How I Found My Way Back to Songwriting
It was August 16, 1992 that I rejoined my muse after a lonely 13-year hiatus. I remember the day very clearly. I was on the 3-season porch of my grandmother’s house in Newton and I picked up my guitar and wrote my first song after so many years away. It took about ½ an hour. I didn’t title it. I dated it 8/16 and that became the name of the song. I still don’t title my songs. I just date them, and title them later. I’m not sure what exactly inspired me to start writing again. It might have been the heartbreak of leaving my first entrepreneurial venture behind, or maybe the realization that all that glitters is not gold, but I turned back to the bright light of music that was always, and always would be, there for me.
“Blue on blue, white on the wind, summertime’s ending with me holding on again. Walking down to the river and running, me full of emptiness, you with the light in your eyes, and a satisfied mind.”
Not my strongest lyric, but the starting point of my grand design to resume my pursuit of becoming a professional songwriter.
During these first years, my then wife and I met a young man living with “Johnny” in his bunker in New Hampshire. Johnny had taken Brian in after he found him working for his parents as a cook in the rural inns that they would “manage” and leave behind, along with their debts. Brian had been taken out of school, but there was something about him that resonated with me. Music. I asked him one day what he wanted to do and he told me he wanted to go to recording engineering school in Ohio. My wife and I co-signed a loan for him and off he went. Six months later he was living on our couch in Newton looking for a job. That’s when he found Fletcher and Mercenary Audio, and started his first job in music.
At the same time, I was quickly coming to the conclusion that I would never again want to do anything that didn’t have to do with music, and I had to make a career decision. I had gone to college, got my CPA with a big international accounting firm and started building companies. Why couldn’t I build a music company of my own and have a great day job in the music business? I decided to look into buying indie record labels and merging them together under a public shell that could then be financed. I started looking for a CEO and Fletcher, who by now had become a friend and colleague, introduced me to the legendary producer and entrepreneur, Sandy Pearlman. Sandy loved my idea, but he kept harping on the idea of music on the internet (this was now 1997). After about 6 months, I gave up and told Sandy I had to take a break. A few months after that, I got into a “my way or the highway” discussion with my partners in my then business, and they said, ”the highway.” So, at 4:00 on May 7, 1998, I sold my stock back to my partners and went to my office to pack up my desk. The phone rang. It was Sandy. “I just met 2 guys who are downloading music on the internet and they want you to go buy record companies for them. What are you doing?” And I said, “As of 5:00, nothing.” And that company became eMusic which became worth $900M at its peak. I made some great money on that deal, which allowed me to really focus on music.
In the next few years, I would be turning out albums with my now-longtime foil, Paul Candilore, forming a permanent band, touring, and finding a publishing deal which put my songs on TV. In 1997 I had made the decision to put music in the center of my life and let everything else revolve around it- music delivered in spades.
I’ve had many adventures in music over the years, and they continue today. My old friend, Bob Crowley, asked for my help with his microphone business back in 2005 and later with his wireless audio business. When Bob got sick in 2021, he asked me to put a deal together for management to buy him out of the wireless audio company. Several former Mercenary Audio folks now work with us.
Julia Cameron, author of “The Artist’s Way” said about art, “leap and the net will appear.” And that’s exactly what happened to me. Fortuitously, in 1997 I would also meet a man who became my closest friend. He helped me make my decision back then to “leap,” and that decision was based on “The Artist’s Way” teachings. This friend has also passed away, but his encouragement to trust my muse has given me the life I have today.
I wrote a song this morning before going to the airport to fly to New Orleans. I write a song most mornings. I live to write and I write to live. When I came back to music in 1992, I deliberately decided to focus on songwriting, because it was an “ageless” way stay in music, and something I could keep doing until literally the day I die. Everything else in my life has conspired to support this conviction, and I’m continually amazed at how this works.
As a final note here, I’ll share a few rules of thumb I have for myself in songwriting:
1. Let yourself write a shitty song
2. Just because you wrote it doesn’t mean it’s good
3. Write a better song
It is with a joyful heart that I report that the van Gogh Brothers will restart their monthly residency at Vincent’s Worcester, on Saturday, September 9th at 8:00 PM!