Back In The Arms Of A Good Friend
A funny thing happened on the way to retirement.
I’ve been thinking about retiring from music. Not completely. I expect I’ll continue recording and releasing albums (though I think I’ll rely more heavily on digital distribution), but I’m not sure how much more I want to perform and tour.
Fact is, I’m a media executive. My day job is full-time, and then some. I’m on call 24/7. If I’m not online, they find me on my Blackberry. If they don’t find me on my Blackberry, they find me on my cell. I spend numerous weeks of my year in L.A., Miami, Las Vegas, Park City, and beyond. So I’m not sure how many more of the precious few weeks of vacation get I wanna spend on the road (fun as it can be). I’ve been thinking a lot about Thailand, Australia, Hawaii…
And I’ve been thinking a lot about how thankless it is to be a 34-year-old musician prostrating ones’ self to a 22-year-old booker.
Not to mention I’ve frittered away thousands of dollars on records and and release parties and t-shirts and tours, and never really made it into the black.
Not to mention I’ve been sick as a dog all week and am absolutely positive it has everything to do with my three-album, two-tour year.
So I’ve been thinking about retirement.
And as most things work, I got a nice little “feather in my cap” (as Rod Perez would say) yesterday afternoon when Rob emailed me that Jeff had emailed him to say that my cover of Matthew Sweet’s “Girlfriend” (available on my recently-released “Heartland”) was voted one of The Onion AV Club’s “Great Cover Songs of 2005.”
It’s not a huge deal, but it’s kinda cool. I mean, I could’ve been universally lambasted for ruining the song. Instead, seems like at least a few people out there are digging on it. In a short-and-sweet description wedged between Rilo Kiley and The Donnas, Christopher Bahn writes:
Just when you think you’re a big old oak tree falling to the ground in a empty forest, someone comes along and says, “I see you falling!”
Which — for today, anyway — is good enough for me.
