As 2024 wound down (now over six months ago), I had a realization that, except for the open mics I’ve hosted at TCF over the past few years, the last show I played out was five years earlier. Never in my life, even when I had infants and toddlers, had I gone that long without playing public shows. And never had I gone that long without playing in an active band of some kind.
Five years earlier, in late 2019, Anne and I played a show in the speakeasy basement at Tellus360, which would be our last as Here Inside (for now). We were gearing up to record a new EP at the beginning of 2020 and were pushing to get back out a lot more later that year. The COVID pandemic squashed that whole process and all we got out of those sessions (for now) was the “Ordinary Days” EP that we released as a single during the lockdown period as a tease for the upcoming album. We spent the rest of 2020 figuring out how to navigate our lives and businesses through what was the most bizarre year of our lifetimes (for now!).
The years that followed were a mix of recovering from the pandemic, reorganizing our businesses, and working through a series of family situations that took up a lot of mental headspace. But I started hosting open mic nights during the fall and winter of each year at TCF, which gave me an opportunity to play a couple of songs now and again. I reached back into my archives and played songs that spanned my entire musical life. It was really interesting to relearn what I had done when I was so young and begin to respect the work in a way that I had never before, even when I was making it.
I made a commitment to myself that in 2025 I would pick a dozen songs from the four alt rock albums I made between 1991 and 2004 and put together some kind of a band to play at least a few gigs. I wasn’t sure that I could even find musicians who’d be willing to entertain this old music, but back in January I started posting in various places about the idea. I eventually found Erik Teichmann (bass) and Brent Palsgrove (drums) and we started working through the material. The approach has been a mix of fresh interpretations and following pretty closely to the original arrangements. So far it’s been a lot of fun to explore this material with fresh ears and a much different perspective from when it was written.
We’re halfway through 2025 and we’ve made good progress, but there’s much left to do to reach my goal for the year. The time is now to get moving if we’re going to make it.