Kim - I read on your web site that you just bought your first bike.
Bryan – You’ve been there recently then. I just got it last week.
Kim – Do you love it?
Bryan – It was hard to come to this thing after only having it for 4 days. Her name is Matilda. She’s platinum and chrome. A 1100 V-Star Classic. It’s just about that time of year in California where you can just drive around. And out here I’m hearing every motorcycle that goes by and just going (he makes a face of total longing). It gives me an extra heart patter. You know, from the beginning of my marriage I had to swear off of motorcycles because she said that I couldn’t have a bike until the kids were out of the house. So the kids are out of the house now.
Kim – I was reading on your Nifty Noodles (on the web site) and there was so much frustration in your March entries with cash compensation religion. How do you keep doing it?
Bryan – There’s that thing about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. There’s a certain amount of insanity to all of that. I guess that the bottom line is that music is like a calling. If you’ve got a calling, you’re compelled to do that calling – regardless of how painful it gets or what other people do or what everybody else thinks about it. The problem is that my calling is running along these lines and it kind of ties into Christian circles and what other people are doing in the name of God. It doesn’t always match up and the conflicts are … you know … a lot. You can scream all you want to about going through the valley of the shadow of death, but you still got to go through it. I had to work a recovery program for addictions, because I was trying to medicate a lot of the pain rather than trusting God with it. I’m not sure that I even knew how to take it to God. Dear God, I don’t like some of your friends. So I would just vacate. I would isolate and I became obsessive/compulsive about a lot of things that eventually turned into addictions. You don’t know you have an addiction until you try to quit something. The music thing – I’m gonna sing no matter what. I felt like I’d pretty much screwed up my Christian persona and my career and everything else and I was willing to tender my resignation and just go out and play clubs. If I’m going to sing at the Orange County Rescue Mission and that’s all it amounts to – well OK. I don’t have any designs at this point on where I should be placed or what my career looks like. I think so much of that stuff becomes a so much of a distraction to your calling that pretty soon you’re sidetracked clear into oblivion and you forget what you loved about it in the first place. After 30 years of Christian music I was tired, frustrated, angry, hurt and lonely. I had a plan for my life and I expected to see my career go a certain way and look a certain way. God has taken all of the self-righteousness and arrogance out of my life. There’s no way to do that except to just hack all of those branches off. We were preparing to go play the club scene or whatever because I didn’t figure that anybody wanted to hear my story anymore. But it’s exactly the opposite. It’s like there is suddenly more interest in it. If we do something it’s not a career move. I was convinced by the band to play music that we like just because we like it and stop worrying about whether it fits into the praise and worship category or the CCM category or not. I just want to play and sing what I like, so that’s what we’re doing. People are always going to hurt you. There is no pain free existence. Even if you make the right choices, there is going to be pain there.
Kim – I think that’s probably why more people are paying attention. You aren’t trying to whitewash your existence and pretend that you have never made the mistakes that the rest of the world makes.
Bryan – The minute that you think your own story isn’t so bad, then you make it easy to relapse.
Kim – Somebody that is in the deep, dark hole of an alcohol addiction needs to see someone who’s been there too – and has come out the other side. You can’t get much hope from someone who stands in front of you and says something like, “I used to like a glass of wine with my Italian food, but God got me past that!” Someone in the bottom of a bottle that hears that is going to think that you’re a joke and so is the Savior that you’re talking about. I think that it’s a good thing that you are willing to share your story because people need to see real-life overcomers.
Bryan – I don’t brag about what I was, but I don’t hide from it either. If somebody can learn from my mistakes – well, great. Just because I don’t make them anymore, doesn’t mean that they never happened.
