Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Sunshine

"Fortes fortuna adiuvat"
"Fortune favors the bold"


The events of this story are all true, the names have been kept the same to regain their innocence. The facts may have been dressed up because that's what memory does and to make a better story.

So I am going to break through the imaginary wall of writer and reader to share a story about how I got to today and why it is the best time of my life.  For those of you know that know me, it is possible that I shared the story of how I reentered the music life.  The story starts by choosing a career going door to door selling stocks and bonds, which coincided with the day the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression began: October 9, 2007.  Technically that day was a Tuesday and I started on a Monday, and I had already begin knocking on doors for 8 weeks, but I digress.  Knocking on doors is an experience all it's own and rejection is parcelled out in, no-one's-home's, not-interested's, and get-the-hell-out-of-here's. It was also a time of much walking and thinking.
      The thought that returned more often, as I marked the number of doors that knuckles met with was, "This is an awful beat down, had I only put this kind of effort into music then certainly by now I would be making a living doing music."  This thought put to death the idea that I could make a living as a salesman and for a time caused me great sadness, as if I had found the keys to a treasure chest I once had, but disgarded because I never believed I would find the key.  All the while the environment around me continued to disintegrate and the financial crisis deepened, fear began to take hold of the minds of those I would encounter.
    As life does often time bring about, fate intervened and one of the doors that was opened was a kind couple, an artist and a musician and my life as a musician began anew.  The exciting way to tell this part is that I got signed to a record label because of my incredible talent, which in a sense was true.  Perhaps a more accurate way to describe the experience was that I did someone a favor in return for a demo.  I have found and continue to find that blindly doing good turns for people provides more opportunities than just about anything.   So I gave some financial advice in return for a demo.  When the demo was done, one Lynne Messinger, currently of  When Girls Collide and formerly of Unknown Gender, was so impressed that she offered to record an album.  Seeing this as my opportunity for redemption I jumped one foot into music and one foot into my career as a financial advisor, and one foot into the board of my church, and one foot into basketball and one foot into mentoring kids at the school I used to work at, and one foot into a health supplement business.  As it is plain to see I was running out of feet.  This occurred in November of 2008, as the country elected its first president with a black parent, the market continued to crash and my wonderful wife and I were expecting our second child.
      The album took over a year to record due to the rust of not having performed at a high level musically for almost seven years, my producer's equipment malfunctions and experimentation with mixing.  When it came time to release the album, my financial reserves had been spent and my career at Edward Jones came to  an end.  The desire to take care of my family necessitated a move to North Texas. This move put a bind on the relationship with my now friend and former producer and has put our relationship on hold for nearly two years now. At some point I will muster up the courage to at least reach out to a person that was kind to me during a challenging time of my life.
       At this point I am going stop telling the story because I am still in the middle of it and finish off by saying how happy I am that my family moved to Denton.  We have been blessed by so many friendships and great relationships in a community that has fostered our growth.  Music has become my career thanks to support of so many.  I am amazed at places like Banter Cafe which cultivates and provides love to so many artists beginning their journey.  Endeavours like Denton Radio.com show what can be accomplished by persistent effort and maintaining a vision.   Artists looking to take their crafts to next level are fortunate to have labels like I Love Math Records tell them "Yes this is good, let's make a record."  It is familiar to those I have frequent contact with, to hear me self prophesize about the coming renown of Denton and its music scene which is about to pop.  To mangle a movie quote "I believe in Denton."

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