4th
Height’s Year in Review
2011 was a strange, trying, year. At times, I felt like my music career was at a complete standstill. We didn’t drop a new Height With Friends album and it didn’t seem like many people had much to say about us. However, as I reflect on this past 365, I realize that a lot has happened, both good and bad. Here are some of the highs and lows of my year, in the order they happened.
Shark Tank
Shark Tank, my group with Lord Grunge, Brendan Richmond and Mickey Free, released our debut album last February. I’m very proud of it, and it didn’t come easy. For a multi-state, multi-country side project with no plan to tour, we managed to make a few moves. We played twice in Baltimore, twice in Pittsburgh, and once each in Atlanta, Philadelphia and Providence. People’s support and excitement at some of these shows was unreal. We put something together that people really like, and laid the groundwork for something we plan on doing for a long time. We’ve also been hard at work on a follow-up.
Height With Friends Mega-Tour
This winter, I did my ninth tour that went to the west coast and back, the sixth of which I booked on my own. What made this one notable to me was that I attempted a more ambitious routing. Unlike my usual 30 day coast-to-coast marathons, we were out for 51 days. For a DIY operation, the ratio of shows vs. off days was good. We covered some ground in places we often have to skip, due to time. Flags were planted.
Rap Ambassadors Tour
My man Colin, aka PT Burnem, invited me to join him for his second tour of Europe. I’ve dreamed of touring other countries since I started, but I was never able to make it happen. Bringing the whole line-up was out of the question, so Colin volunteered to perform all the duties of every other member of Height With Friends. Our friends Sasha and Xena booked most of the tour and drove us from town to town. We played in Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, Croatia, Poland and France. Touring the US is like touring Candy Land compared to Eastern Europe, and they sacrificed a lot to make this happen for us. They braved potholes, corrupt cops, troublesome border crossings, parking tickets, twelve hour drives and sleepless nights, all while being pleasant company. I had never seen people go through so much to make a tour a reality, and I truly appreciate all they did for us.
We got to play for some of the best audiences of our careers, especially in Eastern Europe. Having some level of respect and excitement granted to you before you perform is awesome. People seemed to assume you were going to be good until you proved otherwise, instead of the other way around. I usually left the shows impressed with the work the promoters had done, and with the energy the audience had given to us. They were aware that they were not passively watching youtube on their I-phones, but seeing human beings give their all right in front of them. The first world could learn a thing or two about how to act from these places.
Rap Round Robin Five
Soon after getting back to the US, we set off the fifth annual rap round robin. We packed Floristree (Baltimore warehouse venue) to capacity, with 300-plus people. I remember seeing Floristree that packed in the past and feeling like I could never accomplish something like that, but we made it happen.
Every year the round robin got slightly bigger, but I knew we could push it to the max this time. This was the most work I had ever put into one show, and it was really stressful. Orchestrating things between 38 musicians, soundmen and lighting people, going all out on promotion, fielding endless emails and phone calls from people on the bill or people coming out of the woodwork and trying to get on the bill… I felt more like the director of some insane musical than a musician. A show like this isn’t something I want to do again for a long time. I wanted to do my absolute best to take the round robin to the highest heights that my humble powers could reach. I did it, and I don’t want to do it again.
Every new group, Mania Music Group, Ooh / Seeweed and Soul Cannon, brought a ton of people out, killed it, and didn’t miss their cues. Every act in the room was in rare form. When it started, I could tell some of the people who had never seen a round robin before were confused. Once things got going, it was a magical night.
Tour Blues
In October, we did our first self-booked US/Canada tour where we made a real profit. After gas, tolls, oil changes, and one night in a hotel, we were able to walk home with a decent chunk of change for each member who did the entire month. We didn’t make half of what we would have made at home working day jobs, but we clocked enough to make our landing back in Baltimore less stressful than usual. We finally made a big step toward booking sustainable tours. The problem is that touring itself had never felt like such a fruitless effort.
DIY touring is both wonderful and terrible. It sounds promising enough when you’re eighteen. “It doesn’t matter if you play for twenty people, because those twenty people will all tell five more people, and next time you’ll have 100 people and then…” That sounds great, but 99.9 percent of the time, it doesn’t work that way. Sometimes things don’t take off not matter how hard you push. We gain fans, but we lose fans too. It takes work for fans to stay up on underground music, and not everyone can do it for very long. The first Height album came out twelve years ago, and not everyone can be expected to stick around and follow my career for all those years. Supporters come and go, and it’s an uphill battle to maintain any audience at all. That’s just the reality of being a truly DIY band with no man behind the curtain keeping you in the public eye.
Some of the shows on this tour were among our best ever, and some were beyond garbage. At eighteen, the garbage shows were considered part of paying dues. At thirty, these wack shows are making me question my life. Every night I spend on stage is paid for by many nights on the computer booking tours. If the time on stage itself is garbage, what’s the point? If we’re not really broadening our fan base, what are we doing out here? We don’t seem to spreading much word-of-mouth buzz. We aren’t meeting managers or booking agents interested in working with us. What’s the point of gunning so hard in this one direction that doesn’t seem to be paying off?
These are problems I’ve pondered ever since I first started touring. For the first time though, putting my head down and Heisman-handing my way through the bullshit didn’t seem like the answer. A couple months later, I can’t say that I have it any more figured out, but I’m working on it.
New Line-Up
After that tour, one of my goals was to keep playing regional shows as often as possible and keep experimenting with the set. I invited my friend Joe to join in on live drums, and asked Jen to start playing guitar in addition to singing. The line-up is now Jen on guitar and vocals, Gavin on vocals, Joe on drums and Justin on trombone, vocal delays, beats, and lights. We did shows in Baltimore, Philadelphia, DC and NYC. I thought all four performances were excellent, and that we’ve reached a new plateau as a live act. I don’t expect these guys to stay in my band for the next twenty years, but I feel like I’ve found a system that works, and a way of playing that makes the songs come to life onstage.
New Album
As it stands now, the new Height With Friends record will be out two years after our last release. All the touring of the last two years is partly what made it tough to stay on schedule. The main problem however, was something that happened at home. Mickey Free bowed out of the recording and mixing process, halfway through the album. We’ve always been close collaborators, and he’s recorded and mixed almost everything I’ve worked on since 2005. We came to the conclusion that it would be better to part ways than to finish the album together. This really threw a wrench in the works, but it had to happen. Our working relationship had been falling apart for a while, and it was better to totally pull the plug, for now. I think going our separate ways will ultimately lead to better Mickey Free music and better Height With Friends albums. We’re still main mans and I’m sure we will have some level of collaboration further down the road.
Frank Yaker took over the recording and mixing process and the ball is rolling again. The record will be mixed and mastered in the very near future, though the details of the release are still up in the air, I see this album as a triumphant new start. I don’t know what’s going to happen with it, but I have the strong feeling it won’t be downplayed like some of our other releases. 2012… Let’s go. Thanks for reading.
