I’ve been thinking again about life, the universe, and everything. I’m closer to 50 than not, and it’s only natural to think about what was or could have been as you approach another milestone. I was reminded of an old blog post I made on another site years ago, and thought about it again this weekend. So here it is, resurrected from elsewhere on the internet circa 2014, and I’ll add some updates along the way.
Today, I was sitting in BGR having lunch and watching a Journey concert from some point in the 80s. It got me introspective suddenly, thinking about what might have been some ten years ago. I expect that anyone reading this blog knows that I have been playing bass guitar for almost 20 years, been in and out of bands (most of which involved my sister in some way or another), and still play any chance I get. What some people might not know about me is that in 2004, I had a near miss with fame.
Sherman, set the Wayback Machine for 2002. I was another IT employee working for another dot-com trying to keep the lights on in the shadow of the bubble burst. I was becoming increasingly disgruntled and seriously eyeing a career change, so I enrolled myself in community college in an Audio Engineering program (something I later finished in 2007 through Berklee College of Music).
During the Spring ’03 semester, my sister let me know that a friend’s band was looking for a new bass player and asked if I’d be interested. I’d been through two fairly painful rejections with her old band, and was really apprehensive, but I thought I’d give it a shot. She put me in touch with a guy named Pete Evick and his eponymous band, Evick. We exchanged a couple emails and he asked me to come out and play a couple songs with the band on Wednesday night. Long story short, after a few fill-ins and some wrangling, that June, I became the bass player for a very active and hard-working band. During my year and a half with the guys, we had to have filled close to 180 nights. When my particular dot-com failed, I managed to survive on savings and my band income for about three months, so I was a professional musician for a time. I even performed on the Sunset to Sunset EP. Yeah, I’m on Spotify, baby! The stories from my tenure could fill a hundred blog posts, but this one is more about what could have been rather than what was.
In November of 2003, Pete’s tenacity and unceasing networking landed us four gigs opening for the Bret Michaels Band in Virginia, South Carolina, and Florida. It was probably the busiest week of my life: there was one point where I was awake for 36 hours straight and that includes drinking shots at Noon on a Sunday. A real rock star moment. Over the ensuing months, Pete forged a deep friendship with Bret that continues to this day. As for me, I had a mortgage, mounting debts, and a new IT job that was getting more than a little annoyed at my absences and tardiness due to being out rocking the nation until 3am three-to-five times a week. It was a hard decision, but I left Evick in August of 2004 in the midst of a complete reorganization of my life. Not before an EPIC west coast adventure that allowed me to take the stage at the famous Whisky A Go-Go on Sunset Strip.
For a long time, I fell out of contact with the guys as they achieved amazing heights of success. They themselves became the Bret Michaels Band. I found myself more than a little bitter, not at the guys themselves, but more at the fans of the band. I had once considered them dear friends, but now it seemed they had completely shunned me. I’ve recently reconnected with the guys and even shared a stage with them (as Evick) back where it all began at Sully’s. Pete is still a good friend of mine, and we keep in touch as often as his busy schedule allows. So what do BGR and Journey have to do with this?
It’s not often that I allow myself a moment of “What If?” but seeing the big arena rock show of Journey on that flat screen gave me pause and I wondered. What if I hadn’t left in 2004, right when things were taking off? How different would my life have been; how different would I be? Would I have been able to cut it as a touring bass player? Would I have lived up to the standards of a national act like BMB? Would my independence and outspokenness have landed me in hot water with the boss or even gotten me fired? Who might I have met or loved along the way? Would I have tattoos? Would I have appeared on Rock of Love?
Truthfully, thoughts like this are pointless because life is a giant Choose Your Own Adventure and you can’t flip the pages back. It’s human nature, however, to think back on these major turning points, especially when one path worked out so well for the people who stayed on it. Honestly, I don’t regret my decision because some excellent things have happened to me since: I finally got my shit together, met my wife in 2007, got married in 2010, welcomed a magnificent daughter in 2012, and this past October (2013), I landed what I have long considered a dream job at Red Hat.
So, in conclusion, I came back to work and decided to write all of this out. Pete, if you happen to read this, congratulations, my friend. For a few minutes over lunch today, I kinda wished I’d stuck around at least a little while longer. Thanks for a lifetime’s worth of memories and here’s to nothing but continued success over the years.
That was the original post with some light editing. In the almost 10 years since I wrote this, I moved to Tennessee, published a book, and changed jobs a handful of times. Pete has been touring with Bret for nearly 20 years, although the cast of characters around him has changed somewhat. One newer member of the band is my younger sister, so even though it’s not me up there playing bass, there’s a Clark on that stage. Maybe being the big rock star was never going to be for me; it’s a hard life and I’m a much happier person now than I think I’ve ever been. But it still brings a smile to my face to think of people that I care about out there living out their dreams. To be honest, so am I.
