DEATH OF AN INDIE BAND

Eight years ago, I was a single 20-year old living in my parent’s basement trying to recover from a broken heart. It wasn’t a person who broke it, but a band. So much has changed since then. Yet here I am again, left to pick up the pieces of a shattered dream. Because ultimately that’s what Get Along had become to me.

It’s hard to believe I’m even writing this. In a way, this journey has been so much longer than the six years we’ve been playing together. Cara and I first met in my high-school best friend’s basement. She wanted our help recording a few demos and we were happy to do it. Cara was an overconfident 13-year old with more natural talent than a brass high school rock n’ roll drummer could care to notice. But eventually, I did notice. And years later my life would change forever when I asked her to start a folk duo with me. We called that band, Tenderfoot… then Plenty of Fish.

But later, we decided on Get Along.

I could write about all the songs we wrote and recorded. I could tell silly little stories from the tours we booked; trailblazing our way through the mild, mild west. I’d love to tell you my favorite memories – the best bands we played with and the friends we made along the way. But I have a tendency to ramble when I write blogs and for the sake of time, I’ll keep this to the point.

Last year, with the help of our good friends Glenn and Rich at The Spot Studios, we recorded an EP called, Let My People Go. It was the culmination of years of writing. After the birth of our daughter in 2014, being in a band got hard for the first time. I mean, it’s never easy being a good band (we like to think we were one). But all of the sudden we were a family; a real one. No longer some young married couple driving around in their Forester with a drum set and $100 synthesizer. We had a car seat now. A diaper bag. There was something so much bigger and more fulfilling than Get Along. It was easy to spend more time with our little girl and less with our older, much louder baby.

But as we adjusted to family life, we found ourselves more inspired than ever to also do band life. We had to create and perform. We had to do what we felt we were made to do. So we did, slowly but surely. We worked on what we felt were our best songs to date. We sold our home for a handsome profit (thank you Colorado Housing Market boom!) and invested all the earnings into the EP. We were going to record and market it with a proper budget. We had never gone “all in” on the investment side of our music and now was the time. It was so exciting.

Unfortunately, things just never went the way we hoped. 2017 was probably the hardest year of my life. It was the hardest of our marriage. It was the hardest on the band. The release of our single Death of a Spirit Animalhad done alright. It didn’t do as well as we had hoped, but we knew we weren’t a “radio single kind of band” so we didn’t think too much of it.

We finished recording the Let My People Go EPafter that, and it turned out good. It was the best thing we’d done to that point. Well performed, well written, well produced – it was solid. But I knew in my heart right from the start that it wasn’t everything it could have been. It wasn’t ground breaking. It wasn’t what I dreamed it would be. It fell a little short of my expectations. As had all things in Get Along and most things in my life.

We released the EP on September 22nd, 2017 to little fanfare. We played a release show the same day – and it will probably go down as the hardest, least satisfying performance to date of my 14-year live music career. We just didn’t have it. We were emotionally exhausted. We were out of sync. The third member playing with us at the time literally walked away in the middle of the climax of the set; a dramatic crescendo suddenly spun into an unintentional and loose, whimpering resolution. A shadow of the set we intended to play was performed to a half empty room. I walked off the stage that night and forced a smile for my friends and family that were nice enough to come out that evening. We sold 6 EPs.

And so there we were, disenchanted in a sea of white and gold balloons. Trying to get motivated to rebuild an EP that had somehow, one day into its release, already failed to be what it could have been. I don’t know if anyone reading this has ever poured a good portion of your life into one single thing that constantly caused you pain – maybe a bad relationship, job, or addiction could qualify – but somewhere along the way I realized Get Along was that thing. It was an abusive spouse; a sunk cost fallacy toying with my intellect and emotions. This wasn’t really fun anymore, like it was meant to be when Tenderfoot played acoustic songs in my parent’s basement. And it’s not because I lost my love for performing and writing. It’s not because I stopped believing in the power and positive influence music can have. It’s not because I stopped believing in myself, or my family, or the promises of God – even if I struggled with all of them. It was just all the hurt. It was the emotional toll of consistent rejection. It was selling SIX MOTHER EFFING EP’S AT A RELEASE SHOW. It was never getting UMS any year we applied, while every other band we knew got it. It was getting rejected by locals only radio shows, even though we clearly had radio quality recordings. It was asking band after band after band if they wanted to put some shows together – and it never happening.

I know I’m bitching. And anyone who ever made it in anything had thicker skin than I’m currently displaying. But six years of being poked eventually leaves a bruise. And this isn’t to blame anyone else. I take full responsibility. We didn’t sell the EP that night, because the performance was shit (and because streaming exists). We didn’t get the radio support because we didn’t write radio friendly songs. Other bands didn’t want to play with us because we didn’t really fit the scene, or participate enough in it. Fuck, I get it. It’s on us. It’s on me. But it still hurt like hell. And I couldn’t take doing the same thing year after year with no positive result.

So we had to kill it. We had to Kylo Ren the thing and “let the past die”. And the only way to do that was let Get Along die with it. And so we buried it. We played our last show at Lion’s Lair last Saturday – the same place we debuted the band. And we had a great freaking time.

So what does it mean for us now?

What it means is we’re back at square one. We’re taking some time to evaluate what it is we want to bring to this world through our art. I personally am on a journey to rediscover myself; to try to be a better husband, father, friend, and everything in between. I honestly see music playing a massive role in that. In fact, I don’t think I can do it any other way.

Cara and I are not finished pursuing a career in music. It’s the best way for us to do some good in this world. But we are done pursuing Get Along. I’m not sure when we’ll be back, or what it will look like. I’m not sure what kind of music we’ll play or who we’ll perform with. But I know that we’ll be better for it when it happens.

I want to thank everyone who ever supported Get Along. There’s so many times that people bought CDs, texted me when we dropped new songs and videos, came out to a live show, etc. And I cherish so many of those moments in my heart. Some of them really had an impact on me and kept me going longer than I could have on my own. I hope, somewhere, there’s a few people who really loved a song or two of ours - someone who was moved or impacted by us in some positive way. That’s what my favorite music does for me. It makes me a better person. It challenges my way of thinking or reaffirms the things believe in most. It helps me express hope and love; it picks me back up when the world has weighed me down. And I hope to bring more of that to others through my own music. Thanks again for all the years of support. This was a really hard decision to make, but it’s the right one for us. Hopefully we’ll see some of you again in our future endeavors.

Much love,

Nick