Photo credit: Scott Willis
Tell us about your tour vehicle. Any notable breakdown stories?
My tour vehicle is a Hyundai Santa Fe. It has traveled from Seattle to Nashville and all over the Southeast in the last couple of years. It’s a sniff short of 200K miles, and I expect it will last another million. Other than stupid automatic windows and a timing belt, it’s been pretty stable.
Back in the late 90s, I was on a tour that broke down on a Sunday in a very tiny town in Northern Louisiana. Nothing was open; there were no cabs, and we slept in the van until the tow company opened up Monday morning. We spent the day taking a walking tour of people who did not want anyone in their town while we awaited the verdict from the one auto mechanic within 50 miles. It was a lesson in economics.
How do you eat cheaply and/or healthy while on tour?
My wife is fantastic at feeding me. She sends me out with a lot of tasty and healthy snacks. I also get hungry when I drive long distances, so I snack at the wheel, especially when I know the show deal doesn’t include a cheeseburger. I don’t always eat healthy on the road.
How many strings do you break in a typical year? How much does it cost to replace them?
I go through about 6 sets of strings a year. But I also often use a bass player playing upright. Those strings are expensive. I don’t usually break strings anymore, but as anxious as I’ve been to get back on the road again, I wouldn’t be surprised if it started happening again very soon.
Where do you rehearse?
I usually rent a sound studio around Nashville. It costs a little more, but it helps to really get the sound of the performance down. Since things have started to come back (fingers crossed, knocking on wood, and evangelizing medical science), the practice space has been buzzing, and it’s really cool. It’s oddly nice to see people in bad moods up there actually – exhausted by music and practicing like back in the before times. It’s those ‘inconveniences’ that went away during the quarantining – being in the weeds with plans with people and traffic – that I’m trying to embrace as well.
What was the title and a sample lyric from the first song that you wrote?
The title was “The White Ranger” and it was about being jealous of a kid in my school who had development issues. He was bullied a lot, and he was always positive and happy and would ask out all of the girls in school, who would all mock him and tease him. It didn’t help that his family apparently had some economic challenges too, leaving him in cheap old clothes and often smelling like he hadn’t bathed or had his clothes washed in a long time.
I remember one of the later verses or choruses or something: “I’d probably be the White Ranger too. And every girl would be in love with me. I wish I was the White Ranger too, and no one could hurt me.”
Describe your first gig.
The band was Mulligan Stü. I asked the manager of the Joe Muggs coffee shop, inside the local Books-A-Million if they would let us play there. I think maybe I knew somebody who knew somebody who was the night manager. After a few weeks of bothering them about it, they let us set up and play. It was so cool. I made t-shirts and flyers, and we brought in a lot of 14-17 year-old kids who didn’t spend any money, loitered in the parking lot, and probably did a fair share of shoplifting. It looked like a success at first, but after the second or third time we did it, they asked us not to come back. Our acoustic folk shows in the biography section had become a pretext for hooligans to trash Books-A-Million. It was perfect.
What was your last day job? What was your favorite day job?
I have my hands in many sinister plots. I currently have investments and business interests in intellectual property, robotics, and bootlegging. My favorite day job was when I worked for Baskin Robbins in high school – around the same time I was playing corporate bookstores. I look great in pink, and I love ice cream almost as much as I love music. It was a veritable “wolf(e) in the hen house” situation, though. And I was too young to have any self control. I got fired when I hosted a party after hours for some of my rowdier friends.
How has your music-related income changed over the past 5-10 years? What do you expect it to look like 5-10 years from now?
I have never made enough money from music to tell the government about it. The losses are so much more traceable anyway. I expect that my music income will be dependent on my ability to tour regularly, which I am trying to do more and more as things come back. But my ability to tour will likely depend on my ability to generate non-music income. It’s a hustle economy; in my opinion, you gotta diversify your dependence.
What one thing do you know now that you had wished you knew when you started your career in music?
All I can think of is knowing the results of major sports and gambling events like in Back to the Future II. But the one thing I’ve learned in the recent isolation and meditation is WHY I do this, which it seems like I probably should have known a long time ago. I think I’ve thought it was for an income before, or for fame or recognition, and in some of my more ambitious moments, a kind of immortality. Now I realized I do it for the same reasons I do most things – to connect. Music is the best way to connect, and if I’d known that, I think maybe I’d have enjoyed myself more when I was younger.