😂 I Don’t Know How I Ended Up Here

4 Shows, 2 Records, 1 New Mailing List Home

People sometimes reply to these emails.

Recently someone wrote and said, “I have no idea how I ended up on this mailing list and who all these people are that you talk about.”

Which kind of put me on the defensive at first.

But then - I’ve been collecting emails at shows and from various interactions in person and online for 25 years.

So, yeah, I get it. My mom was my first subscriber in 1999 along with a few of my high school friends.¹

Beyond that, we could have just as easily met at your college cafeteria in 2002 as I sang my love songs to ease (or intensify) your hangover or backstage at some massive music festival when I played the drums in front of thousands of people 15 years after that.

All those interactions, boiled down into a .csv file that has travelled with me for longer than my beer-stained clipboard did.

My mind reels at the places I have been and the opportunities I’ve had to meet and be with people like you.

Writing you and telling you I’m in your neck of the woods and can I play a show in your living room or you’ll never believe it but I’m playing a show tonight in Fairfax or Halifax or Melbourne or Chicago or Paris.

That era, that vibe, that all will never come back in the same way in my life - but that’s something I did. For many, many years.

Kids changed me, the business changed, I just…changed.

And now the home of the mailing list has changed.

Now we’re on Substack and instead of just “Syd’s Mailing List” it has a possibly more expansive name: One Good Reason, taken from my 2017 album “Easy Magic”.

Music was once my ticket out of a small town, then my apprenticeship at a craft and my livelihood.

Now it is something different - more integrated into who I am than ever while shedding some of the craving that had come with it.

I’ve come to see my One Good Reason when it comes to music as simply the opportunity to connect - first with the people I’m making it with. To speak without words in the rehearsal room, to move together towards a common purpose, to process something. Then in the studio, then with an audience.

They’re all tightropes. And that’s why I joined the circus - to walk those tightropes.

So much time is wasted in rehearsals and recording talking about what to play with words that consume energy that could be spent just playing it. So much ego needs to be overcome to serve the song, the band, the project. But a band with no ego and no discussion is boring.

It’s good to notice that the music business is a rigged, fame-obsessed hellscape, but, once you’ve found something to play together, it’s boring to play for yourself.

So we try to find an audience, sometimes without taking time to thank the audience that’s already showed up.

Which is my point - thank you for showing up. You’re also my One Good Reason. Yes, you can have more than one.

No worries if you don’t click every link or read every email or come to every show. We’re both still here.

Substack opens up some cool possibilities for us. There’s a much more robust community and commenting section. There’s group chat if we want it and you can support my work with a paid subscription. Those links are all sprinkled around these words.

And now, a stroll down the record store bins of my life currently.

Upcoming Shows and New Music

Radio Skies Floats Away - New Record and 4 Shows

Radio Skies has a new album and we’re playing 4 shows at the Deer Lodge in Ojai. New lineup, new songs, and a new chance to make foundational Ojai memories that may be the backbone of our community for years to come.

Mia Dyson made an album with us that came out to the most ardent, breathless praise of anything we’ve ever made together - the piece in Rolling Stone tells the story perfectly - she almost died of a heart attack so the fact that this record exists is a miracle.

xoxo

Syd

1. A quick story about my high school friends and my music:

When I first started releasing solo music I was 17. Up until that point I had simply been a drummer who loved rock and roll, especially hard rock. In those heady early days of email people were still figuring it out.

I was accidentally cc’d on an email where a bunch of guys I really respected were having an entire conversation whose theme was “what the hell is this crap he’s making? It’s so soft and…what? Love songs and acoustic guitars??” — devastating at the time, but also - a kid had room in his heart for Korn and Ani Difranco, what can I say.