Looking for My People
Over the past few weeks I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about music. Not songwriting. Not recording. Not performing. Music itself, and particularly the kind that happens before anyone hears it. The kind that happens when somebody says, “What if we tried this?” and somebody else immediately replies, “Wait, do that again.” The kind that happens in rehearsals, garages, basements, living rooms, and occasionally in studios. The kind that is built together.
For the past several years, I’ve spent a lot of time developing my singer-songwriter side. I’ve written more songs during this time than at any other point in my life. I’ve hosted open mics. I’ve played showcases. I’ve learned how to stand in front of a room with nothing but an acoustic guitar and a story and try to make a connection. I’m grateful for all of it. I’ve learned a tremendous amount about songwriting, performance, vulnerability, and communication. I’ve met wonderful people and become a better musician because of those experiences. And none of that is going away.
The funny thing about all of this is that it is happening at exactly the same time as two other things. The first is that I’ve been watching Rush perform on stage again for the first time in over a decade. Neil is, of course, not there, but Annika is absolutely killing it, and it means that she, Geddy, and Alex are out there having a freaking fabulous time. You can see it in their faces: the love they have for the music, for each other, and for simply being there together and goofing off. At the same time, I’ve been reading a biography of The Cars and finding myself struck by the relationships between Ric, Ben, Elliot, David, and Greg, and by the way each of them arrived with their own influences, instincts, and ideas. Yes, Ric was steering the ship, but each member brought something unique and weird, and together they created something that belonged to all of them and to none of them at the same time.
As I sat with those thoughts, I found myself thinking less about the music itself and more about the people making it. Not in a nostalgic “things were better then” sort of way, because I don’t actually believe that. Most musicians I know are still growing, still learning, and still finding new things to say. But there was something in those stories, and in watching Geddy and Alex on stage, that kept drawing my attention back to the relationships. Not simply the friendships, although those matter too, but the creative partnerships. The way one musician’s instincts challenge another’s assumptions. The way a song becomes something larger than the person who first brought it into the room.
And somewhere in there I started to realize that what had been nagging at me for the past year or two wasn’t really a question of genre at all. The more I thought about it, the more I found myself thinking about people rather than songs, rehearsals rather than performances, and collaborations rather than recordings. I realized that I was feeling lonely.
I grew up playing with other musicians. Not simply around them, but with them, building something together. I had collaborators whose influence on me remains impossible to overstate. There was Chris (the other one), whose guitar playing constantly pushed songs into places I never would have found on my own. There was Nils, whose bass playing could somehow be both the foundation and the secret melody at the same time (and who was 100% a better musician than any of the rest of us). And there was Don, our drummer, who wasn’t just the drummer. He was often the spirit of the thing, the person who reminded us that music was supposed to be joyful, loud, messy, and alive.
Life happened, as it tends to. People moved. Interests evolved. The band had ended long before then, as bands often do, and Don passed away in 2020. The songs remained, and so did the friendships, but somewhere along the way I got used to making music alone.
Not entirely alone, of course. I’ve been fortunate to be part of wonderful musical communities over the years. I’ve shared stages, songs, and conversations with talented and generous people who helped me grow in ways I could not have managed on my own. But over time I’ve come to realize that being part of a musical community and building music with other people are not quite the same thing. Both matter, and both are valuable, but recently I’ve realized that it is the second one I’ve been missing.
To be fair, this isn’t entirely missing from my life. One of the highlights of most months is getting together with my friend Ken Mattsson. We usually spend two hours talking about music, life, gear, songwriting, and whatever else happens to be on our minds, followed by an hour of actually playing. Which, now that I write it down, may be one of the most musician-like ratios imaginable. The point is that those afternoons consistently leave me energized, and perhaps that’s part of what I’ve been paying attention to as well.
Anyway, it’s not the applause. It’s not even the performance itself. It’s the collaboration, and maybe even the rehearsal. It’s the moment when somebody hears a song differently than I do and suddenly it becomes better than either of us imagined. It’s the accidental mistake that somehow becomes the hook. It’s the conversation that happens without words when a group of musicians are all trying to build the same thing at the same time.
People hear “band” and often assume this means I want to play louder. To be fair, I probably do. I have a suspicious number of electric guitars for someone who claims to be an acoustic performer. But this isn’t really about volume. It’s about companionship and creation within friendship. It’s about discovering what happens when talented people bring different perspectives to the same piece of music and collectively turn it into something that none of them would have created on their own.
The truth is that I still love the wit and nuance of a well-crafted lyric and a room quiet enough to hear it. Those things are part of me now, and they always will be. But there’s another musician in here too: the one who likes arrangements, the one who hears drums that aren’t there yet and can’t quite figure out how to conjure them out of the various drum loops on his computer, the one who keeps wondering what the bass player would do in the second verse to counter or harmonize with the melody. It’s the musician who misses looking around a room and knowing that everyone is building the same thing together, or noticing that the drummer just shifted the beat and is sitting there with a crappy grin on his face trying to figure out if or when the rest of the band is going to notice.
I don’t know exactly what comes next. Maybe it’s a band. Maybe it’s a recording project in the spirit of Desert Sessions. Maybe it’s a handful of musicians getting together once a month to see what happens. I’m genuinely not sure.
What I do know is that after spending several years developing one side of my musical life, I’ve become aware that another side has been quietly raising its hand. I don’t feel like I’m moving away from anything. If anything, I feel grateful for the communities, experiences, and friendships that helped me become the musician I am today. What I feel is a pull toward something, even if I can’t quite see its shape yet.
I’m looking for my people again.
And if you’re reading this and recognizing some of yourself in these words, perhaps we’re looking for the same thing.
-Chris