Songs Outside the Bottle (A Story)

I never set out to make an album. Truth is, I never set out to be much of a musician either. For some reason, as I got into my thirties, I just started writing what I was feeling, and somewhere along the way those feelings turned into a few songs. Still not exactly sure how it all came together but I am glad it did.

Most of my adult life was spent in the shadow of a bottle. Booze was always there. It was at shows, in green rooms, the after show parties and a few to get you to relax before bed. It was everywhere. Thank God that my vice was booze. That other shit is scary For a long time, I thought that was just the way things had to be. But a few years back, I walked away from it. It was a Tuesday morning and I woke up doing the mental tally of how much I drank the night before. Since I was using “Booze Math”, I counted up the 6 or 7 drinks I had the night before. By the way, “Booze Math” is how alcohol abusers count. It doesn’t matter how many shots of vodka are in that huge glass, it was only 1 drink. Booze Math. So I undid the math and realized that I had closer to 15 or 20 drinks. It’s funny how fast just 3 drinks can kill a fifth of vodka :). So on August 8th on that sunny day in Chicago, I quit cold turkey. Damn it was hard.

Getting sober didn’t fix everything, but it gave me space to breathe. It gave me enough silence to finally hear my own voice. Hey man, I know it sounds cheesy but it is the truth

That’s where these songs come from. They’re little pieces of me stepping outside the bottle, trying to understand who I was without it. They’re not polished, and they’re not perfect. They are simply honest.

So when I got to the third track, I felt something shift. Maybe it was clarity. Maybe it was fatigue. Maybe it was just knowing that if I kept recording, I’d end up back in the very world I had fought so hard to leave. So I stopped. No big announcement, no dramatic exit—just three songs, and that was enough. Cold turkey, just like the booze. The good news is that I will never be called a “one hit wonder”, mostly because I never had a hit.

I can’t explain it fully, and I don’t really want to. Mystery has its own truth. All I know is that life is much lighter now. And if these songs mean anything to you, then maybe stopping was the right call.