I've received lots of different reactions after telling people that I'm going to India by myself in December. Most of my friends are excited for me, if not confused about why I would chose India of all places to take a month off. Others warn of the dangers there and I've even perceived some resentment from those who would like to travel more (but choose not to) or think I'm somehow disrupting business for what is only a short time away in the grand scheme.
But in reality the trip is selfish. I've earned it. We've been on the road and playing shows, sometimes more than there are days in the week, for years now. Even in college I put a premium on my music career, staying in New Orleans and rejecting any opportunities to study abroad so I could network and play out, a strategy which has presented plenty of benefits. I'm not claiming I've reached some sort of complacent plateau and can take 'er easy now, but this is the first time, ever, I've felt a month off would do everybody right, even our fans who get bombarded by messages for shows and updates on a weekly, if not a daily basis. No one is going to forget about Frogs Gone Fishin', if anything they might check up on us and become active in a discussion about what we're going to do next, which is gonna be BIG, by the way.
I'm writing this in the RV as we cruise through the beautiful autumn foliage in upstate New York on our first tour to the northeast, by way of the midwest and to return through Texas. After some preparation in November it will be time to traverse another massive subcontinent. The trip I'm taking is not to relax, or find enlightenment or for any one specific purpose. A main tenet of my trip is that, to a large extent, I don't know what I'll find or be undertaking while I'm there. That's the beauty of traveling by yourself and while I travel a lot here in the US as a musician on the road, it's a constant logistic negotiation to make everyone in the band happy. Where to eat, where to get gas, where to sleep, what to do during the 22 hours a day we aren't playing music... all of these decisions are one big democracy which I won't deal with on the road in India. Me, myself and I will be responsible when things get shitty, and likewise can pat myself on the back when I'm having a great time.
And things can get shitty in India. Bugs (inside and outside of your body), petty theft, long wait times and lines and general culture shock will all be factors to watch out for. But something I learned becoming an Eagle Scout while slogging through waist deep moose-muck on backpacking trips in Canada is that it's the journey, not the destination, that counts.
So I picked a difficult place to travel for the challenge and the ultimate reward that only people who intrinsically choose to do something difficult receive. Call it getting out of your comfort zone. And as it turns out my comfort zone includes being able to sleep in an '87 RV with FOUR other full-size, methane-producing male adults for a month, so traveling stag will be all the more liberating.
And CHEAP. You can live, and I mean LIVE, in India for as much a day as it cost to feed the band for ONE meal in the USA. If you really stretched your comfort level you could exist on 450 rupees a day, or about 10 dollars.
But India is a land of extreme duality, poverty and development, tradition and growth, and my trip has some duality to it, as well.
After I land in Mumbai I'll head northeast by train to Bodhgaya, a holy place for Buddhists where the Buddha himself is said to have attained enlightenment, the supreme realization that we are all bound to suffering in this life, but can overcome it if we remove our most deep seeded of attachments. No matter how much of a minimalist, new age, vegan, psudo-hippy lifestyle you can pursue here at home, a Buddhist lifestyle is at best, misunderstood and at worst, unattainable in our society. No matter how you slice it, if you are unemployed and not financially empowered from some other means, you'll be homeless and hungry in no time. The idea of the wandering ascetic is both unattainable but also misunderstood. Buddha taught a concept known as "The Middle Way" which states that just as you shouldn't live as greedily as possible, you shouldn't necessarily wander and starve like some sort of monk, either. Buddhism is all about being happy in whatever station you find yourself in life.
After Bodhgaya I'll head north toward the Himalayas and Nepal, possibly crossing the border into Kathmandu. But it won't all be meditation and reflection for a month. For the latter half of my trip it'll be the beaches in Goa, the southwestern coast, where I'll soak up some sun and meet not only Indians, but the Europeans, Australians, Israeli's and people from all over the world that come there to warm up during the winter months. Meeting as many people as possible is a primary goal of my journey. I want to see how another society functions on a daily basis. From my experiences on the road in America and other places abroad, one of the best ways is to pop into a pub and have a beer with the locals, the working class, for lack of a better term. And class is somewhat of a highly sensitive topic in India, some are even considered untouchable by the rest of society. But you can't turn a blind eye to a system that contains 1.2 billion people, a sixth of the world's population, and so it's time to go see it for myself. India is vast and a looking glass into the effects of colonialism in our recent world history. It's a nuclear power that shares a border with Pakistan, increasingly the most mysterious and ambiguous ally, or maybe enemy, of the US in the region.
On a far less serious note, I'd like to pick up a sitar, or at least some of the most prominent melodies played on that most serene of instruments and translate what I learn to a travel guitar.
I'm excited not only to experience a new culture, but to take a break from smart phones and actually ask living, breathing people where I should go, not to mention a break from the McDonald's and WalMart-based economy I see EVERYWHERE on the roadside in America. It'll be just me, a backpack, and a brand new place to explore.
Friday, October 21
Thursday, October 13
On the Road Again
"cause I'll be gone 'till November"
-Wyclef Jean
Bertha, the Frogs Gone Fishin' RV is cruising east. It's 7:05 PM and there is a massive, crimson harvest moon firing up the horizon directly in front of us as we head out of town on I-76 toward I-80, Iowa, Chicago and the rest of tour. Call it East Bound and Down, call it National Tour. Call it what you want but this is our most ambitious undertaking, yet. We've hit Chicago and Cincinnati before, but the area east of Ohio is largely uncharted territory for FGF. That's all about to change. Some other things have changed recently and because we've intentionally been on the down-low about personnel changes in our organization, it's time to come clean with what's been happening, and what's going to happen inside and outside Frogs Gone Fishin'.
Steve and Mark don't play music in FGF anymore. It's something you don't foresee, but every band, it seems, goes through it. At some point life bumps up against everything you thought your band would be as a kid and you deal with what all of our twenty-something friends deal with, the idealism of youth fading into the harsher, but ultimately more satisfying world of getting business done. I will always love those two guys and wish them nothing but personal and musical happiness.
On bass and drums this tour are the Double D's, Dax and Dave, and at the helm of our eastbound ship is Double A (Aaron) our ever-trustworthy and efficient road manager. The man can cook, drive for HOURS, fix anything and helps keep us oriented toward our goal of playing as much music as possible, in as many places as possible, planned and unplanned.
Frogs have been as far east as North Carolina (we'll do Asheville on Halloween this year), and as far north as Cleveland, but never to New Jersey or New York as we'll do this month. The band is especially excited for a gig at Sullivan Hall in Greenwich Village, NYC, on Halloween weekend. Bringing Bertha and a band that's not exactly on a New York budget will be a challenge, but I wouldn't consider myself a touring musician if we didn't at least try and make this a viable route for ourselves so we can keep coming back in the future to build a fan base.
Frogs plan on taking a short break during the winter months, to solidify our lineup and add additional instruments to our sound. The only way to keep from calcifying is to grow and it doesn't ever hurt to build demand by restricting access. Again, you bump into the reality of paying your bills when you want to restrict the number of shows you play in a given market, but it's a big country! Then the reality of how much gas really costs us as a society manifests like some sort of giant pink elephant in the room which no one wants to address.
It was tough to hear when our business banker told me that it's harder to acquire small business credit under Obama than it was under Bush. I've given this administration the serious benefit of the doubt but, in the financial sector at least, they are failing. Not to mention the fact that the crooks who did serious damage to the world economy still have their jobs. Small business is what drives our nation forward, along with corporations. But I do know that in a nation plagued by debt and few job opportunities, new prosperity must come from a different place than corporations. Companies like that are too massive, too dense to move quickly in a world changing as rapidly as ours. We are one of those small businesses, and can attest first hand to the difficulties that entrepreneurs face these days.
But luckily for we musicians, our business is not a cyclical one, in terms of the entire economy. People, in general, want to go out, have a good time and listen to music, and I would suppose more-so in times of economic distress. But we are always striving, trying to book better gigs, farther in advance for more money. Being in Chicago and New York should refine our business sense, and what it means to be a musician in a highly, and in the case of New York, the most competitive scene in the world.
Bertha feels solid in the dense fall air, the engine aspirating that much better. There are so many variables on tour and all I can really hope for is Halloween not being that scary for the Frog's bank account as we journey to New York and beyond.
-Wyclef Jean
Bertha, the Frogs Gone Fishin' RV is cruising east. It's 7:05 PM and there is a massive, crimson harvest moon firing up the horizon directly in front of us as we head out of town on I-76 toward I-80, Iowa, Chicago and the rest of tour. Call it East Bound and Down, call it National Tour. Call it what you want but this is our most ambitious undertaking, yet. We've hit Chicago and Cincinnati before, but the area east of Ohio is largely uncharted territory for FGF. That's all about to change. Some other things have changed recently and because we've intentionally been on the down-low about personnel changes in our organization, it's time to come clean with what's been happening, and what's going to happen inside and outside Frogs Gone Fishin'.
Steve and Mark don't play music in FGF anymore. It's something you don't foresee, but every band, it seems, goes through it. At some point life bumps up against everything you thought your band would be as a kid and you deal with what all of our twenty-something friends deal with, the idealism of youth fading into the harsher, but ultimately more satisfying world of getting business done. I will always love those two guys and wish them nothing but personal and musical happiness.
On bass and drums this tour are the Double D's, Dax and Dave, and at the helm of our eastbound ship is Double A (Aaron) our ever-trustworthy and efficient road manager. The man can cook, drive for HOURS, fix anything and helps keep us oriented toward our goal of playing as much music as possible, in as many places as possible, planned and unplanned.
Frogs have been as far east as North Carolina (we'll do Asheville on Halloween this year), and as far north as Cleveland, but never to New Jersey or New York as we'll do this month. The band is especially excited for a gig at Sullivan Hall in Greenwich Village, NYC, on Halloween weekend. Bringing Bertha and a band that's not exactly on a New York budget will be a challenge, but I wouldn't consider myself a touring musician if we didn't at least try and make this a viable route for ourselves so we can keep coming back in the future to build a fan base.
Frogs plan on taking a short break during the winter months, to solidify our lineup and add additional instruments to our sound. The only way to keep from calcifying is to grow and it doesn't ever hurt to build demand by restricting access. Again, you bump into the reality of paying your bills when you want to restrict the number of shows you play in a given market, but it's a big country! Then the reality of how much gas really costs us as a society manifests like some sort of giant pink elephant in the room which no one wants to address.
It was tough to hear when our business banker told me that it's harder to acquire small business credit under Obama than it was under Bush. I've given this administration the serious benefit of the doubt but, in the financial sector at least, they are failing. Not to mention the fact that the crooks who did serious damage to the world economy still have their jobs. Small business is what drives our nation forward, along with corporations. But I do know that in a nation plagued by debt and few job opportunities, new prosperity must come from a different place than corporations. Companies like that are too massive, too dense to move quickly in a world changing as rapidly as ours. We are one of those small businesses, and can attest first hand to the difficulties that entrepreneurs face these days.
But luckily for we musicians, our business is not a cyclical one, in terms of the entire economy. People, in general, want to go out, have a good time and listen to music, and I would suppose more-so in times of economic distress. But we are always striving, trying to book better gigs, farther in advance for more money. Being in Chicago and New York should refine our business sense, and what it means to be a musician in a highly, and in the case of New York, the most competitive scene in the world.
Bertha feels solid in the dense fall air, the engine aspirating that much better. There are so many variables on tour and all I can really hope for is Halloween not being that scary for the Frog's bank account as we journey to New York and beyond.
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