Blog 54: Band Management: Phoenix or Crows…

I’d been writing a weekly blog about seeing how far I could take the Egg Eaters, make them famous, manipulate the levers of power, all the ways to be charming and pushy and brave and game the system. Radio. Label. Press. It kind of worked. But it didn’t work. On February 28th of this year I wrote a blog post labelled “band mismanagement.” A lesson in being domineering. Then everything closed down. Music venues. Recording studios. Darkness descended. It hasn’t been a pleasant time. I have lost friends and I have witnessed friends fall apart. We lost someone recently. I didn’t sleep. Each night I waited for dawn in a stiff plank of anxiety, searching for something to push against, something to fight. I don’t know – searching for a metaphor – whether music was at the bottom of the well or that music is the rope that leads back up into the light. I do know that I have been making remote music, sneaking into dark basement jams, managing online music shows, making some porch music, listening and listening, talking and talking, texting and texting about music. It has taken on a greater importance. A lot of collaborations. And there is no better feeling than to collaborate with someone, share a song with someone, and have them respond through their art. That is like becoming brothers. I don’t like the weight necessarily. That music can lift me so high, laughing as I play – and then other moments when I feel excluded… I am sure it is not just me. I try to let everyone know, who shares music with me, who collaborates, that everything is gentle and kind and easy. A phoenix is the bird that rises from the ashes. A crow, a raven, is the bird that feeds on carrion, that spiritually can travel between the underworld and our world, that can fly into the darkness and return to the light.
Oh hell – this post went dark – and then stayed dark. I just want to write dance music. Nothing is worth writing unless you can dance to it. So how do you do it? How do you write dance music?