My Criminal Career
I never thought I’d be a “journal” guy. But smart people I know and trust continued to testify to its merits, and one day I took them up on the advice to start journaling.
Consider this the most recent installment, which I share publicly and nakedly as a way to announce my latest creative pursuit…
The mirrors in your eyes will only shine on yesterday.
In 1996 I gave up the pursuit of a career in the music industry. The decision to leave my band at the time — Jes Gru — just as it was beginning to get the notice of legitimate players in the record business, was a difficult and painful one. But the truth was, my “criminal career” (as Glen Phillips of Toad the Wet Sprocket so eloquently coined his own) was stealing from me. It was burgling my present and ransacking my future. So I walked away.
What followed was a rather significant bout with depression and the first of multiple identity crises to come. I was working to come to terms with this turning point in life, taking stock of the damage my musical ambitions had inflicted on my life. Relationships were ruined, career opportunities were forsaken, and the act of leaving the band would destroy four of the best friendships I’d ever have in life.
As a result, I came to hate music. So much so, that I went more than a full year avoiding any semblance of music like the plague. I turned off the radio permanently and ignored my CD collection entirely; and I certainly wouldn’t pick up my bass or acoustic guitar. Music was dead to me. And I was dead to it. Harrumph.
Some two years later, in 1998, the winter of discontent began to thaw…
When the curtain falls don’t tell yourself your swan will never sing.
As the ice eventually melted — without me ever being fully aware — I began to slowly but surely let music back into my life again. The radio turned on. The CDs found their way back into the car. The dust was blown off dormant guitars and amplifiers. I even began to write songs again.
Before long, the fire had been re-lit. I invested what were then meager earnings in a 16-track recording device and began to record my first original music since leaving Jes Gru. (In fact, one of the songs I would go on to write would be a completion of a Jes Gru song we never quite finished while still together as a band.)
It was time to make music again, if only for myself. I decided to complete a full-length album…just to have…ya know…for me. And me alone. I never intended for it to see the light of day. And it basically never did.
But it was catharsis. A rebirth. A familiar but forgotten creative outlet.
And then it happened.
Never try to fly with frozen wings.
That project would come to be known as Mill House. For the most part, it was me writing and recording, relying on the talents and expertise of those I’d need to bring into the project to do the things that I could not, myself, do capably. Most notably, my brother John would be my main accomplice, providing the drums, keyboards, mixing and mastering for much of the material.
It was on a day that I found myself at his music studio recording vocals for a Mill House track, “Nothing to Say,” that “Frozen Wings” was initially born.
Following the vocal session, John asked me if I wanted to hear his latest composition — then a work in progress. He had most of the chord progressions in place, and asked if I wanted to write the lyrics (as I had been doing for a few songs on his initial album release for his Mr. Radio project). I eagerly obliged, as the fire was smoldering once again, and here presented to me was an opportunity to keep those creative juices flowing.
With melody in hand, I went home and began to write the lyrics to what would become “Frozen Wings.” It was the song I needed to write, because it was the song I needed to hear.
The theme? You can revel in the past, but you can’t dwell in it. Someone needed to tell me to move on. Move forward. Because when you do, you never know what adventures and rewards await. Even if the present feels like the ending chapter to your past. It’s not. It’s the middle. The rest of the story awaits.
The words flowed out of me effortlessly. They were the culmination of a journey that began with unbridled enthusiasm and optimism (the Jes Gru era), that later brought enduring heartache and depression (the band’s break-up and demise), and which now had led me to a place of healing and moving on.
The song, as a result, is all about looking forward, even while embracing what came before. Not out of mourning, but of celebration…
Rebirth. Parole. And Frozen Wings Rising from the Ashes.
Today, that criminal career has been paroled and reformed. I’ve managed to make a living out of the English degree I had earned prior to throwing it all away to chase the life of a rock star. I now have the freedom and bandwidth to apply my love for writing, having released two novels and one non-fiction title.
And music is mercifully back in my life. In 2020, I launched August Red, a musical project with influences in — and paying homage to — yacht rock and west coast AOR of the late 70s and early 80s. I am once again conspiring with brother John; and I am writing, recording and releasing music again.
It may not be a career, this music business of mine. But what was once criminal is now reformed, released and back out into the free world. I couldn’t be happier. Funny, where life takes you.
Philosopher Søren Kierkegaard famously said, “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”
Turns out the career wasn’t so criminal after all. There was some good in there.
Oh, and the relationships I thought it had once destroyed? I’m now married to the girl I wronged back then; and we have two beautiful and talented children. Those friendships I thought I had destroyed? The boys in the band are all besties again, and have been for decades. We’re even making music together again, as some members of the Gru are now collaborating and composing as The Few. (More to come on that front soon!)
I’m starting to understand things more clearly, the less time I have in front of me, and looking backward. Maybe there’s a lesson in there somewhere for you to take away and apply to your own life.
Regardless. There. I did a journaling.
And they were right. Feels pretty good.
i swear, we had the time of our lives...
For those interested, here is that song, originally composed in 1998 and released by Mr. Radio, and today reimagined in a yachty kinda way as August Red’s latest single: