I’ve been trying to form a band on and off since moving to Austin about 1.5 years ago.  It’s largely been a painful process.  I know other musicians in my social network, but they either are committed to other projects or there is no mutual interest in working together or both.  So I generally rely on friends of friends, craigslist, hitting on strangers, etc.  I’ve made a couple friends doing this, but am still bandless.  It’s not that I’m real demanding or have a really niche project in mind, it’s just that finding a band with strangers is a miserable process by design.  There are a lot of factors at play when attempting this sort of thing…

Casual tolerance: Even if you’re strictly in it for the money, you still have to tolerate the people you work with.  When forming a band, this is generally the first issue that presents itself.  When you first meet your potential bandmate, it’s likely that one of you will fall somewhere between dull to downright offensive.  It’s like speed dating I suppose (at least the way they portray it in the movies) where you essentially have some degree of chemistry with a person or you don’t.  It’s pretty obvious pretty quick.  And yet when the meeting is done, nobody has the nerve to just say “maybe next time.”  Instead it’s an uncomfortable “I’ll be in touch” even though that’s a lie.

Mutual Musical Interest: You’d think this is already covered if someone responds to your ad or something like that, but taste in music is a very tricky thing.  It’s generally acceptable that you don’t agree on everything.  It’d be creepy if you did.  But this can be a massive source of conflict.  Usually the way it goes down is like this.  Person A says “Modest Mouse is absolutely my favorite band ever… but not their early stuff, that was too weird.”  Person B goes “oh yeah, they’re cool” but inside they are thinking Person A is a moron and shouldn’t be allowed to own an iPod.

Similar Motivation/Objectives: Pretty simple here, but often a killer of bands.  If one person wants to get drunk and jam and the other person wants to release albums and go on tour, there’s going to be problems.  Everyone involved has to have the same general goals in mind for the band.

Compatible Schedules, Personal Situations, Etc: All sorts of weird problems can come into play here.  Maybe one person works nights and the others work during the day.  Maybe one person doesn’t have a car.  Maybe paying $10/week for rehearsal space is not an option.  Whatever it is, you all need to be able to regularly pick a time and place to practice/play and it can’t present an issue for anyone.  Sure things come up, but so often there is a person in the band that always has a problem with commitments.

Comparable Talent Levels: Lots of people have different opinions on this and it usually comes down to what you’re doing and the egos involved.  Personally, I’ve played with people that have post-grad degrees in music as well as people who couldn’t name one note on their instrument.  It really doesn’t matter if it doesn’t negatively impact the music you’re doing.  Essentially, you can be at any talent level as long as it’s not noticeable in a bad way.  However, there’s plenty of times where there is a vast difference in talent and it’s a major issue.

Friendship: Assuming you’re doing this for enjoyment and not a career, friendship will come into play.  Some people can’t handle showing up for practice/gigs and leaving it at that, they want to get more interaction out of the people they do music with.  Others need friendship as a way to work together, resolve disputes, etc.  Maybe you don’t have to be best friends, but at some point you likely have to do more than just tolerate your bandmates.

Not sure about anyone else, but I think it’s amazing bands ever happen.  For what it’s worth, I’m trying to make forming a band a bit easier for the world, hopefully it will help a bit.

Cars that vaguely resemble what we drive today have been around since the 1920′s.  That’s closing in on 100 years.  I’d guess that door locks on cars have been around for at least 60 of those years.  And you know what?  That entire time, nobody has been able to fix the fact that if you pull up on the door handle when somebody hits the unlock button/lever, the door will remain locked.  We’ve all had that annoying encounter when a passenger tries to get in too soon and you have to repeatedly unlock.  It’s like when somebody is walking straight toward you and neither party knows which way to move to get out of each others way.  All these years, we can’t fix the door lock problem.

That leads me to guitars.  The electric guitar has existed even longer than the modern-ish automobile and yet so little has changed.  We still can’t get an open D chord to play completely in tune, for example.  And Bigsby, a company that has made tremolos since the 40′s, can’t make a tailpiece that isn’t prone to squeaking.  Despite this, I just got a new Gretsch.  It has a Bigsby.  I’m sure it will start squeaking eventually.  Whatever, it’s not a bad product, just annoying that everybody deals with the squeak.

What’s more annoying, is the strap buttons Gretsch uses.  Folks call them “strap locks” but they do not in fact, lock at all.  They screw on.  So normal use pulls and twists on them, and they come loose.  Then your guitar is on the floor.

Here’s what I’m talking about:

And this is what eventually happens:

So $15 later, we switch to something more logical, like actual strap locks that don’t come off on their own by design:

Granted, I got the Korean-made Electromatic model that’s like $750.  But, Gretsch sells guitars that sell for upwards of $4,000 that have this same screwy strap button system.  It’s completely illogical…

I think this was a very bad purchase… The gripping surface has foam. Going to get sweaty and fall apart and be annoying. But whatever, it’s a pick that comes in a little pouch so that’s exciting, right?

I purchased a new guitar recently.  It’s an Ibanez AEG20E.  First, the dorky stuff.  I paid $300 for it new.  That $300 got me 100% real wood (5 years ago, not a chance), Fishman pickup, preamp w/ eq & tuner, 1/4″ and XLR out, decent tuners, decent fretboard/neck, a nice setup from the factory, some weird “Ivorex” saddle (fancy name for plastic?), and a nice look.  It’s a thin body, but so be it, it still sounds pretty nice.  That doesn’t add up to an awesome guitar, but it’s amazing for the price.

Anyway, the more magical part is what happens when you play it.  Not just this one, but any acoustic you like.  It puts you in a different space mentally.  You just have one sound, and you’ve gotta get some good noise out of that.  It simplifies everything.  All you can focus on is the sound that happens when you hit the strings.  It cuts through the bullshit, essentially.  Beyond that, it helps when you’re using your other instruments as well.  It’s like a fountain of youth or something for creative stupidity.  You get into this weird habit of relying on effects or amps or other tricks to write and it keeps distracting you.  The acoustic reminds you that you don’t have to use that stuff.  At least not to write.  It’s been useful so far, I hope that continues.

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Maybe it’s hip to have a weird name for your website and never explain it.  I’m not going to pretend anything about this site is hip.  I’m not even going to try and make this story hip.  It’s a name I gave my recording space in high school.  When I upgraded to a sweet Tascam 4 track (cassette!) I decided my space needed to be treated like a real studio.  And when I was 16, that pretty much meant giving it a name.  I don’t recall if I just picked two random words out of the dictionary or if maybe it was a combination of Daft Punk and the name of a terrible sports bar in Milwaukee.  Either way, Daft Paragon was what the poorly made sign on the door read.  Lots of spectacular noise came out of that room.  I guess I’m trying to recapture that innocence of really not knowing what you’re doing.

Finally getting some positive movement on something I’ve wanted to do for maybe 10 years.  Found someone who wants to put their voice to my music, and do it without any real human interaction.

There’s certainly some magic to the typical formula of getting some artists in the same room and letting them create noise together.  I’ve been a part of some cool stuff with that format.  But it doesn’t work so great when you work more than 40 hours a week and are also in school and have friends that don’t play instruments and a wife you desperately want to spend quality time with and dishes to wash and cats to clean up after, etc, etc.  It also doesn’t work so great when all of the preceding stuff doesn’t leave you in a perpetual state of inspiration.  Or when you have reservations about getting in front of a friend or stranger and playing stuff for them that isn’t polished or finished or even good.

So I’ve wanted to try a different route.  Find someone who has some of the same issues that wants to be a part of something.  Send them your noise and say “this is what I got, if you like it, let’s do something, if not, cool.”  And then they work around their own schedule and motivation/inspiration level.  And maybe something cool would come of it.  It’s kind of a low risk, high reward scenario.  Especially since I don’t really care about playing my stuff live or anything like that.  I just want the accomplishment of having finished pieces of music documented in a way that others could hear them if they cared.

I’ve attempted this more or less over the years.  I’ve found people who start off interested, but get distracted or lose their motivation.  I have someone new that is different from the rest.  A friend in another part of the country.  We have different opinions on music, but not completely opposite by any means.  We are both motivated for the same general end goals with this.  And they even bought recording gear.  Financial investment is a good sign.

The first hurdle was figuring out how to even get started.  It’s silly, but for whatever reason I threw all the normal songwriting concepts you’d use when you’re in a traditional band out the window.  I felt like I had to deliver music that was 100% complete minus the vocal track.  Put a lot of pressure on me and a lot of pressure on the other party as if they had to deliver greatness on the first attempt as well.  As silly as it sounds, it seems the tried and true method of having a rough idea and sharing it is the way to go.  It’s way early, but we at least had a mutual breakthrough like “yeah, this could work!”

Don’t know where any of this will go, and it could totally fizzle out.  But if it doesn’t, that’d be pretty rad.  Either way, that’s what’s up.

Virtually all of my friends are involved in some form of art. A few do it for a living, but most do not. Of those that have “normal” jobs, families, etc, most of them face the same problems. It’s hard to find the time to do anything meaningful with your art. Even when time is available, one often feels guilty that other tasks are being ignored (repair work around the house, helping with chores, playing with the kids, etc). That kind of takes your heart out of things.

It seems impossible to think someone can do this sort of thing part time and be at all satisfied with the results. Maybe others have it figured out. Maybe there is nothing to figure out. Either way, gotta keep working at it… I don’t even play the lottery.

In my working life I manage a couple people and occasionally get to weigh in on decisions that impact even more people.  That little power trip got me interested in these management articles written by Harvard blowhards.  Lately the big buzzword is “failure.”  They all want to talk about how failure can be this great experience and if you embrace it you’ll breed success.  They are all fucking morons.  They’re talking about failure in the most paltry of terms.  Their idea of failure is when you propose a business decision based on careful planning and calculation and it turns out your calculations were incorrect.  Say you estimated that undertaking Project A would yield a profit of X, when really it yielded a profit of Y (or a loss of Z).  Either way, the results are undesirable, you made a mistake.  However, that’s a mistake, not a failure.  It’s a calculation error.  You might be bummed that you didn’t check your work carefully enough or your boss might be mad that money was lost, but on an emotional level, nothing bad happens.

And the success part of it?  Even further from the mark.  In their world, success is nothing more than avoidance of mistakes.  If that’s the route you take, risk becomes negligible.  You never expose yourself to the potential of mistakes and leaning toward the successful route becomes your defense mechanism.  You end up defining achievement by simply taking the safest route possible.  Regardless, it’s a very disconnected experience and you gain nothing from it on a personal level.  Sure going the success route is a good way to get promotions but a terrible way to really experience anything in your life.

Failure, on the other hand, is fantastic.  But not the failure the Harvard dorks are talking about.  Real failure is so much deeper.  Failure is when you really expose yourself and pour all your emotional energy into something that you end up hating.  It has nothing to do with the perception of others, it’s completely internal.  Failure is like jumping off a bridge believing there is a net below to catch you, and it turns out there’s nothing more than the sudden force of your body slamming into concrete.  Failure is when you really try to let out who you are on the inside, and you’re not happy with the person you meet.  It doesn’t have to be so dramatic, but that’s the idea.  Failure can happen on a much smaller scale, but it has to be a personal experience.  Tomorrow I might read this post that I’m finding so profound at this moment and think it’s gibberish.  I might think I’m just trying to make excuses for anything I’ve created that others have thought wasn’t enjoyable.  But then again, maybe not.

I think I’m on to something.  I realize I don’t know everything, I don’t have it all figured out.  And I don’t want to get into this comfort zone where I stick to the things I’m good at, where I always go the route with the greatest chance of success.  I want to fail.  I want to create things that I hate, that I’m ashamed of.  I want to keep creating new art that I don’t think is good enough because I believe someday it will drive me to create something I am satisfied with.  I think it’s the only way I can find a way to create something of substance.  Sure I could really focus on what’s successful and maybe I could be the next guy with a CD on top 40 radio.  Or I could keep attempting to find what is really buried inside my brain and end up creating something I’m proud of.

Finished my first guitar project in quite some time.  My Tom Anderson Classic got a makeover.  While many people probably liked it the old way, I’m much happier.  It looks less pretty and sounds more gritty.  Didn’t do too much, but removed the stacked humbucker TA pickups and put in some Lindy Fralin VH single coils.  Wired for standard strat wiring (1 Vol, 2 tone).  Replaced the tortoiseshell pickguard with a white one.  Replaced all the gold hardware with chrome.  Kept all the same hardware though, Sprezel locking tuners, Wilkinson tremelo (VS100 I believe it’s called), etc.  So now it sounds and looks more like an older strat but plays a lot nicer.

Oh and if you notice a hole in the pickguard below the volume, it’s because I originally had a kill switch.  I figured the 2 conductor wire pickups would be loud, but really they are pretty good.  Everything is shielded decently and that was enough.  Need a little sticker or something to cover that up.

Here’s the “before” picture: