Last night was my fifth gig of 12 in a row. Over 20 this month. (And that’s with the week off from the wedding.)
I’ve been blessed with a lot of work, but I was tired driving home from Lansing last night. I’ve put about 700 miles on my car this week alone. However, I woke up today reenergized! A little past 9 AM, Natalie was already working on journalism in her office, the dogs were playing chase in the house, and coffee was already waiting in the kitchen. I stumbled out of bed, wondering, “Where am I?”
You see, I keep having these dreams of going back to teaching. The dreams are from many perspectives:
- Being a first year teacher again,
- Not being a teacher but being expected to teach anyway,
- Waking up late for the first day of school,
- Grading papers late in the night,
- Being a high school student again in my own classroom!
Have you been seeing the back-to-school signs and Facebook posts, too? From a teacher’s perspective, you feel a tital wave approaching. You are looking for both your surfboard and life jacket.
It’s odd to express this, but the stress of being a musician on the road doesn’t even come close to the stress I felt from the teaching schedule. Dreaming about the classroom puts me in a panic again. I spent so much of my eight years being an English teacher under a pile of essays and sleep deprived. I loved working with kids and talking about writing and literature, but the classroom followed me home too often.
Last night after my set at the Pump House, I met some teachers in the audience who thanked me for my hard work. I said, “Oh, being a musician doesn’t feel like work very often!” They replied, “We mean for your teaching years, too. We teach math in the Lansing area…”
These kind teachers admitted recognizing that English teachers have it the hardest in the field. And last night I dreamed of those essays again. Full on nightmare.
I’d like to remind everyone to give a teacher some positive vibes these next few weeks. The start to school is exciting, but the semesters in the classroom are a roller coaster: The grading feels never ending; the curriculum and testing requirements are always changing; the politics, distracting; the classrooms are too crowded…Yet most teachers don’t lose sight of their mission.
Teachers are the best people on this world. I miss my colleagues, and I’ll be thinking of them a lot during my next 600 miles on the road through Michigan.
Good luck with your start of the school year.
The last view of room 227 before saying goodbye.
I’ve Hit the Year Mark!
Hi everyone, I missed sending a June newsletter because life got in the way. Natalie and I moved to Ann Arbor in the first week of July, only a few weeks before our upcoming wedding in August. It’s been a summer of change!
Plus, I’ve reached the year mark of when I left teaching to pursue music full time as a career. I’ve made it! I’ve played so many gigs, I’ve lost count. My car has over 160,000 miles on it, about 20,000 miles alone this year from seeing most of Michigan, as well as seven states with three tours.
Thanks for the support during my crazy ride. The letters from Holly High teachers, alumni, and students have been encouraging; the new faces signing up for the mailing list at shows has been validating; the new musicians and bands I’ve met along the way have been a great community.
After the wedding, I’ll be hitting the road again. October will be bring me to Canada to support Paul Federici on a week tour. And the fall will bring me back into the studio to record. Plus my drummer Stuart Tucker and I have some full band shows together in the fall in the Detroit area.
PS: Our bass player Kevin Vines’s wife Themba just had a baby! Congrats you two! My cousin Andrew Vial will be joining us on bass for a few gigs.
My first thought of today, and other days, since all days, past and present, mark violent tragedy, here and elsewhere, and I wonder what part in it all I play:
“As I walk through this wicked world/ Searching for light in the darkness of insanity. I ask myself/ Is all hope lost?/ Is there only pain and hatred, and misery? / And each time I feel like this inside,/ There’s one thing I wanna know: What’s so funny about peace, love & understanding?”
One problem I find with playing cover gigs is handling bar patrons that demand I play their favorite song, even after I politely say, “I don’t know how to play [insert song here].” [Usually, this request is for Creed.]
Some people won’t stop. They will say, “Come on man! You know it!” Others get mad. Many times they continue their request while I’m in the middle of playing a song.
My new tactic to end the conversation is to publicly compare said bar patron to my math teacher in fourth grade, Sr. Aquila. Sr. Aquila would make me stand at the board and demand me to do a math problem or spell a word I didn’t know. Making me stand at the blackboard didn’t make the ability to spell a word appear in my head, yelling at me to play a song didn’t make it appear in my head either.
When I end with, “Please don’t be like St. Aquila,” this statement usually gets them to go away with a chuckle. I recognize this will one day backfire and get me punched in the face, but for the time being, I’m happy to share my elementary school anecdote.
