Diary of a Portland Musician

It’s lonely at the top

by Mr. Indie

I’m sure you’re all waiting with bated breath to hear about the debauchery that took place on the Commander Powell tour. Well sorry friends, but that would be an extremely short column. These guys are pretty tame, as am I, so there aren’t any swordfish or she-male groupie stories. There are things to discuss, however; I did a lot of thinking during my travels, as one tends to do when sitting in a van for six hours a day.

I’m in a predicament. Let me preface this by saying that I am by no means complaining. I realize I have a pretty sweet deal, but there are downsides to my situation that have been nagging me since I left, and what better forum in which to address those downsides than here?!

Imagine this: You’ve spent the past three years transitioning from “hired gun” to “songwriter”, and you’re super busy after finally quitting your day job and committing fully to your music. Now that you feel in control of your artistic life, your goal is to start bringing in some real money in order to get out from under your parents’ financial umbrella. And then, BOOM! Out of the blue comes an offer to re-join your friends’ fairly successful band for a few tours. You can turn them down and wait for your own projects to start paying the bills (which could be anywhere from a year to never), or you can accept and be gone a few months out of the year in exchange for financial independence. Seems like a no-brainer, right?

So you say “yes”, fly down for a month to learn all the songs, and embark on an April tour. While on tour, you learn about the next outing, being scheduled for July. Oh, and if all works out, there’s the mammoth two monther in the fall to support their new album. All of this makes any sort of continuity in the rest of your life—the part of your life that actually matters to you—next to impossible to maintain, and suddenly it seems everything revolves around this band that you don’t give a shit about.

And therein, my friends, lies the predicament. I don’t give a shit about Commander Powell. Don’t get me wrong, they’re a great bunch of guys who make really amazing music, and I’m honored to have been asked to play with them, but I’m not at all personally invested in the band. I feel like it would be stupid of me to walk away, but every night of tour, at multiple times in the set, I would find that there was one thought running through my mind: “God, I bet it sure is fun for Ronny and Zed to be playing their songs in front of all these people. I really wish I was here with my band instead of these guys.” Then after the show I would proceed to do ridiculous things like sign albums that I didn’t play on, or smile politely while repeating the mantra, “I’m glad you liked it, thanks for coming” over and over and over while dude after dude high-fived me and explained how much Commander Powell’s music has affected their life, all the while thinking “if they only realized that I have about as much to do with these records that they hold so dearly as that random guy who just threw up in the urinal…”

Not only are the weeks and months that I’m on tour with Commander Powell virtually wasted (aside from monetary gains), but the time I spend in Portland with my other bands and my girlfriend seems hurried and fragmented. I don’t know that there’s an immediate solution to this. Ideally, of course, I would start bringing in a steady income from my own music and quit Commander Powell, but that’s not going to happen any time soon, especially if I’m out of town four or five months out of the year. Hence, this apparent stepping-stone is, in many ways, a hindrance; no doubt I would get significantly more work done if I wasn’t in Commander Powell. Then again, people are much more likely to pay attention to my other projects now that I have the tagline, “member of Commander Powell” next to my name.

Is touring with Commander Powell getting me where I want to be in my life? Not really. It’s a job, bottom line; but at least it’s better than punching a time clock every day. I suppose the only sensible option is to stick with Commander Powell while working as hard as I can on my own music during my time at home, and maybe in three or four years I’ll be high-fiving my own fans for a living.

-Mr Indie

Most names have been altered to protect the privacy of persons/entities involved. Any similarities to actual persons or events are probably pretty accurate, but you can't prove anything.