Mark's Pages

June 22, 2011:

We went to dinner in competing factions. The singer, his girlfriend, and my ex girlfriend to one restaurant; everybody else to a second.

"We want to get you back where you belong," says the fiddle player to the author. "Does this include the singer?", replies the author skeptically. Laughing, the manager says, "We're still working on him, but he'll come around." Not laughing, the fiddle player insists, "He doesn't have any choice, it's all of us against him."

Why do they want me? To keep them together, I think. For their big break opening through October for the Very Big Band at the top of the indie music scene.

What are they offering? $25/day per diem and all the girls I can eat.

Will I go? No. Too much stress. And too much ego. I'm a musician. I don't want to be anybody's babysitter, no matter how much I love them.

It all works out. They do the tour, which lands them on a major label, which today markets them as "The legendary XYZ." I stay home to write, and organize the smuggling of Central American refugees into Canada.

Of course it's natural to have regrets.