Well it’s been a busy week at the little workshop in the woods, with the birds singing and the Birdsongs becoming. It’s been hot but that is expected for this time of the year in south central Texas, and I think the folks who complain about it aren’t as shocked about it being so hot again as how much hotter it feels to them one more year on down the road. Me? I’ll take it. Sweating is good for you and I’ll never have a real winter again. August is my payment on that.
I do like to try to take August off, well at least that’s the standard line. I think I managed it one year. I know when I set all this “Actual company” stuff in motion to be legit and growing with a real workshop and website and all waaaaay back in 2004, I wanted time off over the Holidays and August off. What I didn’t know then that I absolutely know now is that all of those “Have it to you by the end of the year” builds all come up to get cookin’ on about this time for that to happen. It’s like a lunch rush at a diner. Certainly not complaining, given what I get to do for you all for a living! Grateful for everything. What an amazing position to be in, not only to be building basses & guitars for a living, and working for cool people, but consistently having a bit more of it to do than I’m comfortable with. There’ll be a time for comfort, for a more relaxed pace, for the “I’m only going to build X many instruments this year”… and that’s coming, maybe next year, maybe 2020, but it’s not now. For now I still chase the dream and I’m still all-in and balls-out, doing what I love to do, where I love to be. If you ever talk to a guy in that position who bitches, just reach on through and slap him silly through the phone. Shouldn’t take too long.
I am going to call the days a little earlier in the afternoon until it cools back down in September just for a modicum of self-preservation, but I’ll be working the garden I’ve been blessed to have come my way to tend all through it. And that’s a fact, Jack. You know, this goes back past 2004 when the real company launched – the first Birdsong (as a maker’s name) happened in 2001 from the back corner of my buddy “Uncle” Johnny’s workshop. The first use of “Birdsong” as a model of my first guitars happened in 1999 or so out of the back room of a little music shop in Melrose, MA a year after I first got some sawdust on me during the guitar building process. And I’ve been tinkering, parts swapping Strats and putting together parts-o-casters and Strats-o-various since about 1988. That’s a hell of a run! Definitely everything stepped up in every way in 2004 - life was devoted to it and life changed around it. Most dreamers don’t get a run like this, even the ones who quickly transitioned into DOERS at the slightest spark from the plan and threw everything they had at it. MORE than what they had. More than what they ever imagined was inside them to offer up. That all just gets you a better chance on a big ol' maybe.
While you build the dream it builds YOU into the Captain it needs. Then, if you’re doing it right and not letting life spill its insanity into the dream, what the dream has built in YOU spills out into your LIFE and that gets stronger and better too. I was reminded of this looking through these old pictures of the very first days setting up to become official Birdsong (to post with a little motivational post I put up on Facebook every Monday around sunrise). I'll leave you with the one from this past week. “Never hand over the validity of your dream to others who will never see your vision.”
Listening to: Jazz station 91.7 KRTU San Antonio ALL DAY LONG, some live Dead jams.