You want to see me mad....try to make me follow in someone's footsteps and do what they're doing. Every cell of my being has to be into the next step for me to take it. I don't care if massive success awaits, if it's not my step, it's not my steps.
When I was first signed as an artist, I had just spent 3 years running around New York City mostly alone reading, researching and buying records and listening....a whole lot of listening. I think I spent more time thinking about what it is we were trying to do, than actually doing. For me, it wasn't music we were making exactly but more of a collage, a painting with sound scapes and mood. I listened to a lot of Miles Davis and John Coltrane "Blue Trane" in my little East Village apartment while in acting school. My appetite remained soaking whet and I was never bored and I was very careful not to become one of those downtown guys chasing models. It can be done, whole days trauling in the cafes looking the part and getting no work done. After an early evening stroll for a coffee at Cafe Gitane, it was time to get to work. In the early days it was really hard to feel like I was getting things done. An artist has a canvas and he finishes his painting and moves onto another. We were entering the digital realm and the possibilities were immense. All of sudden we had too many options and had to start narrowing down the focus. Looking back, three years is not that long for someone who had never made a record or been in a studio before, not to mention playing instruments and writing lyrics and singing.
When you make a good record, there is a well worn path to this jackass at the mic and I wanted no part of it. I hated seeing pics of me, positioned to be the next big thing with images resembling past artist. All this new technology and we're expected to have careers like the old heroes. Fast forward to now, I'm on a strange new path. I don't recognize it and it seems like it could be uniquely mine. All the different streams are starting to add up to what looks like a sustainable career. Defining ones own success is very important. And uh....oh yeah...comparison is the thief of joy!
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