We all wanna be big, big stars

I wanna be a lion
Eh! Everybody wants to pass as cats
We all wanna be big, big stars
Yeah, but we got different reasons for that

... I wanna be Bob Dylan
Mr. Jones wishes he was someone just a little more funky

I just spent a few hours thinking aloud in front of my parents and answering questions about where I'd like to live and what I'd like to do, and never once in that time did I invoke the wisdom of the Counting Crows. But then I sit down to blog about my psyche, and a few lines from "Mr. Jones" are the first things on my fingertips. Congratulations for seeping in, Adam Duritz.

Actually, I've just also sifted through a voicemail message and a few e-mails regarding the G Tones' membership. Karlin quit Sunday afternoon for his valid reasons. Shortty is naturally concerned about the short term, because he booked us some studio time for this Thursday and a gig next Friday. He doesn't want to have to go through the embarrassment of canceling either or both because our lineup is in turmoil. So, since I expressed the same frustrations with the band that made Karlin quit the band and may ultimately make me decide the same, Shortty called me to see if at least I'm still in for those dates. I will probably tell him I'm in. I did agree to the studio time (although I somehow wound up with a conflicting appointment with a personal friend), and I did agree to the gig. Of course, so did Karlin, but he's now un-committing himself for those.

He has been talking to me for a few years about the ticking clock that represents whatever time left he has to make it big in the music scene, if something is ever going to happen.

He said it to me last night before the gig, too. We were on the half of the bar designated as the "stage" because it's simply a bunch of open floor between a jukebox against one wall and a pool table near the opposite wall. Karlin sat down next to a monitor and behind a speaker, hiding from the view of the other half of the bar so he could wolf down a turkey sandwich that was his for full price at the bar, along with a regular Red Bull because the bar doesn't stock the sugarfree kind he prefers. (The bartender hadn't heard of a sugarfree Red Bull and even scoffed at such an idea: "What's the point of having an energy drink with no sugar?")

It's a far cry from what I would consider "backstage."

My concept of backstage mostly comes from the dressing room depicted in "This Is Spinal Tap," with the finger food that annoys the guitarist. I think of cushy rooms with hearty spreads of complimentary food, beverage and other assorted amenities. I think of security making sure we won't be mobbed by fans.

And other things we just don't have when we play in bars and are out there with the common folk. The kind who drop us a request, inscribed on a napkin, for "Time in a Bottle" by "Jim Chroce" [sic]. Totally not up our alley.

The luxuries and facilities we lack are what was on my brain last night before the gig when I said to Karlin, "When are we gonna play a gig with an actual backstage?"

"I don't know," he answered, "but it's gotta be soon, if I'm gonna make anything happen for me musically."

There he was again, emphasizing that ticking clock concept.

He and I look back often on the fact that we remained faithful to a classic rock cover band called World Peace Party for more than three years, based on a perceived likelihood that someday we would be more than a garage band with a grueling rehearsal schedule.

That someday we would emerge from our pit of basements and start opening for national touring acts whenever they played our big local venues.

That somehow we would be perceived as better than a typical bar band.

(Although it never added up in either of our minds about how we get to that position if we weren't ever performing out, because don't we have to have something to show in order to be compared to typical bar bands? Then why the hell weren't we ever playing out?)

We gave that dead-end group three years of our life and got back nothing in return by the time we quit this year. Karlin and I had two other notable side projects through that time, of which neither came to fruition. We have been disappointed with the next project for which we gave more than half a year. While my patience is running out, Karlin's has already depleted.

He wrote me today, after he quit the G Tones, elaborating yet again on that ticking clock. "I don't have the time to waste anymore; if something's going to happen for me musically, it's gotta happen NOW. I can't wait or waste my time."

Nearly word for word what he'd said to me with a $6.95 turkey sandwich in his hand and a sugary $3 Red Bull on his bass amp next to him.

I have to figure out what my future is too. Like, where am I going to live, what jobs should I shoot for, do I need to go back to school and learn some new skills or fine-tune the ones I have? The parents reiterated to me tonight that I am welcome to move in with them "indefinitely" while I figure all that out. I want to be more independent than that, but I wouldn't turn down a free room while I was looking for an apartment and making other arrangements. I really don't want to be one of those guys who lives at home when he's 30.

As for what I want to do for a living next, I was explaining to my parents a few specific musical occupations that would satisfy me. And I also spoke of a particular writing opportunity that would also satisfy me. My dad asked how either would do the trick as the two are so divergent: Being a touring musician, he said, requires only a few hours a day of playing music, which is having fun and sounds carefree, whereas writing requires more time, different assignments, with pressing deadlines. How could one person whose dream job seems so stress-free possibly be just as happy taking a high-stress job? I feebly responded that they satisfy different parts of the brain, I don't know. Something.

One point about being a musician I kept revisiting while I was talking with my parents is the idea that I'm sick of playing to rooms with more empty chairs in them than people when I'm perfectly capable of playing to hundreds and thousands at a time. That, to me, would be really fun. I love traveling and seeing new places (as long as it's not by bus). I love playing with other excellent musicians. I love making audiences happy. And I don't care if I make tons of money or become a household name. I just want to make enough money to get by and to be the keyboard player for someone who might just be a household name.

But I have no idea how to make that happen. And until I figure that out, I'll be playing gigs where my bar tab exceeds my pay, where we don't have a backstage, where the number of empty chairs exceeds the number of asses in seats, and where the performance sounds like a rehearsal. And I'll be looking for employment at some writing job that I hope keeps me happy, at least until the itch once again becomes so unbearable that I have to scratch one more time.