Cool Hand Luke

1. I’m getting old.

2. Being in a band all this time has kept me from growing up. It’s good in some ways, but very bad in other ways.

3. I don’t know how to do anything but be in a band. That is to say, I have no marketable skills outside of music. This, honestly, scares me to death.

4. Most guys my age have at least some athletic ability and desire to play sports for fun. I don’t have that, and I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because I’m no good, so I don’t want to play with people who are. That then starts a spiral—I don’t play because I’m not good but I’m no good because I don’t play. This is a source of insecurity for me. It also makes me wonder what I missed when I was growing up. It also makes me want to start keep up with sports so that I can at least have something to talk about with guys who don’t care about Radiohead and books. We’ll see if that actually happens.

5. I am really, really going to miss touring.

6. Any future songs I write may not ever be heard by anyone else, and I have to be okay with that.

7. Cool Hand Luke was never a very big band, but that is more true now than it ever has been.

8. Cool Hand Luke has some of the kindest, most encouraging fans one could ever hope to encounter. I am overwhelmed and thankful for the kindness I have been shown.

9. I like playing with a band a lot more than playing by myself.

10. At the end of the day, I kind of like to rock.

11. Touring as an adult is not as exciting since I don’t do all the crazy stuff I used to do.  Conversely, there is way less drama.

12. I think I spent a few years trying to re-capture an earlier time—like I wanted it to be 2002 again or something. Of course I could never do that, so I was always frustrated. I have learned that recreating that time isn’t possible and even if it was, I’m not the same person anymore. That time is gone and it’s okay. Now is good, too. On the last tour, I just tried to enjoy my time, and I had a blast.

13. It wasn’t as sad as I thought it would be. It was just mostly fun and at times surreal. It didn’t feel like the end.

14. When we started touring, none of us had cell phones, and we used actual maps to get to places. Our webpage had a URL that was impossible to remember. It was like www.tripod.com/punkrock/jesus.1234_coolhandluke/tennessee-fv9nr2_duckduckgoose or something ridiculous like that. I had just gotten my first ever email account through my college. There was no myspace, Twitter, or Facebook. We used AOL instant messenger to find people (back when they would send you a disc in the mail for 20,000 minutes of free internet!),  and we actually called people  on their land lines to book shows. If you wanted our merch, you had to write what you wanted on a piece of paper and mail it to us with a check. We got “fan mail”. We recorded our first EP to ADAT and then released it on cassette. We had a glossy promo pic in which I had a goatee. We thought Jinco’s were cool (though I could never afford them) and we all had chain wallets.

For this tour, I was the only who didn’t have an iPhone and we used GPS to get to shows. We don’t even have a webpage anymore. I booked the shows using texts and emails. We released the new record online only. Skinny jeans are cool. Times have changed.

15. It never was perfect, and nothing ever will be.

16. I’ve been extremely blessed to get to do this for so long.

17. I got to do what I dreamed of doing as a kid.

18. It was nothing like I thought it would be.

19. I feel like music is something I’m really good at and I feel frustrated that I can’t make a living doing it.

20. Something about riding in a van all day makes me tired no matter how much rest I’ve had.

21. The food I bring with me in order to save money is never as appetizing as the food that everyone else is eating from a restaurant.

22. I never need everything I pack—especially books. Every time, I bring three or four books. I end up having time to read three or four chapters. I never did learn that lesson.

23. I’ll probably never know what it’s like to have someone else set up my stuff and not walk out on stage until the house music stops and the lights go out. I’m okay with that, but, man, wouldn’t that be cool?

24. I miss playing drums a whole, whole lot.

25. I will never stop coming up with new song ideas even if there is no way to see them come to fruition. It’s just a part of who I am.