What sets your soul on fire?
“Music’s the only thing that makes sense anymore. Play it loud enough, it keeps the demons at bay.”
-Across the Universe
“Who do you want to be today, Brian?”
“Um… Ringo!”
“Okay! I’ll be Paul.”
One of my clearest, earliest memories is dancing in the living room with my father to The Beatles or The Who on his then state-of-the-art home theater system.
I only need to close my eyes to conjure the beige and brown color scheme leftover from the 70s, the metallic silver shine of his audio amplifier, and the sleek black CD player from which the soundtrack to my childhood poured.
Music wasn’t just background noise in our house. It was an experience in-and-of-itself, like sitting down to watch a movie or TV show. My father would encourage me to notice different elements.
“You hear that thumping over there in that speaker? Listen, right now. That’s Keith Moon, the drummer. And that twanging sound you’re hearing now? That’s Pete. He’s the guitarist. This is a guitar.”
I don’t remember a time without guitars. My father was a professional musician in the 70s and 80s, putting himself through his own PhD as the bass player for Long Island’s premier Top 40 wedding band. I’d strum along on a plastic toy guitar with nylon strings as early as 2 years old. I wasn’t playing, of course, just pretending. Imagining. Waiting.
Wanting It Bad Enough
At 8 or 9 years old, dad got me my first real guitar. It was a sleek navy blue Ibanez. Holding it made me feel like a rock star, but I hardly learned a single chord.
I wanted to be like Pete Townshend, but without all that pesky learning and hard work. So that guitar collected dust in dad’s music room, and that might have been the end of it. He never pushed or pressured me into playing. His rule was simple:
“I’ll sign you up for lessons, but first you have to learn at least a couple of chords on your own.”
He’d given me a beginner guitar instructional VHS tape. I watched it once for a few minutes but never got anywhere. Maybe I was lazy, maybe I just hadn’t found the motivation yet, or maybe, in the words of Mitch Hedberg,
“I taught myself to play guitar, which was a bad decision because I didn’t know how to play it. I was a terrible teacher. I’d have never gone to me.”
Then one Sunday afternoon in 8th grade my father invited me to the living room to watch a movie.
“What are we watching, Dad?”
“It’s called Eddie and the Cruisers,” he said. “You’re going to like it. It’s one of my favorites movies.”
Eddie and the Cruisers is a 1980s musical mystery thriller that was a critical and commercial flop, but developed a cult following on home release. It featured an all-original soundtrack from John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band, a ridiculously-named but incredibly talented young band from New Jersey on the rise in the music industry.
And I was hooked.
When the movie ended and the credits rolled I jumped off the couch and tore out of the living room without saying a word. I ran upstairs to dad’s music room, found my dusty Ibanez, carried it back downstairs, handed it to my father who hadn’t budged from his spot on the sofa, and said,
“Teach me.”
I learned my first three chords right there and formed the foundation of a lifelong bond with the instrument.
The Talentless Show
Not four months after learning my first chord I pulled together a band of misfits from school: drums, bass, vocals, and me on guitar.
We signed up for the spring talent show and with less than four practice sessions managed to squeak out a rendition of “On the Dark Side,” the hit single from Eddie and the Cruisers that not one of my 12-year-old schoolmates would have ever recognized.
But it didn’t matter. I became a rock star overnight and quickly got to writing my own songs. Sure, I only knew three chords, but a rock guitarist with three chords can change the world.
Dad surprised me with a home recording studio for my birthday that summer. And, before you start imagining how wealthy we were, it’s not what you think. It was essentially an 8×12” box that had some microphone inputs, faders, and knobs for musicians to record their own songs at home.
In those days even standard recording software like Pro Tools was prohibitively expensive, with a learning curve that required proper study at a recording institute. These consumer-grade boxes bridged the gap between the analog and digital age, and I loved it.
Songs were recorded to a bizarre and incredibly expensive storage medium called zip drives. They looked like slightly smaller, bulkier floppy discs. Each zip drive fit precisely one song, and god bless my father who purchased dozens if not hundreds of these things as I was churning out three or more “original songs” per week.
I never properly thanked him for that investment. It allowed me the freedom to create endlessly without running out of storage space or having to erase old songs to make room for new ones. I recently found a box of those old zip drives in some boxes of old stuff my father mailed me in an attempt to clear his own basement and clutter mine.
As you can see, they are ridiculous.
Getting Serious
In high school I formed a new band with some buddies. We called ourselves Semi Crazi, and were quite proud of how clever it was to spell ‘crazy’ with an ‘i’.
I started experimenting with writing albums instead of songs, first EPs and then eventually a full-length LP. We printed to blank discs, designed cover art in Microsoft Word, and assembled full CD packages to sell to classmates at $1-2 each.
We barely recouped the cost of blank CDs and printer ink, getting our first taste of what it’s actually like to make a living in the arts, but we had so much fun. Throughout high school we’d play block parties and friends’ backyard BBQs, and even some official school events (when they’d allow a rock band to make a ruckus).
By junior year I was my school’s Eddie Van Halen. Again, not that anyone my age knew who that was besides me and my best friends, who I made listen to my music collection on repeat while disparaging the age-appropriate bands they all enjoyed.
“Yellowcard? C’mon, guys. Let’s just put Van Halen or The Who on again.”
Pursuing Greatness
I decided that I wanted to pursue music professionally, and my dream school was Berklee College of Music in Boston. Berklee is the premier contemporary music conservatory in North America. If you want to study rock, pop, or hip hop, you go to Berklee. Famous alumni include John Mayer, Quincy Jones, Steve Vai, Melissa Ethridge, Al Di Meola… you get the point.
I prepared with my private guitar instructor for months. Mom drove me to Boston and sat outside the room during my 10-min anxiety-inducing audition, after which I waited months for the result.
Finally an envelope from Berklee arrived in the mail. My heart pounded as I tore it open to discover…
I got in.
Over 2000 guitarists applied and only 100 were accepted, and I was one of the chosen few. It’s one of my proudest moments, but the high didn’t last long. My father put the tuition cost on the table in front of me.
It was $52,000 per year (today it’s around $70,000).
Luckily at 17-years-old I was smart enough to realize that if you go $200,000 in debt and come out with a degree in electric rock guitar, you’re screwed for life. Dreams dashed, I accepted a full scholarship at a public state school which had a Music Production major.
Pivot!
During my freshman year of college the music industry was imploding on itself, and I wasn’t convinced in four years there’d be an industry to graduate into. So I abandoned the music major entirely and ended up pursuing a philosophy degree instead.
Throughout college I continued to gig in various rock bands, from joining a professional group in Buffalo as their second guitarist to playing lead guitar in my own original bands in Oneonta, my college town.
By senior year, however, I was hardly playing anymore.
My academic days were focused on preparing for graduate school in philosophy, while my nights and weekends were dedicated to building my business as a magician, which I’d somehow been getting paid to do since I was 16-years-old, in my free time outside of school and music.
At the last hour I turned down the PhD program offer to pursue magic as a full-time career.
Reigniting the Flame
In order to focus on magic I moved out of state and away from home. Building a business was a lot harder than I expected and in my focus I lost sight of music for nearly three years. It was miserable. I was miserable.
And then one day I read an article about how the cost of home recording software and hardware had come down so far it was starting to give local professional recording studios a run for their money.
“I wonder if dad and I both got the exact same software and hardware, if we could record music together, remotely?”
It turns out, yes. Quite easily, in fact.
So I started playing and writing again to give me and dad a way to stay connected while I was living out of state. We called our project Escher’s Enigma and proceeded to release three EPs and one full-length album over the next three years.
In 2015 I started to record demos for our most ambitious musical project to date, a full-length 80s prog rock inspired concept album, a story in music form. We figured it would be finished by late 2016.
And then my TEDx talk went viral and changed my life overnight.
Since mid-2015 I’ve been touring the world as a speaker and consultant on human connection. I spent three years writing my first book, launched a podcast, and built an entire new business as a “thought leader.” I also got married, my wife got her Masters, we moved a bunch of times, and bought a house.
I worked on new songs for that untitled rock opera whenever I could find a few hours here and there in between road dates, but for the last four years my father has mostly sat still, patiently waiting for me to finish writing and recording my parts so he could contribute his.
It was starting to look like this passion project would never get finished.
And then… pandemic.
When One Door Closes
Between March 12 and 14th I saw my entire speaking calendar of events into next year disappear, as if they never even existed.
It’s hard to describe the panic and devastation that ensued, given that my wife is pregnant with our first and I’m the primary breadwinner. But I’ve already written about that experience over the past few months. I built a new virtual speaking business, plus coaching, consulting, and online education. I’m just fine, financially and otherwise, so there’s no need to worry about me (Mom, I know you read my blog. Seriously, I’m fine). We’re all in the same storm, but there are a whole lot of people in a much worse boat than I am.
The unexpected consequence of having all this of time freed from traveling, and spending every waking second in my own house? We finished the rock opera! The album is called When the World, and the concept is this:
Imagine deities have to attend school to learn how to build and control universes. The album explores what happens when the ego of an inexperienced deity collides with the needs of its creation.
My father and I had an absolute blast completing this project over the last few months. It’s one of my very few sources of true joy in the midst of this emotionally, psychologically, and financially devastating pandemic.
(The other true source of joy has been spending time with my wife preparing the nursery for our baby boy, due this September).
The album was released yesterday on 7/7. We dropped a music video for the title track, “When the World,” alongside its release. While the album will be available for purchase on Amazon, we’ve also made it and our entire back catalog available for streaming on Soundcloud for free.
Sure, we’ve made a few bucks in the past selling our music, but no amount that would change anybody’s life, even in a pandemic.
Nearly everything else in my life has become monetized as part of my business, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Everyone’s got to make a living, and I happen to be in the business of intellectual property, or “thought leadership.” So of course I charge for my work, be it a speech, workshop, coaching session, or online course.
But there’s an increasing pressure to monetize even one’s hobbies, and that’s where I disagree.
Writing, performing, and producing this album with my dad set my soul on fire. And in order to keep that fire burning, I need the fuel to remain pure.
So if 80s-inspired prog rock is your thing, you’re going to dig this album. Watch the music video for “When the World” below and, if you’re into it, enjoy the whole thing, on us.
If you’re a professional musician, I’m not saying you should give away your music. Music’s your job, like speaking is mine. I’m saying if music’s your job, find something outside of music that sets your soul on fire. Then give it everything you’ve got, and share it with others.
The world needs more generosity. And we all need a little more joy.
Listen on Soundcloud or Spotify.
Purchase on Amazon.
