Thank You

Thanks to everyone who came to the shows last weekend in San Francisco and San Jose. I can't tell you how much fun I had playing and I can't wait to be back. Hopefully I'll have some California shows again in June or July.

I saw Leonard Cohen on Tuesday at The Paramount in Oakland. He sang for three and a half hours, and somewhere in the third or fourth encore, he thanked the audience from what seemed to be the deepest and most genuine wells of his heart. It was a performance filled with gratitude, and for a man that is four days shy from having fifty years on me, I can only hope to have his attitude at that age - if I am fortunate enough to see it - and to still have a crowd gather around me when I pick up a guitar.

I remember having meetings with labels when I was figuring out who would release Charmingly Awkward. We'd be in some executive's office with a window looking down at the rooftops in Hollywood or along an avenue in midtown Manhattan, and they would ask me what my goals were with music. My genuine answer, which eventually became my stock answer, was "I want to be doing this when I'm sixty." Though the reasons behind Cohen's world tour are dark, involving stolen millions by his longtime manager and what must have been a horrifyingly anxious and stressful lawsuit, the genuine and clear enjoyment of each moment and connection with the audience was a glorious "Thank You."

This isn't the forum for really expressing all I felt that night. It had been a difficult day for me. I parted ways with my managers of three years.

It was incredible timing, the meeting that afternoon and the show that night. I was able to see a man that had struggled for years within the restraints of the business and despite poor initial commercial success, someone who persevered, consistently making something pure and gracious. Ultimately that allowed him to build an incredible bond with his listeners, the few and far between that felt what he was singing.

I'm fortunate to live in a time where the internet is still a bit of a frontier and I can connect with people without sacrificing and committing myself to the gauntlet of the mainstream music industry, and as managers and labels come and go, I can always be in touch with the people that connect with things I create, and present those things however I'd like - with few limitations.

I left the show excited to move on, and to remind the people that enjoy and relate to what I say and create, how much I appreciate them.

A friend of mine posted a review of "Waiting For The Pills" the previous night. In the brief plug he managed to sum me up in a way I would hope to be perceived most days of the year.

He said, "Dave's a real person that just wants to make music forever. "

That's it. Thanks again.