Does Music Matter?

The rehearsal space for my bands is the basement and it’s looked rough basically since 2021. Whenever I started really going back to work at The Current whenever I wanted to (we were never fully remote but they encouraged hosts to be remote as much as possible) the space went to shit. Piles of stuff, cables, detritus, turntables with Band of Gypsys on channel 1 and Eleganza on channel 2. Turntables are barely plugged in. The printer doesn’t work. My wife has a massive soda stream canister on the desk she uses to work down here. . .does she use a soda stream? Nope. Is that canister blocking most of the view of her monitor? Absolutely. But I knew Heiruspecs would have a lot of rehearsals for our upcoming shows. And I also now that a cluttered room and space is kryptonite for making me want to get in on the work. Write new music, write more of this blog here et cetera. If I’m stepping over my 2021 taxes sitting on the floor to get to the desk I won’t get to the desk as often. As I’m writing now I’m fresh off of 30 minutes cycling out of my neighbor’s sauna listening to “Best Jazz Songs of 2023” playlist on Spotify and feeling like 3/4 of a million dollars.

After I got the rehearsal space into pretty good shape I had the opportunity to come down and run a couple basslines before going to work. Some of the new Heiruspecs songs are a handful on bass, and let’s be honest some of the old ones are too. I feel in good shape lately on my instrument because of that monthly Big Trouble gig. . .plus a monthly rehearsal for said gig, plus practicing for said rehearsal and gig, it’s adding up compared to where I had been at. My fingers feel good, my ears feel pretty good. My spirit feels good on the instrument. I have a 1*15 Mesa Boogie speaker down here, with an Mesa MPulse600 Head I bought right when Heiruspecs started going out on the road. I don’t take it out of the basement anymore. It sounds so fucking good. I’m playing on flatwounds I’ve had on the bass since I was Dessa’s bass player. At least 6 years ago. I haven’t replaced a single string on my bass since becoming a father, I assure you of that. For a bass player working my corner, dead strings are beautiful. Anywho, I’m running some bass line and I remember just hitting a B on the second fret of the A string and the note and this thought washed over me: “this is the most important shit you do”. When you are an anchor of a band. When you are holding a note for just the right length, and you’re ready for the next part, and the drummer is locked in, and the writing is solid, and the band sounds energetic. . .is there something I do that is more than that? In a fundamental sense it feels less important than radio. I like radio more in many specific ways, I also like radio in a lot of philosophical ways more than performing my own music. But as far as importance, holding that B in the corner of this room that is covered with pictures of me and my friends having played music since the mid 90s, it’s centering. It’s reminding me that my life largely consists of a continuation of the things I thought were the coolest on earth before I did them. Every note felt so special. Bass is such a special instrument. It is the ultimate stealth instrument. It often doesn’t have to change when every other instrument does, it can also completely change the valence of a piece with an utterly subtle change. From time to time I reference an idea that Jeff Chang introduced me to in his book “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop”. The idea is that of dub history. You have the history of an event, of an era, of a person. And you also have the dub history, the B side, the smaller stories. Slate’s One Year program seems to be telling the dub history of an assortment of random years from the last 100 years. Basslines are the dub history of music. Not the guitar solos, not the lyrics, not the interview with the singer and the discussion about her belabored reworking of an earlier demo and turning it into gold. The dub history: legato, open string, passing tone, ghost note, unexplainable placement of a non-chord tone on beat one, one chord played across a song otherwise filled with single notes. That’s one of the most rewarding parts of Questlove being an icon. This is a dub historian on the mainstage. It’s exhilarating precisely because it’s not. It’s inspiring because Questlove’s stories are about scheduling sessions, being intimidated by drum machines, being overwhelmed by Dilla. It’s insider baseball. Playing that B I know I’m telling the dub history for Heiruspecs, a nothing band that means everything to a significant amount of people. A band that made some jams that have meant the world to some people. I know of one dude who has the lyrics of a Heiruspecs song tattooed on his arm. I got the dub history tattooed on my beautiful butt, the octave pedal settings, the dotted half note rest.

Jim Anton is the best bass player in Minnesota. John Munson is Minnesota’s bassist though. He played with Semisonic, that’s semi-iconic internationally but that’s the king shit right here. When you do the math I think they are the only BIG THINGS rock band from the 90s out of Minneapolis. In the intervening thirty years and the ten years prior he’s ran some great bands, collaborated with some people and generally is at the center of some great musical moments. I don’t know how much older he is than me but I’m going to say 12 years. That feels good. John Munson is 54 in my dub history of him. Maybe about 12 years ago I’m doing a thing at McNally Smith (not working there yet) and I believe he’s getting his band "The Twilight Hours” off the ground. John Munson at the time might not have been at a vastly different age than I am now, and I know he’s got kids in his life. But Munson mentioned that he and Matt Wilson were driving down to Chicago for a gig and they made this observation to each other: “this is simultaneously the most useless shit we do with our life and the most important”. And at the time Munson shared that with me I struggled to understand it. Driving to Chicago to play music seemed unimpeachably like the most important thing I do in my life. A distant second might be you know. . .working at a group home for kids with special needs? But driving to Chicago for a gig, what is better? What is more important? But now, age 42 me radio host and father of two, as almost every gig involves a serious interruption of previously scheduled activities, it involves time away from my kids, which involves more work for my wife (you see she’s already overworked, she’s reading PDFs through the shadows of a sodastream canister in a clean ass rehearsal space). I get it. But listen:

At that moment, when I’m hitting that B, it’s the most important thing in my life. Last night Heiruspecs played to a sold out Turf Club audience. We’ve been doing a Holiday Classic basically straight since the early 2000s, and for me this was one of the best. We debuted new music, the bass drum was loud as shit, I was really happy with our playing. THIS NEXT THOUGHT IS GOING TO SOUND ARROGANT AND VERY WELL MAY BE BUT I AM JUST GUESSING THAT YOU WILL ROCK WITH ME CAUSE YOU’VE COME THIS FAR. I have to accept that Heiruspecs has honest to goodness fans who like our shit, who listen to our shit, who care about what we do. It’s inarguably true that we do. We have decent listenership on Spotify, when we put out physical product a small but reliable cohort of listeners buy it. When we play people come out. One of the best rappers ever to come out of MN, Meta, just played a poorly attended show in Minneapolis. That’s a tragedy, the man is unbelievably gifted. As Heiruspecs was playing to a really big crowd last night I took a moment to be thankful. It’s not a guarantee that your crowd will stay with you, will put up with your shit. Meta should have that when he comes back to Minnesota. Simple. My struggle when I play up there is I think about my wife, and my neighbors and my high school friends who come out cause it’s a good night out and I think “what are they actually doing while we play. . .are they intent upon on deVon’s solo, are they connected to Felix’s lyrics?” Or are they looking at their phone, waving down a bartender, trying to remember the name of someone they recognize from across the room. Some of all of that happens, but what actually fills up the house is people who I’m not legitimately friends with, people who like the jams, who want to hear the jams, who want to hear the lyrics, hear the solos, enjoy the art. And I have to admit that for all of my confidence in myself and my projects, that is a thing I am working to process. When I’m digging into my bass and trying to deliver the best sounds I can, it’s the most important thing in my life. Playing the bass is this physical thing, it’s not physical like drums, but it’s not typing, it’s not without a physical engagement, especially the way I play. I woke up this morning feeling like a 42 year old man who put on brand new sneakers and played a 98 minute set and then hung out and chatted up the bar for another hour. But I spent the day today being easy on myself, taking my time, spending extra play time with my daughters, reading things a bit more slowly, pulling out the headphones to actually talk to the neighbors on the walk. The last couple weeks of making an extra radio program for every weekend, navigating Hanukkah, a Heiruspecs show and more. . .it’s been a lot. But there was a lot of release after the Heiruspecs show. I hugged most of the band. We don’t get to see each other that often, we get to play less. We get to play a steamy ass sold out show that we curated ourselves less often that. One of our most dedicated fans is an amazing woman named Oogi and she pointed out sweetly to me at the beginning of the show that. . . “someday you’ll stop doing these”. She’s right. At some point the stars won’t align for us to do Holiday Classics. At some point the stars won’t align for us to really be a band. We’ve made it 23 years. That’s insane. It’s my life’s longest professional project. And everything else in my life professionally comes out of that. And when I played that B in a newly clean basement practice space. . .I was thankful for where it started and where it’s going.