7-27-2009
...and here I sit within the confines of my home studio/office, deep in the heart of East Saint Paul, MN. I am a million different emotions. I am bitter, I am angry, I am saddened but most of all I am lost.
I look back at the last decade of blood, sweat and tears derived from 3 different entities but all one in the same. I've watched this industry shift and shape into many different things. All of which lead to heartbreak in one form or another. Somebody always loses. No matter what. Even if you get the prize, there will still come a time when numbers are crunched, emotions are played with and hopes are turned upside down. It's a business. I hate it. I never signed up to be "the numbers guy" or to be the lucky duck that gets to deal with club owners, promoters, mucky mucks, etc. In someway or another I've been shoved into it. "Dammet Jim! I'm a song writer not a band manager!" In turn, I get to relay the good, the bad, and the ugly to 4 other hopefulls who get to ride on the momentum of the music industry information super highway.This sucks. There's nothing worse than getting together in a room filled with your brothers/fellow musicians and addicts, who put their faith and trust in our own built machine, only to tell them that the giant business cock of the industry has bent us over and made our assholes a little wider than they already are from the years of emotional, physical and mental abuse.
I must admit, having Rich back in this monster has made things a little easier for me to take. Even though we share in the disappointment of having to cancel a tour run that from the beginning looked promising on paper but eventually turned sour by way of numbers, dates, etc., or lions and tigers and bears... however you wanna look at it, he still has faith in me as a human being, song writer, performer, risk taker and dreamer. I am the ying to his yang. It's been that way since 9th grade. Much love to the other guys as well as they have spent good time in their personal efforts to make this happen (this includes Mike from the band OUTLET. That will be CA's dirty little secret.). Sacrifices of life, love, memories and the comforts of home take place when arrangements are made to set out and put our art on display. For some reason though, this punch to the balls just hurts a little more. Maybe we set our bar too high? Maybe we are just sick of the lows. Maybe our trust and faith of the people fueling the machine is in the wrong hands? Who knows.
I'm venting. Fuck the industry and fuck the times we live in. Those of us who truly work our asses off to make the lives around us and our own better deserve the taste of the pie. Our machine is getting tighter. Our songs are getting better. Even if we never reach our ultimate personal goals in what this beast can do or where we know it has potential to go, I can say that for this stab that we are about to take, for this statement that we are about to make, something great will spill from the hearts of these bums from nowhere, Minnesota that will leave a lasting impression on the lives of this band and the people around it. It's time to make OUR move...
-Wally J.
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