Emo’s Not Dead: A Defense and Celebration of a Misunderstood Genre

As of writing, it is day two of the fourth annual Emo’s Not Dead cruise, and ya girl is having the time of her life. Like, you have not lived until you’ve watched Hawthorne Heights from a hot tub in the middle of the ocean. I can’t believe I almost elected to not do this cruise, and while it’s set me back financially waaaaaaaay more than I’d like to admit, I don’t regret this trip at all. Knock on wood, the voyage has been quite literally smooth sailing.

There are activities at practically all hours on this boat, but one particular event caught my attention — a panel on the history of emo, hosted by the guys from the aforementioned Hawthorne Heights. I wasn’t super familiar with the band before the panel, but I am a bonafide music history buff, so I’d be remiss if I missed out on the discussion. So I set my alarm alarmingly early for someone who’s supposed to be on vacation and hauled my ass up to the deck to catch it. And I’m so glad I did, because it was a reminder of how much this genre and this music scene has meant to me throughout the years.

Prior to high school, all I listened to was classic rock. I never even entertained the idea of seeking out music that had been made after I was born. To younger me, the best stuff had been already made and all new music was garbage and inferior to my heroes. But something unusual happened around tenth grade. My good friend at the time was dating her now-ex-husband, who turned out to be a total fucko, but he had great taste in music. So I was over at his place one time and, knowing I was a music lover, he offloaded all his old CDs on me. Among them was Jimmy Eat World’s follow up to their breakthrough album, Bleed American. It was titled Futures and it had a dark, ominous cover featuring a telephone booth. Something about it drew me in. So on a band field trip to Chicago, I put on my headphones and loaded it into my portable CD player.

And I’d never be the same.

Everything about their sound captivated me in that moment. I was playing cinematic movies in my head to the moody melodies and desperate lyrics. Every word and every twinkly guitar riff was soaked in pure emotion. The music sounded like what feelings sound like. It was a strange sort of synesthesia. And it made me realize that there were still bands out there making great music. In a way, JEW (which is a hella awkward abbreviation for a band name) was my conduit to the emo genre as well as the 21st century of music as a whole.

Funnily enough, Hawthorne Heights cited JEW as their conduit to the scene as well, and they talked in great detail about how they had similar journeys to mine. They were Midwesterners too, Ohioans to be specific, and they didn’t have much in the way of record stores or places to discover new music. But a friend had gifted one of them Clarity, the precursor to Bleed American, and that was that. Like me, the guys were drawn in by the music and the deeply emotional lyrics.

And that’s why they call it emo — it’s literally just emotions set to melodic punk rock. The guys from HH (a much better band abbreviation, by the way) brought up the fact that the word “emo” has a lot of baggage. In the beginning, it was almost an insult to be called emo. Bands didn’t want to be known as emo. Hell, I remember the slight moral panic in the MySpace era where authority figures assumed emo was shorthand for self-injury and other self-destructive habits. In schools, guys in the scene were often called f*gs and other cruel slurs, and girls in the scene were characterized as sluts or posers. But as the years have progressed, the “emo” label has since been reclaimed. Millennials like myself proudly wear the title “elder emo,” and younger folks are adopting the name and subculture as well.

I think fondly about the emo and emo-adjacent music I listened to as a young woman. I’ve had a lot of memories in the music scene, going to multiple Warped Tours and other festivals and making connections with the other attendees and artists. Live music is so important, and I’m glad I got to experience so much of it throughout the years (although I’m sure my ears aren’t so glad). I’ve written quite extensively on here about my fears regarding AI and the future of music, and those fears definitely still stand. But you can’t engineer away live shows. You can’t beep-boop an experience like the one I’m having on this cruise. That’s something the robots can’t replicate — the real, authentic human connection that comes with screaming along to your favorite songs with your 100 new best friends.

When the panel wrapped, the guys opened up the floor for guests to share their “coming to emo” moments. I hesistantly raised my hand and introduced myself as a fellow Midwesterner, albeit a Michigander (they forgave me). I shared my story of discovering JEW as well and how their music spoke to me like nothing else did. I also told them I appreciated how HH had come up out of Ohio of all places, because I get it. When you grow up around nothing but cornfields, finding beauty in the everyday isn’t easy. You have to make your own beauty, and that’s something else I love about music. I love the way folks can alchemize pain and hardship and even boredom into something lovely, something other people can appreciate too.

As an elder emo and a musician myself, this cruise has been a reminder of why I am in this game. It’s why I find guitar picks in my washing machine. It’s why I have callouses on my fingertips and can’t get baddie nails. It’s why I chose classical guitar over pre-med in college. It’s why I agonize over every word in every song I write. And it’s why I still believe in beauty in this world, even though I’ve seen so much of its ugliness as well. Music truly is what emotions sound like, and there is so much power in channeling those feelings into song. It’s a form of emotional bloodletting. It shows you that you’re not alone in this world. It saves lives.

That’s what emo is about. That’s what music is about.

I’m Sailing Awaaaaaaay

So, I’m going on a cruise in a few short days.

Mind you, I have never been on a cruise, and I kind of always assumed I’d never even have the chance. I vaguely remember my much-older sister saying she’d take me on a cruise when I got my high school diploma, but after graduation, it changed to after I got my bachelor’s, and after that, it was my master’s. So I just assumed that was a nice thing she told me so I’d stay in school and not run away to join a rock band or the circus.

Both options are *very* within the realm of possibility, for what it’s worth.

But last year, I was playing in a band with a truly cool frontperson who, despite us not being close anymore, is still someone I respect greatly. They told me about the cruise and how it’s great for networking because you’re basically trapped on a boat with music industry folks and fans who care enough about music to drop a cool few grand to see their favorite bands. That was enough to convince me to exercise my poor credit card and join the excitement. I bought my ticket and a flight down to Miami, where we’ll be sailing off to Mexico, a place I have not ever been to and, again, was never expecting to actually see.

But if playground rhymes taught me anything, it’s that there are REALLY HOT GUYS AT THE DOOR DOOR DOOR.

I’ll be honest, I came close to attempting to recoup what money I could and bailing on the trip many times. My friend who inspired me to buy the ticket and I had a falling out, which made me question why I was even going. Then, rising political tensions made me wonder if it was even safe to travel outside of the country, and I kept getting nightmares that I’d be detained trying to re-enter the country or something. I got as far as posting an ad stating that I’d sell my tickets in the main Facebook group for the cruise, and I almost had a buyer.

Then my dad died. Suddenly, I was standing face-to-face with my own mortality as I watched the single closest person to me fall away into the afterlife. It hit me that I may never have the opportunity to do this kind of thing ever again, and I could hear my dad whispering to just jump in. I remembered his last words of advice to me: be yourself, take care of yourself, and enjoy yourself. He wouldn’t want me to cower and hide away. He’d want me to live in the light. He’d want me to enjoy myself any way I can in this hellhole.

And so that’s why I have my big purple suitcase packed to the brim with all my outfits for the trip and I’m panicking making sure all my reservations are in place. This is certainly the most I will have ever travelled on my own, and while I have some trauma regarding travelling alone (major trigger warning for that link, by the way), I feel much more confident now. Last year, my bosses sent me multiple times to St. Louis, Missouri, to train up some new trivia hosts, and I ended up getting very familiar with the TSA and travel etiquette. So I feel a lot less nervous with that experience under my belt.

Still, it is nerve-wracking, especially since I don’t have any of my partners or friends with me this time, and it’s my first time out of the country in a really meaningful way. I took a train through the mountains of Canada in high school with my family, but that was just a day trip, and I had my parents there the entire time. I’ll know my former bandmate on the cruise, and I’ve been in communication with my cabin-mate, a cute emo dude from California who likes Pokémon too, so there’s that. But I’m trying to view the journey as an opportunity to make new friends. It’s poetic that most of the Warped Tours I attended in my younger years were attended alone, because now I’m very familiar with now to navigate shows and music festivals as a solo audience member. I plan to use my extrovert powers to make a few connections on this trip at least.

I met one of my closest friends for coffee this evening, and I showed him the meat and potatoes of this post before I shared it with anyone else. We agreed to meet because we were both world-weary and desperate for the ear of someone who “got it.” After one read-through, he goes back to the part I wrote about what my dad would have said if he were here, his last words of advice to me. He found it reassuring, in a strange way. And I think I get it now. I think that’s the best way I can honor my dad — by living so vivaciously and so fully that the darkness of the world cannot extinguish my light. That’s how he wanted me to live, and that’s how I want to inspire others to live as well.

And if that involves setting sail on a fuck ass boat with a cute emo guy, so be it.

When Despair Seems Like the Only Thing Left

I realize this blog functions as something of a barometer of how my life is going at the moment. When things are great, you get fun travel blogs and reviews of Taylor Swift’s newest releases. When things are not so great…well, that’s this post, sadly.

I feel like I’m sending a letter in a bottle to whoever is willing to listen. My life has been on a solid downhill track since Charlie Kirk had to get shot and ruin my entire plans for the future. Did you know my wife was the Office Depot girl? We were in the process of buying a house when the controversy went down and she lost her job over it, tanking my credit score and requiring us to drain my wife’s entire life savings to survive. Now I never liked Kirk, but I don’t think he deserved to die, and I’m especially pissed his smarmy ass got capped now because it literally avalanched into fucking with my well-being. Every time I walk by the house we were supposed to buy for our future family, I die a little inside.

A while back, I wrote this song. It’s called “Grandma.”

Now when I wrote this song, I wrote it as a personal manifesto — I will reach old age, and I will become a grandma someday. Even though it hasn’t been very long since I wrote it, with each passing day, it gets harder to sing it with my full chest. Because truth be told, I don’t know if I’ll ever reach senescence. I can’t help but feel either that either I’ll be gone in the next few years, or the entire world as we know it will be gone.

My entire life, I’ve wanted to follow in the footsteps of the rock stars I’ve looked up to growing up. Now, we barely have rock stars. We’ve got Taylor Swift, a shit ton of political talking heads, and a smattering of microinfluencers that like two people actually care about. That’s it. Those are your “rock stars.” If you’re lucky, you’ll have a song blow up on TikTok for a second, but then what? There’s no gaining fame and fortune from music anymore, especially with the advent of AI. Why would anyone seek out new music when you can just beep-boop three thousand pirate metal songs about kanagaroos? I probably sound like “old man shouts at cloud,” but having played with fire and seeing how destructive it is firsthand, I think I’m justified in feeling a little paranoid.

Now, I don’t even know if I want to go public with my music, or anything for that matter. I’ve seen how quickly things can go south. You can get cancelled over the slightest transgressions, and I don’t know if I could handle that kind of scrutiny. Not to mention the litigious nature of the music industry as it stands today. Music is and has always been a derivative art form — musicians are constantly aping other artists they look up to. But in a post-“Blurred Lines” world, you can get slapped with a lawsuit over songs that share a similar vibe, regardless of whether or not they have any commonalities on a theory level. It’s enough to sue over a song that’s inspired by someone else’s. That’s right— you can’t even have inspirations anymore. Why the fuck would I want to keep writing music when there’s a chance my heroes can slap me with a suit? I’d put down my guitar forever if that happened to me. I’d rue the day I picked it up in the first place, in fact.

And not to mention that a bisexual white woman who was near my age was just fucking murdered by the state, and what is the general public’s response? Instant character assassination. I can’t even share some of the shit I saw people post about the late Renee Good, who was, by all accounts, a great person. But according to the shitheads online, she was a terrible mother who had it coming. Never mind the fact that she could have been like, Casey Anthony levels of “terrible mother” and she’d still deserve a fair trial. How the hell are we letting these armed thugs wander the streets acting as judge, jury, and executioner. This is America. Where the fuck was her due process?

I don’t know where I’m going with this. I’m just scared. The political violence is ramping up and I don’t know if I’ll be the next victim. And if I am the next victim, what will the world write about me? Will they say I’m a slut who deserved it? Will they bring up my divorce and say I was a bad wife? Will they make up even worse for me in order to justify my murder? I sincerely don’t want to be a martyr. I always dreamed I’d be the next Ann Wilson, not Anne Frank. I wanted to change the world through my music, not be slain with such casual cruelty and thrown away like garbage. I always dreamed of better for myself. I sound like I’m suicidal, and I promise I’m not, if only because the only thing that scares me more than this life is the thought of what could come afterwards.

I don’t like the direction the world is going, and I sincerely wish I could get off this ride. I don’t want to die, but I don’t want to keep living like this.

CANCELLED! (Or, Why Society Needs to Embrace Grace)

Chappell Roan is simultaneously living my dream and my nightmare. Imagine being some random ass girl from the Midwest one minute, and in the next, the eyes of the entire world are on you as if you’re Lesbian Jesus. On paper, she has the exact life I’ve fantasized about for decades. She wrote that one hit song (or two…or three) that will immortalize her for generations to come. She gets to wear some of the most extravagant outfits I’ve ever seen on a performer, stuff I’d die for a chance to wear.

Imagine getting to wear *this* in public.

And her infinite coolness has even been acknowledged by my own childhood heroes, the Wilson sisters of Heart. Nancy Wilson accompanied her onstage for a cover of “Barracuda,” and she even got to sit down and talk with Ann Wilson on her podcast. Needless to say, when I wished upon a star all those years ago, I’m pretty sure the wires got crossed somewhere and my wish went to Chappell instead. And let’s be real, the girl deserves it. She does have talent. She’s an incredible performer, and her songs are catchier than anything anyone’s else has been doing in this boring-ass pop music landscape. But there’s one aspect of Chappell’s life I’m so glad I don’t have going for me:

The scrutiny. God, the scrutiny.

So Brigitte Bardot died recently. Don’t reach for your tissues just yet, because she wasn’t really someone worth mourning. She actually kind of sucked. Like, a lot. She was literally so racist that the government of France fined her over it. She basically called the entire #MeToo movement bullshit. She called queer folks “fairground freaks” and blamed the destruction of French culture on the gays (as if French culture isn’t already, by definition, pretty gay). That last point is probably the most important to note, as Ms. Bardot has become something of an unwilling lesbian icon thanks to the aforementioned Chappell Roan.

In the opening lines of her song “Red Wine Supernova,” Chappell croons “She was a playboy, Brigitte Bardot,” paying homage to the cinema legend’s exquisite looks. Obviously, it’s a shallow reference that doesn’t address the fact that Brigitte would flick her nose at the kind of fairground freakiness Chappell gets up to. Nobody really took issue with the throwaway line initially — it was understood that Brigitte’s name was simply used as shorthand for the kind of glamour that only existed in a bygone era. She could easily have used Marilyn Monroe, or Greta Garbo, or Jayne Mansfield, or even Elizabeth Taylor, as a certain other frequently sequined starlet recently did. But “Brigitte Bardot” just fit the rhyme scheme better, and as a bonus, Chappell gets to put on a sexy lil French accent when she says it. Everybody wins!

But then, this happened.

To be fair, Brigitte would *hate* this for herself.

If my Threads and Reddit feeds were anything to judge by, the Pink Ponies (Is that what we’re calling Chappell Roan fans?) were livid at the sight of the tribute, which entirely glossed over Brigitte Bardot’s checkered legacy. To be fair, a little while later, she’d post this:

To a lot of folks I encountered online, though, the damage had been done. Her reputation had already recently taken a hit from partnering with MAC Cosmetics, a company that notably supports Israel, after she famously passed on a White House performance over Palestine. But eulogizing a certifiable asshole was a step too far, and Chappell had been officially…cancelled.

We cancel a lot of people. Taylor Swift, who I alluded to earlier, even wrote a catchy ass villain song about it. Sometimes, the cancellation is justified. For example, Bill Cosby? Pretty fucking justified if you ask me — I can’t see a situation in which it would ever be acceptable to name-drop him as anything other than a predator and creep. Same with guys like Diddy and the absolute monster from Lostprophets. As the intro to that one Law and Order spinoff says, sexually charged crimes are especially heinous and should be weighed as such when considering uncancelling someone. But take, for example, Snoop Dogg, who recently came under fire for some questionable remarks regarding same-sex relationships in media. Is it time we retire “Gin and Juice” as a feel-good anthem forever?

We still got this bluegrass cover!

But here’s the thing — Snoop apologized. And he acknowledged he is still learning. In fact, I’d say his apology was damn near spot-on: “Teach me how to learn,” he said in his statement. “I’m not perfect.”

There’s the difference. That’s what separates the rightfully cancelled from the flawed human beings who sincerely want to do better. It’s right there — that self-awareness that you are imperfect, and that willingness to improve. That the secret. It’s completely understandable to want to hold people accountable. That’s the only way advancements will happen in society. But we can’t keep pushing away potential allies for every transgression. We’ll always stay divided.

I think very few people are beyond redemption. Honestly, if Kanye and Nicki wanted to have a massive heel-face turn and walk away from the right-wing grift, I’d welcome them back with open arms, and not just because I want to listen to the indisputable banger that is “Monster” guilt-free again. But they’d need to show some remorse. Grace should be given freely and abundantly, but the person receiving that grace needs to be legitimately sorry for what they did too. It’s a two-way street.

I think the folks trying to cancel Chappell for her Bardot post don’t realize they’re shooting us in the foot by dividing us further. We already don’t trust each other as a society and we’re falling deeper and deeper into isolation. Community is scarce, and there really is an epidemic of loneliness wreaking havoc on our society. What we need now isn’t some puritanical litmus test. We don’t need a “perfect ally” — we just need folks who are willing to stand up for us, and sometimes those folks aren’t perfect.

It’s funny, just this evening I got into a verbal tussle on that godforsaken social media site we all know and hate over whether or not “rest in power” was an appropriate phrase to say in remembrance of a white person. Never mind that said white person, Renee Good, was oppressed in other ways (being queer and a woman, for example) and was literally killed by her oppressor. This person, who I imagine had good intentions, maintained that the phrase can only be used for people of color. That is the kind of over-the-top policing that hardens hearts. How does that black-and-white mentality make us any different from the conservative evangelicals who dictate that we have to do x, y, and z to be saved?

I’m not saying we shouldn’t call people out for egregious screw-ups, or even smaller transgressions that maybe came across wrong (Chappell’s memorial post is a great example), but there needs to be some grace delivered alongside the message. Otherwise, we’re going to cancel each other into the fucking ground. We need to begin viewing each other as people again — beautiful, deeply flawed, and capable of change.

Spending Hanukkah in NYC (When You’re a Country Bumpkin With No Jewish Background Whatsoever)

So, ya girl finally made it to the Big Apple. It only took me thirty-two years to get there, but better late than never, right?

To be honest, I always felt like I belonged in the big city. I’ve always joked I’d be the quintessential Musical Gay™ had I grown up close enough to civilization to engage with musical theatre. My measly little school did not have the talent to pull off a full production of anything, let alone something like Rent. And I’d make a badass Mimi. I slay “Out Tonight” at karaoke any time I attempt it. But alas, my hometown is a teensy weensy Skittle in the grand scheme of things, and so my Broadway career was doomed from the start.

Still, when my best friend/bandmate/honorary little sister Ellie messaged me to tell me about a LIT ASS HANUKKAH PARTY in NEW YORK CITY, I was so immediately down. Said party was hosted by a chef influencer who is like, actually famous, and we are but crumbs whose band is still in its embryonic stage, but as fate would allow, we landed those sweet, sweet tickets. The trip was going to be me, Ellie, and Cole, our bassist, who I can best describe as “cool personified.” We all piled into Ellie’s little white car and began our ten-hour drive to NYC, with all three of us taking turns behind the wheel. The drive itself was not especially noteworthy, except for when we finally got to the city and it took us literally two hours to find a place to park, and then we finally said “fuck it” and parked in a big stupid garage that costed us like $200 overall. So yeah, uh, not everything about the city is great. The fees are astronomical.

Once we’d found a place to park, Ellie led us to her family’s Manhattan apartment, where we were promptly ushered in and offered some of the finest hospitality I’ve had the pleasure of encountering. Seriously, my wife has talked up Jewish hospitality (her ex and her best friend are both Jewish), and I can definitely see why, having now experienced it firsthand. Ellie’s Aunt Elana was the first to welcome us, whipping up a trio of dishes and presenting them to us weary travelers like starter Pokémon. Then, her grandmother invited me to play a game of Mad Libs with her, which was a lot of fun if not for the fact that I had to restrain myself from using “fucky wucky” as an adjective. At night, the city streets treated me to a serenade of Pavement and other indie favorites through my open window. We’d explore the city in the morning.

When we woke, Aunt Elana led Ellie, Cole, and I to a diner (ahem, deli) a few blocks away called Barney Greengrass. The atmosphere wasn’t too dissimilar from the Coney Islands we have back in the Detroit area, but the menu differed greatly, with more of a focus on fish and pickled stuff. I ended up trying lox for the first time (which, considering how much I love salmon, is a wonder I’ve not tried it sooner), and also had some lovely latkes. I restrained myself from eating the latkes with a savory tomato and vinegar paste (ketchup), as I would at home. In my defense, I am a. not Jewish, and b. not exactly a bastion of great culinary taste. (My boyfriend, David, on the other hand, eats latkes with hot sauce like a maniac, which I think negates all 10 percent of the Jewish ancestry on his 23andMe results.) The waiter was kind of rude in a charming New Yorker way that I appreciated actually, and immediately clocked me as not being a city native. He thought I was from Portland, and having watched many episodes of Portlandia, I can’t say I blame him for that assumption.

When we got back, Ellie and I put on an impromptu performance for Ellie’s extended family and their friends. We played our extended set with several covers and even threw in a few of my solo songs as a bonus. Aunt Elana even invited us back to perform again, promising to bring more of her friends from the city next time. After our little gig, we rested for a few hours. The main event would be that evening.

After spending that afternoon getting ready for the night, we crammed into a taxi and made our way to Brooklyn, and I mourned the fact that I couldn’t blast my favorite Beastie Boys song the whole way. During our hour-long journey, we got to see so much of the city. It hit me just how enormous this place was compared to Detroit or even Chicago. I was not in the Midwest anymore.

Once we’d gotten to the venue, we had about an hour or two to kill before doors opened. So we took that time to explore the stores on the block, including an art and imports store that sold everything from elaborate knives to ornate rugs and taught knitting classes out of the basement. The shopkeeper was a friendly older Arab man who was delighted that I was able to say goodbye to him in his native language (working in a Lebanese restaurant comes in handy). The next store we visited was run by another older man whose ethnicity I couldn’t quite place, but he was very kind as well. To be honest, most of the New Yorkers I met were very amicable or at least charmingly aloof. Having seldom left the Midwest, I’ve heard horror stories of how wildly unfriendly the outside world is, so it was a relief to have most of our interactions be positive ones. In fact, the only animosity we detected at all was while we were at that store. A few dudes there were talking mad shit about me and Ellie in Spanish — not realizing Cole is actually Mexican and knows Spanish. He decided against intervening, as he didn’t want to start shit and hadn’t clocked them as a real threat, but he ended up telling us about it after the fact for the laughs.

At last, we got to the event. The venue was smaller than I was expecting — a singular room behind a swanky hotel — but it was crammed full of elegant decor and twinkling lights. Ellie and I escaped to the ladies room before the event really got rolling, only to meet THE chef behind the party. I, being faceblind and stupid, did not register that this was her, and so I went on some rambling tangent about how girls should be able to Venmo titty to each other (I stand by this idea). I should also mention that she was like, really pretty. Like, astonishingly pretty. Everybody there was that pretty. Well, the guys were okay. But the girls. DAMN. THE GIRLS.

I have never seen so many sexy Jewish women in one room. Oy.

Then, the 400 milligrams of a certain herb that is legal in both the great states of Michigan and New York that I had taken prior to the party started to kick in. And suddenly I was surrounded by all of these beautiful posh Jewish girls from the city and here was my hillbilly ass pretending to fit in as the edibles made me extra strength autistic. I swear that shit intensifies the ‘tism. I clung to Ellie the whole time as I kept worrying the entire night if my face was making a weird expression or something. I did meet a few really cool folks, including a very sweet burlesque dancer and a guy who worked in Africa doing poaching prevention. Sadly, it was really hard to hear in the venue, due to a combination of the loud music, my head being sorely congested from an especially gnarly cold, and my issues with auditory processing, so I didn’t do as much socializing as I would have liked.

The stage would be filled with all kinds of performers and speakers throughout the night, including several talented pole dancers and a very silly drag queen, but I think my favorite moment was the kiddush, or blessing recited by the rabbi, who was, in fact, pretty fly. He spoke about how we need to preserve our sense our empathy for all things— “even the neo-Nazis” as he added, which blew my mind. It’s so easy to lose sight of the humanity in people who don’t recognize the humanity in you. The rabbi’s speech actually left me a little misty-eyed. As I drove away from the city the next morning, I kept his words with me. The world would be better if we all had a bit more empathy for one another. Maybe the first step is experiencing life outside your comfortable corner of the universe and seeing that deep down, we’re really not all that different. Jewish or Christian, Midwesterner or New Yorker, we’re all silly little creatures on this big weird rock in space, and we are all capable of love.

Happy Hanukkah, friends!

Just Do It: The True Secret to Beating Imposter Syndrome

I’m sure you’ve all heard about my newest musical endeavor, The Kalamazooligans. If you haven’t had the pleasure of being trapped in a car with me in the last week or so, allow me to show you our first single. It’s…interesting.

Especially once “Elmo” and the “children’s choir” join in.

Following the “success” of “What’s in a Name?”, the members of the project started cooking up a ridiculous, over-the-top twelve minute monster song that essentially paints me as this benevolent, chaotic musical goddess known as the BEAT MOTHER who has taken all these misfits under her wing and gave them purpose and, perhaps most importantly, sick ass beats. It started as a joke, but it’s a huge role to step into, especially since, between me and you…

I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.

How I feel doing literally anything, but *especially* music.

I am not a Certified Audio Engineer™ nor do I have any proper training aside from one semester in the media production program at the local university, which I subsequently had to drop out of due to financial reasons. I have no business calling myself a “music producer” or “sound technician” or “audio engineer” or even “person who vaguely knows what they’re doing with a digital audio workstation.” In short, I feel like a fraud. An imposter.

Surely you’ve heard of imposter syndrome, that awful feeling that you don’t actually deserve to be perceived as “good” at the thing you’re known for, even despite whatever achievements you may have in that field. My old band, Syrin, had a pretty dope song about the subject, although I don’t have a link to it anywhere. Hell, I’ll probably write a song about it myself. It makes for great writing material, but it sure is hell to live through. Frankly, I don’t feel like I deserve the title of “beat mother.” I don’t feel like I deserve to teach music. Half of the time, I don’t even feel like it’s my right to play music.

But I’m learning to just do it anyways. Do the damn thing.

That’s the difference. That’s what separates the men from the boys, the women from the girls, and the grown-up nonbinary folks from the wee enbies. Maybe it’ll be uncomfortable at first, and maybe you’ll embarrass yourself a little. Do it anyways. You’ll never improve if you don’t try.

You can’t call yourself a musician or a writer or an artist or anything if you don’t do the thing. That is the crucial part of the equation. I can call myself a football player, but throw me onto the field and I’m useless because I’ve never done the work. But here’s the cool thing — there’s a very low barrier for entry into a lot of interests. If you wanna learn guitar, all you really need is a guitar. But you have to, you know, practice the guitar. Then, that’s when magic happens. That’s when you’ll start to feel that sense of being an imposter fade away. “Doing the thing” is the mortal enemy of imposter syndrome because it gives you the power to stare it down in the face and say “Well actually, I can call myself a musician because I am playing music.”

You don’t need a fancy degree for most things if you’ve got the fortitude to seek the knowledge yourself. Allow yourself to explore stuff that interests you and learn a thing or two. Most of what I’ve learned about music production, I’ve learned by dicking around in various digital audio workstations. Maybe a formal education would make me a stronger producer, but I’m not going to let my lack of professional experience keep me from already doing what I love to do. That’s where the word “amateur” comes from, actually — the Latin root for “love.” It’s not about making money or garnering fame. Amateurs do things simply because they love to do them, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Being an amateur doesn’t make you an imposter — it makes you someone who is in love with the act of learning itself.

Unless your interest is brain surgery, you shouldn’t need formal training to dabble in the things that fascinate you. In the immortal words of Nike and/or Shia LaBeouf, just do it.

The Ballad of Old Dog Tavern

What is your favorite place to go in your city?

Alright, let me tell y’all a little story about how I found my voice in a little bar in the heart of Kalamazoo.

We’d just moved to the city not long after my ill-fated music therapy internship crashed and burned. At the time, I was feeling real down and out about my place in the world of music. My lovely wife, knowing I’m so extroverted I will literally die if I don’t get attention for thirty minutes every hour on the hour, suggested karaoke as a solution. And well, it certainly was the solution. We found friends here that are going to last a lifetime. We found a whole ass village out here, all thanks to the wildly supportive karaoke scene. It revitalized my love of music and even gave me some killer collaborators. And ground zero for this karaoke revolution was a little dive bar called Old Dog Tavern.

I don’t know a lot about the lore of the building, except that it definitely used to be something else. Just taking a cursory glance outside (because part of this was written on location, because I’m a weirdo who writes at the bar), it was once part of a paper company. The interior is dark and dingy, but in the way that gives a comforting old dive bar its signature vibe, with largely wooden decor and plenty of mirrors for ambiance. The main entrance opens up into a corridor with an adjacent room set aside for ping pong table shenanigans. But once you enter the main room, that’s where the magic happens. On that stage, everyday civilians transform into rock stars every week.

Where else could I take a picture this cool?

On any given Friday night, Finn will be manning the karaoke machine (well, laptop — it is the 21st century). Ask him for a song and he’ll put you up in his next round. Outside, the regulars are passing around joints and anecdotes, ranging from the heartfelt to the raunchy. A few of us are showing off our newest creations. One occasional regular is a visual artist who brings his materials to work with. Another frequents the open mics as a singer-songwriter and will regale you with stories from the best nights. Under the stars and fairy lights, you can see downtown Kalamazoo bursting with life. The merriment only lasts for a while, because once your name is called, someone yells for you to get your ass to the stage. And that’s when you come alive.

The Old Dog karaoke crowd is the most ridiculously supportive community I’ve ever been a part of, to the point where I often characterize karaoke night as my sort of surrogate “church.” As a recovering evangelical, I yearn for long nights of fellowship and music like I had in the church of my youth, only without the toxicity, nepotism, and homophobia. I feel like I finally found my “spiritual community,” and it’s not even a spiritual community in the traditional sense at all. But we live and love like Jesus did. And let me tell you, I bet Jesus would rather hang out with us than that weird-ass pastor who’d chastise me for voting for Bernie Sanders (when I like, never brought that shit up, yo).

I never even showed him the crocheted Bernie I have displayed on my living room shelf!

This is the kind of community that will cheer you on even if you attempt “You Shook Me All Night Long” and are panting for breath by the end. It’s the kind of community that will shake their asses off while you sing “El tiburón” and make you feel like a freakin’ king. We’ll clap and sing and dance and probably cry if you sing Billie Eilish. We’ll put in requests for our favorites from our friends. Everyone’s got a favorite song they wanna hear from someone else, and everyone’s got their song or artist. David “Karaoke Dad” Parent is known for his Elvis renditions. David “my boyfriend as of last week” Bannon sings the hell out of AC/DC. Mary Emma kills “Never Enough” from The Greatest Showman, and when Steve performs “Minnie the Moocher,” shut it the fuck down. Me, I’m known for Heart and Britney Spears, which probably makes me the only person on the planet who can pull off both Heart and Britney Spears.

You know, I bet Ann Wilson could totally make the snake thing work too.

My point is this place is something magical, and ever since we started going regularly, our lives have improved tenfold. It’s not a secret that we have a loneliness epidemic, to the point where I’m literally seeing the Michigan government putting up billboards that beg folks to just go outside and talk to people. This is the solution, guys. We need more spaces like Old Dog where you can simply go and drop the armor. The bar actually has a little sign up that I managed to snag a picture of, and I really love the sentiment.

It truly is a place where all the misfits and outcasts can be vulnerable and at peace. Every town needs a place like that. I’m glad I’ve found mine.

The Freeing World of Outsider Music (And Why You, Too, Can Make Cool Stuff!)

Here’s a confession: I was originally planning to spend this month locked in my apartment with nothing but my laptop and recording equipment in order to bully myself into making an entire EP in a month’s time. I had a whole plan of action and everything. I was going to do a collection of covers of my favorite recent Chappell Roan and Taylor Swift songs and name it The Rise and Fall of the Life of a Midwest Showgirl Princess because I’m already extra as hell so why not lean into it? And I figured with how relevant both artists are right now, at least someone important would hear my project and like, give me a bunch of money to make music forever.

That’s how record deals work, right? They didn’t teach me that stuff in music school.

But here’s the eternal problem I run into — I’m an extrovert through and through. I’m actually stupidly extroverted at times. I envy the cute quirky introverts that just need like, a book and a cup of coffee to go, because I need at least thirty solid minutes of conversation every hour on the hour or I die. So I decided I’d try to appease both the part of me that wanted to record music and the part of me that wants to hang out with folks by throwing my gear into a sack and schlepping it over to my friends’ places.

And that’s when the real magic started happening.

I’d break out my laptop, load up the DAW, and my friends would hover over me excitedly as I cooked up silly little beats for them to mess around with. None of us are actually rappers, but we like to write raps about stuff and pretend we are. I think the first song in what would eventually become The Kalamazooligans project happened at Luke’s place. He’s a writer, one of my closest friends, and a frequent collaborator of mine. He wrote a really heartfelt verse about finally finding companionship in the karaoke scene, and our mutual friend Willy made up a chorus inspired by a “live laugh love” sign (featuring Kim Jong Un — don’t ask) Luke had hanging up in his living room. Then David (who’s one of my Fairale bandmates, actually) rounded out the second verse, and I took the last. Suddenly, we had an entire song we literally pieced together with nothing but Logic, some Apple Loops, and that Focusrite Scarlett audio interface every fucko with a podcast owns (myself included).

They make them bright red to match the flags that come with having a podcast.

Was the finished product “good” by the standards of the music industry? Absolutely not even close. This is not Top 40 radio. Max Martin (my Swedish pop hero) would not touch these songs with a 39-and-a-half foot pole. The average listener would probably be surprised to learn that anyone involved in the making of this music was actually a professional-ish musician. But something special happens when people who have no business creating art say “fuck the rules” and do it anyways.

Outsider art is art made by folks with no connection to the “legitimate” scene, aren’t properly trained in their field, and/or often have stuff like mental illnesses and other disabilities working against them. In other words, not your glamorous ideal of an artist. Outsider art includes visual art as well (an infamous example being controversial cartoonist Christine “Chris-Chan” Weston Chandler), but on the music side of the loosely defined genre, you have guys like Tiny Tim, who somehow broke into the industry as a niche act armed with nothing but a ukulele and a wild falsetto. There’s the elusive proto-singer-songwriter Connie Converse, whose tragic life I actually immortalized in this very blog. Even Brian Wilson, the legendary freaking Beach Boy, was considered an “outsider” by some metrics, although this is debated. These are all characters I find infinitely more fascinating than the manufactured pop star image being pushed by the mainstream music machine.

Wouldn’t *you* rather read about *this* *dude?*

I’d like to think the future of music rests with the outsiders. Whether they realize it or not, people tend to gravitate toward artists who have a fascinating backstory. It’s why Taylor Swift managed to captivate so many people despite being born rich and pretty — she was still able to sell herself as the girl-next-door underdog with a guitar and a dream. Fans have been revisiting the drama between bands like the Beatles and Fleetwood Mac for generations now. I feel like artists today are too sanitized and “professional.” We need musicians with personality. We need musicians who take chances. We need freaks, geeks, and weirdos making the music no one else would dream of. We need outsiders.

When I was studying music therapy, my eventual dream was to help everyday folks make music they could be proud of. I knew firsthand how healing the process of music creation could be, and I wanted to share that with my clients. Obviously, that dream died a horrible death — but maybe it didn’t. Maybe this is what I was meant to be doing this whole time. My friend group has been alight with ideas, and my phone has been blowing up with requests for new songs and beats to work with. Everyone is so excited to cook up fresh material, and it’s revitalized my love of creating music like nothing else. The crew even dubbed me the “Mother of Beats,” and I gotta say, after everything I’ve been through with music, it feels good.

I think our culture needs to rethink its relationship with music. Music isn’t only for attractive people, rich people, or able-bodied/neurotypical people. It’s the birthright of every human. Kids are always humming little songs to themselves — until society beats it out of them and says they’re not “good enough” to be singers. I’m fucking sick of that mentality. In a world where you can literally just beep-boop a “perfect” song, get dirty and create something yourself. Make it messy. Get your imperfections all over it. Who cares if it doesn’t sound radio-ready? The grit and grime are what makes it special.

I’m excited to see where The Kalamazooligans ends up. I hope it inspires more “outsiders” to get their hands dirty and create. Perhaps it’s a lofty goal, but I want to start a creative revolution, even if it never leaves this Midwestern college town with a silly name. If I can make my own corner of the world brighter, more whimsical, and more musical, I know I’ve succeeded.

A Daddy-Daughter Dance With Father Time

Do you need time?

We gettin’ philosophical with these prompts it seems. I’ll bite.

When I was little, I wanted nothing more than to be a grandma. I was really close to my maternal grandmother, from whom I got the name Joyce. To little kid-Jessa, she had the perfect life. She didn’t really have any responsibilities. My grandma never worked a day in her life, and she was passenger princess supreme since the day she first drove a car…immediately into a building. All she really needed to do was slather stuff in lard and cook it up, and aside from that, her life was all watching game shows and kicking back in her La-Z-Boy.

Now as a thirtysomething, I keep myself busy enough. I’ve got two jobs that tend to occupy a good deal of my time, an ever-growing polycule (I think I have like, a boyfriend now? Maybe two?!), and a band/collective of friends that has been hard at work cookin’ up creative projects galore.

But I want more.

For a while, it was hard to say what I wanted more of. I certainly need more money — my wife lost her job in a truly fucked up way I can’t really elaborate on at the moment, and we haven’t quite recovered since. A part of me wanted more fame, as I’ve longed to be a rock star ever since I first watched the Bon Jovi Crush tour VHS tape as a child. Maybe I wanted more things to love and care for — more cats, a dog, a bearded dragon, even human children of my own. I have a deep motherly instinct I’m slowly coming to terms with, after all. But I think the overarching theme of everything is that I need more time.

I’m 32 as of writing. I realize I’m a spring chicken compared to a lot of folks, but I’m also not in my prime anymore. I don’t have the stamina I used to at times. I get winded walking up the stairs, and I can’t belt like I’m Ann fucking Wilson the way I did in 2013, when I sang “Crazy On You” for American Idol and actually almost made it. I can’t imagine jumping around a stage headbanging like I did when I played in a shitty pop-punk band, and the thought of sleeping in that tiny ass tour van with my current 30-something spine is the stuff of nightmares. I used to swing dance like a motherfucker, too. I could do crazy ass aerials like these. If I tried doing any of those moves now, I’d snap my neck and die probably. I’m sure some of these things could be alleviated if I actually worked out like I’m supposed to, ate better, stretched, and found a way to intake a certain herb that is common and legal in the state of Michigan that doesn’t involve smoking it (edibles just don’t hit the same, man). But even if I ate the finest organic produce, did yoga at sunrise like clockwork, and smoked nothing more than brisket, I’d still have to contend with the fact that my health will decline someday. No one is young and healthy forever.

All this to say that I’m certainly feeling the weight of getting older. Or to put it frankly, I feel like I’m running out of time.

My main, cool job is hosting game shows for the music bingo and trivia junkies of the greater Kalamazoo area, but I moonlight as an overnight caregiver at a nursing home. It’s not the most glamorous job by any means, but it’s a decent enough living. It’s also not something I’m particularly good at — I’m notoriously shitty at my job compared to the other, less neurospicy caregivers who mostly have kids of their own to practice on. That being said, I do enjoy what I do most nights. It’s a pretty carefree job once all the residents are asleep.

But then you start thinking.

At a nursing home, you’re constantly surrounded by reminders that were running out of time. Memento mori, if you wanna get Latin with it. You find it every time you enter one of the residents’ rooms. Look around and you’ll be greeted by senior pics and wedding photos of a bygone era. It’s easy to forget that old people were once just young people like us, each with their own dreams for the future — and each now coming to terms with their own ending. The saddest part, in my opinion, are the dusty keyboard in Ms. E’s room or Ms. B’s largely untouched crocheting kit. This is a woman who, fifty years ago, built guitars for Gibson when the company was based in Kalamazoo. She could have built my old Epiphone at that factory for all I know. And now she can barely hold a crochet hook. The Other Ms. B was an avid swing dancer for years, and now she can’t even stand up independently, let alone do any of those crazy aerials from that video up there. A literal badass combat vet cries for help every night because he peed himself again. This isn’t the future I want for myself, and yet it’s the future we all get, barring a literal tragedy. You die young or watch yourself get old enough to lose sphincter control.

Truth be told, there are a lot of things in the future I’m not scared of, and I’m even excited for. The next generation of Pokémon is Gen 10, and the next Taylor Swift album is her lucky number 13, and while the most recent installments in their lengthy catalogues have been a little disappointing, I’m still hoping my favorites bring their A-game next time around. I’m excited to hopefully watch this political landscape crumble and rebuild into something better for everyone, not just the elites. I’m excited for my next slice of pizza, my next joint, my next song, my next stuffed animal, and my next kiss from one of my partners, but I’m not excited for everything that comes after, when it’s all over and I’m left alone with nothing but my anxieties. I’m really excited to have kids someday, but in a way it almost feels like game over. Like that’s the last big milestone. What comes after that? Menopause? Grandkids? Death? And what the fuck do I do when I can’t hold a guitar anymore?

It’s hard to come to terms with the fact that I’ll never be this young again. I remember writing earlier this year, around the time of my birthday, about how all my heroes are getting older, and so am I. It’s a weird feeling, watching everyone grow and change, even as every day feels the same somehow. I’m scared of dying, but I’m also scared of getting older. There’s no winning. I guess I take solace in knowing even the great and powerful Stevie Nicks felt this way once, so I’ll let her sing this one out.

Why I Became My Cringy Childhood OC For Halloween

Meet Ann Valentÿne.

Like I said in the video, she was essentially a drag queen’s take on “Alone”-era Ann Wilson from Heart with a lot less clothing and more sequins, with a bit of a femme Jon Bon Jovi flavor for taste and a hint of a dark-haired Sophitia from the Soul Caliber video games. She was a rock star, but more than that, she was the 20th century incarnation of Aphrodite, and she was tasked with both saving the world and her little sister from an ancient evil. She had a hot beefy boyfriend, but in my stories, she’d always save herself. She was kind of a badass.

I’ve written about her before and how I recently unlocked memories about this character, who was a kind of escapism to middle school-me. She was definitely my attempt at creating a self-insert and was probably something of a Mary Sue if I’m honest, but I loved her. She made me feel powerful when I was a scared bullied little kid. And when I happened upon a certain leotard online that resembled the signature bodysuit I designed for her, I knew it was kismet. I needed some new stage clothes and a new persona for my music career, and I really needed a Halloween costume. Besides, I wasn’t quite sure how I could top Chappell Roan last year.

So I chose to lean into the cringe and live my childhood fantasy, because why not? The world is going to hell in a handbasket and who knows how many more Halloweens we’ll have before humanity inevitably blows up the planet. Why not add just a little bit of childlike whimsy to your world? People are so scared of cringe and looking uncool and it’s sapping all our creativity and fun. There’s a reason why popular music has been in kind of a lull lately. The Black Eyed Peas and OutKast could not have careers in our current zeitgeist. We’re too afraid of silliness.

The scariest part of the season is how many folks take themselves too seriously. I’m not afraid to admit I was a bit of a dork growing up, and I still am. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Embrace the cringe — be your childhood OC for Halloween.