I broke my back for 4 years trying to make an album called "Wreckage of the Past." I don't know if I've never not hit some pre-determined deadline I've set for myself.
When I woke up the first morning after the first show of the Northwest Warpath Tour in 2018 I had a startling revelation. "My dreams came true. And there's nothing here."
We stayed on an Indian Reservation, or "The Rez" as they called it the first night of the tour. I felt like such an imposter and fraud. Afraid I'd be found out, I did the first show. The next morning overlooking a lake that looked like a postcard I realized I wasn't a fraud. Not only did my dreams come true, but it broke my heart and quickly turned into a nightmare.
For 20 years I chased a goal and missed everything along the way. I missed everything important, pushed and manipulated everything & everyone. I was selfish and self-seeking and only cared about one thing. I basically felt like the biggest piece of shit of all time. When we had a couple days off I didn't leave my hotel room and cried monster tears the whole time. I saw how evil and terrible I was and had been chasing this stupid dream for so long by any means necessary.
"Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it" is hella true. I found no pot at the end of the rainbow for sure. I got a clear view of the wreckage of my past. It wasn't bittersweet, it was straight up bitter.
After some months after I got home I knew what I needed to do. I started making a double album called "Wreckage of the Past." This time from a different perspective. Music was no longer my God.
I made hundreds of beats over the next few years trying to record the follow up to my "Late Bloomer" album starting over from square one. I completely re-learned my voice or maybe started discovering it for the first time.
I wrestled with the "Wreckage of the Past" obsessively over the next 4 years and knew my hard hat, lunchpail mentality would eventually beat it into submission. Some songs I did over 9,000 takes on. I know it's in the thousands because I can see the playlists take numbers and many songs I recorded 10+ times.
It's nothing for me to record each verse 3 or 4 hundred times per sitting and when I moved to my Grandma's in 2021 that's exactly what I did. I thew or gave away everything I owned except clothes and equipment.
I told myself one of two things is going to happen. I'm either going to die or finish this fuckin album. I just didn't think I'd actually die.
In maybe September I quit my job, quit everything in my life, burned every boat & bridge and went head first into finishing "Wreckage of the Past." I had it planned perfectly. It beat me.
For the first time I lost. It killed me. It killed something in me. I saw why too. It's alive. It's art. It has it's own timeline. It can't be told what to do or when to complete itself or how to exist. I saw that I'm not in charge. I'm not the boss of it. I'm only in service of it. I can't tell it when to bloom. I can't tell it what it should or shouldn't be. I'm not the boss of it, it's the boss of me.
Basically as soon as I gave up at my lowest point the engineer called after I thought he was long gone asking if I had the files ready. I told him the whole thing imploded on itself.
"Mind of a Madman 2" was always a frustration outlet. I started working on it in 2016 or so and even thought I completed it once. When I'd get pissed and hate making music I'd go work on MOAMM2 for a couple weeks until I felt like making beats again. It was suppose to be a mixtape type thing with other producers so I could write and release tension. Mixing and production were already done by producers better than I so it's easy to just find beats and write.
In a panic I started looking at the MOAMM2 files and realized I basically had an album I could send in. Like I robber I went raiding project files from Samantha and Mark. I called Mark trying to con him out of some of his best songs in progress, but he knew better.
Somehow, in like 10 days, I went from one of the lowest points in my life to MOAMMM2 recorded and being mixed. Samantha and Cousin Ian came through pulling me through the finish line and I was like, "what the fuck was that??" I wasn't even trying to make that cd. All 14 songs were recorded in about 10 days plus a couple we later cut. Strangest thing ever.
My head is still for sure in a pretzel, but maybe I'll extract the correct lessons from the whole ordeal. Art is alive. It has it's own timeline. It will be what it wants and bloom on it's own schedule. No one was ever even suppose to hear several of the MOAMM2 songs. In desperation I decided to finally listen for a change and get out of the way.
When I go back to working on "Wreckage of the Past" this time I'm going to let it work on me and learn to work WITH it.
The music shit has literally nothing to do with music, but everything to do with life.