We got a new toilet after this. 🌊🚽 #hightide
We all have things we’d be stoked to tell our younger selves. I’d love to drop in every now and then with a little news from the future. “You’re not gonna believe what you get to do in the next ten or twenty years!” Tonight would make a good story for one of those visits…
We’re halfway through the tour with @michaelfranti . Tonight, Nate and I were out back packing up our gear when we heard Michael say from the stage, “If the Wheeland Brothers are around, get on up here!” We dropped everything and headed for side-stage. Colin, their playback engineer, handed me a wireless mic.
One minute we were packing up our gear. The next we were singing “Say Hey (I Love You)” with Michael Franti. A fairly substantial improvement in our evening’s duties.
I remember when we first arrived on the music scene. Everyone seemed so scary and pro and unimpressable. We wanted to make something of lasting significance…to matter…and I think we were afraid we wouldn’t. I was starved for acceptance, friendship, and mentorship from other artists, and didn’t find much in those early years.
Artists are beautiful creatures until you starve them and pit them against each other. Then they erupt like hungry seagulls over a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.
But Michael Franti has been everything I’d hoped: a regular dude carrying an extraordinary message of love for your fellow humans and earthlings, healthy self-respect, and holding on for the next good wave. There’s something deeply encouraging about seeing someone get that far and still make other people feel welcome.
Tonight, he called us up by name and shared his stage. That meant a lot to the part of me that had been looking for that kind of friendship all those years.
I’ve listened to that song a million times on the Bluetooth speaker in my living room. If I could go back and tell my younger self about tonight, that’s where I’d start: someday you’re going to hear that same voice coming from the guy standing right beside you. And you’re going to sing along.
Our California blood wasn’t built for this. 🤙🥶🤙
Seeing the sights. Living the dream. Finding the shower.
