I’m pretty bad at keeping my online presence updated, and all too familiar with recapping a year’s worth of comings and goings in an apologetic post, but the best way I know how to sum up my music activity of the last year is simply that I mostly quit doing it.
I’ve always thought music, as a career, was a pretty selfish affair; we played music because we needed to, and if someone out there was attuned to it we were lucky, and if someone paid for it we were luckier still. “It’s not selfish at all, people need music,” people who needed music would say, and I’d try to accept some grace in that point of view; at least, until last year, when I stopped feeling lucky and instead felt angry.
It’s been a little over a year since the election, and while I wish hindsight was out there proving everyone wrong…here we are. Maybe now we’re just starting to learn how to navigate the debris of the new world order but a year ago things felt more uncertain. Music, of all things, felt completely arbitrary and unnecessary. “Well, people need music,” people would say, and I couldn’t help but think that wasn’t entirely true; people needed entertainment, so they wouldn’t have to think about consequence. And entertainment, to me, felt like the most useless assignment, providing a distraction from ourselves, who always seemed to elevate the worst of us.
For a good stretch of time, regardless of grace, I didn’t want to offer entertainment to anyone. The only way I know how to break through a headspace like that is to step away from it for a while, and so I did.
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As far as sabbaticals go, this one was pretty well-timed — I don’t talk about my family much on the internet when I help it, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention spending the entirety of last spring living in a pediatric transplant ward. My daughter was born with beta thalassemia; for her, the only treatment was a lifelong reliance on monthly blood transfusions. That is, until last year, when we were blessed with an opportunity to receive a new and groundbreaking genetic stem cell therapy. There are hurdles yet to clear but — a pretty great mark of progress — she had her port removed a week ago. There isn’t enough gratitude available for the team of doctors and nurses at both Children’s Minnesota and MHealth Fairview who made this possible, and not enough admiration for our brave neighbors, the kids and their families in the BMT ward.
I tiptoed back into the music world at Bones & Wire; took on a bit of production and recording and also wrapped up one of the more ambitious and fun projects I’ve been involved with, Jeremy Ylvisaker’s Break. What started as simple tunes with three or four guitar tracks recorded with a broken wrist straight into a computer ended up as 24 tracks of amplifiers and room sounds mixed into the most immersive daydream I could imagine. Take a listen if this is something you are into, which I think everyone should be every now and then.
I was driving through the Pacific Northwest with my friend Erik Koskinen when we learned of ICE’s invasion and subsequent occupation of Minnesota. We watched, as observers a thousand miles away, a brutal administration try their best to decimate our neighborhoods. I saw communities rise, protesting the demands of fascists. I saw them risk — and occasionally, lose — their lives for the safety of our neighbors. We met new communities in the audiences we played for, who offered solidarity and hope and accepted both as well. Our first show back home in Minneapolis, in the embrace of our exhausted friends, felt not much short of spiritual.
I’m not sure I’ve yet absorbed how necessary these sorts of connections are for all of us. I can’t be naïve enough to think anything I do as a musician could matter in this world, but for now I am willing to accept a little grace. Maybe, people out there need music. Maybe only I do. At the moment, that’s enough.