I Sleep In On My Days Off....

Today was the last of my days off, after working 7 boring days ina row I think I earned them. Life is turning in a different direction for me, and it's turning quickly. My wife, who is deployed in Iraq, should be back in the states in a little less than 4 weeks. I haven't seen her except in pictures since Oct. 21st. It's been a long period of time being away from her. Luckily, the move back to the Midwest brought me closer to my family. Mainly my dudes are the one's who really helped to keep me both distracted and focused. If I didn't have them and this music to carry me through these last 7 months I don't know what I would have done. Needless to say I appreciate everyone who has kept me afloat. It's a weird transition I'm headed into though. Going from being completely independant and self-sufficient to having someone to share everything with, including all of my time, is going to be weird there's no way around it. These last 2 years though I think I officially have seen it all, so I'm more than ready for the challenge....

Life kind of took me full circle this past week though. One of my best friends came back into town to visit his family. His son (which i didn't even know he had) and my son ended up getting to play together. So crazy to imagine that once many years ago we talked about being friends long enough to have our kids running around together, and as it turned out it came to be. I learned that another one of our bestfriends growing up turned into a war hero. I had been out of contact with him for about 3 years, and I knew that he had been deployed numerous times (turned out to be 4). But, I learned that while serving our wonderful country he earned 2 Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star for Valor. It didn't really surprise me in the end, he was always the bravest of all of us growing up. He always tackled the biggest kid when we took on all comers in sandlot football, and he always hit the biggest kid in the mouth first when we fought off psuedo bullies from other neighborhoods. Next time I have a drink I'll be sure to toast to Jeremiah, for who he always was and not just who he is now....

So the music has hit a slight lull for me personally. Those that know me know that I always have a lot of projects shuffling around. And until recently I was balancing all of them well. But, now it's starting to feel like I'm running out of time to record. It's hard to finesse everyone's schedules together in order to get into the studio, and then on top of that every trip to the studio equals a trip down the freeway for me. Which inevitably means that even sessions I get at the love rate end up costing me. If you can ever have too many joints to record, I believe as I look at my backpack jammed with rhymebooks, that I've reached that point. Playing catch up when you have 100+ tracks written and ready to be recorded is darn near impossible. My goal for the year is still to surpass the amount of tracks that I recorded last year (upwards of 150). I can't complain too much though, I have gigged nearly 3 times as much in the last 7 months then I did all of last year. And my crew, (www.myspace.com/soulproviderscrew), is pretty much the talk of Kansas City right now. I guess I'll never be completely satisfied with my progress in the end. Although I'm confident that bigger and better things still lie ahead of me....