20 Years Later…

I am sure all of our friends that are close to our age can count many blessings in their lives. I am no exception. But I also know that I feel uniquely blessed to have 3 friends in my life that are the biggest blessing of all.

For over a decade of my life I lived in what was essentially a marriage. A band asks a lot of a person, and a person asks a lot of a band in return. Again, we were no exception. Our schedules, for years, revolved around regular rehearsal days, show dates, band meetings and group decisions about how we spent our money and how we spent our time. As most musicians will attest, it can be a serious yolk around your neck – but I wouldn’t trade it for the world. It taught me about people. It taught me about business. It taught me about songwriting and performing, and the difference between creating art by yourself and in a collaboration. And I’ll tell you what – I will take the latter every time.

These past two weeks we have wallowed in tons of nostalgia and old jokes, and created new ones without effort. We took as much time as available to catch up on each other’s lives, see each other’s families, and most importantly work really hard together again to make our songs sound the best that they can. These guys I chose to attach myself to 30+ years ago still take it seriously, and still have just as much love for the songs we wrote and played together. And holy crap, there were a lot of songs.

Writing our set for Saturday was easy to do – 3/4 of it at least. Those remaining slots had us sifting through our seemingly endless recordings, and our seemingly stunted memories. I can’t even count how many times we all let out a collective “whoa” when hearing an old recording we had all but forgotten. Two or three times during each rehearsal someone would bust in to a riff or a melody from like 1992 and we’d all kick in. I can’t tell you how the lyrics managed to spill out of my face, but spill they did. It was a great testament to the indelibility of music in the human brain. And a testament to how many times we hit the stage and studio together over the years.

So, twenty years after our final show, we get to hit the stage again this Saturday night. And, no matter what happens – if my voice suddenly goes, if the stage collapses, if not a single human shows up – I will still count myself as one of the luckiest human beings in the world. I can say I have been part of creating music that some people still like, and I get to play it with 3 people I still love.

So I’m taking it upon myself to say thank you in advance on behalf of all of us for allowing us the opportunity to play a bunch of our songs again,

and making us feel welcome to do so. Beyond our own friendship, we made more friends because of this band than anyone should be allowed to. We will be forever thankful for that, and we will be looking forward to seeing everyone.

Time to orient the crystal, boys.

/ken