If you make a backup plan, you will fall back on it. I've heard these words of wisdom from another fellow traveller before. Almost 30 years ago I picked up a guitar and I knew what my life was going to look like immediately. It was the day before high school and I found my dads' old Kent electric in the basement, dusted it off and walked to the mall to spend the tiny sum of money I had saved up on a pack of strings at Harmony Hut. I was scared, going to a school the next day I had never gone to, my head filled with poison lies from my former private school classmates about a public school filled with drugs, knives and fist-a- flying. "First day you have to kick someones ass in the lunchroom, or you'll never survive!" Yes, I'm not making this up, this is what I was facing, and it wasn't true. But I had to do something, sports I hated, I found school boring and was socially pretty akward. On my good days I wore the class clown uniform, on my bad days I just kept to myself.
So music really saved me. I could be "cool" with music.
High school, 2 years at Berklee, dropped out and started playing in bands around Baltimore. Good bands, no, great bands. And those bands came and went with little to show for it than a great time.
It was around this time I started forming a backup plan. Perhaps it was the smartest thing I could do at that time. We all need money to eat right? And punching a clock just doesn't suit me. So I started fixing amps. I got good at it, really good. That was 20 years ago.
Last summer I had to great fortune to spend my birthday with Kim Deal in a dark, roasting studio in Los Angeles helping here work out some new tunes. That was truly a gift, very intimidating and a great flashlight illuminating how much of my ego has gone quiet. I felt good about how I responded to her needs, i.e., if she didn't dig something I was playing it was great to not get impatient and just say "okay, what would you like?" If she did dig something even better. My biggest observation though was no matter how much ability you have, talent, chops etc., it doesn't make up for someone just doing something every day for 30 years. I felt lost at times. Here was this person in front of me who is pretty psychedelic (in a great way!) and probably couldn't work at any other job, but the second she started playing an instrument or singing, that focus and intention just killed me. I felt like I had lost a lot of time along this journey, plan B space had consumed 40 hours a week for the last 20 years of my life.
Today I feel sad and frustrated about this. I've had moments in the last year where I didn't even know if I can play as well as I can solder. I'm going to go ahead and feel these feelings till they are done, and see what is on the other side. It's very hard to put plan B down after you've been living it for so long. I've helped alot of folks along the way, brought a lot of smiles to alot of faces. It's enabled me to have a comfortable existence for so long. And I know that if I chose to work on music 40 hours a week, something else would have happened by now. How do I trust something that I don't know? I make music here and there now and have little incentive to do anything with it. The messages from my peers screaming "but you are such an excellent amp fixer, just keep doing that cause I need your services!" are so loud, much louder than the occasional friend, customer, peer saying "Jeezus Jef, if I could only play like that, what the fuck are you living this plan B for?"
My only answer today is I've been living plan B from outer space rather than plan A from inner space. Outer space is that old "approval" space. What can I do to feel safe, or give the illusion to my loved ones that I am safe and earning a living. Don't get me wrong. I appreciate the B plan. It has provided. But not knowing what the A plan looks like without giving it my all is torture.
So what's next? Do my best to live what I tell young folks every day. Is this something you really want to do? Than just go do it, and don't live plan B from outer space. You can do it, and so can I.
xojb