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THE EPILOGUE: DON'T GIVE UP!
Last night I watched/listened to Melissa Engleman's new album at an online watch party. Five brilliant songs that were played with lyric videos. It was a fantastic array of music from my golden voiced friend. She has such a wonderful voice and is a truly talented writer, but this album was not created overnight. Melissa has been performing for a long time but one day she decided to enter a contest, the winner of which would get a professionally produced album! There were all kinds of things she had to do to win, like grow a certain number of fans, raise the money for a single, then use that single to raise enough money for more songs to be produced and she entered, did the various tasks and trials and won!! Tragically then the pandemic happened and they could not get her out to Boston to record the album in the studio. All hope was lost! She had worked so very long and hard only to have success ripped from her hands. We were all heartbroken but she didn't give up. Many years later she was able to go back to Boston to record the other songs. Then she rented some studio space in Austin, (where she's from) to do some extra mixing and on 12/11/2024 the album will finally be released. I am planning on doing an interview with her which will be published in The Boozeletter when the album comes out, and I hope that a lot of you will check out her brilliant album when it comes out. Whether you love music or her music, her personal story is an inspiration to me and motivates me on a regular basis. It is a great reminder that surrendering is a guarantee of failure and persistence in the face of difficulty is our only chance forward. When you are a struggling artist that means you have to get a "real" job or jobs. When you are doing things alone that means that ANYTHING that needs to be done has to be accomplished by you. Guitar string broken, you have to fix it. Internet not working for your live stream show? You get to be the tech person. Want t-shirts? You have to order them. Shows booked? You're the booker. Talk to your fans, you have to write them. The moment you are too tired, it is all too much, then guess what? Nothing happens. A swelling soundtrack doesn't appear, and there is no movie montage, it is just you, and your ability to keep moving forward in pursuit of your dream. Thank you, Melissa, for never giving up on your dreams and for gifting me with both music and inspiration.
Dane Stark, another hero of mine, took over his father's winery, which was located on Page Mill Road, but the winery was in his dad's basement which is highly impractical for someone to continue on. So, he took a leap of faith and bought a small vineyard in Livermore, California to continue his dad's legacy. No one at the time associated Livermore with great wine, and a lot of fools still don't. He has proven it otherwise and continues to make great wines and just keeps getting better and better at it. I have been lucky enough to watch him grow and thrive and much like Melissa when things need to be done it is Dane that has to do them. We don't really get access to small wineries out here but trust me when you visit one it becomes quickly apparent that it is all hands on. Bottles don't fill themselves; grapes don't harvest themselves; boxes don't even tape themselves. You have to do SO many things to make a vintage of wine and then you have to sell it without a media blitz, commercials etc. Folks have to get in their cars and go to the winery and taste and see whether or not this wine they have never heard of is worth it. Ollie and Michelle are out there in NoDa making excellent spirits at Great Wagon Road and people still don't know that we have this gem in our backyard! Muddy River has been quietly making great rums in Belmont, but people reach for Captain Morgan etc. every single day.
Michel Couvreur a wine importer thought that Scotland was doing a bad job of procuring quality Sherry casks, so he bought some Scotch and some sherry casks and then aged them in a cave in France. It remains the craziest booze story I have ever heard of and yet it produced some of the finest whiskey I have ever tried. Grab a bottle today and see for yourself. He was probably mocked and ridiculed and yet he persisted and created some brilliant whiskey. Can you even imagine going to a bank and asking to borrow a large sum of money to buy a bunch of whisky that you wanted to age in a cave for 12 years?? "So it won't be able to be called Scotch?" "No because it will age in France." "And you are going to age it for 12 years?" "Yes, I think whisky needs time to mature." "Okay please go away and never come back."
Throughout history so many with great ideas have been branded a fool. They thought Einstein was crazy. Sidney Frank launched an oddly flavored German Liqueur "Jagermeister" and turned it into a hit with college kids??? He created whole cloth a prestige vodka "Grey Goose" still thought to be a high-quality vodka today! He looked over at 400 years of Ketel One and thought but do they have a frosted glass bottle? Tito Beveridge a failed real estate agent created the most popular vodka in the United States, first from his garage and now from wherever he buys his vodka from. Iowa, Missouri? Who cares? You all love it and he is worth 2.5 billion and no one even knows his name is Bert!
So instead of coming up with a way to market a not delicious German liqueur to college kids, you just have to survive a Thursday. There is only one full proof way to do that, and that is dumb luck! The other way which is not foolproof but works more often than not is to not give up. Things will often look quite grim and the possibility of success appears at negative 27,000 percent! You cannot even conceive of how it will work out. If a genie gave you three wishes then you would need two more just to break even! The only guarantee is that if you quit it will not work out. If you put the pen down, toss the keyboard out, sell your piano for cash, put the dancing shoes in the closet it just ends right there. First you rob yourself, and then all of us. There are just so many talented artists that never got to feel the warmth of recognition but produced brilliant art anyway. Shakespeare would be stunned that we are still putting on plays and making movies of his work. Van Gogh would be shocked to find his work in museums around the world!
But Keith, I don't have the voice of an angel like Melissa, I can't paint like Van Gogh, I don't have the money of Michel Couvreur to let whiskey sit in a cave for TWELVE years! I just go to work every day and try not to embarrass myself. Those other folks were following their dreams not yours. You have your dreams which are not theirs. You still have people counting on you and you can still make an impact in the world. Elon Musk has a huge influence on the world but very little on my friend James. I have an impact on James, and you have an impact on the people in your life. It is quite easy to feel like you are just being blown around by the wind, hanging on for dear life and some days you are. Other days you have some wiggle room. Giving up on life is always an option and it is one that too many folks take. We feel small and insignificant but the other day I saw someone's obnoxious t-shirt and I felt excited to do the opposite of it. I was like before the meteor hits and destroys us all, let me uplift one more person! Is there anything easier than just quitting? Skip a meeting skip a party, don't answer a phone call or a text, skip birthdays, just skip everything. So easy. What is the reward though? Did you use the extra time and energy to cure cancer, or did you just feel some extra self-loathing?
I hated Scotch the first time I tried it. I hated it the 118th time I tried it, but I wanted to like it and then one day I did and now I love it more than any other spirit! I lied about liking gin because the woman I was pursuing liked gin and then one day I realized I actually liked it, and now it is my second favorite spirit after Scotch. When we give up, when we shut down we make our world smaller. When our world gets smaller it gets darker. Is there a better morning than one full of wonderful possibilities? Do you have any friends that will sometimes kidnap you for a good time? Those precious creatures can't stand to see us wallow in complacency, and they are great to have around. Death is inevitable but life is wildly unpredictable! Do you think at any point I thought I would live in Japan? No most of my predictions equaled loneliness and doom! Even if you are an optimist some imagination is required! You can't actually picture converting the garage into a bonus room, but you start watching youtube videos and asking questions and doing the series of steps required and some day you made it work. The first The Boozeletter went out to two hundred people and was called "Tastings and New Arrivals". Now we have 45,000 subscribers and that took a decade of never giving up to build.
12 years ago, I reconnected with Melissa because I missed her and wondered what she was doing now. She had just recorded a live album and so I bought it and became a life long fan. I always thought she just needed a chance just like I needed one. I was toiling away at liquor stores that had no use for any of my ideas. She was working various jobs to pay the bills. We both bet on ourselves instead of just giving up. It was very easy for me to picture myself just working at one spot and hoping it all worked out. Moving to the other side of the country was insane. She could have just made music a hobby and tried to find better paying jobs. I'm so happy and proud that neither of us threw in the towel and look at us now! Sometimes it is just about dusting yourself off and getting up off the couch. Other times it is being given an opportunity and running with it. The path is so rarely clear or even visible so it requires a lot to even try to do anything. I became a good cook because I wanted to learn and was okay with failing over and over again. You can learn from those mistakes if you want to. If you just surrender and make the same eight dishes over and over again you don't learn anything.
Please please please, whatever it is that you love and want to do, don't give up on it. Big or small, keep that dream alive because it is so important and vital. Kurt Vonnegut said if you are not looking forward to anything than you are just waiting to die. But why is there nothing to look forward to when there is a world full of possibilities. An older woman swore in the store last week and apologized and I said, "you've already lived your life one way, time for a change, go ahead and swear!". You had 567 bottles of vodka in a row, time for a change. You beat yourself up daily for mistakes you have made whether they are your fault or not, time for a change. You want to take a little risk or a chance, but you envision all the ways it could fail and thereby guarantee that it will. The luckiest person alive never had everything go there way, and by the way, that would be awful anyway! I just recently discovered that my high school crush married the very next guy and is still happily married! Why would I be heartbroken about that? It only becomes too late when we are dead or they are dead or we are all dead. Before that, you can still throw your hat into the race, take the road less traveled by, speak up, dance, sing, be silly, compliment strangers, root for folks loudly and often, and be kind! Just be kind, you will never fail when you do that! I think that we all like to be on solid ground and why wouldn't we? When you are on shaky ground it is pretty much all you can focus on, so we reach for certainty over the unknown. Sometimes the known is pretty lousy so despite the comfort and familiarity I would strongly encourage you to keep trying, the best you can, and land where you land knowing that you followed the light that moves you. Thank you to all of the folks that are still fighting and who continue to move me. You just never know who you are going to inspire with your effort and passion. Success will never impress me as much as the people who persist in the face of adversity.
Cheers
Keith
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