Spirit Bomb/An Incredible Show of Restraint

I’ve been holding back. I don’t know why exactly, but I know I have been. I don’t mean to insinuate that I have been doing so intentionally. Quite the opposite, really. Most of the time it has actually felt completely out of my control, and, while it has been extremely frustrating at times, it hasn’t been all that unpleasant. 

For about two years I’ve been troubling over trying to understand where this sudden feeling of limitation was coming from. I can’t count the amount of times I thought I’d pushed myself too far, lost all my drive, or just gone and fucked it all up. The confusing part is that I don’t feel like I’ve been pushing myself even close to what I am actually capable of, and I still feel incredibly motivated, and I have no idea what “it” is that I could have possibly fucked up. I’ve had so many moments where I have been really afraid and incredibly stressed out and oooh, believe it or not, I really hate being afraid and stressed out. However, I’ve been doing my best to be gentle with myself and have forbidden wallowing my way into some silly mindset that I’m weak or stupid or a failure (at least, forbidden wallowing for very long). Afterall, it's understandable. Being stressed, I mean. Life is hard and the world is on it’s worst behavior and we over here in Bad Buddy Land continue to have the strange and terrible compulsion to try to make a go of it in the fucking ARTS. 

I digress.

A whole a lot of manys of things have happened since the last blog post, and I’m going to do my best to provide an update for whoever might be following along, and I’ll try to be brief and get to the point (whatever that means).

The most obvious update is that we did in fact record and release our cleverly titled sophomore LP, “Bad Buddy II”. From my own perspective, the process was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in my career thus far. It’s interesting how different making a second record is compared to making a first. Aside from all of us being better at our craft, we also know each other better as people. We had a sonic precedent to reference in our first album, which is something we could have chosen to lean into or ignore. Going in, we all knew more than the first time around, but that meant that we all had more to consider. 

When we started working on the album we had a moment where we looked at each other and wondered if we would be able to do it again and still sound like us, like Bad Buddy. It had us speculating how we were going to do it. We put a lot of planning and intention into the making of Bad Buddy II. I locked myself in my basement for a week to exorcise the songs that had been haunting me, we did a group creative writing retreat, and booked numerous sessions of pre-production to make sure we were all aligned in our vision. All-in-all the pre-pro took the better part of a year, but that year was filled not only with music, but with cooking meals and sharing them, playing games, getting to know each other, cry laughing, real crying, joke talks, real talks, real support, real friends. I won’t go on too much longer about the album because it’s old news at this point, but I’d like to touch on my personal experience recording BBII, because it was very special to me.

So when it was finally time to start tracking we knew we wanted someone to engineer the album for us, and we also remembered that we like to make things as hard as possible for ourselves and decided that instead of going to one of the many amazing, great sounding, fully operational studios in town, we would rather fabricate one in a cabin in the woods somewhere like rat-people. Thankfully, local audio superstar, Scott Franchuk, turned out to be a secret rat-man and was not only willing to be trapped with the four loony-toons in the band, but hauled what felt like half of his Edmonton studio out to make it happen. We spent nine days together at an incredible rental I found and if I think too hard about the positive impact that Scott had on this album I’ll cry. Recording BBII was the first time in one of my own creative projects that I didn’t have to engineer the record at the same time. Scott’s impeccable craftsmanship and attention to detail grounded me, and it was an honour to work with him in this way. He confidently captures audio with honesty and integrity and approaches music with dedicated intention the likes of an archivist. His calm, quiet, attentiveness both supported me as an artist, and forced me to look inside myself and trust my own instincts. On top of it all, he’s one of the best hangs around. Ultimately, I am a better musician because of working with Scott, and I have nothing but the utmost admiration, love, and respect for him. I’ll never thank him enough. 

While I’m reminiscing about the record, the last thing I’ll include is that there are so many people who had a hand in making BBII what it is. I want to directly shout out a big ol thanks to Lucas Chaisson who came and helped set up at the cabin, Brett Klein and Chloe Yakymyshyn (who wasn’t in the band at the time! Cute!) who drove out just to help us get all our shit back into town, Philip Shaw Bova for mastering, the INCREDIBLE Jake Clark for squeezing in the album art collab into his very real and busy artist life, Lana Bachynski for fixing all our FUBAR graphics and being our #1 fan, Kelley Warren for taking music and making it concrete, and of COURSE - THIERRY DIAB, MIX ENGINEER OF OUR DREAMS. Thierry has mixed everything you have heard of Bad Buddy and is so thoughtful, so talented, so easy to work with, and such a wonderful, beautiful person. If you’re looking for someone to mix your album don’t be shy! Reach out to him! You won’t regret it. He’s a magnificent collaborator and I’m very lucky to call him a friend.

While it felt like it took us an eternity to bring BBII to life, we actually managed to do it in half the amount of time as the first one. I’m proud of us and proud of the music. I think it sounds like us. Making a record is so rewarding. You take an idea, filter it through a bunch of people and it ends up being something you can hold. It’s long form magic. It’s the coolest! However, after the sparkling, tingling high of creating something out of nothing starts to soften at the edges, reality is good at reminding me that a career in music is a snake eating its tail. Recording an album is just part of the cycle.

Releasing BBII was a series of “oh shit, rights”. “Oh shit, right, we need merch”, “Oh shit, right, we have to upload it to the internet”, “Oh shit, right, we have to tell people about it”, “Oh shit, right, we have to apply for festivals, and book shows, and submit to radio and, and, and, and, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. Right.” When you have only ever been through the release strategy part of the album cycle once before (and it was four years prior) needless to say there is a lot of relearning involved. 

For me, the transition from “creative artist person" into “band administrator person" has proven to be a nasty little shoulder period that has me switching back and forth between the two roles with disorienting frequency. This period is riddled with traps and everything is tedious. This period reminds me how much time weighs. Here’s one example of a trap - I’ll be trying to upload our music to a digital distro and then “oh shit, right, we need single artwork” and have to stop admin-ing and force-create art that will be different from the album cover and represent the song for as long as the internet exists and also not look like ass somehow but it has to be done in the next two hours because if I don’t get the song uploaded in time then it won’t be processed in time for us to release when we said we would and we won’t be able to submit it to official playlists and any publicity we have managed to summon will all be for naught. (A big shout out to Andi for the Q.B. single art inspo, a big “way to phone it in” to myself for the Meat Machine single art cop out.) On a positive note, I don’t think this shoulder period will always feel so challenging. I actually doubt it will feel even half as difficult the next time around, and I think it’s normal to not be an expert at something you have only done once before. 

[QUICK PSA] I’d like to take a moment here to acknowledge that I know that wrote that I was going to try to keep this brief and I recognize that I have completely failed in that attempt and I accept all responsibility for my actions but I promise I actually am trying and so if you think this is long-winded than just imagine if I wasn’t trying so you know what actually you should really count yourself lucky and actually you’re realistically probably just awestriken upon bearing witness to what I can only assume people are now calling “an incredible show of restraint.” [END OF PSA]

As I was saying - I don’t know why I have been holding back. I’ve been trying to write this blog post for two years. I think that’s when I started to hit the limiter. I think it’s related to creativity. I think it’s related to balance. I’m sure someone could tell me which planetary bodies are out there fucking around with my gravity. Maybe I’m just passing a little too close to a black hole. I swear, if I wasn’t in my body I’d say I was having an out-of-body experience. Disconnected. Floaty. (Again, not exactly unpleasant.) I’m more-so curious as to why I can’t seem to keep both feet on the ground at the same time. It's like walking into a room and not remembering why you’re there or wondering what was so upsetting in a dream or forgetting the word “Ouroboros”. I don’t know why, but when I feel this way, I need to spend all my spare time sitting and staring at a wall. It seems to help. Then, when carrying my head in my hands becomes too heavy for me to bear, I know it’s time to replace thoughts with actions. I trace my steps and try to remember how I got here, why I’m walking in this direction in the first place, and if I’m even going where I really want to go. The answers I seek always lie somewhere in the audience of a live show. 

At some point in the last couple years, I made a quiet resolution to go to more shows. To be more specific, I resolved to go to shows with which I had 0% involvement with - not doing sound, not playing, nothing. Though it’s a rather expensive habit (even when my broke ass manages to slither on to a guest list - thanks friends), there isn’t a better way to spend a dollar. 

When I first made my little resolution I was describing my state of being as “tired in my soul”. I’ve gotten pretty good at compartmentalizing over the years, but the walls of ye olde mind palace were starting to feel preeeettttttyyyy fuckin thinnnnnn. If I thought too hard about any one thing, it had the power to bring me, weeping, to my knees. I was fragile and it scared me. I’m too much of a pussy to be vulnerable, so naturally I just refused to allow myself to land on anything for too long for fear that it might break. Initially, going to shows worked wonders to clear my head and I was enjoying being completely outside of myself. I could just let the music wash over me and pretend I didn’t exist. But, no matter where you go, there you are, and I am who I am, so it didn’t take long for the shows to kick my brain into overdrive.

I have seen more outstanding performances in the last couple of years than ever before, and I am appalled at how often watching these shows - performances that effected me so deeply and in such positive ways - was met with an overwhelming feeling of inadequacy. As if the exceptionality of others could diminish my worth, as if it’s a competition, as if, if I allowed myself to be moved by creation it would stunt my ability to be creative. It seems the line between inspiration and defeat is incredibly thin. It dawned on me that instead of admiring the work of the artists, or feeling a sense of pride in my friends, or just recognizing how lucky I am to have the absolute pleasure of watching music in action, I was comparing the talents of others to my own and convincing myself that I would never measure up. I wasn’t really listening, and therefore was actively holding back from enjoying the very thing I love the most. What a fucked up thing to do.

This realization was a blow to the heart, but in a good way, like being revived with CPR. I was flooded with the sudden awareness that I wasn’t just holding back from enjoying music, but from a great many things. Holding back from being inspired because it scares me, because I’m not sure what it would feel like to just be my whole self. Because I’m not sure what my days would look like if I gave myself the chance to be a full-time artist. Holding back because I know that once I start down that road, I’m going to have to put my foot on the gas and not take it off. I’m well and truly afraid of testing what I’m capable of. It’s intimidating. Daunting. Electrical, like a prairie storm. I’ve been holding back because what if I try and it doesn’t work? Or, even more unnerving - what if I try and it does?

I think a big part of this fear is rooted in how stressful and taxing the album cycles have been, and when I think of speeding up that process, I can only view it through the lens of my previous experiences. I'm making a conscious effort to keep in mind that we are all growing along with this Bad Buddy thing. I have to trust myself and trust my band and trust that we’re going to be better at it than we were last time around. The future is ours to make of it what we will and now isn’t the time to shy away from all we have been working so hard to achieve. 

I also realized that I’ve been holding back on enjoying the fruits of our labour. I haven’t really allowed myself to look back at and admire the hill we just climbed. If it isn’t glaringly, clinically, certifiably obvious by this point - I have been thinking a whole lot about ~*LiFe n sTuFf*~. After two years of intense pondering, an analogy popped into my head that made everything click into place a bit and has resulted in my being able to vomit out this godforsaken blog post:

I haven’t been hitting a limiter, it’s more like I’ve been riding a fixie bike down that big hill. I’m not pushing myself too hard, I’m just at the point where I have to take my feet off the pedals and let the wheels spin freely. No amount of pedaling is going to make me move any faster. It makes me feel like a bit of a dumbass how often I have to remind myself that it’s ok to be happy and enjoy the downhill ride. Not allowing myself to sit back and breathe is what is actually slowing me down. I’m not being limited, I’m charging a Spirit Bomb*.

For anybody reading this - I have no idea why I write these fucking things. I suppose they make me feel better in some way. I suppose I just wanted you to know. I would also like to extend a heartfelt “thanks, pal” your way. I can’t thank you enough, actually. It’s really nice to be supported. Everything I have ever done has only been made possible because of the support I receive on a constant basis from my friends and family. I’m perpetually being Weekend at Bernie’s propped up and kept alive by my community. I/We would never have gotten anywhere with this thing (life/band) without all the help from our peers, our friends, and our audiences - it’s not a show if you can’t show it to anybody. This post never would have existed if not for a good friend giving me a laptop to use on an indefinite loan.

Anyhow. At some point I stopped letting music wash over me and started letting it pass through. I gave myself the opportunity to be inspired. I let go of doubt. I was moved to tears. I’ve been sincerely in awe of all the amazing music that’s being created out there. I've been scarcely able to look directly at the brilliant light that emanates from my friends and peers. It will never cease to amaze me how powerful music is. Making time for myself just to witness all the beautiful alchemists crafting transmutations on stage rid me of some pretty stubborn demons and healed my battered soul. I am happily transformed. I’ve been holding back, but I’m not holding back anymore. 

Thanks again, for everything.
Love you, boos.

xox -e. 

P.S. We went to Japan and the UK and it was great. Geoff put together an awesome playlist from all the bands we played with who had music online. We also have a manager now. His name is Lorne and he rules. 

*The Spirit Bomb (元げん気き玉だま Genki-dama, lit. "Health Energy Sphere"), also known as the Spirit Blast in The CW4Kids/Vortexx versions, is a powerful attack invented by King Kai. It is potentially one of the strongest attacks in the Dragon Ball series, but its strength depends on the number of organisms supporting its use. Users of the Spirit Bomb gather huge amounts of energy from all chosen surrounding life forms and inanimate objects to conduct that energy into a massive sphere of astounding destructive power. Energy takes the visual form of sparkling, glittering wisps when adding to the mass that are usually blue and/or white in color. The creation of the attack promotes a calm breeze away from the bomb, which turns into a strong continuous gale and expels colorful bands or radiation of Northern Lights-esque aurora. The Spirit Bomb is quite swift when used and, if the user is not careful, it can absolutely obliterate a planet.