Sharing Your Music Is A Vulnerable Moment

On Sunday Heiruspecs got together to share some new music with each other. The process of this is different for every group and style of music. But, since I started sharing songs with fellow band members in about seventh grade there’s been some similarities. You are standing in front of a group of your peers, sharing your ideas hoping for some amount of consensus. You want some consensus from your bandmates that the music is good, or that it can be good. Add to that the dynamics of rappers, it changes things a bit more. When you’re sharing music in a group with rappers there’s an additional dynamic. That dynamic is that rappers don’t have a ton to do during the actual sessions where you’re recording the beats. I don’t need to show Felix or Muad’dib the chords. They don’t need to know the inner working of the beats. If they elect to ask or get in to it, no problem. But they don’t have the necessity to do so to navigate their way to their art and their statements. The reason that changes the dynamic is because you might have people in the room whose lack of enthusiasm is further amplified because they are just sitting there not engaged with asking about chord qualities or loop lengths.

My first couple bands I felt a fair amount of comfort shooting out song ideas because the band was started with me as a central piece. I played in a band called Grin. I wasn’t the singer, thank god for all of us, but it was understood that for Jon Baker, our singer, it was presumed I’d be bringing in some music and some lyrics. We were just learning how to play music, I think we were comfortable bringing those ideas in and exploring them. We were in middle school. I took that shit so seriously and I realize that my parents were probably more thinking, I’ll drop Sean off for a couple hours and life goes on. But to me those hours were the most important part of my week. And in retrospect, some of the most important hours of my life. Laughing, fighting, joking, and really drilling shit. I think the groups I’ve been a part of are generally recognized as some of the most efficient and dedicated rehearsers in our community. That’s not strictly good. I think at times we have been too efficient, too all business. But even in those middle school years with Grin we took our rehearsal time serious, we expected people to be on time, we played things til we got them right. I learned a lot. But I learned that it’s hard to bring in a song and tell other people your age how the song goes, what part you hope they’ll play and how you envision the song going.

In middle school some of the difficulty is just the raw insecurity that is the nature of those ages. But even at age 42, there’s something about bringing your sheet, with your chords, and your tempo, and you’re hoping that what you’ve put down is not only great sounding. . .but it leaves enough room for the other players to bring their own greatness to it. You hope you have left enough invitations inside of your writing for other people to do their best work.

As a non-singing bass player who is a pretty bad ass songwriter I can also come into the position where me bringing in music at all is a bit of a nuisance. Through sheer will I forced myself into my brother Steve’s band Catfish Blue. And we found a path to my writing being if not welcome. . .at least expected. But at first my brother was in this situation where he was hunting for a bass player and instead he got a bass player, sibling and incessant writer of tunes that I demanded the group play. I always wanted to just be a bass player. In middle school I would listen to Van Morrison and imagine being a skinny old black man wearing a green suit playing amazing bass with Van Morrison. I know that’s a tall order. Not black, not skinny, not a bass player for Van Morrison. But I thought of this emotional distance and technical authority that a pure bass player could have as something beyond my reach. You know someone who didn’t have to ask what key a song was in, he can just drop in and start adding his sauce to it. But I’ve always had to ask what key. Every once in awhile I’ll drop in and find the groove, but I struggle with that. I was jealous of that technical facility because it was what I saw my friend Conor bring to Catfish Blue. He was the ideal as a rhythm section player. Incredibly committed to each song, but not necessarily bringing an agenda of his own to the songs. A supportive player who was shaping his raw technical facility around songs with tons of artistic investment. Conor’s an amazing player, he still is. Years later, I’m a freshman in college, he’s a senior in high school and I’m sitting on my cordless dorm phone talking to Conor about me moving to Minnesota and the end of the chapter of me being in Catfish Blue. It was a hard phone call, I know it was hard because I know it was two phone calls that we split up because it got too hard. But, while I was in that first phone call sitting on a closed toilet looking in the shower for some privacy; I remember realizing that writing these songs was a gift. It wasn’t the gift I wanted most desperately, but it was the gift I had. The fact that Conor envied something I had in a musical setting was almost unfathomable to me. Knowing that he was gave me more confidence to what I can bring to a musical situation. Man, I love you Conor.

I led the music side of Heiruspecs with a stupid, arrogant iron-fist for the first couple years of the band. I started Heiruspecs in 11th grade. There was an important way to present hip-hop music with a live band and I thought there were maybe three people on Earth who knew how to do it and I was one of them. I loved the music, I studied the music and I wrote the beats, so fuck you very much. I had a great bass teacher at this time at Walker-West. Her name was Laurie Lang. Looks like she’s still active. I brought all this arrogance about my new band into my lessons with her and she just flattened all of it. She basically said that even if I knew exactly what the horn players should do and exactly how they should do it. . .I would get better results if I got buy-in from the horn players, if I let them use some of their own expertise, some of their own knowledge. And now look, she knows what I don’t know. I don’t actually know what this horn section should do, I barely know what I should really do as a bass player. She knows this, she wants to see me start to use the brains in the rehearsal room to unite for a better sound. She was right. She put me on a better path. But I still wasn’t collaborative enough, I couldn’t loosen up enough. I thought running a band meant yelling.

DeVon Gray is the keyboard player in Heiruspecs. He is spending a lot of time in Rhode Island right now, so he wasn’t at the rehearsal last night, but we’ve had quite the rollercoaster with playing each others music. He was (and is) the stronger player. Now a lot of his life is about composition, but he’s still no joke on a keyboard. He knew great music, he turned me on to great music. He was aloof and at times incredibly demanding as a collaborator in our high school years. I spent a long time in my youth thinking he didn’t think of me as shit as a writer. But he shared with me that when he joined Heiruspecs in our early 20s he was scared to bring his music in. That’s actually a failure on my part as a leader. He should have been welcome, encouraged and excited about bringing his music in. But some basic part of my brain thinks it’s great news that he was scared. . .cause I was scared to bring my shit in to Catfish Blue. I also think that even if everyone is supportive around you, it’s still scary to bring your music out and see what other people make of it. If that doesn’t scare you. . .I don’t know, I just can’t even imagine that.

Now we’re all adults. And not like young adults, we are a band of middle agers. We shouldn’t fuck with each other. We generally don’t. We do this band cause we believe in it. But sharing your music still makes you vulnerable. Josh asked if some of the C#’s in my chart weren’t minor. Naw, they’re all minor, I just fucked up the chart a little Josh. Getting over those things, it’s vulnerable and you want to get to the point where you press record on your iphone, start counting and try the song on. Try a couple random things out, change some things, shout some things out.

The session went well. Got through two of Felix’s beats, two of Josh’s beats, two of mine. My second one was voted “most likely to be a dud” by me so I figured we’d try it when we only had fifteen minutes of practice time left. I’d put a little money on it being a dud just cause the A section sounds like the A section of an acid jazz instrumental from 1993 and the B section sounds the B section of an acid jazz instrumental from 1993. But, we do not sound like an acid jazz band. So there might be a dud in there. But I love the other jam I did and I really love what else was offered up by the other players. There’s less mind games, there’s more shared vision.

Sharing songs can be a crucible of emotion. Especially in those young years in a band. Especially in those years when we don’t exactly know what comfort zone each person is going to operate in. I like that crucible, I learned a lot being in that crucible. And trust me, I’d love to just be a bass player, but it’s not what I have, it not’s what I can do. I don’t need to yell to lead a band, but I’m meant to be the leader, to bring the thing together. It’s one of the things I can do. And I’m finally proud of that and finally don’t have to prove I’m good at it by making my peers feel lesser than.