I was a very active member of the Boston music scene. Aside from playing underground and out on the streets, I played out in clubs and did everything an independent musician does to get by, hoping to break through.

 

     It was through my efforts busking that I was able to convince a premiere club in Cambridge, called the Middle East, to give me a residency on Tuesday nights. I was certain that in time, and with little promotion, I could pull people from the subway and the streets into this corner lounge. When I started playing outside in Harvard Square during the summer of ‘98 and ‘99, with my friend Jason Gardner on drums, we were enjoying quite the little buzz. Some nights we had a line out the door.     Along with local radio and press coverage, I was starting to feel like a rock star. In some small ways, I was.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Pilgrimage

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Everything came easy to me then. I was being recognized on the street, I was sleeping around, people were buying me drinks, getting me high, the works. Best time of my life, not a care in the world.

 

     Something was not right though. Things started to feel stagnant. I knew something had to change or I would forever be a fixture on the local scene, never realizing my full potential. There’s a saying amongst musicians in Boston that in order to make it from Boston, you have to get out of Boston. And so there it was. With the millennium looming, I resolved to move to New York City.

 

     I was really cocky back then. I dismissed everything that was good for me in Boston, just to get on a bus by January 1, 2000. I was certain it would be the beginning of my actual career. I grabbed my bass, a back pack, and off I went.

 

     I crashed on a friend’s couch in Jersey City, before I eventually settled in Brooklyn. My stay was contingent upon making a living busking underground. I was scared. The subways down here were bigger, louder, dirtier, and less receptive. Had I not played in Boston all those years, I don’t think I would have made it through the first day.

 

     Four years have now passed, and I’m just beginning to get my groove. New York City is everything they say it is, and yet nothing of what I expected it to be. If that’s a cliché...  well, then it’s true.

 

     NYC has given me the opportunity to re-evaluate everything. I’ve come to realize it has been about the “process”; the process of survival, the process of understanding, of being, why I came down here. Whether I get discovered or not is irrelevant (or is it?).