A couple weeks ago I had a gig in Santa Rosa. This was the night after I had done a live recording for Danny Click and the Hell Yeahs for an upcoming release. It had taken a LOT of planning and effort, favors, hours, etc…. but it went off great. I totally brought the A game to this one (I mean, I always try to, but this was the first with my 32 input HD rig and not even a hiccup….. as it should be). Point being, I had been doing a ton of prep, even setting up the day before the gig, then working the entire afternoon and night of the gig until 2:30a, and then leaving again barely 12 hours later for MY gig.

 

Not un-fun, at all… it was great. Only thing is that we had just welcomed our daughter into the world not even four weeks before, and I was sticking Sasha with Delilah AND Ziggy a lot of consecutive nights. Getting kids to bed is sometimes pretty tough, and I felt kinda bad for her. But I still did it anyway….. she always encourages me, even though there is usually not any significant money coming in from this kind of thing- and this was no different.

 

I was watching the band before us, and I started tripping out a bit on everything: we were playing a pretty poorly attended gig, but I was watching a drummer (who I went to college with when I was attending SRJC) just totally spreading his wings- and he is a great drummer. He had played in another band, also at a gig with us, awhile back, and it was not the kind of situation where he could play like he was now: basically creating parts that were entertaining for him, and at the same time serving the music perfectly. It is a lot like how I try to play when I get behind the kit, although I am nowhere near as good as he is.

 

Anyway, then we played, then another band played, we all had fun, it was a total "musician's show" in my opinion, I came home with a box of squash from the leftover Farmer's Market stash, and all was good. Totally worked to hell after lots of time and effort invested in the days leading up to this, but not anything to complain about.

 

The next morning I was sitting on my deck with my daughter in my lap and playing my son's little acoustic guitar while she smacked at my hands, for like 45 minutes….. Ziggy in the background saying "sing, daddy- sing!"  (he has no idea that this is not gonna happen….)……. and I realized that I am REALLY very lucky to be doing all of these things. This is how my life is, and has been for the past 15+ years (except for the kid thing, obviously), and even though sometimes I am freaking out about lack of money, or lack of work, or lack of a college degree, or whatever……. I don't think I would ever want it to be different.