Austin Rising

Hope..its everywhere. Does everyone share the same hopes and dreams of success, of making it?

I’m sitting by the pool on a glorious clear blue texas day.  The buildings opposite seem carved out of perfect pieces of granite and some one just rowed past on a boat like a giant swan. its unreal. The wind hides the hot Texas scorching sun that is secretly turning me into a lobster colour. Everywhere the gentle breeze brings a different blast of music floating through the air.

Its as if they dropped the Glastonbury rock festival into a city. Last night for the first time since we landed in Austin, Texas on wednesday Mick and I walked casually along the streets. I have to tell you its an amazing feeling to be here. There is music EVERYWHERE you look. Every bar, diner, coffee shop has a band playing, every car park turned into a makeshift open air venue. There are literally thousands of bands. On every street corner there are a group of 4 or 5 people clutching guitars and positivity and belief is in the air. Every ten yards someone shrieks Fucking A its MIck Jones and Tony James! as if it couldn’t possibly be, aliens just landed. People just love you here and it feels good.

We’ve worked non stop since we landed and I’m not complaining. Today as I sit here I’m trying to make some sense of all the thoughts I keep getting. How can there be so many thousands of bands with thousands of songs…all those guitars, lyrics, drums, tuners, leads, set lists.. everyone with a dream. and we’re part of it (we’ve got a bigger bus though – Mick said!).

But we’ve all been through it, we who have chosen this life and followed that dream. Our hands have ached from walking streets carrying a guitar in a heavy case, fingers and nails scarred from over enthusiastic windmilling. We know what its like to be up all night trying to make that song work. To have a band and for those people to become family only to be torn apart because the chemistry boiled over, falling over and getting up again to try again. We’ve carried our amplifiers into tiny bars and set them up, waited for people to come and looked into their eyes while playing to see that recognition of connection,  of the mouthing words of something you wrote one night. We’ve looked at others being, judgemental wondering why they’ve got the big car  and you just can’t see it. We know what its like to tumble into bed exhausted, regretting that last Jack Daniels with the music racing round your brain insanely never stopping and waking wishing you had not said something ..it’s the fear that comes with the territory no matter how high up the ladder you think you have climbed.

Every few years some industry asshole says something is killing music…home taping is killing music, Napsters killing music, illegal downloadings killing music..

NOT HERE. Music is exploding and alive everywhere. Music and hope.