I had different plans for today’s mumbling, but to really nail down the topic, I’m going to give myself another week to really do it right, so please tune in next week for a really special Museday Mumbling. Now onto today’s offering:

In all my relationships, I’ve maintained a fruitful relationship with a “woman” other than my wife.

No, I’m not polyamorous or anything. I just love music. Music is part of me, and will always demand my attention. Almost to the point of it being another partner I need to honor.

So, in this, I am a blessed man.

Now, let me be clear – I’ve had my share of heartbreak, but none of that surrounds some woman trying to come between me and music. A lot of musicians have to suffer a nagging partner who is less than supportive and who make the very experience of playing music a guilty chore because they demand their undivided attention. That is a fundamentally unfair approach to being with a musician, and any man or woman out there who needs that sort of singular attention needs to leave musicians alone. Seriously. It will only end in your dissatisfaction and large amounts of pain for your musician partner. WALK AWAY. You are not meant to be with an artist. You will only make their life suck. I, thankfully, have avoided this pain.

I’ve always been lucky enough to have partners who “got it”, and there have been some nice women along the way who have pushed me to continue and improve.

Starting with my college girlfriend, who was always supportive even though she didn’t seem to get the music I liked at all. She was way more 120 Minutes and I, at the time, was straddling somewhere between Headbangers Ball and Yo! MTV Raps. And because I’m a sponge, I started to love a lot of her music, and I drifted toward 120 Minutes.

So all the Gen X people will get that paragraph. For everyone else – she liked weird college alternative stuff and I liked mainstream hard rock, metal, and hip hop and I grew to appreciate her stuff.

Even still, long after we broke up, she associates me on some level with the music I loved, and that’s just sweet. So thanks go to her for letting me be me and me love what I love without ever giving me shit about it.

Also while in college, I have to give an honorable mention to a girl I didn’t have a relationship with but who encouraged me when my untrained, never-sang-in-choir ass took a voice class and sang some Mozart as my final. She was a trained singer and pretty judgmental and picky, and she made it a point to lavish me with praise for my performance. I’m pretty sure that was huge for me, but it might just have been that she was very attractive and kind of scary to me and it was nice for her to be nice to me. Either way, it was important.

Then let’s jump to my first wife. She encouraged me to sing. She showed up at every gig (until I knocked her up…best oops ever, though). Nothing but support, always. It helped build the confidence I needed to actually become a decent singer.

As for my current wife, she’s amazing. She came to all of my shows (until I knocked her up, but that was more on purpose this time). She seems sincerely impressed by my abilities both as an instrumentalist and as a singer because she loves people doing the things they love and doing them well. She is the most supportive person I know, and will always allow me the space to create or chase down some creative idea or play some weird gig three hours away where I’m gone all day.

I am thankful for every single one of them. They understood that the music was an integral part of who I am, and they loved that, too. And how lucky am I to be 3-3 in long-term relationships where it relates to being afforded the space to be a working (well, at least a part-time working) musician.

So, thanks to Sarah, Heather, and Erin for loving me as I am and putting up with “the other woman” (music). And an honorable mention to Adeline for being supportive instead of scary for once.

And this isn’t really part of this discussion, but I would be a fool to leave out two of the biggest loves of my life, my mother and my daughter. My mother was always supportive of me learning music. Ever since I was a goofy little six-year-old kid banging on a very broken piano in a garage in Massachusetts, to when I made district band in 4th grade playing clarinet, to my failed attempt at cornet in 5th grade, to her getting me a little Casio MT-100 keyboard for Christmas in 1986. Letting me pick out a guitar for my little brother for Christmas of 1988. Letting me get a nicer Casio (CT-460) for making honor roll in 10th grade. Always pushing me to perform songs for the family and sing, even though I’m not a show pony and I’m not super comfortable with it, it still is a confidence booster. And any time she could come, making it to my shows with the assorted bands I’ve played with over the years. And my daughter, for always telling me I’m awesome and being impressed when I show her something neat on the guitar or keyboard or whatever.

So to all the girls I’ve loved before…thank you.

TMS