A lion-hearted man on a mission
It's hard to believe that I'd only been in the band for about a month when we started shooting the first season of "Will Play For Food". Streetlight Cadence had been a part of my life from the moment it started, and I'd spent years watching from the sidelines, helping when I could and (truthfully) scoffing at the deranged, haphazard path my brother-in-law had chosen as his young adult venture. I had just matured past the legal drinking age when he asked me to join his newfound sidewalk crew and I politely said no. Many times.
Some years pass. The band had made big moves in Los Angeles. I was physically, financially and professionally at peak and about to become a dad.
Then, in the course of two weeks, three things happened: I became a dad, my best friend took his life, and Hurricane Harvey hit Houston as we were driving back from his funeral.
I still don't know if I've healed from those two weeks. I spent a couple of days grieving, sleepless, and on edge as the water rose.
It was during one of those nights that Jon frantically called me and asked me to produce the band's infamous cover of Taylor Swift's "Look What You Made Me Do", shot and recorded mere minutes after it dropped. We got off the phone, I successfully downloaded the raw files, and we lost power.
Do you remember the days when laptop batteries only lasted a few hours? With a mouse in one hand and a baby in the other, I cobbled together that video and managed to upload it via cell data seconds before my computer died. I guess that was my first taste of living life in the moment as Jon does. It was in that moment that I asked my wife if I could join Streetlight Cadence.
That meant leaving our friends and both sets of parents behind with a newborn in tow and shifting from suburban to city life. Slashing my income in half while paying double in rent. Joining a group whose music I wasn't totally into, but knowing something magical would come out of it that I could never create on my own.
I found healing by saying yes.
Would I do it again? Hell yeah I would. I still am.