Meeting Chris (our drummer) ruined my life. If you knew him you would understand my pain.  Chris is not a man.  He is a force of nature.  He is like a hurricane ripping through the trailer park of life.  You can’t say “no” to a hurricane.  You just can’t stand up to it, especially if said hurricane rains down Jack Daniels by the metric ton and knows where you live.

When I met him I had given up on playing music.  Every decent musician I had known in my years just didn’t have the focus or the drive to make anything happen.  I had accepted it  –made my peace.  My new passion, my new big dream was to work in a cube-farm and live pay-check to pay-check, waiting only for the weekend where I could drink too much, argue with my room-mate about the rent money, wake up hung over and get nothing done at all and then rinse and repeat and rinse and repeat.  Pretty sweet right? But then Chris came along and forced me to hit the road and play all this rock and roll and meet all these cool people in all these cool places and it was just hell.  You can’t imagine.  There was music and parties and adventure and more parties….    Like I said: Pure Hell.

To make matters worse.  I used to be a guitar player.  And I say Used to be.  But I had to give up on that dream too.  He wanted me to sing, the bastard.  I tried to compromise: “But I can play guitar and sing” I said, so naïve…  But noooooo, a front-man can’t play an instrument in this band, because Mr. I-don’t-care-what-you-think doesn’t want a singer who is shackled to any musical instrument!  Apparently a front-man must constantly run across the stage and do backflips while juggling flaming knives while he sings.  Last I checked David Lee Roth is still hated but you know… “Don’t worry about it, you’ll be fine.  Drink up.”

But surprise!  I can’t “Drink up”!  Not this guy!  I have to dodge the blue-ribbons and the shots of Jack like Mr. Anderson dodges Bullets.  While the guitarists get to party it up I have to take care of my oh-so-sensitive instrument and guess what?  Alcohol is bad for vocal chords!  Gotta take it easy!  And gods forbid I should catch a cold on the road!  So… while fans crowd around and everyone has a good time after the show, who’s the lucky guy who gets to skip all that and go to bed early?  Yours truly, of course.  No trashing hotel rooms for me!  Let the other guys do that, while I’m trying to sleep no less –have you ever tried to sleep while drunken rock stars trash your room?  Yeah, well you don’t know what you’re missing.  Bloody hell I hate my life.  Thank you Chris.  Thank you.

And what is the only thing that I get in return for all this?  A friend who always has my back -no matter what, who stands up to anyone and anything for me at the slightest hint of trouble and who will follow me to the ends of the earth if I so much as ask.  Oh yeah… and ROCK.

Sucks right?

Inire’s new album Cauchemar is available now.