Well, it’s been a memorable year. Definitely not a good one, but for sure memorable.

In January, we lost one of my favorite musicians/lyricists and writers ever, brilliant Rush drummer Neil Peart, to cancer. I’ll probably write about him next week to mark a year since his passing. Also in January, I moved to a house where I have a dedicated studio space and I played some great shows with Chandler and The Bings in Austin and San Antonio.

In February I traveled to Raleigh to hang with my brothers and see the amazing Canadian band Sloan. We jammed and I got to play real drums. It was super fun. And I played some more great shows with Chandler and The Bings in Austin and San Antonio.

In March, everything shut down. Shows all cancelled. I started to do my day job from the aforementioned home studio (which turned out to be awesome, actually). Work began in earnest for Chandler and The Bings recording studio versions of some of our creatively-rewritten cover songs.

In April, one of my songwriting heroes, Adam Schlesinger (Fountains Of Wayne, “That Thing You Do!”, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, etc.), died of complications of COVID-19. This loss inspired me to write my first song in years. Work continued on the Chandler and The Bings tracks.

In May, I released that Adam Schlesinger tribute – at least as a rough demo. I also decided to commit to being a weekly content creator and started this Museday Mumblings feature on the blog, covering topics ranging from generational music differences to a few political rants. I’m overall very proud that I’ve kept up with it and proud of the content, and it will continue into 2021. I also blogged about launching a video series, bringing back “The Bathroom Schizo” with a feature called the “Friday Flush” but haven’t managed to record any new songs yet. In 2021, I will make this happen. I have better gear for accomplishing the task now. So look out for The Friday Flush, coming soon (seriously this time…)!

In June, it was a lot of writing this blog, and analyzing mixes of the Chandler and The Bings single.

In July, Chandler and The Bings released its first official single. We were very proud of it. Not a whole lot happened with me musically except more blogging.

In August, I made my first little explainer/playthrough video where I go over the parts I played in “It’s Gonna Be Me”. Kind of Leland Sklar-style.

In September, not a whole lot happened. LONG blogs about various things here, and a little noodling but not a whole lot of sharing.

In October, we lost one of my main inspirations as a musician, Edward Van Halen, to cancer. I wrote about what he meant to me and the lessons I learned from him and then shared stories of seeing the band live.

In November, we had some tension and distance in Chandler and The Bings, because of so much time with nothing really happening, but we talked about it and ended up having a practice, working up three new songs to add to the repertoire, which was very fun!

In December an acquaintance of mine, Patrick Fleming, chose to take his own life. I feel like if we didn’t end up in this 2020, Pat and I would have hung out and become actual friends. It made me very sad. But Chandler and The Bings managed another practice, which was wonderful. We also got vaccines to battle the coronavirus. Which gives a little bit of hope for 2021 and actually playing shows again!

So that’s basically my 2020. I left out the politics and stuck to music.

Black Lives Matter. Until the vaccine is widespread enough, keep wearing that mask and washing your hands, and stay physically distant. Keep those damn droplets to yourself. And thank goodness 2021 promises to be less of a shitshow than 2020. Here’s hoping I don’t regret those words.

Peace be the journey and Merry New Year to all!