Leave Your Bedroom & Get Naked

So, last evening I mixed two of my favorite bands in Charlotte- Matrimony and Public Radio. It was one of the show highlights of my year. I’ve had the tremendous pleasure of working with both groups in the studio. I mixed Matrimony’s Ep “The Storm & the Eye” and engineered a good bit of Public Radio’s upcoming album slated for release early this coming year. Whenever I mix bands they usually provide some quite humorous material for my Twitter Feed but this show was so great I didn’t even think of pulling out my phone. Every few minutes I’d have people stopping by the booth just to say Hello. It was starting to annoy me until I realized what this meant. I was working for two amazing bands who’s members are all close friends of mine and I could look around the packed Visulite Theatre and see everyone from familiar faces to close longtime friends. How often has or will this ever happen again?

On top of this thrill, the “icing on the cake” I guess, I had a lengthy conversation with a member of one of the most influential bands in the past ten years or so of my life. You see, when I was seventeen (or maybe it was eighteen, let’s just go with seventeen) I started a band called “oh, Kay . . .” after my best friend told me she couldn’t talk to me anymore since she was getting married. Anyway, we went to record a couple songs and even though we had practiced a good bit I handed our drummer, Johnny Rumbach, a CD to listen to on the drive. I told him to forget what we had worked out before and just take the fifteen minute drive to study this drummer cause he had the vibe I wanted. Last night after the show I talked with this “vibey” drummer for a while. In ten years when the present day twelve year old Justin Beiber fan meets him I’ll know what it feels like. I didn’t ask him to marry me though, so yea, there’s that.

We ended up at the Browns’ house, the married front couple of Matrimony, after the show. I walked into the kitchen and this drummer with the vibe just walked up to me and asked how I got the drums to sound so good. He had such a thrilled look on his face like a kid who knows generally how a car engine works but wants to know why his buddy’s goes faster! We started geeking out about mixing techniques and studio gear then it turned into a lil music lesson. Not the kind of music lesson where you play scales or learn about theory, it was about the intangibles of music. He told me about playing Madison Square Garden then a month later playing the Mercury Lounge, a far smaller yet super rad club. People would ask him, “Dude! MSG! How was it?!” and all he could say was, “I don’t know, cool I guess but the Mercury Lounge! That was a killer show!” He also told me about a show in the UK he played with his band where only five or ten people showed up. After they got off stage the singer was bummed and the drummer was freakin out about how great of a show it was.

What’s my point? People tend to judge shows on how many people show up. Point is, if you are killin it and playin your heart out, wearing your heart on your sleeve, bleeding on stage, gettin naked (metaphorically speaking) then who cares if there is five people or fifty thousand?! These days there are a ton of bands out there but there are even more musicians who may be sick but still just sit in there bedrooms or basements playing. There’s a ton of people who never get lucky enough to step on stage to do what they love. This Indie Icon of a drummer told me how everyone wants “It” to happen but it won’t happen til you do it. If you sit back waiting for the fabled A&R guy in shining armor to rescue you from your Starbucks job and hand you a record deal on a silver platter then enjoy making coffee. Or, you could go out there and play music cause it’s damn fun. Communicating with another person, or five people, or fifty thousand people is a privilege. They’re looking for someone to communicate with them though. They want to hear from someone who will just share some honest feelings musically, even if they don’t necessarily like the music!

Get out there, leave your bedroom or basement, play some music, take your clothes off (musically speaking of course). Most of all enjoy it. If you get to play on any kind of stage have fun. Don’t take it for granted. Everyone wants to be heard and you have people listenin’ to ya . . .