Happy 25th birthday to this song. I look like a baby here because I was. Wrote Here We Go Again when I was 17, recorded it when I was 19, and released it when I was 20. Also at the time this video was created, the fonts we used were cutting edge. lol

Wish I could go back and tell this kid to make better choices earlier, but oh well! He did what he did and that’s just the way the story goes.

The album this is from (my debut “GLEE” from the year 2000) is long out of print and no longer available on streaming (as a gift to myself and the world) but you can still listen to the remastered version everywhere via my self-titled record from 2006 if this is your thing.

#OldPortland

I was in the studio recording this (now out of print) album with PFog 20 years ago this weekend. It’s a mess, as were the mixtapes that had led to it, the record that came just after it, and the 2 EPs that followed…but, whatever. It was the 90s, I was a maladjusted teenager, and it was before easy-access technology swooped in to help 17 year old songwriters suck less on their own.

I actually got noticed by the industry way too early in my career and had to figure out how to not totally suck in real time while everyone watched me totally suck on very big stages that these super famous artists I had grown up worshiping had made space for me to join them on. But I wasn’t ready, and I wouldn’t really be ready for another decade.

I blazed forward anyway. I said yes to everything, disappointed everyone, kept writing, met the right people, met the wrong people, went on TV a bunch, continued doing very public things, failed, won, failed, won, failed, won, caused a scene in the circles I was supposed to impress, and slowly got better at all of it until one day in 2008 I woke up and just didn’t suck anymore…or, at least, it wasn’t as pronounced. (It’s also completely possible that I just started sucking in a totally new and different way when I quit drinking. I’m open to that, too.)

The point is, it doesn’t matter how much you suck as long as you scare the right people with your songs while you are still young and beautiful.