The Journeyman.....

It was 1993 when I took the big plunge....finally putting the final touches on the rebuilding of my parent's home and lives from the tragedy that was 1992 and Hurricane Andrew, I felt that it was time to set out and conquer the world....I had learned a few country licks, I had played on a few local recordings, and of course I was ready to be a "studio musician"......looking back on it now and knowing what I know now....oh if you only knew what a delusional state of mind I was in!!! ...........not because there's anything with dreaming but because I felt that I was ready to show up into town and have the audacity to call myself a studio musician....after many many years of researching this, I'm here to tell you that the A-List session players are not made......they're born.  The job description of a studio/session guitar player to walk into a studio that costs $150 -$300 an hour and on the spot play a song that you've never heard nor played before just by looking at a chord chart....except that it's not like piano music where it's all written out for you...you have to INVENT a part...ON THE SPOT....a part worthy of becoming a pop staple for thousands if not millions of guitar players to study for hours to try to replicate well enough to post on YouTube and brag that they "learned it note for note"........and by the way....you only get 2 or 3 takes at best, because in the studio time is money...lots of it......and then you need to invent good and fitting solos for these songs... etc etc.... Suffice it to say....this was NOT me.....the good news? there were about 10,000 other idiots who thought the same thing, so I wasn't alone in Nashville.

There was one thing  that I DID have a very good grasp on  at that time though.....one thing I HAD CHOPS !! lots of practice and intuition.... one thing that I was able to march into Nashville and demand work on........................................... a construction crew :)

I had just spent 2 years helping my parents rebuild from the hurricane damage, and not only at my parents' home but several other places in Miami, with friends, etc etc......I knew how to use my hands and work tools....so when I moved to Nashville in the fall of 93 I found construction work with a trim carpenter named John Ezell.... It was a fun (NOT) winter...Mr. Miami with his little tan and long curly hair in my first Tennessee winter.....oh boy.  I remember a day that I had to help another contractor pour a cement footer....(trim carpentry?) the high temperature of the day was 9 DEGREES!... i was manning the portable cement mixer....water hose in hand and covered in cement dust I stood there next to this little clunker....it was rusty and made this squeaking sound as it turned....the squeak and cadence of the turning mixer got ingrained in my brain....I can still hear it to this day......I'd swear it was saying..."Welcome to Nashville, Welcome to Nashville, Welcome to Nashville..."....I was so cold and wanted to literally cry and run back to the sun and mosquitoes in Miami.....but I kept reminding myself ..."no one's making you be here....you're here because you want to be....you're here because this is a stepping stone to bigger things...." and somehow the passion of youth and my dreams kept me there through the winter time until I got my first TV gig pulling cable for a camera crew....another story for another blog.

During that long winter with the trim carpentry crew I learned so so much (I should mention that I had done construction in one form or another for almost every year during the summers since middle school).....still....I learned more than I ever dreamed from those guys....bunch of crass and rowdy rednecks....and I miss them til this very day.....to put it mildly, a cultural shock for Mr. Dade County.

Around the second month that I worked with this crew I started hearing a word getting thrown around by the contractors and carpenters.......this word was "journeyman"....this word revolutionized the way that I saw myself as a musician and a person.  The reality is that growing up, as many of my closest friends will attest...I worshiped Dann Huff''s work....him, Chris Rodriguez and Terry McMillan....I wanted to be them....I bought entire record collections based on their presence on these records....to this day you might wanna avoid getting me going about Dann Huff....and to top it all off now he's a superstar producer.  More on that at the end....when I realized that I was NOT studio player material (maybe being a bit hard on myself at the time) I was very demoralized...I was ready to hang it up and go home......

it was about Christmas time and Bic (one of the site supervisors) said something about a "Journeyman".....I think the context was...."Well if he can't handle it then find me a journeyman who can...."..........my curiosity was piqued......I pulled Bic aside and said....."Hey man, at risk of embarrassing myself......what the heck is a journeyman?"  Bic, who normally would have seized on the opportunity to tell me a story to set me up for a prank of some kind actually took a moment to educate me......

"A journeyman is a term we use around here for a carpenter who has enough years in the business to not only be entrusted with most any job but to not embarrass the contractor or master carpenter by being unprofessional in front of a client....he knows enough about tools to know what's expected on the job, he knows enough about current trends and styles to field questions from the clients if  the contractor is not around, and most importantly he does not need to be a master carpenter, just a damn good journeyman.".......................I know I used quotes and although it's not 100% word for word....it might as well have been....because that explanation changed my view on playing guitar forever.

Master carpenters in the state of Tennessee back then had to take a test to prove that they were in fact masters at the craft....no faking that.  Journeymen did not have the pressure of having to prove anything to anyone other than the clients... and really to themselves...all of a sudden there was a new breath of life for my future as a guitar player.....all of a sudden the reality of all-or-nothing didn't seem as ominous to me....I wasn't even 100% sure why, but I knew that God was trying to tell me something.

It took me close to 20 years but I figured it out one day........

I'm about to be very transparent about my guitar playing.....we're all our own worst critics (if we're smart) because it's best to find our weaknesses in private and work them out, than to walk onto a stage and have 1500 people witness them first-hand.  I'm a pop-rock-blues guitar player....I'm a product of the 80s and this is at the core of what I play....blues, pop, rock....after all is at the center of most guitar music....I've been blessed with the opportunity to play on a lot of studio projects through the years....some better than others, but a "session player".....I am not......that's the honest to goodness truth...I'm not a jazz player, and although I can play the modern country stuff, you're gonna see me break a sweat in concentration......but I love the challenge.....I'll be glad to learn a jazz song, country song, or even classical if you need me to. Somewhere along the way I was blessed with the opportunity of learning to play piano, harmonica and a couple of other instruments that will hopefully help me to serve the client better....maybe make the stock a little higher? who knows? simple business practice....no ego.

The challenge is to listen to what the client wants and try my hardest to give them exactly what they want...to get out of my own way and recommend when appropriate but not insist on getting my way...I want to strive to become good enough as a guitar player that you throw me into any situation and I will make you look good....not because I want to be recognized as a good guitar player, but because I want to be recognized as the guy who you feel comfortable and safe standing behind you as you sing.  I strive to learn each day how to "serve the song" and consequently..you! ....how to not overplay nor underplay.....not to try to show every trick in my bag of tricks every time I plug my guitar in, and most importantly, when to learn to just NOT PLAY....and understand that my part in this particular moment....is absence.  I try to ingrain into my heart...conviction, that if you're paying me to play for you I NEED to spend time preparing this song for you, because even if I've played it 1000 times, you're needing me to play it imagining you singing it.... touching the strings in a way that complements your phrasing and voice timber and dynamic.....I love to look back and realize that I was stressing out at the prospect that I did not give myself enough time to get to the gig in case there was traffic...I love looking back and saying, "I should've  set 2 alarm clocks in case one did not go off"..........I don't ever want to lose the element of service, reliability and dependability.

 Does this always happen?? not often enough!...I mean after all, no one likes being told not to play here, or not to overplay there.....but that's life, especially in a position of support and service....it's not about you....it's about the end product.....and so every time that I think about the fact that I started playing guitar at the age of 12 I've trained myself to remember 2 things...."After all this time, I should be so much better than I am" and "I need to improve more".......this will forever be a work in progress...but one I'm determined to master.

The difference between the master carpenter and the journeyman is the focus on whom is served....the master carpenter has to live up to his title....the journeyman wants to live to hear his phone ring again.

Am I a journeyman guitar player? who knows, if I am, that's for others to determine, not me......and it's probably best for me to never know how far or how near I am to this undefinable goal.....lest I feel that I've arrived at a level of some kind and ease up on my desire to become better..........the truth is that out there somewhere.....there is a journeyman who's been doing it a few years longer than I have......and what's the urgency in knowing anyways?, as long as the phone keeps ringing and someone somewhere needs you then a wise man should just enjoy the ride and make memories of the journey............like a seasoned journeyman.

oh.....and  I wanted to share this about Dann Huff and Keith Urban's work together.  Enjoy the work of this Master Carpenter....Dann Huff.

Each and Every Highway....

So yeah...its pretty obvious that I've been introspective the last few weeks....its evident by the stuff I've been writing both on my blog as well as the music I've been writing....I guess we all have those times when we think and think about everything......you think about your life, about the things you've lived, the things you've done and the things you've seen....

Without sounding like I'm bragging, I've been blessed with the opportunity to see some pretty amazing things....and had the misfortune of ending up on the wrong end of life just as many times.... I've flown in a helicopter over the slums of Rio de Janeiro, I've walked with a $65,000 camera through the most crime infested and gang riddled streets of Mathare Valley in Kenya, I've stood on the border between Mongolia and the Siberian desert watching the sun beating down on me at 11pm....I've stood at the base of the Acropolis in Athens, Greece....I've felt the brush of alligators on my bare legs in the swamp of the Everglades.....I've sat and chatted with Palestinian gunmen who begged me to film them and let them tell their side of the story of the Israeli Palestinian conflict... I've swam in the Indian Ocean waters of Mombasa....I've been inside an actual chamber of Parliament in London literally in the shadow of Big Ben....I've rolled tape in the middle of a riot in Chiapas, Mexico....and speaking of riots, I watched Woodstock 99 go up in flames quite literally in front of me....walked the dusty streets that my grandfather walked on in San Javier, Bolivia....I've been in the control and command room of a fully operational Navy Destroyer and once walked into Donald Rumsfeld's office in the heart of the Pentagon.

I've driven miles from here to the moon and back....I know backroads and shortcuts in at least 5 states...I've driven through the rockies, through the backroads of  Nicaragua, the streets of Honduras, the curves of the Smoky mountains and the blue Ridge parkway....Blizzards in Pensylvania...taken a Greyhound with my best friend from Philly to Miami and learned the meaning of frustration through it....i've witnessed the oceans of bicycles in China, and sipped the worlds most awful coffee in Manila....

So so so much more...overflown the lines of Nazca... watched hysterical mothers looking for their missing children after the earthquake in Pisco, Peru....smelled the stench of the mass graves in Haiti....overflown the carnage left behind by hurricane Katrina all over the gulfcoast....I've been hit with bottles in east Jerusalem, punched in Miami, Mexico, Charlotte, etc....  shot at in Beit Jala, arrested in Bethlehem, detained in France.....and had a 30lb buzzard fly through the car window and land on my lap in Recife, Brazil.

I've lived a life that's full.....said Elvis Presley....I've traveled each and every highway...and the one thing I've always walked away thinking was....."I feel like a Forest Gump class idiot ...." and "Boy have I got a story to tell...."....every time that I think that I've seen it all I realize that I so have not......I realize that once God knows what the future holds....there have been a few times that I have found myself negotiating with God....."Get me out of this and I'll.......(Fill in the empty promise).......

A little tidbit of idiosyncrasy about me is that I ALWAYS have had music with me wherever I go....be it a walkman back in the day, a portable CD player or an ipod ....and the one common song every single time was this one with these lyrics.....it made that midnight sun in Mongolia all that much more of an introspective experience....I never felt so far from home like I did that sunlit night. I hope you like it and I hope you'll answer my question at the end :)




So what about you? what's your craziest experience where you thought you'd be lucky to be alive the next morning....?? (all I ask is that you keep it PG-13 at worst) lol :)

Changes.

You know?, I'm into my fourth decade of life on this wonderful ball of mud we call  home...I've noticed that we live in a series of cycles...I could tell you from personal experience how every 5 to 7 years things blossom, bloom, and die...and on the 8......new beginnings....heck...it's Biblical....

You can pretty much see how every generation in the rock and roll era defined it's own musical identity every 10 or so years....but really it's not 10...it takes a year or so for something to catch on...and on the other end of the decade it takes about a year or so for something to get so annoying, overdone and baseless and yes a year to flush it all away and make room for something else....

Take the 80s for example....pop rock got so ridiculous that it had no choice but to die away and get re-incarnated (for better or worse) with everything the former was not....out of tune, basic, under produced, and raw....the antithesis of everything 80s rock was....

for example.....by 92 this was dying...(for obvious reasons)






and it was being replaced by this....




"Stupid and contagious" as the song says.....well it was contagious and music once again redefined itself for the next decade and so forth and so forth....

I used to think that the rock and roll of my high school years was invincible and would never die...."pop-metal will never die" I used to say.....and to a certain degree it never does...because it lives in the hearts and ipods of millions of overgrown juveniles like me....but I digress....

The reality is....NOTHING is safe from change....in fact....change is one of the only earthly things that are a sure bet....there is nothing new under the sun and nothing man-made will last forever....change is just a part of life.

I HATED Nirvana and grunge......with a passion....so much so that I practically boycotted the 90s.....my attitude was "I refuse to give up all my time of practicing scales and arpeggios to go and purposely play out of tune and sloppy...." so I became a fan of country music because they still gave a rip about making skilled music....

During these years Nashville was booming....Reba, Garth, Diamond Rio, Vince Gil....they were happening!!! and I was right in the middle of it.....I made the quintessential move with 2 suit cases and 2 guitars to Nashville to "make it".

In all reality and looking back.....grunge wasn't only inevitable....it was NECESSARY....and if I could relive history and know what I know now, I'd probably embrace those changing times....change is unavoidable....necessary....BUT... sometimes (often) hard as nails.

If I have an Achilles heel in my character it would be... being sentimental....I am prone to remembering details about good and happy times, down to the scents, the feeling of butterflies in my stomach, sunshine on my skin and everything that makes me savor a happy and unforgettable moment.  I often find myself thinking about the people that move in and out of my life....the ones that somehow affected and helped shape my life or character, and then just disappeared into their destinies.....and man, how much it means to me every now and then when an old friend tracks me down.....just to say...."man I was thinking of you and just HAD to see how you're doing......

I don't like it when change is brought about by losing the people I love....this last year I lost a friend and mentor....a brother whom I admired and respected and shared SO much life with....meaningful people have come and gone....some by life some by choice......change....it comes in all sizes and flavors.

It's so easy to go down pity party road.....I have been the worst at this....and with the exception of a few close friends who REALLY know me.... I can have a pity party without anyone knowing it and with a smile on my face........even if I'm bleeding to death on the inside...all in the name of not losing my dignity...

Psalm 103:2 says... "Praise the LORD, my soul, and 

forget not all his benefits--" .... 

I now believe with all of my heart that change is easier to cope 

with and it's easier to deal with when we remember the things that God's brought us through and how He never fails (in spite of how often we fail Him.)

For reasons that are pointless to bring up...this has been a tough year for me....in some ways one of the toughest ever.....I found myself in the old familiar place of the knot in the pit of my stomach and blurred vision about the future.......it seems like I've constantly had a choice to make.....go down pity party row again and some more....or see it for what it is.....another change in my life.....Sure enough.!!...it's been 7-8 years since the last major, catastrophic and painful change in my life.....and here, all of a sudden, here I am looking at the future....

7 years ago I quite literally felt like I would not make it....God's love and my children literally saved me from self destruction and I learned so much....or so I thought....until I found myself again questioning God in the same pathetic and faithless ways....I found myself blaming God for problems that I got myself into and that He warned me about.... me....me... me....selfish and at the same time the very  cause for all of my troubles. 

Sometimes when I get overwhelmed, in the evening after business hours I sneak into the chapel where I work  and I'll sit at the piano and just play......I grew up Baptist as a child and somewhere filed in the back of my mind are a hundred old hymns that somehow I remember word for word........ I've always found comfort, when there's none to be found, in just going back to the basics of my spiritual make-up and rebooting....old hymns do that for me....they comfort me.........a couple of weeks ago it was Friday night and I wanted something that I could not have.....home was the last place I wanted to be......and I started thinking of some very silly choices of what I could do with a perfectly good Friday night because I could not get my way.......thankfully I ended up in front my keyboard and somehow found myself quietly playing in the dark..... "Count your blessings, name them one by one....count your blessings, see what God has done....count your blessings, name them one by one....and it will surprise you what the Lord hath done...."

Man those words sunk into me...like a rock in a lake....I was humbled and embarrassed at the same time.... 7 years ago it felt like my life was destined to suck forever.....and yet God got me through.....7 years ago I was terrified that my children would grow to be troubled and dysfunctional people....and they're not...they're happy and creative and mischievous and funny and loving........7 years ago I thought that I would suck as a single father and that I was too ignorant to raise them on  my own.........we're doing just fine....and in ALL of that I see nothing but God's hand and grace....God gave me another chance to get behind my guitar and play more over the last 4 years than ALL of my other 27 years playing guitar combined!!.....to live my dreams....to have the most amazing musical community that I have ever had....to have the best friends that any person could ever dream of having......to live out dreams that I never thought I would.....

and yet I was thinking some very ridiculous things because I could not get my way in one little area of my life.......

I wonder what God thinks about such non-sense....."How can you possibly be falling apart at the end of another 7 year cycle!!?? have I not proven to you that I'm bigger than any of that??? have I not proven that I will forgive you and carry your sorry butt every time YOU screw things up??.....what's it gonna take"???

I was ashamed.....I started counting my blessings......... health, career, friends, healthy happy kids, a car that's been making a horrible knocking sound for 3 months and is still running......etc etc etc.....SO MUCH!! and in counting  my blessings I found that I had absolutely no moral leg to stand on to throw any more pity parties.......

I'd like to tell you that I learned my lesson that night......I did......ask me if it has changed my life and now i'm living from victory to victory.........no.  I have my moments....the ups and downs that we all do.....but I HAVE a new sense of excitement about tomorrow....about the possibilities that come with every sunrise.....about the grace that will find me every morning......and about the life that I get to live with the people who love me......so many of them....another blessing to count.

and so the cycle starts again.....and the challenges now for me....are to continue to count my blessings and be thankful....and to make choices that make the next cycle not a new start but a continuation of all the great things that my Father has done for me and in me......no more new beginnings....I'm not "starting" anything over again...I'm going to ride the momentum of the life that God has given me...the pretty and the ugly....and keep swinging for the fences because I believe this will make God proud. Day by Day, minute by minute, challenge by challenge.

but then again, I'm just a guitar player.....what do I know?...............Jesus love me......this I know.