I am a liar, but I’m an honest liar. As I think all artists are.

In Picasso’s words,

“We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand.”

Moreover, as said by Tolkien,

“After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of truth, and indeed present aspects of it that can only be received in this mode; and long ago certain truths and modes of this kind were discovered, and must always reappear.”

So maybe I’m not a liar, maybe I am a storyteller, and in all stories remains some element of fiction.

My fiction shows itself in the performer—and fiction lies in that word: performer. This act of standing in front of a crowd of people, singing these songs, telling these stories. It is, genuinely, one of the single most fun things that I’ve ever done. But it is a character, it’s someone who is confident in the thing that they are performing.

This fiction displays itself in a continuous river of “content,” and social engagement. A “pretend” that forces me to create small videos to satisfy an algorithm, to care what the algorithm thinks.

The prevailing voices of this AI-curated, dopamine thief shows—especially in this realm of musical and visual creation—a very different space than the one that I occupy. To replicate this would be to create algorithmic success, and in many ways I have tried.

But if you enter my apartment, you will not find a perfect, clean, and tidy studio space with all of the perfect equipment. You won’t find photos of the legendary studios I’ve recorded in, you won’t find entertainment.

Instead, you’ll find small memories, the little moments in chasing a dream. You’ll find artwork that I love, a messy floor between recording attempts, secondhand gear, well-loved amplifiers, budget synthesizers, loose cables, empty string boxes, and untempered natural light. You’ll find a soldering iron that’s been used too many times to repair the same instrument, and a window with the screen falling off.

In that room, you’ll find a person: an honest liar. That person is not a character, they have good days and bad days, but often it feels like the bad outweighs the good; though everyday is an opportunity to change that. That person has a piece of paper pinned to the wall that says “be disappointed, not defeated” a few feet away from an incomplete list of goals organized from “attainable” to “lofty.” Their eyes are tired from blue light, they crave words on paper pages. Every day they have to remind themselves that they create for the sake of creating.

The person and the place, the performance and the playback are not “finished.” At least not in the way that the blue box in my pocket says finished looks.

This is the first ten seconds of a song that is terminally in process:

Every song I’ve recorded has this moment, but it never makes the recording. The sound of sitting down, adjusting the mic, turning up the volume, fingers finding their place on a fretboard.

To me, it is like the recording has captured a moment similar to the tuning of an orchestra. The transition from reality to fiction, the indication of preparation for something that is not quite a lie, but a hidden truth.

I’ve begun to see this moment everywhere. The lights dimming in a movie theater, the low hum of a hot amp mixed with voices at a show, the first few interior pages of a book before the story begins, the frame around a piece of art, sunrises and sunsets. These transitions provide permission to the liminal space, a notification that the experience is about to shift, the fiction is about to reflect something.

If you enter my studio, you will not find perfect lighting and expensive gear, a collection of guitars, or high streaming numbers remembered on the wall. You will find an orchestra, tuning, for someone hopelessly steeped in fiction.

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At no point in my musical journey have I had gross finances available. When I began recording “Letters,” I had just graduated college with a degree in Writing, a 22-year-old man with a not-yet-developed frontal lobe, and a lot of feelings. However, I had a stable job with an income of around $48k annually, and some borrowed and purchased recording equipment I had procured over the last few years. After my then girlfriend (now wife) encouraged me to stop talking about putting an album out, and to actually take the action to do it, I found an artist’s retreat accepting scholarship applications, and was accepted to go to a lakeside cabin for ten days to record the better part of my first record. My good friend, Caique, traveled to Durango to record drums for me. My friend Andy wrote and recorded a number of keys parts. I had the opportunity to work with talented mixing and mastering engineers, and eight months later put out the record.

The making of “Letters” was an entirely self-funded process. While this effort was difficult financially, with my relative job security and decent income, I was able to make it work. An estimated cost breakdown for this album, and its promotion would look something like this:

Artist Retreat Cost (after scholarship): $500

Travel Costs: $300

Add’l Equipment: $300

Mixing: $1500

Mastering: $600

Release & Marketing: $500

Release Concert (Durango): $350 - offset by ticket sales, net +$150

Release Concert (Denver): $1500 - offset by ticket sales, net $0

Film crew for Denver release concert: $1500 - offset by sponsorship, net -$200

Net Spending: $3900

While this is arguably cheap compared to the costs of most professionally produced albums, this was still an entirely self-funded project, and would not have been possible without borrowing equipment, and receiving assistance from a multitude of people. Regardless, the privilege of having funds left over after covering the necessities of my daily life to contribute to this project was something that allowed me to make the music without getting “permission” to do it. In the cost breakdown above, you will even notice that the first two concerts I played after the album’s release were performed in rented spaces, as my band had not yet “earned their stripes” to book anything capable of supporting the music we were trying to play.

Aside from these two shows, and a long running series of solo bar gigs, my experience as a live performing musician could be narrowed down to church musicianship, and camps. While this provided stage experience, and sound and audio experience, it vastly limited the unique exposure to grungy basement clubs, empty rooms, and unforgiving crowds that a live rock band performance merits.

Beginning in 2024, I had the opportunity to start traveling with a number of bands on tour, working as a guitar tech/stage manager, and assisting with all things touring. These experiences lit a raging fire beneath my buttocks. I was gifted the chance to learn all that I could from these bands—how they interacted with the audience, how they performed, how to navigate the live performance space. Not only did I become aware of an intentional performance ethic, but I was educated on the accessibility of the act of live performance. This was not a game for virtuosos and nepo-babies, this was a game for hard workers. Persistence and practice were the key ingredients to becoming a professionally performing band. All of a sudden, my distant dreams became attainable skills.

What does this have to do with losing my job?

If you’ve read my previous essay, you know that in May I lost my job—the same job that allowed me the stability to fund my first album. With a difficult job market where I live (and across the country), I re-entered the gig economy as a video editor and audio producer working under contract through my company, Ragged Sounds. Side note: if you are looking to hire someone for video or audio services, please send an email to management(at)raggedoak(dot)com. Between this, and my wife’s work, we were just able to make ends meet. Some weeks we wondered if we would be able to pay our electric bill on time, but thanks to my wife’s incredible work ethic and skill, and some lucky contracts on my end, we have kept our heads above water.

The end of my secure employment occurred a few weeks after a tour of the southeast United States with my friends from Redwood. A few days prior, I had played a release concert for my EP, “Less Than One,” for a cooperative show between myself and artist Matt Clark (Lil Bud Designs). These two engagements produced in me a desire to not only play more live shows—in part to grow the Ragged Oak reach, and get my music heard by more people—but to play better live shows. Upon my return from tour, and my exit from traditional full-time employment, I poured my blood, sweat, and keystrokes into booking the right shows, and playing the best we could.

In my early musical journey, creating the opportunities to play live allowed for a financial risk factor. I could rent a space and pay it back, I could travel, I could pay musicians, there were small spaces within which I could take on financial risk to produce opportunity. If you are in a touring band, or are a band promoter, you are almost definitely wincing at the previous sentence. The reason for this is that while some financial flexibility can produce opportunities, it can often produce the wrong opportunities.

Examining my first every show as Ragged Oak, for instance. I paid to utilize a small, local venue for an intimate album release show. While I got to keep 100% of ticket sales from this event, the venue had no investment in the show. The people who worked there didn’t take me seriously for the entirety of the process leading up, advertising the event was a unilateral effort, and the event did nothing to give me further traction moving forward. A similar scenario occurred in a release show I put together in Denver. While this show provided a bank of incredibly valuable audio and video resources for building a media identity, it was more like a birthday party with live music.

Don’t get me wrong, these were incredibly memorable, special moments in my musical career, but from a musicianship standpoint, and from a scene standpoint, I did not earn my right to perform. While I worked incredibly hard to create the opportunity, to put on a quality show, and to produce something memorable, the individual opportunities were bought. The risk was not in the playing, but in the bank.

After I lost my job, performing music became a battleground.

Financial insecurity meant that I had to find gigs that took me seriously, and that paid me. I had to find a rotation of band members that could practice regularly, and shows that would pay me enough to pay them. More importantly, every show was a fight to deserve the next one, with the intention that the next one be a better opportunity.

I had to produce ideas for exciting shows so that fans and attendees in my city would receive a new experience every time they saw us play, and I had to find ways to do it that wouldn’t cost me. Practices became explorations, searching for new ways to evolve the set, and the songs—not merely playing the recordings back with live instruments. I stripped back the instrumentation, I learned how to band direct, I figured out how to play clubs, basements, skateparks, and as of last week—theaters.

In the beginning, I felt like Sisyphus. Every week I would reach out to venues, promoters, and touring artists searching for opportunities. It was a victory to receive a response, even if the response was “no.” But slowly, I started booking. These weren’t the three-hour bar cover gigs I did in the past, these were ticketed, paying shows with serious bands. Every show was a chance to earn the right to be there, and I loved it.

I was recently reminded of a moment in my childhood when I competed in track. At the age of ten, I competed in the mile, and came in dead last. This was not a gentle last place, but last place by nearly 100 meters. I remember my parents gently suggesting that maybe this wasn’t my sport, but at the time I recall no deep disappointment or shame. I had competed, but I had not really earned my place there yet. Six years later, after years of training, I competed in a half-marathon, and placed in the top ten.

I think back to this story, because I believe it is congruent to my current experience as a musician. When I was a teen, the experience of putting time and effort into something, of earning the right to be somewhere, to compete, was a thrilling and rewarding thing. This experience as a, quite literally, starving artist, was the same. I had to earn the right to be in every room I played in, otherwise I wouldn’t get to play in another room. This forced me to practice more, to challenge my creativity, and to learn how to not only be a musician, but a performer. Every show was a thrill, and a learning experience.

There is an entirely different essay in the idea that the struggles of this past year also created a more authentic, empathetic, desperate performer, but from a purely actionable standpoint, it produced a hard worker.

Last week, Ragged Oak played its first theater show at the Animas City Theatre in Durango, CO.

We opened for a touring indie band called Cardinal Bloom. I booked this show because of another band I met at a different show we played who said, “this band I love is coming through town, you would be the perfect opener for them.” I went home, DM’d the band, got put into contact with their management, and eventually was able to book a 45-minute opening slot at a 270-cap venue that I made so many memories at during my college years. We played one of the best shows we’ve ever played, our fans showed up for us, we sounded polished and raw. Most importantly, we performed the best we ever have.

Following this important moment in my life, and in the life of Ragged Oak, I can confidently reflect that losing my job made me a better musician, and a better performer. While I have experienced one of the most difficult, stressful, and depressing periods of my life over the last year, the opportunities pulled from the ashes have been invaluable.

The entirety of this process has revealed to me some strange desire within myself to be in mutually beneficial conflict with world I occupy. Not the people in it, not the goodness, not in a way that wants to destroy; but it is as if I am walking through some strangely thick, soupy air to reach my destination, and it is forcing me to grow stronger in the process. It is the very same joy I experienced when I was younger, moving from someone who did not belong in the race, to someone who felt alive doing it. I find myself dwelling on the possibility that all of the obstacles were opportunities. What better thing to give an artist than an obstacle?

“I am constantly trying to communicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell about something I only feel in my bones and which can only be experienced in those bones. Basically it is nothing other than this fear we have so often talked about, but fear spread to everything, fear of the greatest as of the smallest, fear, paralyzing fear of pronouncing a word, although this fear may not only be fear but also a longing for something greater than all that is fearful.” - Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

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Last night I played a show in a concrete basement.

This is not an unfamiliar engagement, nor a strange setting at this point. I’ve had the opportunity to become used to the sound of loud, growling amps, concrete walls suffering from beyond a bed of graphic t-shirts, spilt beer, and skin soaked in cigarette smoke. Last night was the same in its own special ways. The sound tech never showed, the drums were beaten and bruised, the headliner had the smallest crowd. My own band, Ragged Oak, brought an energy that excited me. I screamed the heavy parts on a Wednesday night, the growl of my distortion pedal made me grin, my shirt was dripping with sweat after the last song. It has become a high that I take for granted: People thrashing hair around during one of my new songs, cheers during a guitar solo, the moment you feel the bass kick you in the chest and stop thinking about playing—you’re just doing it. All of this has settled as a new normal, like a marathon runner who has become used to the feeling. I was in it, confident behind my instrument, and confident in my band.

In May I lost my job. Lost might be the wrong word. In May, my job lost me. For four years, I worked for a church in Durango, CO. My job was to direct the College and Young Adult Ministries. I have never considered myself a religious person, but I have a real belief in following Jesus. I believe in loving your neighbor, I believe in caring for the poor and downtrodden, I believe that gross wealth is a sickness, I understand why Jesus turned tables in the temple, I have become sickened by the hatred and intolerance spread by those who call themselves Christians. May was eight months after my boss quit, my boss who no longer identifies with a faith. In the eight months that followed, I worked beneath a lip-service Christianity; one that boasted of wonderful deeds, but that was seeded upon the value of money, the display of numbers, and the efficacy of pretending to be a megachurch on Sundays without the “problematic elements.”

When I perform in front of a crowd, my best moments are authentic. Screaming at the top of my lungs to my songs “Jericho” or “Synesthesis” are my highlights of each show. I love the moment in “Winter” when I am reminded of the young, heartbroken man writing it by a riverside. When it is ugly, I embrace the ugliness. When it is beautiful, I hope that it moves me to tears. Among my greatest prides of the last year is that my band has reached a point where I no longer have to worry about each musician knowing their part, or playing it well. I can now focus on enjoying the experience, on experiencing the emotion that was once there when I wrote the music.

When my old boss quit, I took over some of his responsibilities for a season, namely within the music ministry. I stood on a stage on Sundays and sang worship songs. I would look out over a congregation—some rich (mostly rich), some poor, some who I knew, some who I didn’t. Each weekend, I progressively felt more and more like a liar. Myself, some of my co-workers, members of my congregation, we were performers. I put on the mask of a performer every Sunday. I was a perfect, sinless child who never said “fuck,” didn’t care if he could bring his wife to orgasm, and wasn’t a socialist. I could speak to red hats and blue collars. I wasn’t depressed, my health was good, I wasn’t wondering if I could afford my next meal, because God fixes that over night. I was fucking sick of it. The Jesus I knew would be thrown out of this church.

The crowd last night was small, maybe 30-50 people. It was a Wednesday night after all. The energy, however, was riveting. Here I was, sweating through my shirt, bearing my soul in the art form I knew best. This was love, this was fury and pain, fear and courage, this was the creation expressing itself to its creator. It was ugly, and it was beautiful, and we got to feel it together.

I’d had a number of conversations during my last few months at the church about numbers. There was a radical concern regarding how many people participated in my ministry. My ministry which consisted of a group of people who suffered from depressive disorders, abusive parents, self-hatred, addiction, and naïvety. I loved these people, these college students who were curious, critical thinkers, and deep feelers. I now believe that what the greater institutional church is looking for is not curious, honest people. It is looking for believers—those who believe first, and ask questions later. But I found God in the questions, and I was not going to lie to these young people.

That small crowd of last night received an honest performance. My voice began dying early on—not because of poor vocal practice, but because I was too excited to use it. When my lyrics were painful I sang them with pain. These people paid money to come to a show in a red-lit basement in the middle of the week, they deserved the best of me.

The numbers problem came to an end at the peak of my depression and frustration within my job at the church. It had been almost four years, four years I had never intended on, but embarked upon for the care of the people I would serve. Before, I had been a writer. I’d graduated from Fort Lewis College with a degree in Creative Writing, I had published books, short stories, and poetry. I had written curriculum. I had ghostwritten published works for over 200 people. I thought that maybe I could help more people working in this ministry, so I put my career on pause. Four years later, my new supervisor—a cowardly, middle aged man who treated women like fragile statues, and young men like disappointments—told me that they were going to terminate my position with the most pathetic fake tears in his eyes. I had already decided I couldn’t do this anymore, and thus agreed on a mutual ending of my employment in two months.

Last night’s show was the seventh show we played in six months. The last six months have arguably been the hardest I have worked as a musician, and the hardest months I’ve experienced as an individual. This drive to push my music further came after the immense privilege to tour the U.S. with the English band, Redwood. I now consider the members of Redwood to be some of my most genuine friends. Watching them play every night, working as their guitar tech, seeing their passion, all of this filled me with a fire to do this as well. Too long had I waited for something to happen, I was going to suffer the spilt beer, the shitty basements, the asshole show promoters, I was going to do it.

The last time I toured with Redwood was two weeks before my last day working for the church. Because we had agreed on a mutual parting, I was told I would receive a financial “gift” rather than severance. I did not receive this. I wrote a letter about caring for people over prosperity, about how I found it disgusting to devote outreach to the wealthy and comfortable, about how we led a community that would send money to the less-fortunate, but would not touch or talk to them. This was, very likely, the wealthiest church in my city. I would wager this is why they were so concerned about money. After all, Jesus never had anything good to say about money. After this letter, I was told that it was “mean,” that I was wrong, and that leadership was disappointed in the direction my thoughts had gone.

Since my last day, not one person from this church has reached out to me.

I tried to return to writing, but the field has been wildly saturated by AI large language models since I last worked in the industry. More companies are hiring writers to provide copyright-free content to train their algorithms than there are companies hiring writers to write. I went through over 400 job rejections. I began working on contract as a video editor and audio producer, which is wildly inconsistent, but occasionally pays well. My wife and I have lived on pennies since May. Her car broke down, and we cannot afford to fix it, so I get to drive her to and from work every day. We are safe, but we are poor, and it is beautiful in an ugly sort of way.

Last night I played a show in a concrete basement. I woke up at 6AM to drive my wife to work, I went to my favorite local coffee shop to work on a video, and to apply for more jobs. At 10AM I went to therapy, something I can do now since I have acquired decent insurance for the first time in six years. I talked about the many faces I wear, about my exhaustion, about my regret every morning that my eyes open at the behest of the alarm clock. I talked about the health problems the doctors can’t seem to diagnose. I talked about my frustration at institutionalized religion. I talked about the emotional manipulation that still lingers with me. I talked about my frustrations with the show I was going to play in a concrete basement. When the time was up, I went to film a video for one of my many contract employers in my den of inconsistency. I loaded my equipment in the rain, I wondered if I had eaten yet, and I played a show in a concrete basement.

For a moment, I was myself, all of it.

As I tap away on my keyboard, now sitting in a brewery, alone, on a Thursday night in Durango, Colorado, I have just received another job rejection. There is a double rainbow outside. Inside, I wonder if serving those young people for those four years sealed my fate. The news is violent, the oligarchy wants me dead, my music does not produce the numbers it should, I cannot seem to find work in my profession, my health is declining for unknown reasons.

All of this has made me ask the question: Who cares?

Who cares about the musician playing in the concrete basement? Who cares about the young writer? Who cares about the social worker? Who cares about authenticity? Who cares about art? Who cares about me?

We find empathy in the depths of our pain.

Our Western social systems would have us believe that life is either good or bad. You are lucky or unlucky, tortured or praised. But life is a fucking mess of things we don’t understand. Maybe all of this makes me a better man, maybe it doesn’t, but I think it validates the Artist. You see, last night I played a show in a concrete basement. I’ve never had truer conversations about the nature of being, love, care, and service than I have had while touring concrete basements with new friends. No rich person has ever taught me the value of money, but I learned it from a homeless family on Colfax. No healthy person has taught me the value of caring for my body, I learned it from a 25-year old in a wheelchair who I taught how to ski. No celebrity has taught me the value of art, I learned it from an old man weeping over a microphone in a pub. No number has taught me the value of humanity, I learned it in concrete basements.

Art is proof that empathy prevails. It is ugly and beautiful. It is honest, even when it’s lying. None of this changes my experience, the reality is that I am low, this is hard. There is no genuine promise that that will ever change. However, in the depths of our humanity is this amazing ability to take our pain and love people with it. I would like to think that is what I tried to do last night in that sweaty, loud, half-filled basement. That is the mother in Gaza who gives her meal away. That is the person who can’t make rent letting an addict stay with them. That is the person who speaks and acts rather than thinks and prays.

Whether on paper, or behind a microphone. Whether at a cafe, or a brewery. Whether at home, or on the street. Regardless of the situation within which my soul finds itself, there is an opportunity to be more than I know. I am not a victim, I am not a savior, I am fundamentally human.

I am a little bundle of broken, honest, exhausted, authentic, beautiful flesh screaming in a concrete basement.