(Jared here: I feel like this song provides a fitting soundtrack while you read this post: Rachel Portman – much loved. Take a second to cue it up, then dive in.)
I have been writing and re-writing this last tour blog for almost two full weeks now. The rush of returning has been replaced with a bunch of home town gigs, some full-blown domestic duties, and the routine of the “every day” (or at least what the Fredeens call the “every day”) has begun it’s rotation. I have romanticized and dramatized the tour in my brain. I have stood back and viewed the trip in it’s entirety as a generic painting on a wall in a doctor’s office. I have spilled the tea about personal details and grievances to close friends. I have avoided actually writing transparently about it. I have done all the things one does as they process something of such magnitude. I have done all of this and I keep coming back to you.
Much like Bastian in The Neverending Story, I am acutely aware that you all have been with us through it all the entire time. You’ve already read our stories, laughed at our anecdotes, reached out to console us when you saw we were in distress. You have ridden in the truck along side us as we dropped off Rudy at camp, lost our gear out the back of the trailer, traveled long and dusty roads through dessert paths, and sat in hail storms. You heard the audiences cheer us on, and cried with us as we said good-bye to friends. You fought the good fight of the independent artist with us every step of the way, meeting new friends and revisiting old ones. You slept at rest stops with us while we tossed and turned in our truck, and you stretched out with us when people were kind enough to help us get hotel rooms. You’ve been there…for all of it.
I want to go on and on about our revelations as a band and how changed we are. I’d love to vent and kick and scream about the base level of “unfairness” I feel we have sometimes experienced. I long to shout loudly to the masses about art and its purpose, and all of the self doubt, self indulgence, self awareness, and self pity that accompanies such a calling. Oh, I’d be so grateful to bend an ear to our stories of corruption and injustice and the inescapable feeling of frustration for the music industry as a whole. I would. I have. I’ve typed and typed and erased and erased.
But every time I sit to air my grievances, I feel ashamed.
Because the worst day I have EVER had as a working artist, is still better than my best day not as one.
A question arose in a conversation near me at one of our last tour gigs. “Was the juice worth the squeeze?” Was the juice… WORTH the squeeze? The tiniest bit of sweet, nourishing, life-bringing, nectar dripping from the hardest, thickest, knottiest, most unpliable rind, is only made MORE precious for all the effort put into procuring it to begin with. It’s worth becomes so much greater, and it’s value that much more treasured, due to the struggle and strain given to retrieve it’s benefits.
We struggled with this tour, do not mistake that. We cried. We fought. We questioned everything we did. We sought escape and greener pastures, and we did not find them…at first. But when we did, however small they were, and for however limited of time we got to rest and find sustenance, all wounds seemed less deep. All sorrows less of a burden. It was in those small moments of respite that we remembered who we were, and it was because of YOU that we were able to do so. All of the friends, fans, and family who held us in their sacred spaces and healed us were the true heroes of this 2024 summer tour. And that is the reason it was and IS always going to be worth it. And we can’t possibly ever thank you enough.
Was the juice worth the squeeze? Absolutely and one hundred percent. And that juice was, and will always be YOU.
