Musicians are always chasing the one big gig. But what happens after it’s over?
Being a professional musician is one of the few scenarios where an adult builds an entire life around an interest that grabbed their attention when they were children. Ask kids what they want to be when they grow up, and they usually answer with their fantasy job: professional athlete, cowboy, movie star, princess, president, astronaut. Time usually reveals that many of these career paths are not likely to work, so most of us silence that childish dream and stumble into something that pays the bills. But plenty of musicians never quite make the leap to practicality.
The other night, I played a club with my longtime friend and bandmate Andy Hull—a great musician, great drummer, great guy. On a break, we were doing what musicians do: talking about music and dream gigs. Andy said that when he saw a Genesis concert as a teen, he thought, “That’s the life for me. I would love to be in the Chester Thompson seat, part of a great band playing in front of 80,000 people.” Then he added, “But that’s probably not going to happen, and that’s okay. I’ve got a beautiful life.”
I responded, “Andy, you’ve been on a bunch of big tours. When you’re not on the road, you’re making records. And for the record, you and I played Nissan Stadium together last winter. It was packed with something like 82,000 people, plus another five million watching on TV. Great money, great gig, great band. If our 16-year-old selves could see that, we would feel like the luckiest kids in the world.” Andy’s reply dropped off: “Ya, but….” Then we laughed and got back on stage, and sloshed through another night of live music.
“Everyone who attains a hard-earned goal knows the hollowness you feel after the after-after party, when the congratulations, back-slapping, and basking in the glory end.”
The conversation reminded me of a poignant scene from Pixar’s 2020 movie, Soul. The main character, voiced by Jamie Foxx, is Joe Gardner, a 45-year-old middle school music teacher from New York who dreams of becoming a jazz pianist. He gets his chance when a former student, now a big-time jazz drummer, lines up a last-minute audition for the piano slot for top-tier saxophonist Dorothea Williams. Joe nails the audition, gets the gig, and then promptly falls to his death through an open manhole. Joe is not ready to leave this world with his lifelong ambition nearly consummated, so his ghost-like soul works and schemes a way back into his body to play the gig.
That night, after much cunning, effort, and breaking the rules of mortality, the dream gig is everything Joe hoped for. A lifetime of preparation pays off: Joe plays great, the band loves him, the audience is into it, his mom finally supports his music career, and his dream is realized. As the band leaves the venue after the gig, Joe asks Dorothea, “So, uh, what happens next?” Dorothea replies, “We come back tomorrow night and do it all again.”
Joe looks confused, deflated, and empty. He explains to Dorothea, “It’s just that I’ve been waiting for this day my whole entire life. I thought it would feel … different.”
Dorothea tells Joe a metaphorical story about a fish who swims up to an older fish and says, “I’m trying to find this thing they call the ocean.”
The older fish replies, “The ocean? That’s what you’re in right now.”
“This?” says the young fish, perplexed. “This is water; what I want is the ocean.”
Dorothea gives Joe a knowing look, then speeds off in a cab.
Everyone who attains a hard-earned goal knows the hollowness you feel after the after-after party, when the congratulations, back-slapping, and basking in the glory end. When you’re alone with your thoughts, you realize that your achievement doesn’t make you feel any different. You’re wondering, “What’s next? Is that all there is?”
When you put all your focus on the outcome, you can attach an unattainable illusion of fulfillment, happiness, perfection to it. The seemingly successful unhappy person is often stuck in a cycle of searching for external things, accomplishments, and/or material objects, to fulfill and complete them. Sadly, they often miss the best part: the journey.
This drive is totally understandable. Professional musicians know that at times, you are motivated by fear: fear of poverty, fear of failure, fear of abandoning your dreams and losing this sense of who you think you should be. Honestly, this fear is a good motivator to improve your skills and hunt for the best work scenario. Those who don’t have those fears usually don’t survive the industry. I think this is the natural wiring of humans. Our knuckle-dragging ancestors were less likely to survive unless they did worry how they were going to eat and not be eaten. But while vigilance and hard work are good things, you gotta know when to turn it off and not become attached to your vision of what life should be.
I have a tendency to live thinking, “Everything will be cool when I have the killer gig, have more money, have more free time, have a 1958 Gibson goldtop Les Paul,” etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum. It’s like I’m waiting to live until my conditions are met. But the old fish knows that you’re swimming in what you are looking for.
I was hired to lead the house band for a benefit to raise funds for veterans battling PTSD. Jared James Nichols, Kirk Fletcher, Dave Mustaine, and others joined the cause, and here’s how it went.
Often with multi-act shows, limited budget, space, and inputs on the mix necessitate that some acts share a house band. Because I’ve been slugging it out for 30-plus years in Nashville, I occasionally get hired to lead it. A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to get the call to lead for “Rock to Remember,” a concert/live auction collab between Guitars for Vets (an organization that provides guitars to veterans struggling with PTSD) and Gibson Gives.
We had a killer lineup, including Jared James Nichols, Dave Mustaine of Megadeth, Kirk Fletcher, and Tonic frontman Emerson Hart. In addition to supporting those acts, I was asked to do one of my songs. There was only room for a three-piece band, and I needed a rhythm section who were intuitive enough to nail a pressure gig with limited or no rehearsal, diverse enough to cover pop, blues, rock, and metal, and could sing harmony. I called drummer Duran Crone and bassist Logan Hatcher, with whom I’ve played enough jam-type gigs that I knew they could hit the curve. As an added bonus, Hatcher served six years in the Marines, which might inspire some vets to see one of their own making it in the music industry.
It’s a bit unnerving playing with talented celebrity musicians you don’t know. But when you’re performing in front of a live audience, it's filmed for broadcast, and it's a no-rehearsal-plug-and-pray, that takes it up a notch. I wasn’t worried about Jared James Nichols and Kirk Fletcher. I knew they would both do something blues-based. Put four good to great players who haven’t played together onstage and tell them to play blues: it’s going to be interesting.
"The idea of trying to cover Marty Friedman’s solo on “Symphony of Destruction” in front of a very intimidating Dave Mustaine was terrifying. Although the internet is full of children who can nail that solo, I cannot."
Nichols walked into the crowded greenroom at the Gibson Garage with just his ’52 Les Paul. I introduced him to Crone and Hatcher, who hadn’t heard Nichols’ song yet. We walked to the only quiet place we could find—a large, tiled bathroom. Nichols played “Baby Can You Feel It”on his phone while I wrote a chart and the guys tried to discern their parts. Then we went onstage, Nichols told us about the form, and we ran it once during soundcheck. Nichols gave us a little more direction, then we went back about an hour later and nailed it live. Nichols is such a driving force that you really can’t get lost playing with him.
Kirk Fletcher was even easier. It was a hectic day, so the details are fuzzy, but I don’t think Fletcher made it to soundcheck. He just texted me saying something like, “Let’s do a blues shuffle in A.” Fletcher met Crone and Hatcher as we walked onstage to perform. Fletcher plugged in, turned up, counted it off, and played his ass off. It couldn’t have been less stressful nor more fun.
Tonic’s Emerson Hart was like dessert. He was playing “If You Could Only See” and “You Wanted More,” two songs I genuinely loved back when there was music on MTV. In gigs like this, I rarely learn a solo note for note. Not that I don’t want to, it’s just that I’m not a particularly good mimic. Even if I get the notes right, it usually feels stiff and inauthentic. I usually start where the recording started but let it go where it goes. Some artists don’t like that, some do. Hart seemed cool with my improv and the performance went well. He has an iconic voice that has grown richer with time. He played and sang great, was fun, funny, and all about helping the cause.
The idea of trying to cover Marty Friedman’s solo on “Symphony of Destruction” in front of a very intimidating Dave Mustaine was terrifying. Although the internet is full of children who can nail that solo, I cannot. Maybe if I dedicated the next 10,000 hours of my life to it, I could get close, but it would still be like bad karaoke. So, I was hugely relieved when Gibson’s brand president Cesar Gueikian volunteered to cover it. He only had a weekend to prep but covered it with ease. Thanks Cesar.
The best part of this gig is that it raised funds for veterans battling PTSD. Studies prove what guitarists already know: playing music is a powerful therapy tool.
Two of my beloved nephews, Joe and John Bohlinger, were teenagers when they joined the Marines and went from hunting and fishing in Wyoming and Montana to heavy combat in Afghanistan. They voluntarily put themselves through years of a truly hellish, life-changing war because they wanted to keep us safe. That kind of trauma leaves an indelible mark. I’m grateful to be part of an organization that does something to try and help them.
In 1967, Richard Head bought his dream guitar for $350 and went on a decades-long musical journey with his prized possession. Now, he’s selling it to raise money for injured veterans.
In Joe Bonamassa’s latest Rig Rundown, filmed in early 2022, Bonamassa showed us a beautiful, faded sunburst 1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard with a history. This guitar was slated to be sold for charity, with 100 percent of the proceeds going to Homes for Our Troops, a nonprofit organization that builds specially adapted custom homes and donates them to severely injured post-9/11 veterans. (HFOT has built 350 homes to date, with another 71 projects underway nationwide.)
I forgot about the guitar and the auction until 11 months later, when I emceed Joe Robinson’s Rig Rundown. Robinson had the same Les Paul. Yesterday, when I returned to the Ryman for a Rundown with Kenny Wayne Shepherd, I saw this special burst again, as Shepherd planned to play it during his set. As I was leaving the venue, I met Richard Head, the owner and donor of this amazing guitar. It occurred to me that my column was due tomorrow, so maybe I could Tom Sawyer him into writing it for me. Luckily, Richard fell for it and sent me the story of the Blessing Burst.
“My higher self knows that you don’t own your favorite possessions—they own you. Essentially, it’s been my burden to buy, repair, protect, and worry about this wire and wood that I’m so obsessed with.”
In 1967, Head, an aspiring musician in Northern Ohio, found a 1960 Les Paul “Burst” Serial #01945 at Elyria Music in Elyria, Ohio. Its cherry sunburst finish had already faded from being displayed in store windows, and it had a repaired neck break. But it was all original with PAF humbuckers and a slim, comfortable 1960s neck profile. Best of all, Richard could afford the purchase price of $350, so he pulled the trigger and never looked back.
This burst, which he nicknamed Blessing, was Richard’s main electric guitar from then on. Blessing was with him during hundreds of hours of gigs, to an audition for Edgar Winter in New York in 1969, then to Criteria Studios in Miami when his band landed a record deal in the ’70s, then more gigs as Richard and Blessing played the club circuit. In 1991, Richard took a job at Gibson where he worked as the marketing director for the electric guitar division. When Gibson created the Custom Shop Historic Collection, Richard loaned his burst Les Paul to Gibson for the purpose of measuring and comparing all of its attributes to ensure that the 1960 Les Paul Reissue, offered as part of the Historic Collection, would be as true to the original as possible. Blessing was featured in the Gibson Historic Collection catalog of 1994, emphasizing the validity of the 1960 Les Paul Reissue model.
Joe Bonamassa took the 1960 Blessing burst on a worldwide tour.
Photo by Rick Gould
In 2020, Richard turned 70 and decided he wanted his Blessing Burst to be a blessing to others by providing mortgage-free homes to extremely injured veterans. Richard contacted his old friend and coworker at Gibson, Walter Carter of Carter Vintage Guitars, who put him in touch with Bonamassa. Bonamassa was happy to help the cause and took the Blessing Burst on tour, spreading awareness about HFOT’s mission.
After a year of touring that took Blessing to the Royal Albert Hall, Red Rocks, and beyond, the guitar is now located at Nashville’s Carter Vintage, where it’s been played by Marcus King, Tommy Emmanuel, John Osborne, Joe Robinson, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, and more. Updates will be posted on the Carter Vintage website as well as Blessing’s Instagram page @Blessingburst.
I just finished a painful, runaway-budget remodel at my home, essentially to accommodate my gluttonous gear consumption. During the process, I found guitars that I’ve not seen in years. I moved piles of old amplifiers that I’ve been lugging around for decades; schlepping them endlessly from my different homes to gigs ad nauseam. I felt like Scrooge’s partner, Marley, who was doomed to drag the chains of his treasure for all eternity.
My higher self knows that you don’t own your favorite possessions—they own you. Essentially, it’s been my burden to buy, repair, protect, and worry about this wire and wood that I’m so obsessed with. It’s a bit of a curse to be owned by your obsessions. It occurred to me that Richard Head is onto something. He found his dream guitar. This Les Paul was with him for a musical odyssey that lasted over half a century. Now the guitar will join another player on their own musical odyssey and the profits from the sale will house people that gave a lot and now need help: Truly that is a blessing. That being said, if I had the dough re mi, I would definitely buy this Blessing Burst and drag it around for the rest of my life and, if possible, I would happily take it with me after I die and lug it through eternity.