Tales From The Musical Trenches

While everyone hears stories about famous musicians, the barely visible world of struggling musicians is jammed with juicier stories, more colorful characters, and a powerful streak of hopeful desperation. In my own long musical career, I have played, toured, and recorded with everyone from the unknown to the revered. Those who put their futures on the line to pursue dreams unlikely to ever come true possess a peculiar, mad optimism that creates lives that can be more fascinating than those of the stars. The world of struggling musicians is a world of heartbreak and hope, death and redemption, near-starvation and triumph, addiction and epiphany.

My musical life has introduced me to extraordinarily interesting and inspiring people, and has taken me to places I would otherwise have never known. But it is always the music that is the most important thing to all those who have chosen this difficult and unpredictable life, and it is always the music that sustains and nourishes us, even in the face of our self-imposed hardships.