The perils of not being piss broke

I've been doing a lot of thinking about The Sheepdogs lately, especially their meteoric rise following their winning the Rolling Stone unsigned cover competition. I was struck by one quote from Ewan Currie in particular:

"Shit was bleak, I saw high school friends get jobs and get married and become adults, and I'm still pursuing this artistic dream where I have no money, no assets and a shitty car I can't even afford to register."

As a band The Sheepdogs have been playing and touring for well over a decade, and honed their craft in small bar after small bar, constantly refining as they went along. And it's clear the hard work has paid off.

Which leads us to the other extreme of this: Our band. A band who got together later in their lives, with each member having already established a career, relationships and lives outside of a band. Chris had been dabbling with singing, songwriting and playing on and off since his teens, but had taken a break when I'd met him. I'd never picked up a guitar outside of a brief and painful period when I was 16, desperately trying to teach myself the chords to Glycerine in my basement. And David played for years with a group when he was younger, but was idle when we approached him.

One thing I think we all secretly want is the ability to do nothing but work on being a band. But part of coming into this craziness late in life is that it's not entirely feasible - I've got a mortgage, for christ's sake - and frankly once you realize how nice it is not to live in your mom's basement or on a friend's couch, it's kind of hard to willingly go back to that life.

Which presents us with a dilemma. To achieve real success, you need to dedicate ALL of your time to music. Think Guns n' Roses-living-in-a-storage-unit dedication. And that's a bit harder to achieve if you are pursing your PhD (David), working full time (Chris and Ben) or, you know, wrestling with twins (Chris - that crazy bastard).

Fortunately, the three of us don't expect to make the cover of Rolling Stone, or even the cover of NOW. Mostly, we have a kick ass time rocking together, playing the occasional show when the opportunity presents itself, writing new songs when the feeling hits us and rabble-rousing as much as we can.

All in all, not a bad set up. And I'm pretty sure it beats having to bunk with Axl Rose. Plus, with a mortgage, who has money for heroin anymore?

Humbly submitted by Ben

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