don’t let yourself stop you.

I have spent a lot of time trying to do what I want to do in life. I’ve talked about it and thought about it and prayed about it and analyzed it. I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with that but sometimes I let all that get in the way of actually going out and doing it. In the words of the great and wise Jedi Master, Yoda, “There is no try. Only do or do not.”

This year I stopped talking about quitting smoking and I quit smoking. I want to carry that over into other parts of my life. Less talk and more do. Just go and be whatever the hell it is you’re trying to be. Think about it and talk about and analyze it as you must but at the end of the day go out and do it. Do it every day consistently and eventually you cannot help but be the thing you already are.

Hopeful Thinking

Everything that I didn’t do all the days I thought about doing them but didn’t…I can still do.

I know there are a lot of problems with that sentence. I know that some of the problems with that sentence have to do with the incorrect application of the English language. But the real problem with that sentence is that it’s just what every procrastinator on the planet wants to hear. Whether or not it gives people with a tendency to put things off one more excuse to do just that though is not why I wrote that sentence.

Here’s why I wrote that sentence:

I still want to sell songs. I still want to write songs. I still want to record them and play them for people and I want to get signed to some label that will help me make some money from this thing I’ve dedicated the latter portion of my life to. That hasn’t changed.

I think there are good reasons why I haven’t done a lot of what I want to do in music. But the reasons why are not the point here. The point here is that sentence at the top of this page: I’m still going to do all of that because it’s not too late.

I saw a t.v. show featuring Sylvester Stalone a few weeks ago. He’s in the gym, grimacing through a set of some monster-lift. He’s looking huge and ripped and awful. But he’s looking awful because that’s what he wants to look like. He’s 63. He’s not a young man anymore. And that’s the point: It’s never too late to do everything you ever wanted to do.

Lately I’ve been waking up with this weird sense of hopefulness. I don’t know where it came from but its here and I’m hanging on to it.

All of this has nothing to do with the video at the top of this post. I just like the song and I hope you will too.