Started playing professionally in 1975, by '77 was playing 6 nights a week with a house gig in Beaumont TX for 3 years. I was the oldest in that band and we all needed parental releases to be in the bar that we played.
Hooked up with a country band just to leave town and experience touring. Only took a year before I had lost my self-respect and moved to the big city to start a rock band and go further. Practiced or played almost every night during the 80s, and then quit playing professionally in January 1990 to raise a family, but was asked to help the music team in the congregation I had joined so it's not like I didn't play anymore at all. During those days I started writing a new kind of music and began developing a new genre. It didn't matter that only a very very small audience liked that genre since I wasn't trying to book myself anymore. I wrote for the pure pleasure of creating something new.
For the next five years, I played in my home congregation as a service to others. No consideration or desire for money. My wife wasn't through with the rock n roll lifestyle and left...then I became a single dad with 4 little kids and even quit playing at the congregation. For a few months in early 1994, I went out to prove that I could still rock, and after a couple of months remembered why I had stopped doing that years earlier.
I was done....but I never stopped writing.
A few years later I remarried and the "new and improved" Mrs Pearce encouraged me to do something with the songs I had been writing, so I went into a studio in 1997 and recorded an album with studio musicians who did what I asked of them, and had no musical limitations of band members. Then I started putting a band together, but ended up with a band that could not play the album so I wrote and recorded a different album with them. That band flaked out as soon as we started seeing some success and fell apart, but I finally found musicians that could play the first album. Only 4 months after it came out, those musicians also flaked out by making impossible demands about where we could/couldn't play. So I quit again...
I've "retired" from music 3 times since 1990.
As my last "hurrah" I decided to do a dance project (half techno, half rock) and bring it dance clubs in Israel. MY timing was impeccable to start that at the same time as the second intifada, where terrorists were blowing up dance clubs. Almost killed 3 times in 6 days, I got home from that and retired again. Ya know...still playing at my home congregation but no ambition for a band anymore.
A former CBS reporter that I met in Israel wrote a story about some crazy goy almost getting blown up in the dance club scene, and a record company found me and offered a deal. After I ignored them for about a year, I did finally sign. They re-recorded a few songs, remixed, and remastered that album to come out in Oct 2002.
But those flaky musicians I used to play with raised their demands. Instead of $75 each minimum per gig, they wanted $250 each....so I went solo.
That was when I knew what had been sucking all my energy and ambition for the previous 20 years. Dealing with musicians and all the drama that comes with it had taken the joy (and profit) out of playing live. Once that was not a factor, I was making more as a musician than as the owner of 2 locksmithing business, and went full time in 2004.
I'm on the road about 300 days of a year since 2005. For 20-25% of a year I'm in a foreign country....today I'm looking out the window of a Royal Carribbean cruise line in Cococay, Bahamas. I'm doing a 30 minute set tomorrow night on the boat but got a week long cruise with my wife out of it. Ahhh....
Yet I'm pretty sure that this season of my life is almost over. I'll probably continue to play until a transition is complete but I've now gone into film-making. My first film released with no fanfare or promotion last Wednesday, and before Friday was over we had secured licensing in South Korea and found distribution in America through an App on the Samsung Gear One (comes out in December)
So to sum it up....over the last 40+ years I go through many seasons where my interests have changed, but I can't figure out how to stop being a musician/singer/songwriter because it is who I am, whether I want it or not.
I once went 5 years without writing a song and then wrote 15 songs in a day. My advice for anyone going through a slump is to quit trying. Change the scenery, go live life and let those experiences become part of your being. You need to draw inspiration from things outside of a music career to be able to relate to others.
If you have paid the dues to know how to write a song, then just let it come to you whenever it happens without trying to force it. And if life offers something more interesting then follow that path...it will eventually come full circle.
If you are a musician, then nothing changes that even if you aren't playing for now.
Hooked up with a country band just to leave town and experience touring. Only took a year before I had lost my self-respect and moved to the big city to start a rock band and go further. Practiced or played almost every night during the 80s, and then quit playing professionally in January 1990 to raise a family, but was asked to help the music team in the congregation I had joined so it's not like I didn't play anymore at all. During those days I started writing a new kind of music and began developing a new genre. It didn't matter that only a very very small audience liked that genre since I wasn't trying to book myself anymore. I wrote for the pure pleasure of creating something new.
For the next five years, I played in my home congregation as a service to others. No consideration or desire for money. My wife wasn't through with the rock n roll lifestyle and left...then I became a single dad with 4 little kids and even quit playing at the congregation. For a few months in early 1994, I went out to prove that I could still rock, and after a couple of months remembered why I had stopped doing that years earlier.
I was done....but I never stopped writing.
A few years later I remarried and the "new and improved" Mrs Pearce encouraged me to do something with the songs I had been writing, so I went into a studio in 1997 and recorded an album with studio musicians who did what I asked of them, and had no musical limitations of band members. Then I started putting a band together, but ended up with a band that could not play the album so I wrote and recorded a different album with them. That band flaked out as soon as we started seeing some success and fell apart, but I finally found musicians that could play the first album. Only 4 months after it came out, those musicians also flaked out by making impossible demands about where we could/couldn't play. So I quit again...
I've "retired" from music 3 times since 1990.
As my last "hurrah" I decided to do a dance project (half techno, half rock) and bring it dance clubs in Israel. MY timing was impeccable to start that at the same time as the second intifada, where terrorists were blowing up dance clubs. Almost killed 3 times in 6 days, I got home from that and retired again. Ya know...still playing at my home congregation but no ambition for a band anymore.
A former CBS reporter that I met in Israel wrote a story about some crazy goy almost getting blown up in the dance club scene, and a record company found me and offered a deal. After I ignored them for about a year, I did finally sign. They re-recorded a few songs, remixed, and remastered that album to come out in Oct 2002.
But those flaky musicians I used to play with raised their demands. Instead of $75 each minimum per gig, they wanted $250 each....so I went solo.
That was when I knew what had been sucking all my energy and ambition for the previous 20 years. Dealing with musicians and all the drama that comes with it had taken the joy (and profit) out of playing live. Once that was not a factor, I was making more as a musician than as the owner of 2 locksmithing business, and went full time in 2004.
I'm on the road about 300 days of a year since 2005. For 20-25% of a year I'm in a foreign country....today I'm looking out the window of a Royal Carribbean cruise line in Cococay, Bahamas. I'm doing a 30 minute set tomorrow night on the boat but got a week long cruise with my wife out of it. Ahhh....
Yet I'm pretty sure that this season of my life is almost over. I'll probably continue to play until a transition is complete but I've now gone into film-making. My first film released with no fanfare or promotion last Wednesday, and before Friday was over we had secured licensing in South Korea and found distribution in America through an App on the Samsung Gear One (comes out in December)
So to sum it up....over the last 40+ years I go through many seasons where my interests have changed, but I can't figure out how to stop being a musician/singer/songwriter because it is who I am, whether I want it or not.
I once went 5 years without writing a song and then wrote 15 songs in a day. My advice for anyone going through a slump is to quit trying. Change the scenery, go live life and let those experiences become part of your being. You need to draw inspiration from things outside of a music career to be able to relate to others.
If you have paid the dues to know how to write a song, then just let it come to you whenever it happens without trying to force it. And if life offers something more interesting then follow that path...it will eventually come full circle.
If you are a musician, then nothing changes that even if you aren't playing for now.
It is what it is until it isn't
