Balls or Brains
It can also be called heart or mind.
To leap forward without a net or to get your ducks in a row first?
What serves your mission best?
This is my story of taking a risk, Vegas, a red carpet gala, and a stage with Robin Thicke.
This all happened shortly after losing everything in my business and personal life and just stepping out newly reborn as an artist
In an unfamiliar space of newness and joy in my life, I am becoming my most authentic self. I am happy to play music everywhere. Pretty much anytime that I am asked and many times even when I’m not. One weekend I have a friend moving into a new home he just purchased for himself. I am asked, or maybe I ask, to play music for the party. Either way, play I do. One of our mutual friends, a new friend for me, is at the party. She is a beautiful blonde publicist for one of the Las Vegas Strip casino properties.
The following weekend I am invited to her Vegas birthday pool party, being held at one of the casinos she represents. Though we are very new acquaintances at that point, I am really operating from a newly found space of love, truth, and authenticity with all people in my life. My connections are becoming much more authentic. My conversations all more heartfelt and real. It's amazing what can happen when you stand in your own truth. You really start to see and feel the connection between all things.
Las Vegas pool parties in the summertime are truly something to behold. It’s really a daytime nightclub with water as your main dance floor. The DJ is belting music that is either raising or lowering the vibration of the best party. Cabanas with bottle service surround the main floor. Drugs and alcohol combined with peaking levels of testosterone and estrogen masked by one small piece of clothing make for a highly charged atmosphere.
My new blonde publicist friend is having a good time. With the group of crazies I run with most times, it’s hard not to. What comes next out of nowhere is my friend’s offer. It seems that she is booking a private, high-profile show at the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas.
She asks if I think I’m ready to open up a show like this.
Being that you could count the times on one hand that I'd actually played with a full band at all, I give the only answer that seems reasonable to me.
"Absolutely!!"
I am asked if I have music and a video to send over for the group’s final approval. I just so happen to have both that are fresh and new.
The Venetian show, as I find out, is to open up for Robin Thicke, Jessica Lowndes, a Hollywood actress making her debut in music, and a club group with a song charting who goes by the name Doc Hollywood. It would be a big corporate affair with celebrities, a red carpet crawling with media for a corporate function in support of a global green initiative.
I would need a full band, which I do not have.
I am also asked to perform two songs, which I do not have.
I have but one.
I imagine that the song that I just recorded, “Fallin' and Flyin',” would be very well-received. But there still is the small issue of a second song. It would have to be an original and I have never written a song before in my life. I have faith. I know that this is who I am inside. I am also certain that this path is where I am supposed to be in my life.
Sometimes you just have to blindly walk into the abyss first, and once there allow the steps to show up beneath your feet. That is the faith spoken about in all the sacred teachings. That is the faith that I am walking blindly by. I have no website, no song, no band, and no money. No problem. In your soul’s journey, your highest thoughts are the ones that need to be answered first. It's the universe’s way of helping you steer your ship.
One day without thinking I have a thought. Thinking almost always gets in the way of good thoughts. I am to reach out to an old friend of mine who is also a musician. I used to see him perform in numerous incarnations of bands and projects years earlier when I had lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is a former Texas boy and the Texas leaks into his California demeanor whether he wants it to or not. After a handful of exchanges with him and a number of hours sitting on a front porch swing on a short visit to my mother’s house back home, I have my first song ready to go. The song is an authentic story of a soul’s journey on the road and the ultimate journey of change.
Now what I have left to do for this upcoming performance is to build a band. Well, I tell you what, in a city like Las Vegas that's easier said than done. Especially when you're asking for freebies.
(The Band for the show)
Anxiously I am trying to put this whole project together. The anxiety that I'm battling isn't helping anything. It never does. I'm about two weeks outside of the show now when I find out that in addition to the performance, I will be interviewed on the red carpet. My past experiences with galas, shindigs, and hoopla in the corporate world tells me that I need to brush up on the company throwing the event and the organization for which they are attempting to raise awareness. Breathe.
My friend’s garage, his former office, my first recording studio, now becomes my makeshift rehearsal space. He is one of the few friends from my old life who no longer sees the old me but truly sees the person standing before him. He's been an angel of support in a surprisingly powerful way. He has a rough exterior but a soft heart and has shown up in my life at just the right time. The rehearsal space shortly becomes my live-work space. A group of individual musicians is finally pulled together to form a band only for the show. Just two nights of rehearsals, just days before the scheduled performance, and we are underway.
With the last dollars in my account again, I rent a car to get around before the show. The universe sees fit to deliver to me, through the rental car agency, a brand new black pickup truck just in time. How amazingly appropriate for me, the one country artist on the bill. The day of the show I arrive to find that the hotel has given me a full suite for tonight's performance. As I go to check in, it appears that I am in the wrong line. The VIP concierge is for me. What? Well, it appears that today I am a star. My bags and guitars are whisked away and I am directed to my suite.
On the walk to my suite I notice that there are pictures of me on signs throughout the casino. This is spectacular. My adrenaline is starting to pump and I feel a whole different kind of alive. I don't have too much time to bask in the moment, as the time is nearing to get myself together and do the sound check for the night's performance.
(Soundcheck, Venetian Hotel)
It's Las Vegas in the summertime. The show is scheduled outdoors at night and the temperature during the afternoon sound check seems to be pushing 120 degrees, if not more. I am the show’s opening act, which means that I am the last one to sound check. My group sets up and we test the equipment, blasting into the opening song to dial in the sound. Utilizing less than half of the allotted time to sound check, I opt to relieve the crew early. Having been outside in this heat all afternoon doing what crews do, they are more than grateful for the reprieve. They are now also my biggest fans. I head back to my room with an hour or so to go in preparation for the evening ahead.
The mind can be your greatest opponent. The roommate that never shuts up. The roommate of yours that has been proven over and over again to know less than nothing, yet we listen intently to his ramblings and abuse. Right now my roommate is giving me all kinds of hell. "You only have forty dollars to your name. This is way beyond you. You aren't ready for this."
I get ready anyhow and find that I hate what I'm wearing. It's very Texas country. Pearl snaps and plaid. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's not really me. It's not what I would have chosen if I had my druthers. Not for this event, not for press, not my most authentic self. But it's what I have and, unfortunately, with all of the moving parts leading up to the event, wardrobe fell to the last minute. I stare at myself for what seems like an eternity, though in actuality it is probably just minutes. I fire up a fresh joint. Fuck it. It's time to go.
(Red Carpet -GULP!)
I have walked red carpets before. I have been involved in high-profile events many times on my short excursion on this spinning rock. But never have I been perceived as a celebrity for the cameras. I have never been on that particular end of this circus.
As I'm guided onto the red carpet, the press explodes. "CJ, CJ...over here, over here." All the members of the press are clamoring for my attention. Just asking for a brief look their way for only just a moment to capture the scene for whatever media outlet they're representing. Wow. So this is what it's like. It's surreal on its own account, but the recent smoke from upstairs has engulfed my senses, making the scene around me all the more dreamlike.
As I look back at the most powerful moments of my life, it has always been my heart that guided me.
Balls or Brains?
Heart or Mind?
What has been YOUR experience?
(This story has been an excerpt from the book, The Journey Home. Authored by @carljohn)