JA's JOURNALS
 

Keri is alone in NYC tonite...

... performing for "da label industry" again, and we are taking a different approach this time--she is playing alone, piano and voice, and then meeting with everybody tomorrow, alone, in yet another go-round to figure out who will put out the new record and when will they do it?

In the meantime, we are releasing 5 or 6 songs on her website, and I want to tell you, we have honed and crafted these babies till they are gorgeous and gleaming, with their engines gurgling quietly as they wait to hit the "take off" button.

Now I am drained and quiet, and I am not sure what I will say about anything, or when I will want to say it. We have been striving since July to bring the best of Keri forward, and you can't try any harder than this.

I have a good buddy, Ed Villaume, or Eddie V as he is sometimes called. Eddie packed it up and moved to LA 4 years ago, to try his hand at the acting game. He is still out there, grinding, clawing, scrapping his way to try to be one of the few guys to break into the game at age 40. You (or I, for that matter) can ask about why, when life can be comfortable for a gent, and he can live in Edina and hang out at Dixies, would he pack it up and finally answer the siren song in his head a full 20 years after most guys have already closed their ears to the song? Or why I have spent the last several years flinging myself over the ramparts and into the melee that is the commercial music business (which, by the way, resembles several of the epic battle scenes from "The Return of the King", except the Orcs are bigger in real life), as we, any of us who have believed in Keri and are talking about her and telling people about her, try to keep 'em pumping?

Yep, I wonder, but today I found a poem that Eddie V gave me, a few years back when I was having (yet another) crisis moment. A poem by Teddy Roosevelt, that bears repeating here:

"It is not the critic who counts, and not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great devotions, and spends himself in worthy cause; at best, who knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat."

For today, this makes some things easier for me, and I hope for you.