Chapter 4: “It’s Time to Grow Up”: Compromise Is a Beautiful Thing

Posted by admin on March 2nd, 2010 | 2 Comments »

My friend Arthur said this to me yesterday.  Not the “it’s time to grow up part,” I put that in there myself,  but the “compromise is a beautiful thing” part.  He was referring to a general mentality that I’ve had towards music, probably for the past 7 years, which is that I should not only be able to do “everything,”  but that I also should do everything if I am going to keep peoples interest.

What I mean by “everything” is that, in some way, I have believed that my music should have enough of each genre: rock, folk, country, R&B, jazz, easy listenting etc. to please most people.  I hear an amazing folk song, so I need to either write a similar song or cover that song, I hear Beyonce sing “Halo,” and I know that it’s a really hot song right now so I need to do a cover of it.  I hear from a friend that I need to check out a song he loves, and I know that he is coming to my next show, so I need to cover that song. I see somebody play some awesome rockabilly solo on the guitar and I have to go practice it, and find some way to intergrate a rockabilly guitar solo into my set list.

It’s always been “the next best thing” with me.  My mentality has always been this stoner-hippy mentality of “mistakes are okay, it’s all music man…, it’s about the energy” and I’ve believed it so much that I even convinced myself that if I was truly a great artist, I should be able to do all this stuff on the fly; that I should be able to write out a setlist 5 minutes before a set time, and just get on stage and wing it and “flow with the energy” and deliever a great show. I even convinced myself that if I didn’t play my songs differently every night, with new songs and covers added to each new show in addition to my old songs being played different, that I would lose fans, and that people, including the musicians who played with me, would get bored.

The results have always been a ton of shit, mixed in with one to three great magical moments per show, (that probably are only as magical as they sound because they are sandwiched next to a bunch of shit.)  My friends usually gives me the same feedback as well: “Zach, you are so ridiculously talented but you need to get clear on who you are!” In other words, I can’t go from playing my original songs, to a jazz arragment of a lady gaga song, to a rock and roll scatting version of an old jazz standard, to an old American spiritual about Jesus and expect that people will either get it, that it will be any good, or that even if it is good…that anybody should give a flying fuck in the first place!

My mentality has been that of a narcissist protecting his insecurity.  By being afraid of not pleasing people, I’ve tried to please everybody and in turn, have ended up pleasing nobody.

My next post will be about how I am replacing this old mentality with a new, more empowering one.

Stay tuned…

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