Here is the sort version of my story:
“I am an American musician living in Nuremberg, Germany. I think the literal translation for Nuremberg is “be sure and bring an umbrella because it’s probably going to rain”. If not it should be. I like it here though because I like gray weather. I also like it because in Europe, as opposed to my previous home in the American South the crazy people do not carry hand guns. Far be it from me to deprive the mentally ill of their guns but I prefer to live in a place where they are capable of no more than the odd screaming fit in public. I love city life.
I have been married 1 and a half times, in love 3 times, made 2 children, 4 CDs, spent 2 weeks in jail, and 25 years as a full time musician. I went to University to be a teacher before discovering I disliked other people’s children and after spending nearly 16 years of my young life in a classroom I would rather clean toilets at the bus station than spend the rest my life teaching school in yet another classroom. Yes, I might have thought this through before starting university but long term thinking was not my priority at the time.
I started playing piano, guitar and bass as a teenager. I was a pimply, introverted little fuck with braces on my teeth, a bad hair cut and attitude. I learned to read at 5 and that’s what I did before, during and after school about 8 hours a day for the next 10 years. I read great books and shit. I read novels, biographies, and if nothing else was available, school books. Then I discovered music and split my adolescent energies between books, learning to play guitar and finding a girl who would have sex with me. The first 2 went ok. The 3rd took a little longer.
I became a musician because I love it and I am a complete fuck up at everything else. Once I had a job cutting up vegetables in a restaurant. I lasted 4 hours. I probably would have been fired earlier except the owner was a good friend.
Another odd job I had was in Nashville, Tennessee. Another friend owned one of those motels in the wrong side of town where you can rent rooms by the hour. He had prostitutes nearby in the parking lot and played porn over the closed circuit television 24 hours a day in case you didn’t get the hint that room service took on a whole new set of options there. I liked the job. When I wasn’t on the road and needed money I called him. He gave me work that consisted of renting rooms to a whole lot of guys named John Smith and changing the porn movie every hour or so. I did much better at this than my brief career in vegetable cutting.
Mostly though I played music. I played with and opened for the used to be famous, famous, would go on to become famous and some that were just great musicians, I played everywhere from Mexico to the Arctic Circle, California to the Maritime Provinces of Canada. I slept in sleazy room on lumpy mattresses and obscenely expensive luxury hotel suites someone else was paying. I’ve played complete shit (disco, casino pop music, etc.) when no other options were available and great music whenever possible because no matter what, you gotta pay the rent.
Which brings me to Europe, literally. I live here because I never have to play anything I don’t want and I play quite often. This is all I ask from life and I have to say life is good.”
