The Lies They Tell

Constant travel, free room and board, the girls, the lights, the drugs. "Oh, to be a musician!" Right? What people forget to mention when they tell a young boy that he has talent is that the road to stardom is absolutely filled with potholes that you may never pull your way back out of. You may get a free meal at the show but then you spend the next twelve days eating beans and rice breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And before you arrive anywhere in a limo you have to weld the front end of your car back together after your lead vocalist side-swipes it with the van. I'm not making this up, he even spray painted the brackets so they would match the car (very classy). I know all of this from first hand experience because I had the bad luck to fall in love with a young musician.
He plays the guitar, banjo, slide guitar, bass and pretty much anything else with strings as long as you give him a minute to figure out how to hold it. When I first met him he had spiked black hair, skin tight pants and liked to sport a dog collar. He played lead guitar in a punk rock band shouting out lyrics about the government and equal rights. He was pissed off (it's hard being a middle class white kid in the south). These days he has traded in the dog collar for flannel and spends his life in worship of Bela Fleck. A lot has changed except for one thing, it's still all about the music.
His tunnel vision and artistic longing seem terribly romantic but in reality his life is about as romantic as a trip to Walmart. I recently checked out the blog adamthedrummer.blogspot.com. He talks about stealing WiFi from Krystal and crossing his fingers over a job at UPS while anticipating an audition at the Atlanta Instititute of Music. As I said it is not a glamourous life and me and my guy have also spent our fair share of time sitting in fast food parking lots checking our email, hoping and praying for some good news.