MILES TRAVELED: 2777.2

BOOKS READ: The Things They Carried (Jason, Mike), Deep Survival (Mike), Blood Meridian (Jonathan), The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead (Beth)

CURRENT CITY: San Antonio

For any of you that ever saw a Red Collar show and afterwards said to me “Don’t quit your day job”, I appreciate your advice but I didn’t take it.

For those of you that don’t know, I quit my job as a Clinic Manager for the Department of Psychology at the University of North Carolina a couple of weeks ago to do Red Collar full time. I am selling my house.  I am cashing in a 403(b) I started when I was a teacher.  The strangest feeling was changing my Employment Status on my facebook page.  Now, if someone ever says “Don’t quit your day job”, I guess they will mean that as a compliment because I am officially in a band full time.

Why am I doing this?  Why would I give up that world and that comfort?  I have searched for reasons and I’m sad to say that the only thing I can come up with is “I’m supposed to”.  It’s not a logically based reason, much to the chagrin of my parents, but it’s really that simple.  I’m doing it because I should.  I don’t even feel like I made a decision.  That doesn’t mean that I was never scared or terrified of doing this. It just happened.  I wish I could write that some great feeling happened with me but it didn’t.  It was honestly a moment of acceptance.  It was a ‘This Is Right’ Moment.

I haven’t had many of those.  I don’t think a person can expect many of them in their life though the television makes you think the heavens will part for you because you squeezed the damn Charmin.  From the past fifteen years, here are my ‘This Is Right’ moments:

1) Marrying Beth
2) Moving to North Carolina
3) Meeting my dog Sur
4) Seeing Mike on our doorstep with a guitar
5) Hitting the road with Red Collar

That’s five that I can think of immediately.  There’s probably a handful more but for easy math sake, let’s say five.  Divided by Fifteen years, that’s one every three years.  Sandwiched in between those ‘This Is Right’ Moments are a whole lot of ‘This Is Wrong’ Moments.

Yikes.  That’s a lot of disappointment.  A lot of little disappointments.  I haven’t thought about that till now.

From a band perspective, it wouldn’t have made sense for Red Collar to do go on tour six months ago or a year ago or even six months in the future.  It had to happen now. We’ve been very careful about our decisions and it’s just the right time.

I have no grand illusions of what is going to happen in the next six months during the hundred or so shows we’ll play.  What I anticipate happening is what happened to this band for the first year of our career when we just played in Durham and Chapel Hill and Raleigh:

We are going to play to no one.

This time, we will play to no one all across towns east of the Mississippi.  We’re not going to sell CD’s.  We’re not going to sell T-Shirts.  We are more than likely going to play only for soundmen, doormen and bartenders.  We will not make a good living at this for the next six months.  We will not make back any money that we spent on the production of Pilgrim.  In fact, we won’t even make the gas money necessary to do this.

Yikes.  That’s a lot of disappointment.  A lot of little disappointments.  Why do it then?

There’s a phrase that I love.  I can’t remember where I heard it first.  I don’t even think that I’m saying it correctly but the gist is there.  It has gotten me through a lot of This Is Wrong Moments and for sure it will get me through a lot of This Is Right But Damn It I Wish Someone Would Buy A CD of Mine Instead of Buying Me A Damn Beer Moments.  I’d like to share the phrase with you but honestly, don’t over use it cause it’s a good one:

It’s easy to apply that phrase to ‘free spirits’…the kind of folks that do artsy-fartsy type stuff that do these type of traveling/touring things while most of the time the general public just rolls their eyes as the faint whiff of patchouli oil slowly fades as the ship goes off to sea to the sounds of Phish.  Okay…I get it.  But it happens all the time to people of other professions not necessarily artsy-fartsy type people.  Think about it this way: maybe some guy out there had a Father and Mother and Grandfather and Grandmother that was able to make great pizzas.   But they only made them at home.  The Family did some daily grind at the Town Mill but on weekends, it was a reprieve from the Grind.  They had wine and a player piano.  And great pizza.

Well that fella, the grandson, got the knack for making pizzas.  He takes out a loan, buys a lot of equipment and remodels a storefront.  Maybe he’s able to make a living at it.  Maybe not.  He’s gotta find out.  That Great American Spirit is celebrated.  There’s some statistic I heard once where if you are starting your own business, you have to be willing to lose money for two years because that’s what it takes for you to earn back your initial investment.

Here’s another example: What about some pimply faced Freshman going to college?  He was always a bright kid, good in science and loved doing lab work.  He’s going to major in pre-Med.  College kids?  Man, they bleed cash: on textbooks and tuition and room and board.  There’s no time for a part-time job and he’s not going to get paid for TEN YEARS.

Both will have lots of disappointment.  Why is a rock band any different?  You can’t expect every town to roll out a carpet for you.  You have to take your licks and be brutally, brutally honest with yourself and your band mates.

The Pre-Med can’t expect to open a private practice at the age of nineteen.  Not everyone’s a Doogie Howser though I swear the rock trades insist that every young hot band out there is ready for the spotlight and it’s not true.  Time is a great teacher.

There’s a process that you have to go through to open up a Pizza Joint or to open up a Private Practice or to Be In A Band.  The guy with the Pizza Place and the kid in pre-Med…neither know what’s going to happen.  He may be sick of making pizzas after six months.  The kid opens up a private practice and honestly can’t stand it.  Maybe what the kid really wants to do is open a pizza shop and what the Pizza Guy wants to do is be a veterinarian.  I think that searching for who we aren’t is as important to finding out who we are.  Maybe I’ll hate this whole band thing after a few weeks.

I doubt it.

But maybe.

Again, brutally, brutally honest.

I’m not going to kid you or myself by saying that this was an easy decision without reservation.  The money issue, doing this with my wife, the house, the job, the retirement, the medical insurance, the time, the energy, the things you leave behind…I was really, really scared.  I mean honestly it’s the worst time in the world in the past seventy years to quit your job and try and sell your house.

But one night I imagined myself at the age of fifty.  I met the Fifty-Year old Jason that didn’t do this, that didn’t try.  The Moment felt right but he chose to ignore it.  There aren’t many of them, remember.  And the one that happened, he let it go.  Here was this asshole still singing songs about no more regrets and finding a place for oneself and this sad fucker never even tried.

It was a big act.

Meeting him would be one big disappointment.  I’d rather have a whole lot of little ones.

Jason