Pineapple Pizza.
The question is always why.
Why is there toothpaste in my hair?
Why do these squirrels insist on digging holes in my dying lawn?
Why did I work with the wrong people to release our last album?
To give my brain a break and/or to be as impartial as my feisty mind will allow: I didn’t know these were the wrong people. In voice and in person, they seemed like genuine slices of pineapple pizza. In reality and as time traveled, they exposed themselves as pool-hall grifters, just trying to claw out a percentage of tour income, of royalties. All without lifting one chalky finger.
It is depressing to join forces with lazy, evil meatballs. From a whisper to a shout, all the basic objectives and requests were argued, delayed, ignored, and eventually exterminated. Leading to a year-long, low-budget battle with these minor-league demons.
We fought back with switchblade combs and howling melodies, shifting to a different name for a nearly-simultaneous release: The Lowlifes, Still Summer.
The Lowlifes. If anyone is reading this, while I tap the imaginary microphone to make sure it’s on — I wanted to claim personal responsibility for our troubles by insulting ourselves first. Basically, I was throwing the first stone. At my very own glass house. Because I am ultimately accountable for what goes down in my garden.
But it was more than a musical middle finger. It was an assertion of love. (If you gagged at the last sentence, I get it. I gag whenever my sisters eat cottage cheese.)
Despite all unpleasantries that gurgle up from the depths of the music business — the serpentine journalists, the lecherous lawyers, the ego-driven agents, the overlords of publishing — I love what I do.
I don’t know where I belong in this world, but I love music and I love writing it.
The point isn’t to fit into an easy, empty acceptance. The point is to do everything I can to be myself and then start turning, spinning, revolving outward. Toward anyone else who weaves their fingers through a chain link fence, contemplating the cars from an overpass on a hazy summer afternoon.
Studios and stages become downright awkward and embarrassing when it all falls apart. But this damn trajectory has never been painless. I was just trying to score the simple connections. I still am.
I guess that’s what happens with satan impersonators and lousy contracts. Worthless and money-driven. A bad contract can really ruin a decent lifetime.
In the future, there will be none of that. From here on out, there will be silvery, linen trousers and full-sailed ocean dreams. There will be mountain rivers, picnic tables, oak trees. Welcome heat waves, all-consuming blizzards. Sipping on the realisms, while still wrestling with hope. And mostly, trusting the people who know what it means to love.