Thanksgiving with the family in Arizona. Am I outgrowing my family? Is that possible? Could there be a worse dream to wake up to? Is that what growing into an adult means? Click your heels. There's no place like home. There's no place like home.

Watched Paul McCartney on TV last night. What a great band he has assembled. Still carrying the torch. His vocals were awesome. Made me realize how we really need to start making a better living from our own music. Right now the general consensus is that bands don't make good money. One out of a thousand maybe make enough to get by. You’ve got your Eminems and your Madonnas. But most of us don't even make enough to live. And this belief is perpetuated and vehemently defended by everyone in the industry. ‘that's just the way it is,’ is the general feeling. We hear it all the time. every show we play, we’re told that we may have to play for free, or we’ll be lucky if we make five hundred bucks to split between all five of us plus pay the soundman, light person, flyers, transportation, etc. and a lot of times it's the bands that are at fault in the first place because they put up with it and so they set this precedent that all bands have to do it. They get so used to it that they never get out of it. It’s like, ‘I've fallen into this belief and I can’t get up.’ it's funny.

And so then all the club owners etc just assume that they can get this free entertainment all the time. Which they can as long as bands are willing to do it. We’re in this position now where we just absolutely refuse to play that game. We turn down more gigs than we accept. Our agent will call and say, ‘such and such called and wants to know if you’ll play such and such club for fifty bucks, no hotel, no drinks, etc.’ And I just look at the phone for a minute and then, ‘uh I don't think so. Maybe you can call such and such band.’ They’ll be charging 7 bucks at the door and we’re going to play for free? O.k. sure well do it. if the club lets everyone in for free that night and lets everyone drink for free. We’ll play for free. no problem. The cool thing though is that the gigs that we do play now feel a lot better. Interesting.

You know, it's just getting to that point where you start honoring who you are more. you start honoring and appreciating what you do and who you are. After a while you can easily sift out the people who don't honor and appreciate you and you just don't work with them. they start to go away because they know you don't want to play that game anymore. In the music business everyone just expects the musicians to work for free. It's really funny if you aren't in the biz and you are looking at it from the outside because there are literally tens of thousands of musicians who live and work this way. Everyone around them telling them that that's just the way it is. So they just fall for it. Clubs always want you to play for free. Festivals and conferences of course want you to play for free. You can sell thousands of CDs and still not make any money. Shit, ask any major label act from the last hundred years, you can sell millions of CDs and not make any money. You can hear yourself on the radio, see radio reports that you're being played on stations all over the country, and still not see any money from that. You can even be played on MTV and not get paid for that either if you want to.

There are people making money in the music business, just not most of the musicians. Again it's just really funny when you look at it objectively. I've been thinking a lot about this the last few days, exploring it, and I think about the last fifteen years I've been a professional musician and I can’t say I've made more than thirty or forty thousand dollars. And we’re just so hypnotized by the persistent beliefs that are so ingrained in everyone that we are kind of brainwashed into believing that this is just the way it is. I always laugh when fellow musicians work for like two years on their albums and then give them all away. Fellow musicians from the scene will give me their new CD for free and I will force them to take money from me for it. I tell them they're crazy. Charge every person you know for your newest CD and I guarantee you won't still be working at that gas station, or that newspaper, or that phone room, or that record store in six months. After all, you wouldn’t work there for free would you? Why is it that most people seem to believe that if they are working a job that they truly love that it's alright not to get paid for it? But if they are working at something that they don't really like then they should be paid for it. What is that? We are a funny people.

Last Movie:  Wizard of Oz. That movie is whacked. And also stayed up all night watching the biographies of the presidents of the United States. I don't think our founding fathers would recognize the America that has built up from the constitution they created so few years ago.