Rock, People!
Me and the fellas played Largo last night. I have to be honest. I never in my life thought that I would ever play with a band. I’d given up on that idea a long time ago. I never thought I was good enough and I didn’t want to have expectations about playing music. I didn’t want to put myself in a position to fail with music. If I screw up playing by myself, who cares? I’m just noodling on my couch. So, I never pursued playing with people in any real way.
At the urging of Flanegan over at Largo, who set me up with Brandon Schwartzel on bass and Ned Brower on drums, I started playing with them. Then Jimmy Vivino came on board. It was all intimidating but not unlike when I got my own show on IFC, I knew I would suck for a while. I also knew that I was good enough to do it. There’s just no cutting corners with practice and adapting and just learning how to relax and do something that you are ready to do.
All this is to say, the show was great last night. It felt like a real band. I’m comfortable with the rhythm section and we had a new guy on second guitar, Jason Roberts. I still fucked up a few times but I was comfortable. I never thought that could happen. So much of it has to do with a music-related trauma that I suffered years ago when I was 15 at a summer camp. I’ve told the story before. I don’t want to tell it again. It was just a profoundly embarrassing failure trying to play music with a bunch of dudes. It was devastating. Over the last five or six years I’ve been trying to process the PTSD by playing and singing here and there to mixed results in terms of how I felt about it.
The other night marked the first time I was free from the fear in a real way. We did a bunch of covers like we usually do but a couple of them were actually kind of transcendent in the playing. A Tim Hardin via Crazy Horse version of If I Were a Carpenter and a fairly true version of Johnny Thunders' You Can Put Your Arms Around a Memory. We did other songs but those just felt just right. Although we did have to restart the Thunders because I fucked up.
Now I just have to shut up about my fear and insecurity around playing in between songs and I’ll be recovered from the horrible music trauma of my youth.
I guess the reason I’m telling you this is because I don’t like to try. I do it, but I don’t like it. I don’t like to fail. If you don’t try you can’t fail, but you also can’t feel what it feels like to possibly succeed. I don’t like to practice. If you don’t practice you can’t really get good or comfortable with expressing yourself. I don’t ever see myself as practicing. I just do the thing. If I love it or if it seems to make me feel present, I just keep doing it. It becomes my life. There’s only a few things I’ve done all my life and all the time. Comedy, playing guitar and talking to people on the mics. I just kept doing all of them but I never thought I would share the music. Too scary. Not anymore.
I keep trying with all the things I use to express myself. It’s what being alive is for me. I just don’t register ‘practice.’ I just do.
I don’t like to write either. I kind of hate it but I write this thing every week. For years now. I don’t even know if people read it. Again, I get on the page. I share the life to live.
Today I talk to Todd Field about his movies and life. On Thursday I talk to Octavia Spencer about her acting and life. I liked talking to both of them immensely.
Enjoy!
Boomer, Monkey and LaFonda live!
Love,
Maron
A Real Band.
