End of the Rode

I received an e‑mail today with absolute­ly noth­ing new in it today. It was an e‑mail that I knew was com­ing and I knew almost exact­ly what it would say. What I did­n’t know is just how sad I’d be when I saw it.

My friends’ band, Green Rode Shot­gun, are going their sep­a­rate ways. They’ve thanked all their fans and acknowl­edged that it is the time for them to try some­thing dif­fer­ent in their lives.

I was prob­a­bly the biggest Green Rode Shot­gun fan in the world who nev­er saw them live. I have sev­er­al record­ings of a live show the did in Nashville a cou­ple of years ago. Also, I heard about 45 sec­onds of a record­ing of them per­form­ing a Tom Pet­ty song as an encore once. That’s it. Oth­er­wise, it was just stu­dio record­ings as how I knew my friends’ music as they all live and per­form in a dif­fer­ent state and nev­er had the occa­sion to play in Vir­ginia and I nev­er was able to sched­ule trips to Nashville when they were play­ing there. Still, I real­ly enjoyed them. It’s a rare thing when a band has enough ener­gy to make a stu­dio record­ing where you can almost see them jump­ing up and down. You’d swear you would hear things being knocked over in the excite­ment that they would put onto a disc. It was a rare and great thing, and I’ll miss it.

I under­stand why they’re not play­ing all togeth­er any­more. As much as I’ll miss them as a band, I know for my good friend, Jason, it is the right thing. We often find our­selves lament­ing on the break-up of rock bands. It is all too easy to see them as one-dimen­sion­al. How could they not want to keep mak­ing music togeth­er, after all, it was so good? How­ev­er, they are all peo­ple and have many dimen­sions to their lives. Not all deci­sions can be about the career you are in right now, and it is no dif­fer­ent for musicians.

I’m look­ing for­ward to hear­ing Yenko Camaro some­time. I’m also look­ing for­ward to see what Jason can cre­ate in the next phase of an already impres­sive artis­tic career. When the peo­ple in the band are your friends, you have those sorts of things to look for­ward to and them break­ing up does­n’t seem so bad, after all.