When it rains it pours...

Where to start....? Woke up to a series of "good news" items so nearly overwhelming that the moment was hard to believe. First off, speaking of waking up, I am currently in Seattle, Washington. No big deal right? We've got two homes, East Coast and West Coast. No problem. Except for the fact that besides the fact that my entire band and staff live on the East Coast, so too do most of the innumerable companies who work with and for us. None of us have any idea truly just how many companies and various consultants and publicists and consultants are involved in "working a new campaign." The figure is mind boggling. The bigger you get and the further you go the more people need to be signed on to help the campaign. And so it is that 99.9 % of them all live and work on the East Coast. All except for one that is. Our UK publicist. They of course reside in the UK. So... Where does that leave yours truly? Somewhere between dead tired and exhausted. East coast is three hours ahead of us here in rainy but beautiful Seattle. Which means that in order to jump on it early enough to be alive and ready to rock by 9:00am EST I've got to wake up at 5:00am. Only problem is that foe the last twenty years my mind heart soul and body have been staying awake till and going to bed around 2 to 3 am. Tough? Nah... More like BRUTAL. Combine that wretchedness with a sensible desire to communicate regularly with our UK and European publicity team I need to either stay awake till midnight in order to catch them at 9am their time just as they're hitting the office, or wake up, yet again, around 5 or 6 am at the latest in order to have a chance to spend a mere hour or so with them before they leave for the day. I often begin my communiques to them in my bathrobe freezing my tail off asking them "Whats the future look like guys?" An hour brainstorming reviewing and strategizing with them, it's time to jump over to begin working with all the companies and people on our east coast team. Sure they're awake aware alive and feeling fine. Showered coffeed breakfast'd maybe even lunched. Me? I'm still seeing the dead darkness of early early morning outside my windows. The strategy sounded perfect when we finally came up with one. I go to bed way earlier than I'm used to, then wake up at 5:00 am and work like a dog knowing that I'm racing that clock turning 2:00 pm because 2pm here = time to go home time for them. Then another hour or two of work and Im supposed to take a nap around 3 or 4 pm to catch up on all the lost sleep and just make sure that I'm up and refreshed in time for dinner at 7 with the fam. Only problem is that by the time you've worked yourself into a mad frenzy attempting to accomplish everything everyone has requested of you that day or the day before, you're just too wired to go lie down and "take a nap." Sometimes it's inevitable and unstoppable. As in by 1:00 pm I'm cross-eyed exhausted and passed out dead on my feet. Yep, it's hard. And no I'm still not accustomed to "going to bed early," as this new blog post illustrates. So... Where were we? Yes that's right. A droopy eyed morning full of heaps of good news. Current single "New Orleans Dreams" has not only managed to break into the Top40, but it's jumped up to #33. This is no less than ten times more incredible unbelievable and exciting from this end than it may appear from the outside. Let's not fuck around and kid ourselves here. I've been recording music and touring since I was 17 years old and have yet to have a bonafide Billboard Hot 100 hit song. Right now "New Orleans Dreams" as it stands does still not qualify for that coveted success story. The song needs go all the way to #1 on it's current chart and then dominate yet another and then and only then will it have a chance to hit the Billboard Hot 100. Yet after more years than I'd ever publicly admit to being in the business this is the closest we've ever come. And it feels AMAZING. In addition there were three different magazine interview requests waiting and the announcement that "new Orleans dreams" was headed towards the charts of another radio format, Triple A. Think Jack Johnson or Fleet Foxes on a good day at a good radio station. That's what Triple A sounds like. It's a damn good bit of news. Of course we could head right into the countless problems encountered today -- as everyday in thr music business when you're sn artist on a small indie record label. But why bother talking about the two different singles and albums that are due by Friday of this week to different companies but were under ordered in the first place and now have to be rushed in order to be made in time to hit all the different deadlines. Nor shall we speak of my beautiful wife who is generous in spirit and kind to a fault and the near nervous breakdown meets meltdown she dramatized this morning over "being overwhelmed by how impossibly chaotic this business is and overworked we all are despite having all the help in the world from all these various companies on boars trying to make things easier and flow smoother for me and this totally unexpected string of recent successes we've been experiencing the last few months. Even if every single one of us involved in these campaigns and careers stayed awake 24/7 and worked nonstop we would still just barely scratch the surface of all the tasks that are due or overdue. It is for lack of a better series of words an utterly complete and chaotic nightmare. And we're on the plus side of the equation right now. We're winning bigtime right now in every arena. If we only had a moment of free time this would surely be a time to go out and celebrate. But we don't. So we won't. But what we will keep doing is working at it. Dreams do come true. You just need the perseverence and resilience to realize the dreams. That's the payoff. Everyday now is a "pinch me" day. But speaking of dreams fulfilled... IT happened today. The unthinkable. Late in the day, though three hours earlier than east coast time, we learned that renegade visionary and sometimes tyrant Steve "his Holiness" Jobs passed away today. The news hit me so suddenly casually and intensely that I found myself during the first few hours after hearing it that I couldn't even go there. I just kept working. Trying not to think about it. Today, a day like any other, will in the years and decades to come will mark the end of an era. Like BC and AD before it, BS and AJ will stay with many of us until our own eventual passing. Twitted crashed more times than can be counted due to the endless outpouring of Tweets running through it's system heralding the news and mourning the loss of who some call one of the most important Americans in human history. And that's a damn impressive group of people to compete with. Yes it's ironic that the majority of human civilization heard about and shared the information of Jobs' passing on a device that he himself invented and introduced to the world. And again yes I believe that a few took it a bit too far when comparing the passing of Steve to the assasination of Martin Luther King. But surely Stevo passing will mean more to more people on planet earth in years to come than if almost any US president died, except maybe JFK; the importance of which lies more at the feet of the circumstances of his death than to anything to do with his noble yet few accomplishments. The passing of Steve Jobs leaves rhe world devoid of one of it's greatest thinkers and visionaries of all time. Those are big shoes to fill. And thus, we all know that they will never be filled. New shoes will have to be invented entirely. And that precisely that is why we will miss Jobs so much. He was a genius at inventing new shoes to fill that the majority of people on earth didn't even know needed filling. Like Einstein or Edison before him, our entire world has been transformed, for better or worse some would argue, in ways we never even dreamt possible. Out of all the hundreds of thousands of things that were said today about the early and sudden passing of Steve Jobs, one stuck with me more than any other: "When we look at the incredible amount of life transforming inventions that came from this man and his company over the last thirty years, it makes you wonder what he would have come up with over the next thirty had he stayed alive." That was an incredibly insightful observation. And from what I know it came from Anderson Cooper. Of course we will never know. And neither will Steve. At least not a here on earth Steve. But it is at the very least a fascinating subject to contemplate. What more really can be said? Except, God will we miss him.