I’m no better than you, and you no better than I.

I won the WRSI singer/songwriter competition. I’ve barely ever won anything. Some baseball awards and a hundred bucks on Keno once. Oh, and a hundred bucks on a scratch ticket from my parents one Christmas. The prizes I received for winning this are a Martin LX1. Which is a cool, travel size mini-guitar. I like the way it sounds. Maybe I’ll put a pickup in it and play it live sometime. I also won some recording time at Signature Sounds Studios. 10 hours. That’s great. I already have a song in mind to do there. Maybe it will be available on a split 7” with someone. Sometime. Who knows? I also won a portable PA. Hands down the most important part of all the prizes that were rewarded to me. I haven’t picked it up yet. When I do, it will serve as a permanent system for our in-store performances at Night Owl and also as a rehearsal PA. I used to lug the PA from the Brass Cat back and forth every Saturday night. I played on Johnny Memphis’ show yesterday afternoon. That was fun. I played “Ghosting” because the River has been playing it constantly from what I hear. This all means so much to me. I’m shocked and most certainly pretty embarrassed about the whole thing. I’m completely grateful to Marty for talking me into joining. And equally thankful towards those of you who judged this thing. I had a great time playing with Alex, Brendan, Eric and Kyle. All great writers.


I am most certainly no better than any of the aforementioned folks. Music is subjective. Completely. You know, dancing about architecture. Everyone reserves his/her right to like/dislike anything that they wish. I personally didn’t think I had a remote shot of winning. Why? I thought that the River would be looking for someone who was a little more straight-forward pop/country songwriter. You know, someone who fit (what I thought was) their style. I rarely listen to radio. So when I put on the River last week I was thrilled to hear them playing some great contemporary bands like Rogue Wave, Sigur Ros, Spottiswood, Lou Barlow, Nada Surf etc. That made me nervous. Oh God I thought maybe I do fit. I still didn’t think I would win though. Truly. I was shocked to receive the phone call from those guys telling me I had won.

I would like to clear the air on a few things too. This was a competition. Yep. There were several rounds and one winner picked. I have never, and never will, see music as a sport. I’m a big sports fan. I find it hard to even talk about both in the same night. They’re two very different visceral and electric beings. I’ve never once played a single note thinking that I was going to “blow someone off the stage” (a phrase I’ve heard from tons of people of the years that still makes me cringe). I’ve never felt I was better than anyone else in any musical way. I can play guitar pretty well. I can’t do simple math in my head. I can reach the things on the high shelves in people’s homes for them. I can’t cook very well. I’ve just recently learned how to sing. I can’t fly an airplane (or even get on one). I can throw a baseball pretty hard and accurately. I can’t do anything that requires building and/or fixing anything with my hands. I can play bass, piano, drums and a small handful of other things. I can’t dance. At all.

What I guess I’m saying is, don’t we all have lists like this? Do any of the things on them make us any better than anyone else? Of course not. I think it’s a great brevity meter. It should allow us to acknowledge ourselves as imperfect. It should also allow us to harness our abilities and accept them for exactly what they truly are. Trivial. I’m no better than you, and you no better than I.

So I won. I won because there were a handful of people that were judges that evening that just happened to like my music. I never changed myself at all during the course of this competition. I still took my dog for a walk every morning. Busted my ass all day long and played music that night for a group of sweetly attentive people. Same notes that I play when I play at the flywheel. Same words as when I play at some bar. Same in-between song banter as always. I will never sacrifice my integrity for personal betterment. I will never sell out. Music means too much to me to do that. To anyone brave enough to think I would do so I would appreciate them telling me that to my face. So I could fucking drop them. I will never change what I do and how I do it. What I think or why I think it. Who I am and why. Never.