Hey, you’re a shy dog, but I can see
You feel the very same as me
You don’t think like people do
Anyone can see I’m the same way too

When it comes to relationships, I’ve never been much of a stand-up-and-fight kind of guy. When it’s over, it’s over, and it’s time to move on. A few times, though, moving on has been easier said than done — and with one relationship in particular, I took that difficulty as a sign that I should do something different. Instead of letting things fade away silently, I hung around; I dedicated myself to being as open as I could with this woman, and tried to find some way around or through whatever obstacles lay between us.

And that’s okay
Sometimes things just work that way

It wasn’t easy. In fact, it drove me a little crazy, a little at a time, over a period of years. I was lonely, and upset, and always putting myself through unnecessary misery in the name of what I thought was love. I thought I was being brave by refusing to give up on this person, but I was really just ignoring the obvious. In the process, I let a lot of things slip through my fingers — time and opportunities that would never return. I was unfair to myself, and unfair to her. I allowed myself to be used. In fact, I just about insisted on it.

And spinning ’round these memories go
And making sense, well, I just don’t know
Yeah, you could say I’m missing you
Lost and alone, I’m just making do

I didn’t really expect it to work. I just wanted to try instead of accepting the only real choice. Sometimes it really is noble to fight for the ones you love — but you have to know how to choose your battles, and you have to understand the difference between love and sick symbiosis, and I was in way over my head on both counts. I cost myself so much senseless anger and resentment, and when it started to spin out of control, I only leaned into it, grinding myself down until the only thing I could see through the smoke was the worst of both of us.

Standing here, I should understand
Why you left me alone
And this small world just ain’t big enough
And the purest souls, they always go too soon

On one level, I was proud of my self-destructive behavior — it seemed manly, somehow. But the deeper part of me, thankfully, started to get tired after awhile, and once I relaxed my senseless grip on this impossible, toxic fantasy I’d been holding onto, I started to realize what I’d been missing. And I felt something I didn’t expect: a warm sort of relief. I surveyed the wreckage and ruin I’d created and I knew I couldn’t undo any of it — I finally understood I’d been at a crossroads when I decided to fight for that relationship, and I knew I’d made choices that had led my life down a path I couldn’t retreat from.

But I didn’t feel regret. Maybe it was because I’d already devoted so many unproductive emotions to the situation, or maybe it was because I understood, on some level, that the lessons I took from all that destruction were as valuable, in their way, as what I’d lost. All I know is that I wasn’t angry anymore. For the first time in a long time, I felt at peace.

So you go on, ’cause now I know
You belong with the beautiful
And I’ll stay here until golden fades
I’ll see you again on another day

It seems a little strange to me, but on beautiful, unseasonably warm fall days like this one, that’s the feeling that often comes back to me — one of acceptance, of absolution. One of loss, sure, and a little sadness — but a sadness that feels earned, somehow, and more than a little bittersweet. Our stories don’t always have the happy endings we want them to, but we still have to find the strength to let them end. Sometimes that’s harder than it should be.

And that’s okay
Sometimes things just work that way
And that’s okay
Sometimes things just hurt that way

I got a lot of mileage out of Kurt Neumann’s Shy Dog that summer and fall, particularly the title track: title track

For Kurt, who was stepping out from the BoDeans as a solo artist for the first time, the song was really about a dog — his longtime companion, who (if I’m remembering correctly) was killed by a snake while exploring. I thought it was an incredibly brave choice to be so open about the sadness that a pet’s death can bring, and although I knew he wasn’t talking about romantic loss, I still took comfort from the graceful acceptance in his words, and the dignified resignation in his vocals. When he sighed, “Sometimes things just hurt that way,” it killed me — still does. Because sometimes they do. And that’s okay.

RCA Records and Tapes

I love a good rock ‘n’ roll loser.

There’s nothing quite like the ragged glory of a rock song that’s almost there — the time’s a little off, the vocals are straining to hit the melody without quite getting there, maybe there are a few bum notes from the band in the mix. Rock is uniquely suited for this kind of stuff, particularly when it comes to conveying a refusal to give up in the face of failure. I think a yearning for redemption has always been a key component of music’s appeal to humanity, but rock made it more visceral — and also struck a burning spark in the tension between the beauty of that redemptive promise and the guttural howl of the far more unpleasant truth.

There’s something painfully noble about this to me — about beauty that persists in the face of hopeless odds. I recently got a rise out of Matthew Ryan when I compared his music to Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke, and man, I just love that spirit, that struggle, that vulnerability. It’s one of the things I think our Pro Tools addiction is costing us as listeners, but that’s a conversation for another day. I’m here to talk about Harry Nilsson.

1974′s Pussy Cats is my favorite Nilsson record, because it so gorgeously sums up everything I wrote about in those first two paragraphs. Of course, Nilsson was born a flawless technical singer, and he had more than enough craft to write songs of stunning beauty, but he was also a self-destructive madman, and as time wore on, that dichotomy drove his music away from songs like “One” and “Don’t Leave Me” and into darker, stranger, and — for my money — far more interesting places.

Nilsson wasn’t content to be beautiful. He had the urge to fail — partly, I think, because it was fun, and partly because he knew he could count on his prodigious gifts to carry him through when he wasn’t otherwise up to the task. And that’s Pussy Cats in a nutshell: an album that captures an amazing talent struggling between finding his muse and pissing it away.

Harry was coming off A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night, an ill-advised (although quite lovely) collection of standards that derailed all the commercial momentum he’d built up with his best-selling Schmilsson and Son of Schmilsson LPs. Again, he was a study in contrasts; he knew he needed a hit, and he was convinced he’d help his case by drafting his famous pal John Lennon to produce it — but he didn’t want one badly enough to safeguard against the boozy disaster the sessions eventually became. But then, on the other other hand, Nilsson valued the mercurial Lennon’s involvement so greatly that he kept going even after he ruptured a vocal cord, hiding his deteriorating condition as long as he could (but not terribly well — listening to the Pussy Cats sessions in chronological order is a study in raspy decline).

Recorded during Lennon’s infamous lost weekend, Pussy Cats came at a low artistic ebb for Nilsson the songwriter — but as singular as he was as a composer, he was also a terrifically gifted interpreter, and that bailed him out on a few of the album’s tracks, including his take on Jimmy Cliff’s “Many Rivers to Cross.” In technical terms, it’s really a boozy wreck of a recording — the drums sound like they were tracked in taffy, the lead guitar smells like a Brandy Alexander, and Nilsson’s heartwrenching vocals are almost painful to hear. But put them all together, and oh, what a song:

Harry Nilsson, “Many Rivers to Cross” “Many Rivers to Cross”

Plenty of artists have covered this track, and Cliff was certainly no slouch himself, but this is the definitive version of the song for me. I found it at the best possible moment, reeling from the messy end of an unreasonably intense relationship in my early 20s, and just as RCA was remastering and reissuing a batch of his albums. I devoured them all, as well as the two-disc Personal Best anthology, but it was Pussy Cats that really called to me. “Many Rivers to Cross” just said it all, and when Harry buckles down and wails, willing his bleeding throat to scale notes he knew he wouldn’t hit, it takes me right back to the fall of ’95 — more than 20 years after it was recorded, and over a year after his untimely death, but still packed with that timeless blend of longing, regret, and — yes — hope for redemption.

Pussy Cats killed Nilsson’s career and damaged his voice for years, but he went on to create music of unparalleled beauty, too — and I don’t know if later works like Knnillssonn would have had as much depth if he hadn’t been willing to stumble into the boozy darkness on records like this. He knew if he followed the rules and connected all the dots, he could make a perfect pop song, but there was something in Nilsson that drew him away from the straight and narrow — and for me, anyway, that’s always made all the difference. Nothing is hopeless when you listen to an album like Pussy Cats – it’s heartbreaking proof that we all possess the potential for acts of staggering beauty, even in spite of our deepest flaws.

I made Minnesota my home tonight
It’s not like the picture in my mind
‘Cause I was so alone it killed tonight
I’d tell any soul…if I could find one
–the Push Stars, “Minnesota” “Minnesota”

For someone who has often been ruinously, stupidly impulsive, I’m actually a pretty deliberate guy. I think about doing a lot of things — calling friends, emailing contacts, writing heartfelt posts — and then before I know what’s happening, the moment has passed, and I’ve talked myself out of following through. I am a fool, I am a fool, I am a fool.

But in the spring of 1999, I followed through on one of the best impulses I’ve ever had: to round up three of my closest friends, put them on a plane to New Jersey, stuff them in a rental car, and spend a week driving across the country. I was nursing a broken heart, of course, and that’s why this song called to me at the time — like the best of Chris Trapper‘s songs, it conveys the wounded grin of a freshly bruised romantic.

‘Cause I want to believe her
I want to believe
I want to believe her
I want to believe
I want to believe her
I want to believe

I did want to believe — in her, much to my detriment, but also in my friends, and in the reliable comfort of pure childishness. I wanted to surround myself with easy laughter. I didn’t want to think too hard, and those guys made it easy. We were young, stupid dudes, and that was exactly what I needed. We got soaking wet on the freezing upper deck of the Maid of the Mist; we ordered horrible hotel porn in Chicago; we covered the rental car in dirt and filled it with junk food. We left fake poop on top of a hotel toilet seat in Montana.

It was a boondoggle, in the very best sense of the word, and although I know there were moments of tension, frustration and annoyance, I can’t remember any of those feelings when I look back on the trip now. It just feels like one long golden moment — a time when we knew we had an opportunity to do something special, and we didn’t let it slip away.

I feel all right, it’s a Minnesota night
You’ve got nothing left to show me but your smile
Stars so bright on this Minnesota night
Can we cut the conversation for a little while?

I don’t know what it meant to the other guys, but that week saved me from going a little crazy at the time, and although my days of dropping everything and rounding up a posse for high adventure on the open road are over for the foreseeable future, I think there’s still a lesson in it for me now — if I can only remember it — as a writer and as a person.

I feel like writing used to be a lot easier for me — a lot more instinctive, and a lot less deliberate — and I know I did a better job of maintaining my friendships back then. Of course, I’m writing a lot more now, and doing it in different places; I understand that the creative muscle tends to get numb and/or fatigued when it’s used this way. And I know marriages, kids, and migration have a naturally atrophying effect on friendships that thrived on free time and youthful angst.

But I don’t think it’s impossible to get around all that. I don’t think it’s too late to try and get better at deciding when to make those impulsive leaps — in fact, if I had it all to do over again, I think I’d probably make a lot more of them. I’m still trying. I still believe.

Having been there “in the beginning,” do you think that rock has become more style than substance?

I think if you were to look only at videos, you would definitely
think so. But I think it’s probably always been that way. I think
there are things that are tremendous hits where you go, “What’s
that?” and then there are things that aren’t hits where you
say, “Well now, I wonder why that wasn’t a hit. It’s a lovely song.”
I think it’s all the same. I just think it’s probably more of all the
same now.

Tracing your career, your emergence as a star was pretty gradual.
You slowly assumed more and more of the vocal responsibilities in
Chicago, and became the voice of their first two Number One hits, and
yet your first solo album was not a commercial success. Did that
discourage you at all from attempting a solo career?

No, it didn’t discourage me because I knew the politics behind it. The record company didn’t want it to become a hit, because they didn’t want me to leave Chicago, so they made sure that it wasn’t a hit. Even though I had a Top Ten — which was bizarre for Chicago at the time — AOR hit called “Livin’ In The Limelight” off that album, they just let it die, because they didn’t want me to have a hit.

The personal problems that went into the making of World Falling Down have been getting a lot of press. After so many years of
relative anonymity, does this bother you?

No, I don’t think so. I think it’s kind of refreshing, after all of the years with Chicago, not being able to voice my opinion about anything. You couldn’t talk about the group–you couldn’t really talk about anything that was happening with the group, because you’d get “Hey, what’d you say that about me for?” [Laughs] So, now that I’m solo, I can talk about whatever I want to talk about, and this happened to be the album where I wasn’t happy talking about anything else, so I decided to get it out of my system.

Did having your daughter around help you through that period?

Oh, yeah. Without her…[Laughs] It wouldn’t have been a nice thing at all. She’s just the greatest.

Now, how do you balance taking care of your career and taking care of your daughter? And given the nature of much of today’s music, do you find that you have to set guidelines as to what’s musically acceptable?

Yeah. I mean, she’s nine years old, I want her to be nine years old. I don’t condone watching any kind of video TV, I don’t allow that–I don’t allow her to watch a lot of TV. I don’t think it’s really cute for a nine-year-old to be dressing up like Madonna. They get old when they get old. So yeah, in a way I censor it, but she’s a wise enough person that she’s into the normal things
that nine-year-olds should be into.

Did having a child make you more aware of what you yourself write?

Uh…no, no. I was never the kind of person who would ever write anything particularly…devilish [laughs]. It made me probably look inside myself a lot more.

For a long time, your group got nothing but bad press or ignored by the press. How has this affected you career-wise now that you’re solo?

Well, I think that people — especially the press — tend to not change. Chicago got ignored…first of all, we got great press, and then we started making it, and we got bad press for selling out, and then we got ignored, and rightly so. Some of the things we did weren’t to the top of our capabilities, but a lot of people have that problem.

I don’t think we were controversial, and that’s sort of what happens when you have a group full of guys who all think they have an opinion. Everybody kind of counteracts everyone else, and nothing ever gets out. Being a solo artist, I just have to leave it up to the people. I’m definitely not going to get reviewed in Rolling Stone and People Magazine.

So it doesn’t frustrate you to run into the same problem as a solo artist?

Well, it frustrates me, but I also realize that I can’t do anything about it. So I stop thinking about it.

Do you feel any pressure to cater to MTV?

I would love to, but they’re just not gonna play it. They just have a set thing in they’re head of what they’re gonna play, and they’re definitely not going to play Peter Cetera. So I stay on VH1, and that’s fine with me, because our best critics have always been the fans, and as far as myself, I love what I’m doing, so that makes me happy.

What was the initial impetus behind your decision to go solo? I think you were recording for something like 13 years before your first solo LP.

I had always wanted to the solo thing, and then after the first album, Chicago kinda promised me that I could do the solo thing, and then they sort of reneged on it, and never gave me the opportunity to do it. They wanted to go one way, and I wanted to go another way, so we decided on a mutual parting. I did not, in fact, quit the group. If anything, I was fired for not going along with what they wanted to do.

I’ve heard many accounts of the band being jealous of all the attention you were getting.

Yeah, they were getting jealous, and I said, “Well, come on, if you’re jealous, then start doing something about it,” but they weren’t in the frame of mind to write songs, and I was the one that was in the studio most of the time,
and…I don’t listen to the new stuff. I’ve heard it a couple of times, but it’s certainly not what I want to listen to.

Let’s talk about each of your four solo albums, beginning with the first one. How did Peter Cetera end up getting released before Chicago 16?

Actually, we were out of a record contract at that point, and we were going along with the new record company, Warner Bros., and they sort of threw it out there while waiting for Chicago 16 to be released. It was nothing more than cannon fodder as far as they were concerned.

Did the fact that Solitude/Solitaire was released so close to Chicago 18 cause you to feel any pressure at all?

I didn’t really feel the pressure. I was so sure that “Glory Of Love” was going to be a hit, and “The Next Time I Fall” was going to be a hit. Really, the only pressure I felt then, and that I always felt, is to have hits with things other than ballads. I fight the record company every time they want to release another ballad off the album. That was really my only concern at the time. It was like, “Okay, do I take the hit or do I go with something fast?” [laughs]

Yeah, I noticed that earlier in your career, you were more apt to record songs like “Skin Tight” and “You Get It Up”…in your solo career, you haven’t done a whole lot of that.

[Deep breath] Well…you happened to mention two songs…

…That you didn’t write.

…That I didn’t write, and that I didn’t think were very good songs. [Laughter] Especially “Skin Tight,” I didn’t think that was a good song. Kind of a D-rated song. I just…thought it was a piece of garbage, but as the lead singer, I had to sing a lot of stuff I didn’t like to sing.

Also on Solitude/Solitaire, you did a duet with Amy Grant that predated her pop crossover success by about five years. Who set that up?

Actually, it was the record company. I was looking for a duet partner, and they called me up and said, “Amy Grant.” I had thought she only did religious music, but they told me that she really wanted to cross over, and she thought it was perfect, so I said “Sure.” The record company gets credit for that one.

On One More Story, you took a much more organic approach than you did on the previous album, and many of the songs are depressing – “Heaven Help This Lonely Man,” “You Never Listen To Me.” Is that when
you started writing about the problems in your marriage?

Yeah, I would say. Definitely. Some of it was reflected in the album, it was just starting to creep out.

The thing about One More Story that would have helped the album considerably was that I had been hired to write the theme song for the movie Big, and so I wrote “One Good Woman.” That was going to be the title song for Big, so if you listen to that song you’ll hear things about the fortune teller and all that. Right towards the end, when it was supposed to be in the movie, we got into some contractual difficulties, and I just kind of pulled the song. Had that song been in the movie, which was a smash hit, it would have helped the album considerably.

There were some really great songs on that album that were never released as singles, like “Peace Of Mind”…

Yeah. I agree, too.

…Which they passed over in favor of “Best Of Times,” which I never really understood…

I don’t have any idea what the record company…you know, you get kind of frustrated.

And that brings us to World Falling Down, which is almost a song cycle. In the beginning, the singer is saying “Don’t leave me,” and then she’s left, and there is depression, and then towards the end of the album it lifts back up again, and the singer is in love.

Well, “Have You Ever Been In Love”…that doesn’t mean I’m in love. It’s a universal thing, and I think it kind of wraps up the whole album. But yeah, I did plan that, yeah.

Your creative output was greatly reduced on this album. After years of writing seven or eight songs on an album, on this one you only wrote four.

Well, I just wasn’t capable of writing more than four or five songs on this album. It wasn’t a time in my life when I felt comfortable writing.

Did you find that what you were writing came out the same each time?

Yeah, that basically had a lot to do with it. After four or five songs, I said, “Okay, enough’s enough.” But I had found a lot of other good songs, so I thought it was time to do it. Just about the only thing I didn’t do was put in an old hit or an old standard.

You started out as a singer, not a songwriter; and in fact, I remember you saying at one point that the world was divided into singers and songwriters, and that you were a singer. How do you feel now?

Well, that was at the beginning. I don’t think you ever realize that you can write a song until you do, and then you’re constantly worried about ever writing another one. I really enjoy the songwriting thing, and I enjoy the singing thing. I’ll keep ‘em both.

What made you decide on Andy Hill as a producer, and what made you decide to record in England?

Well, first of all, Andy and I co-produced, which makes a big difference. I just didn’t feel that anyone could produce me, and I was always giving away credit to people where I was doing as much decision-making as they were, so from now on it’s going to be co-productions. I had known Andy through songwriting, and discovered that we got along melodically and over the phone and stuff, and so I decided to go there and write with him, and when I got there and saw a studio in his house, I decided that maybe it would be nice if we could co-produce some things.

On Solitude/Solitaire, there was no bass at all; just sequencing and synthesizers. On One More Story, you had other people play the bass. But on this album, you picked it up again for a few songs.

Yeah, this was a kind of…I had Pino Palladino play, and Jimmy Johnson, and I got in on a couple of songs. I figured it was time to get a bass back on there, and I personally hadn’t played in such a long time that I just kind of wet my beak, so to speak, on a couple of these songs.

You’ve been unhappy with the way that some of your earlier work was recorded, especially “Song For You.”

Yeah, and actually, that’s one song that I’d love to re-record. I’d like to get with somebody and kind of rework that.

Most people wouldn’t even know it was a reworking. It was a pretty minor hit.

Yeah, I don’t think it was even hardly out. That was a turning point for me. I figured I either had to get out or bring the group back to the top. We were just not functioning. It was one or two cylinders or something.

Are you proud of your older work? Do you still listen to any of it?

No, I don’t listen to any of it. It’s so painful to me to listen to anything before Chicago 16, when David Foster came into the picture and he and I kind of put that album together. Anything before that, I just never felt all that secure about, because there were always too many opinions. Too many people didn’t butt out. Some of the stuff is great. I think some of the earlier stuff is probably better, because…you know, “Saturday In The Park,” and “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?,” and “Beginnings”… stuff that Bobby did when he was doing most of the writing and most of the decision-making. Once everybody started feeling that it was equal opportunity, things started heading downhill. I’m proud of the old stuff, but I certainly don’t sit around listening to it.

Do you miss the interplay of being part of a band?

Yeah, I do. I’ll probably put together a band to go on the road here shortly. That’s kind of the one thing I miss about Chicago, is we had loads of yuks.

So you do plan to tour to support the album?

Well, yeah, we’ll see what happens. If the record company supports me, I’ll help support the album.

What do you hope to accomplish as an artist in the next few years?

You always hope you have some kind of effect on people. When somebody comes up to me and says, “We’re getting married to your song,” or “God, that’s a great song”…that’s what makes it all worthwile. If I can keep doing that, then that’s what it’s all about.

Do you plan to keep taking more time off between albums?

It’s hard to tell. This one happened because of the circumstances. I just couldn’t do it. But, no, I’m starting to get ready to plan the next one.

I’ve been trying to find this out for about a year now. I was wondering if you could tell me why Danny Seraphine left Chicago.

Danny Seraphine got fired. The group decided that he no longer fit in the stage presentation, so they fired him.

[Incredulously] In the stage presentation?

Mmm-hmm.

Well, they have been spending more time on stage than in the studio during the past couple of years. Do you plan on working with him at all?

No. Not really. When it’s over, it’s over.

I just wrapped up a profile on the group, and it’s my feeling that they’ve been heading downhill. Buying songs from outside writers, and using more Scheff and Champlin material than anything from the original members…

I would agree with you on that, but the only thing I could say in defense of that is that if the original members aren’t writing stuff that’s worth putting on an album, then you gotta go with other things. Believe me, I haven’t heard anything that the original members have been writing, but if it’s not on the album, then it leads me to believe that it’s either not happening or there’s some personality conflict.

I really don’t know what’s going on, but I think your observation is correct.

Does that sadden you at all?

Well, that’s what’s been happening all along. There was a stage in Bobby Lamm’s life where he was one of the greatest songwriters in America. I don’t know what happened. James Pankow, even though I never really enjoyed his type of music, certainly a lot of people did, I mean, he had “Color My World” and “Make Me Smile,” and things that I didn’t personally like, but they were big hits for us and people loved them, but I don’t think he’s come close to writing anything like that in years.

So, yeah, I think it’s been going downhill. I don’t know if it’s complacency or what, but…

That about wraps up my questions for you.

Well, listen man, it’s been great talking to you. You did a great
job. I’d like to do a longer one someday.

Lost Causes, “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” (play)

This is the opening track on my first album, and I vividly remember where I was and what I was doing the first time I heard it on one of the real, honest-to-goodness manufactured CDs I printed up. It’s a memory that’s lingered not only because listening to your first “real” album is usually a pretty significant personal milestone, but because the emotions it triggered were so seemingly incongruous that it confused me for a long time.

I was miserable.

I had no idea why this should be. It should have been a shining moment: After years of writing and recording, the album was finally finished, I was listening to it on a nice stereo in my brand new car, and I was driving on a last-minute errand before an album release party at a nice hotel that would culminate with me and the band playing for a room full of people. The local paper’s rock critic was even there. This was the moment I’d dreamed of…but it didn’t feel the way I thought it would. Why not?

My contributions to this song, “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark,” are pretty terrible. My vocals are awful, and while I kind of admire the internal rhymes in the lyrics, I wish they’d been in service of something more profound than pop psychology in pursuit of getting laid. And yet listening to it now, I think it holds an inverse key to what I was feeling at the time:

Don’t be afraid of going nowhere
Sometimes we miss our mark
The light will fade — I know you don’t wanna go there
But angel, don’t be afraid of the dark

(“Angel.” What was I thinking? Groan.)

Anyway, pretty smarmy stuff. But forget about the dark. What happens when you reach the light? What happens when the universe gives you what you ask for? What do you do with it?

In my case, I froze. I did shows here and there, and continued to record for awhile, but I consistently ducked the broader responsibilities that go with truly achieving a personal goal. It’s easy to cop out with stuff like this, because nobody really expects an artist to be successful anyway — and odds are high that even if I’d used them properly, the tools at my disposal wouldn’t have been enough. But the point is that I had them, and instead of trying to figure out what to do with them, I subconsciously started backpedaling to the part where my dream still seemed unattainable.

I’m sure you can predict what happened next, because in some way or other, it’s probably happened to you. There’s nothing quite like creating an opportunity for yourself and then missing/sabotaging it. You’re only accountable to yourself in those moments, so who else really understands your shame? And who can keep you from using it to reinforce the cycle the next time you find yourself on the verge of accomplishment?

I realize I’m not saying anything new or profound here — hell, I’ve almost talked myself out of writing this at least a dozen times already. But it’s helpful to remember — for me, anyway — that it’s easy to dream. And it’s slightly less easy to do the work it takes to achieve 95 percent of that dream. But I think the hardest part is facing what happens when a dream is close to becoming reality, because it’s then that you have to answer the question: “Okay. What next?”

You’ve recorded a song or an album, written a post, built a website, made a life change, shared an idea. You’ve felt the rush, the thrill that comes from creating something exciting. You’re in control. But what do you do with it? Do you keep stepping toward the light, or do you just…kind of…stop? It’s so easy to talk yourself out of taking those last few steps, and no one will ever really know how close you came.

The dark isn’t scary at all — it’s comforting. There’s no judgment there, and you can gorge yourself on hopes and dreams and wishes without ever having to prove how much you want them to come true. You never have to figure out what next. In some respects, life can be easier that way — it’s certainly less terrifying — but it comes with a certain amount of addictive restlessness. That yearning is so familiar that it can start to feel like security.

I know I’ve refused to answer what next more times than I care to admit — that whole thing with the CD release is one of the more spectacular examples, but it’s far from the only one, and I’m still doing it today. I’m a moderately successful writer who runs a moderately popular website, and I’ve achieved this largely through half measures. There are always bigger risks to take, more meaningful stories to tell — and more often than not, I talk myself into standing still.

I don’t have any magic solutions to this problem, any more than I have faith in myself to completely stop listening to those excuses. But I do know that I’ve reached the point, again, where I want my writing — and all my work — to mean something, no matter how small. I want it to feel real to me. I want to know I’ve stretched the limits of my talent, and I want other people to see it. God help me, I think I might finally want to find out what happens next.

Like a lot of people, I think, the romantic entanglements of my teenage years and early 20s were colored by a lot of unexpressed, misunderstood, or just plain repressed emotions — guilt over feelings that weren’t supposed to exist, or relationships that ended badly, or simple longing for what (and who) I couldn’t have. I walked around in denial a lot of the time, and every so often my subconscious rewarded me for it with a dream that would force me to confront my feelings. The damn things stuck like cobwebs — they’d linger for days. I hated it.

This is the state I was in throughout the spring of 1998, when I first heard Largo, the all-star (sort of) Dvorak tribute (kind of) assembled by once-and-future Hooters Eric Bazilian and Rob Hyman. (If you’re curious, I’ve written more about the album here.) There were a number of songs that stood out for me, but the one that really resonated was “Largo’s Dream”:

I’m sleeping at the moment
I’m dreaming and you’re in it
Running down the Little Bighorn
In your platform shoes

I was on the wrong end of a surprise breakup at the time — no closure, no real goodbyes, the kind of thing that can really mess you up if you aren’t ready for it. It would put me under a shadow for years, but I didn’t know that yet; I was still just trying to make my way back to the surface. I made a cross-country drive with a friend while all this was going on, and I have no doubt I was unbearable to be around; hearing “Largo’s Dream” always takes me back to the sunny skies and dark emotions we traveled under in Colorado. Not really Little Bighorn territory, but close enough for a memory. And then there’s this:

Are you trying to get to me now
Like I’m trying to get to you?

It’s a perfectly simple, perfectly pure question, and it made me ache just to hear it. The song’s subject is really pretty specific, and it has nothing to do with my particular situation — like the rest of Largo, it references the families and promises broken by American slavery — but with David Forman’s yearning vocals set against a lovely, plangent piano figure and some typically bewitching synth shenanigans from Garth Hudson, it feels both universal and intimate. “Largo’s Dream” was a source of comfort for me, countless times.

Like the song’s melody, I moved in circles; my feelings, like that piano, came and went in waves, in a destructive cycle I willfully repeated until it had claimed a cost it still shames me to contemplate. And yet I still love this song unreservedly — although it reminds me of a very difficult time, it leaves behind a surge of bittersweet, almost nostalgic warmth.

Sort of like a dream.

David Forman, “Largo’s Dream” (play)

Our discussion, naturally, included a lot of talk about the Replacements and what made them special. It was an interesting experience for me, because although I love the band’s music, I’m not as passionate about it as Dave or Gorman (who contends they’re the best band ever). I wasn’t old enough to really be aware of the ‘Mats during their heyday; by the time I was into my teens and buying music, they were in their final stages of collapse. The first Replacements album I bought was All Shook Down, which is just about the worst introduction I could have picked — a resigned sigh from a band that once made an art form out of making everything sound like it mattered.

Without getting too precious about it, I think the Replacements worked so well because their music was all tension. At first, they perpetually teetered between melody and chaos; later, as they graduated to the majors, their songs were the center of a tug of war between untrammeled emotion and pop songcraft. At any given moment, a ‘Mats song could shock you with its beauty and insight — or punch you in the gut with ragged, willful discordance. Kind of like…life, right?

After we ended the call with Gorman, I remembered one of my earliest crystallizing experiences with the Replacements: Driving through San Francisco early on a sunny spring morning, with my girlfriend in the passenger seat and a couple of her girlfriends sitting in back. I don’t remember where we were driving, but I do know we were headed for a breakup, because I was still tied up in knots over my last relationship. That breakup was only a couple of months old, and I’d stupidly soothed it by staggering out of the house on a Saturday night to go to a party, and in walked this girl with high boots and a short skirt. It was a mistake, but it felt fine for awhile — for as long as I could keep it moving, anyway.

And then I’m in the car on this beautiful day, and “Within Your Reach” comes on, and suddenly I can’t turn it up loud enough, and it feels like my heart is going to explode, and I want to scream along until my throat disappears in a ball of flame. I want to cry, I want to rage, I want to dive into everything I’m feeling, I want to run away from it as fast as my legs will carry me.

That’s the Replacements. That’s what you can do with a few chords and a commitment to the truth. And they channeled it through such a delicious dichotomy — with “Within Your Reach” in particular. How many songs are this beautiful while sounding like such complete shit? It’s a mess, but it has so much power — I’m sure there was plenty of thought involved, but it sounds like the kind of thing that just emerges, fully formed, and can never be replicated again, no matter how hard anyone tries to recapture it.

It’s the kind of perfect intensity that’s difficult to attain and impossible to maintain indefinitely. I broke up with that girl, and the Replacements broke up with each other, and the odd reunion aside, I’m sure everyone agrees it was all for the best anyway. I mean, I’m glad I’m not on that car ride anymore. But I still love playing this song loud and feeling that bittersweet swell.

What follows is the full transcript from my interview with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s Ben Jaffe, conducted for an article published in the March 2011 issue of the Hilton Head Monthly.

While preparing for our talk, I read a few of your interviews, and one thing that really stands out is how often you talk about the need to respect the traditions of your music.

I was raised with a sense of tradition, and I was also surrounded by it. Being around Preservation Hall and so many of its musicians, I developed a respect for them — almost the same way other people feel about their grandparents. It’s from the heart — it’s that kind of love. I also think it’s incredibly important, because of the nature of what we do, to have a respect for those traditions and know where we came from.

What struck a chord with me was that even though you’re very aware of those traditions, the band has spent the last several years expanding its audience in relatively non-traditional ways — with the Preservation album, for instance, which found you working with an eyebrow-raising list of guest stars, or with last year’s single, “It Ain’t My Fault,” which came together more organically — and was released a lot more quickly — than most music.

I think at the end of the day, I see what we do as being a continuation of what bands have been doing in New Orleans for over 100 years. If you look back to the very early days of New Orleans jazz, I mean, Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Bunk Johnson, Pops Ellstein, Buddy Boldin, Jelly Roll Morton…there were no bigger names in music. These guys were the hip-hop artists of their day — wearing thousand-dollar suits, $10,000 tie pins, bragging about their womanizing and drinking. That’s something that I think it’s hard for people today to understand, because jazz is presented in such a different way.

I mean, when my parents came to New Orleans, if someone had told them there would be jazz at Lincoln Center, or Carnegie Hall, or that the Newport Jazz Festival would be so big and so important, they — and a lot of other people — would have thought it was just crazy talk. What we do today, in a lot of ways for me, is bringing the music back to its roots by making it more accessible and powerful to new audiences. And the challenge is to find ways of doing that without straying too far off course — to make sure it’s still New Orleans music, and still Preservation Hall.

The music has obviously always been there, but the music-buying public isn’t always necessarily paying attention. My gateway to New Orleans music was the Dirty Dozen Brass Band’s New Orleans Album, which was over 20 years ago; there was a bit of buzz at the time, between projects like that and Harry Connick, Jr.’s success, but it didn’t last. Over the last few years, though, it seems like there’s been something of a renaissance in New Orleans music. How much of this is real, and how much is just heightened awareness of the city in the post-Katrina era?

You know, I do think it’s real. The ‘90s were not a particularly exciting time for music in New Orleans, for me personally. It seemed like for maybe 15 years, we were trying to redetermine our identity. Katrina did something to this city that made us more aware of who we are, and put a spotlight on us that we hadn’t had for a long time. It made people aware of the depth of our city.

I always tell people they have to think beyond the New Orleans stereotypes — what I call the three B’s: Bourbon Street, booze, and beads. For a lot of people, that forms the basis of their perception of the city, and a lot of things reinforce it. MTV’s spring break specials had a huge impact on the way people viewed New Orleans. It’s always been my battle cry to say that we’re so much more than that. I mean, all that stuff is part of our city, but half a block from Bourbon Street is Preservation Hall, and two blocks from Preservation Hall is the Mississippi River, and one block away is Jackson Square. Eight blocks the other direction is Tremé, which is the center of so much of our music.

That’s always been what I’ve believed in, which is the real New Orleans, and I want to give people the opportunity to hear that music. Once they do, my experience is been that they’re fans for life. And how many cities can you say have an unbroken musical legacy that dates back a hundred years? We’ve had African-American brass bands here since before the Civil War. We have kids playing today whose great-great-grandparents played in brass bands in the 1920s. Our trumpet player is fifth generation. Our clarinet player, who’s 58 years old, is fourth generation. I’m second generation. That’s a beautiful thing. I do believe that some things are meant to go on forever.

But musical tastes are cyclical; trends are cyclical. It’s a part of life, and that’s always been reflected in New Orleans. The amazing thing to me about the music coming out of here today is the unbroken thread that runs through all the styles. But in terms of reaching a pop audience, it’s just part of the ups and downs. I look at old Preservation Hall posters from when they were touring with the Grateful Dead, and I don’t think that’s too far removed from what we’re doing now.

Obviously, you do a lot of shows at home, and there’s a very different vibe on the road. How do you take those different audiences into account when putting together your set lists for tours?

Well…

Actually, back up — do you even have a set list?

(Laughs) We do, we do. We try to play songs from whatever projects we’ve either just come out of or are working on, but it’s a real challenge with a band this old, because we have such a huge repertoire. There are hundreds of songs to choose from, and the audience would know them all, but it’s also finding the songs that the musicians in this particular group feel passionately about.

It’s still a challenge, though. I go to concerts sometimes and come away disappointed because the artist didn’t play something I wanted to hear, and I think we’ve all had that experience. And moreover, when you hear our band in concert, it’s a different experience than coming to hear us at Preservation Hall. That’s a pure experience at the Hall — more intimate. I wish more people had the chance to hear their favorite artists in that kind of environment. In a lot of ways, it’s like what Levon Helm is doing with his Midnight Ramble series — it’s a more relaxed environment. At the Hall, we don’t use microphones or amplifiers — it’s more of what I remember from when I was a kid, when the musicians would just get together. No light show, no stage, no curtains. You can feel the air from the band blowing you in the face.

A concert has more pomp and circumstance. It’s a huge deal, and there are larger expectations between the audience and the band. But I wouldn’t say I enjoy one more than the other, just because they’re so different. What I’ve consistently noticed, however, is the reaction of the audience. There’s just something infectious about New Orleans music — you’ll find people who’ve never heard it that start to move involuntarily to the music.

Also, the audiences are larger on tour. At the Hall, we’re playing to 70 people at a time, and on the road, we’re doing it for between 500 and 15,000 people at any given moment.

It must make absorbing the feedback from the audience a very different experience.

Yeah, and the challenge at large concerts is, how do you make an arena feel intimate? There are ways to do it, but it’s different from playing at Preservation Hall. What’s interesting to me is watching artists who don’t usually have the opportunity to play for smaller crowds come to the Hall. A band like My Morning Jacket, for example. It was beautiful for me to hear the music, and the guys in the band adapt — you have to be a chameleon to fit in that environment, if it’s something you aren’t used to.

Do you ever think about turning those performances into a Live from Daryl’s House type show?

We have recorded them, and we do record a lot of them. We’re working on a documentary about the history of Preservation Hall right now, and whenever we have someone come in, we generally try to capture the performance. To me, though, there’s something intimate about it — it’s like bringing a camera into your bedroom. I cherish those moments so much, and sometimes I don’t want to revisit them. Either they don’t live up to what I felt that night, or it’s so personal that it was just there that night for the people. And a lot of times, artists feel like that — that the show is just a moment in time. That’s right in line with what Preservation Hall is. We’re right on the edge of having everything completely digital everywhere, and I wouldn’t say the Hall has fought it — we just never thought about it at all, because that isn’t who we are.

For us to be there, playing acoustic music together in that environment, it’s just something so special and unique. It requires people to come and see it. I’m a huge proponent of getting out there and taking that big bite out of life, and coming to places like New Orleans — discovering these places. Or creating them!

Is that philosophy part of why the band has recorded fairly infrequently over the years?

Well, you know, as a band, I guess we’ve recorded more over the past few years than we ever have. It’s interesting, where we are in history. I see the music industry changing into something that we don’t quite know yet, but we have a pretty good idea.

You guys are more or less on your own as recording artists, aren’t you?

Right, we’re our own label, and that’s easier today than it’s ever been. But by the same token, there are more people fighting for that same audience. In a lot of ways, the method of delivering music is going to change, but the things people latch onto are going to remain the same.

So what happens next for the Preservation Hall Jazz Band?

We have a project we’re doing with Del McCoury, and that’s coming out on Mardi Gras. That’s something we’ll be touring behind this year. We’re celebrating our 50th anniversary this year, so we’ll be doing a lot of things around that, and I also did the music for a ballet that’s debuting in New Orleans this week. What’s important for me is ensuring that the next generation of New Orleans musicians has the same opportunities that we had growing up.

Finally, what would you say people can expect to see and hear at the Arts Center show?

What I’m most proud of is helping people overcome their fear of the word “jazz,” and I think Preservation Hall does that better than anyone. When people come to hear us, the experience they have so often catches them by surprise — they don’t know what to expect. And it’s not the kind of show where you’re expected to sit on your hands and be polite. Ours are shows where people have gotten up and danced in the aisles.

At the end of the day, what any artist wants to do is take people on a journey for the short period of time that we get to spend together. To forget about all of their burdens and worries — that’s a recurring theme in New Orleans music, laying your burden down. I think that’s what our music does — I think it captures that spirit and takes people on a little trip for a couple of hours.

Related articles

• Del McCoury Band Teams Up with Preservation Hall Jazz Band; Pickup Lines In Country Music; Ralph Stanley Video Liner (the9513.com)

You know whose music sounds perfect to me on a cold and rainy afternoon? Mary Chapin Carpenter’s.

Mary Chapin Carpenter, “4 June 1989″ (play)

How about you?

I know what’s in store for me today.

Katie Herzig, “Shovel” (play)

Ornette Coleman, “Snowflakes and Sunshine” (play)