Game Faces in Foreign Places!! (from August 2)

"Image is everything."
- A. Agassi

I think I visited five different countries in the past 10 days, running up and down massive airports spending DAYS in the air; it gets to the point that I don't know what day it is let alone what time zone I'm in! It's a dream though, one my father always wanted to experience and one that I'm so thankful Music has brought to me.

A thought that came to me during my travels was a phrase one of my homies Shon Penn has coined in his lifestyle: 100% 100% of the time. In a nutshell, it basically breaks down to always being prepared and in many cases "looking the part," especially as an artist or business professional. It's something that comes naturally to some, but definitely not everybody. It's been drilled into us since we were young and in many cases well into our adult life, from school uniforms to work dress codes even over to no athletic wear in the club.

I first noticed it's importance on this trip during our sound check in Lisbon, Portugal. We were playing a huge outdoor festival and many people came to watch since we were in the middle of town square. Besides the backline company showing up two hours late (and then needing another hour or so of preparation since they didn't have a lot of the correct equipment on our rider), a good portion of us showed up extra late for our early lobby call. With all the delays this didn't matter much, but once we took the stage we had a pretty good time: quite a few jokes with each other, rattled through a few stevie and Erykah Badu tunes, and going back and forth between the stage and our trailer punishing our spread (can't beat a good sandwich). Meanwhile, another well-known artist's band was on site. I wasn't a witness to this, but according to some people a good number of them kind of had a side-eye in regards to our 3 hour sound check which only included about 45 minutes of us playing L.H. tunes. Of course come show time we shut the whole stage DOWN and rocked the 40,000+ crowd, which silenced any doubters, but it made me look at things in a slightly different manner.

So the Boss lady sat us all down following the sound check semi-fiasco to give us a pleasant curse-out (lol). It boiled down that same familiar principle: 100% 100% of the time. While this is not about competition in my eyes and I always show love and respect to ALL musicians I meet on the road and at home, I realized that most people look at the position I hold as one with prestige. With this a certain standard of professionalism should be expected and carried in ALL situations. Obviously with other bands and spectators watching us sound check we can tell eyes are on us, but even seeing people whisper as we walked through the airport with our guitars and equipment in tow showed how much folks are really watching. Mind you, we tend to be EXTREMELY wild (check our tweets to each other for evidence lol) and silly when we're out, which is good for morale and laughs. While it's great to have a good time and nobody wants to run around in a 3-piece suit when we have to spend 20 hours in airplanes, we have to be mindful of how we look, act, speak, and generally carry ourselves in all situations because of WHO and WHAT we represent.

It hit home hard for me. While I may not be the loudest, wildest, or least professional by any means, it definitely made me want to examine all aspects of my "image" when I'm out and about. My best advice is to always look the best you can look (within reason and comfort, of course), act the best you can act, and HANDLE YOUR BUSINESS FIRST!! Everybody likes to laugh and joke, but if work isn't being taken care of first then you gotta curb that shit until later.

Sorry for the seriousness, I'll be back to my cynical bad-shit bashing soon!

- rah