Story Focus: "The Long Way"

This past weekend driving to a party in the countryside just outside of Indianapolis, I was in a mood to be moved by music. I sang loud, I drummed the steering wheel, I grew goosebumps along the skin of my arms. Feeling nostalgic, I put in the CD of my old band No Heroics, Please (yes, we used a Raymond Carver reference as a band name, yes, we were nerds).

NHP still stands to this day as the best music I've ever been a part of creating. Even 5 years later, I can still listen to these songs, still feel the quiet expectation building in my chest as each song swells and rolls into itself, still feel the pride of orchestration prickling along the pores of my forearms. I wish that band had had a chance.

Ten years of my life I spent playing in various bands to various levels of success. I know well "The Long Way," that constant hope and reach for elusive dreams. Putting in the hours at the fret board, sweating in tiny carpet-walled practice spaces, figuring out the Tetris game tactics of packing your band's gear into the back of a van or trailer.

NHP was born out of the dissolution of another band when our drummer and singer quit. The remaining members, Matt, Louis, and myself, all wanted to keep playing together. I forget how we hooked up with Trent on drums, but I'll never forget how he left us. We could each hold a decent tune vocally, but were honest enough with ourselves that we couldn't carry a mic, so we decided to keep it instrumental.

From the first song we wrote, we knew who we were, we knew where we could go. We believed in that first song enough to write a 2nd, and a 3rd, and so on.

We believed so much in those songs, we went right to work booking a tour. We knocked out a couple decent live recordings of our first 2 songs, posted them on MySpace, and spent an entire summer doing what needed to be done: hours upon hours planning the route and booking the shows, designing t-shirts and stickers and other merch, writing enough songs to make an album and getting them recorded, designing a decent looking DIY packaging for the album. Hours. Hours.

We booked an entire tour on 2 shoddy live recordings...having never played a single show. How we believed.

And so did our girls. It's only in reading "The Long Way" (unfortunately not published online, but available in Cut Through the Bone) that I really understand the grace and understanding that each of our girlfriend's (wife in Matt's case) had to get through that summer with us. And ultimately, the grace they had when the tour exploded from the inside, when Trent announced just before the first show of the tour that his girlfriend was being kicked out of her house, pregnant with his child, that he was sorry, but would have to go back home after that first night.

There's more to the story, as there is with any story, but it's unimportant here.

What's important, is how after No Heroics Please, neither Matt nor myself went on to do any other music. Louis played a bit in other bands, and still might. I'm not sure. I've not talked to him in years. But, for myself, the implosion of NHP was a sucker punch from which I've never been able to fully regain my breath. I hardly play guitar anymore.

What's important, is there are a lot of Ways. It isn't just confined to the music industry. The Long Way exists for any endeavor a person believes in and is passionate about. The Long Way for you may be writing, painting, acting. It doesn't even have to be an artistic pursuit. You may be trying to make partner at your law firm. Maybe running for a government office. I've seen The Long Way in a couple friends trying and trying to conceive a baby. I've seen The Long Way in a friend trying and trying to keep his veins clean. My Way now is no longer music, but I have my Ways.

What's important, is you never stop walking The Long Way. If you do, that's when you might as well call it a life. You might switch Ways, but don't stop walking. And if you find someone to walk with you, recognize what you have in that, because looking back at it, I had no idea what I had then until Ethel showed me.