Just found a folder of old show posters from the tail end of the Old Portland heyday.

Raise your hand if you were at one of these! 🙌

I quit drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, popping pills, shooting speedballs, doing lines of cocaine, and smoking crack 11 years ago this week.

This was my body back then. I was 6’ 4” tall and weighed 137 pounds. I was sick and dying and did not care. It took years for me to learn to care, and I’m so grateful for every doctor, every therapist, every friend, every family member, every collaborator, and every stranger who cared on my behalf back when I could not.

Thank you love, thank you dogs, thank you music, thank you Naltrexone, thank you medical marijuana, thank you television, thank you pretty shoes, thank you burritos, thank you second chances, and thank you forgiveness.

I’m here for it. 🏆

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.