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Empty Wagon 01:37
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JMS050

Chapter 2: "Trailblazer"

“A badge of honor, maybe, but how far could it carry us?”

If only we realized how quickly that would come to bite us in the ass.

After that show ended we came back home and was told that the album would be getting a release date soon, but that we had to change up all the artwork in order to make it appeal more to the vaporwave kids who were “picking up on our sound.” We had to make it look more “memey,” whatever the fuck that means. Essentially it meant having to scrap our entire aesthetic vision because of what a couple suits thought would sell to the kids. We fought tooth and nail about it, but ultimately it was made clear that it wasn’t our choice to make. We tried to forge onward and see what we could make of a bad situation but it only ended up making things worse.

During our summer tour where we spent most of July and August in the van trekking through a plethora of states which took us as far out as Mississippi, and as north as Maine. We traveled a lot, and met a few interesting people on the way, but soon enough the people who hated us started finding us and making their way towards our shows. It escalated worst on August 4th when we were playing in South Carolina and Cole ended up almost getting arrested for assaulting someone who had shown up just to stir the shit and cause a fight among all the Skids. That guy got beaten within an inch of his life but it forced us to leave early and get out of dodge before shit went further south (technically northwest but what difference does it make?)

Eventually we found our way to Ohio where Walton and Billy Jack ended up getting infatuated with some poor girl who didn’t know any better. Billy Jack had become even more of a recluse than the rest of us had ever been, and it was starting to show even more in his everyday behavior. Clearly this girl he had become hung up over was special to him but he and Walton ended up butting heads a lot. Oh well. When he wasn’t driving the van, he would be in the back practicing scales for hours on end. It became a little crazy after a while. He would practice his scales all day while Walton and I didn’t even bother to pick up our guitars until it was time to play a show. Walton had been taking on the more aggressive qualities that we had originally shown in our earliest stages of the live shows and it had spilled over into his normal behavior. Maybe seeing your drummer beat someone to a near pulp will do that but it freaked the rest of us out for sure. We never quite looked at Cole the same way after that. When Walton and Billy ended up fighting over this girl it became crazy, she would be in the van with us for 2 weeks and it was about 13 days longer than any of us would have liked to keep her around. Those two weeks were filled with so much fighting, tension, and negative vibes that it came as no shock to me when Billy left us when we went back through Ohio. The rest of the band sounded surprised but I saw the writing on the wall. Billy wasn’t having any of this shit anymore, and there were only so many times you could play a show and deal with these hipster fucks who were there for whatever reason. It was tough, but we were down a bass player. Great.


I had to make some calls and send some money over to get him over here but eventually we got Princess Commodore 64 to come back into the fold to help us by playing bass until we eventually found someone else who could permanently fill in while we waited. It helped that we were making our way back to New York around that time, but still, it was urgent he made it here, and I’m thankful he did.

Shows came and went for a few more weeks after that, but come time for us to record a new album, I couldn’t imagine doing it. We had been practicing new songs on the road but things weren’t quite clicking. Eventually we figured some stuff out and kept trucking along until that last day on tour. It was bizarre, but also the most memorable show. Princess had been swinging his bass around and tried to get the audience hyped up, but he ended up swinging too hard and knocked me in the ribs. I almost bled to death that night but Walton bandaged me up, and Cole stopped drumming to pour coca cola onto our instruments. The blood came off, but the strings didn’t. That also ended up being our worst show to date, and not just because of the blood.

We finally made our way on home to the mountains of upstate New York, and we took a break. We took a real good break. I had saved up enough money to live a recluse life like I had wanted to for a little bit, but couldn’t because of sharing a van with 3-4 other people. Walton filled in on drums for a few local bands and killed it every time. It always astonished me how this man could work with any instrument and not feel like he was out of his comfort zone. He killed it. Absolutely killed it.

Cole said he was going to need some time to recharge his batteries, and I understood. Again, being with that many people for that long gets exhausting. I didn’t end up speaking to him again after that happened, but more on that later.

Princess Commodore 64 had spent the rest of the time letting what resulted in way too many fruitful periods of music finally come to roost. There was his Electronic Affection LP & his split with Fictional Girlfriend that really shocked me when they came out. He was a master of mood, as far as I was concerned.

Around this time when I was living as a near-hermit, I sharpened up on the songs I had been writing for the second album, the one you’re all listening to right now. I don’t know what it was about being out on the road, but once I had quiet time to sit and really think, suddenly all the songs were making sense. Around this time I had met some folks from my treks into town who had heard the “Badge Of Honor” album and said they thought it was important. Important in what sense, I didn’t know, but I did know that it meant a lot at just the right time.

I played some of the new songs at various house parties by myself, and I felt good. It was good to get back into the hometown and feel at ease with my songs. It was there that I met her, the blonde-haired raven. We met at a party in early October, and since it was a halloween event I played a set of all First National Band material. It felt weird to sing again, but it felt right. I fell head over heels for her, and I could never quite tell if she felt the same about me. She did things to me that have changed who I am, how I think, and how I’ve lived my life since I met her almost three months ago. It was the best, and it was the worst.

Fast forward to the beginning of December.

By now I had reached out to the other three folks about getting back into the basement to record LP #2, and getting ready for whatever would come after this album was finally recorded and released. As plans got worked out and things were getting lined up for the next few months, we noticed that there was one recurring thread; Cole. After a few weeks we noticed that Cole hadn’t been answering the texts we sent, and he hadn’t been picking up the phone, so naturally we all got worried. I eventually decided to head on over to Cole’s apartment to figure out what was going on. As I walked into the building, and walked all the way up to the top floor and knocked on his door, a strange woman opened the door and asked if she could help me. I asked if my friend Cole was there and she dropped a bombshell on us; as it turns out he had left the state a month earlier and never bothered to tell any of us.

Later research showed me that Cole had ended up moving down to some town in Kentucky almost completely out of the blue. I tried calling him and seeing where he was because his presence in the band was of the utmost importance. He wouldn’t pick up and it terrified me because I missed my friend.

We found out on December 5th that he had passed away from a heroin overdose when he was in Kentucky. I was devastated. The story is that he had gone to Kentucky to live with a friend or family member or something in order to get clean but he couldn’t. It changed a lot of how I look at addiction. It’s all fun and games until it’s someone you know, I guess. We played a show to help raise some funds to give him a proper burial but we could only do so much on such short notice. I was heartbroken, but Princess was in pieces. I guess he’s seen it happen way too many times. We did some more shows but he wouldn’t talk during any of it. He was more of a trooper than the rest of us were, though.

The blonde-haired raven I had met at that party just a few months back had also said goodbye just a few weeks later. It couldn’t work out, I suppose, and between what was happening with her and trying to recover from the loss of Cole, I wasn’t in any place to do much of anything. I still miss the way she made waking up in these sleepy mountains much better, and I miss having someone, but maybe I just needed some sex and a therapist. Who knows.

As the month wore on, I had built a new studio in the mountain house and started tinkering around with new ideas I had worked on a little more. Nothing was sticking again.
Christmas morning, 2018, I called up Walton and Princess and asked them to come over. I was lonely and the failure to put my ideas into music was driving me back to the brink of insanity and I knew I couldn’t be there without my band

So they did end up coming over.

I’m forever thankful for that.

Eventually we spent that entire day banging out what would become this album, the one that, again, y’all are listening to right now. We set up camp in the living room, banged out ideas and shaped up the songs as we went, and come 9PM that night we had an album.

It’s an album, alright. It’s also a snapshot of every single piece of bullshit I’ve had to deal with since May once “Badge Of Honor” had finished up recording. It is the result of not taking this anymore. It is the result of how many folks are finally picking up on what we’re putting down.

We’re fucking trailblazers whether you like it or not.

credits

released December 31, 2018

The Muddy Skids are...

Jack Mackrel- Acoustic Guitar, Electric Guitar, Harmony Vocals
Princess Commodore 64- Bass, Pianos, Ambient Noises
Colonel Walton- Drums, Percussion

Produced by Princess Commodore 64

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