I’ve had a good life, and if you’re reading this, chances are you have too. I mean, we’re literate and we can afford electricity, at the very least, which puts us up on most of the human race throughout recorded history. But complaining about things is human nature — and it can also be pretty funny in the bargain — so we tend to let our many advantages fade into the context of our ordinary lives while we rail against problems both meaningless (goddamn piece of shit iPhone won’t work) and not (like, you know, war).

So yeah, we’ve got it pretty good. Great, even. But we also all have our individual crosses to bear — the imprints left on us by the hands we’ve been dealt, the lingering bitterness of traumas real or imagined, the cumulative weight of what life has done to make us who we are. Sometimes, we feel it; hopefully, more often than not, we don’t — but it always affects the sway and shuffle of our gait, and it has a fundamental effect on how we deal with the world around us.

Me, I’ve always been a little preoccupied with death and loneliness. I lost my father when I was five, both of us the victims of a heroin deal gone bad: he felt his heart give out as his panicked drug buddies left him in a grocery store parking lot in upstate New Jersey, while I grew up shrouded with a lingering ache and the hard-to-shake notion that I would never marry, never have children, and die, like my father did, before the age of 30. When I developed a heart tremor in my 20s, I just assumed I was rounding the final bend. It was a relief, in a way.

I met my wife when I was 26. My oldest child, our daughter Sophie, was born when I was 31. And as I close in on 40, I’ve learned to let myself peek out from that shroud, and although the ache never really goes away, I think it’s only deepened the poignancy of fatherhood for me. She’s six now — already older than I was when I had to start trying to figure out how to make sense of a world where anything could happen at any given moment — and because I still have faint memories of a time when it seemed like a sane, safe place, I deeply treasure every moment I’m here to help protect my kids from the darkness. They drive me crazy every day, but I do.

I’m writing this tonight because yesterday, a man in a neighboring town was killed in a horrible freak accident. He left behind three children whose mother is legally prevented from caring for them and no assets to speak of. Right now, those kids are trying to cope with insurmountable grief and a terrible reminder that the universe is vast and senseless, capable of doling out horror and beauty in random increments.

I don’t know this family personally, but these are small towns and nobody’s business is truly private. I do know that this man’s youngest child is a nine-year-old girl — nine! — who’s had to deal with loss after shitty loss (although none as terrible as this) for most of her short life. I know that even before yesterday, her belief in love — her faith in its permanence when it’s true — had been badly damaged. What can anyone tell her? What can anyone do now? Over time — I hope — she’ll come to understand that even when it does last, it can be a mixed blessing; that sometimes, we have to choose what to take from that love, and whether to let it consume us or carry us forward. Tonight, I hope she and her siblings can just stay sane. Stay together. Stay warm.

We’re all brushed by experiences like these from time to time, and if we’re lucky, that’s as close as we get to the razor’s edge between our carefully constructed lives and the pain of having them shattered. We shudder at the slobbering rictus behind our paper-thin walls, we count our blessings, we button up, and we carry on. Any other way leads to madness; we cope by surrounding ourselves with minutiae, aiming our anger at safe and distant targets, and forgetting that the universe is not our friend.

But here’s the thing. We do have it good, you and I, and that simple fact is a glorious, nut-kicking victory against the endless night. Every layer of protection we’ve acquired, every happy moment, every golden memory, every second foolishly wasted on clicks and texts and status updates — that’s a precious gift that we’ve carved from life’s stubborn hide with sheer strength of will or good fortune. They’re ours and we own them. We earn the dirt and blood under our fingernails just by breathing.

This is the time of year when tradition holds that we bring our friends and families close, and if you’re lucky enough to be able to do so, then celebrate that victory with every cell of your being. And if you can’t, start celebrating the fact that you’re reading words on a screen and work your way out from there. Not because things can always be worse and our problems are mostly pretty lame — although they can and they probably are — but because these moments are yours, and they’re good, and you took them with your own two hands, and you should be proud of that.

I know I am. And although I’m sure I’ll get bogged down in petty crap again soon enough, tonight I’m going to be still for awhile. I’m going to watch the lights blinking on the tree in the living room, and watch my children sleeping, and lie down next to my wife. And I’m going to count my blessings — which include every one of you reading these words — and I’m going to think of anything I can do to help those kids, no matter how clumsy or trivial. I’m going to sharpen my rage against the monster behind the door and I’m going to keep clawing at its hide until I can’t claw anymore.

Its hunger is rapacious, but we remain, and that’s what I’m going to celebrate this season: Our capacity for tenderness, our stubborn persistence, and — yes — our hunger, for the greatest of these, love, which we fumble and struggle with and curse even as we draw upon it for sustenance and inspiration. We can no more control it than we can turn away from its ruthless beauty.

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If you follow me (or the AV Club) on Twitter, you probably read yesterday’s collaborative post between Steven Hyden and Greg Kot, titled How Long Does It Take to “Get” an Album? It’s a thoughtful piece, and although it’s pretty well summed up in its title, it justifies its length with some thought-provoking questions and excellent points about one of music criticism’s most enduring debates.

I read the article with great interest, both as a critic and as someone who has written at length about our changing relationship with music, and while I ultimately would have preferred a more personal/emotional analysis of the issue, it certainly sparked a lot of discussion among the Popdose crew — we’ve been talking about it for the last 24 hours — and it jarred loose some thoughts I’ve been mulling over for the last few months.

For most of my life, I’ve been what you could politely call a voracious music fan. (“Obsessive” or “needlessly acquisitive” would also fit.) If something was out there, I probably wanted to hear it — especially if it was weird or potentially very shitty or seemed to have no reason to exist. I never had to like an album, I only wanted to experience it. I didn’t want to miss anything. Because who knows where you’re going to find your next favorite song? It could be proudly emblazoned in the grooves of a Grammy winner, or tucked away in the dusty corner of a long-forgotten Asia album. Hope springs eternal.

Or it did, for me, until sometime last year, when that lifelong compulsion to listen started to ebb, and I found myself merely craving the comfort of the songs I already knew by heart. Part of it, I’m sure, is simply a byproduct of edging into my late 30s; no matter how open to new sounds you are, I think you’re bound to reach an age when nostalgia overtakes you. But it’s more than that. I was tired.

I’ve always been sort of ambivalent about writing reviews. I started doing it in the late ’80s, back when critics, though still maligned, functioned as gatekeepers and heralds. Commercial radio didn’t suck nearly as much as it does now, but there was still a relatively small subset of new releases that made its way onto the airwaves (or onto MTV); if you were really curious about what was out there, you had to browse the release sheets posted at your local record store and/or in the back pages of Billboard, and then leaf through the review section of your favorite rag. (And there were a lot more rags to choose from then, too.)

It’s important to point out, though, that no one I knew at the time intellectualized it this way. Writing reviews was just something you did if you wanted to write about rock & roll, especially if you were a young grunt shucking and jiving your way up the ladder. It was an easy way to pocket free music, and less nerve-wracking than doing interviews. The pay wasn’t great, but the new releases never stopped coming, so if you were willing to put in the time, you could grab a lot of work for yourself.

And often burn out in the process, which is what I did in the ’90s (twice!), and which is why, when I stumbled back into writing about music with Jefitoblog, I mostly avoided new reviews. There were zero stakes — I didn’t think of myself as a critic anymore, or even really a writer. It was just about me, my experiences with the music, and a surprisingly addictive dialogue with a growing number of readers. Five years later, I was writing anywhere between two and ten CD reviews a week.

So what changed? A lot of things, most of them gradually. I started writing professionally again, and the pay still wasn’t great, but there were more new releases than ever — and all kinds of new ways to get them. Trying to cover it all — even a small chunk of it all — is like sitting at a trough with blinders on. There are months worth of columns I barely remember writing, and albums I hardly recall. They just kept coming.

And as I gradually felt myself losing the hunger and the discipline it takes to keep up, my perspective started to change, too. I’ve said this before: Entertainment writers really aren’t gatekeepers anymore, and they certainly aren’t the heralds they once were. Everything is so readily available that there isn’t even a gate anymore. No one needs a critic to know what’s coming out, and anything that’s out can be heard or seen for free. The purpose of new music reviews has changed — they now exist almost entirely to draw traffic (and, not incidentally, start arguments). Everyone has a public voice now, and the ability to express your opinion where other people can see it is no longer unique.

A lot of things have changed, to put it mildly. But two constants remain: One, a good writer can express coherent thoughts in a distinctive voice, and two, those thoughts have a contextual depth that only comes from long-term immersion. These might sound like small things, but I think they’re precious — particularly now, as we desperately trawl an ever-expanding ocean of data, looking for an echo of resonance. How do we find it? Who do we share it with? What does it mean to us?

In other words, no, our job is no longer to define your cultural experience, but that’s a good thing, because that was always the writing’s least important function anyway. All that’s left now is what really matters: our capacity to reflect that experience.

So what does that mean for me as a writer? This is the question I’ve been trying to answer for the last few months. I still think new music reviews — even the pithy-few-paragraphs ones that Hyden and Kot were debating in the AV Club article that started all this — have their place, primarily as conversation starters for groups of people who have strong feelings about the artists or albums in question. And I think Popdose has been blessed with a number of writers who are consistently able to wring (occasionally startling) new insight from the format. (Example: Rob Smith, whose Can’t Say No series is pure magic.)

The problem, though, is that we — as publishers, writers, and readers — have allowed this type of discourse to take up too much room. The consume/response cycle is so compressed, and the pace so relentless, that real meaning slips away. We grow numb — all of us — and the result is the barrage of memes, lists, and glanced-at links that continually churn to the top of our social media feeds. There isn’t enough time to really absorb any of it, and in-depth pieces get crowded out by regurgitated press releases, video embeds, and cheap snark.

What’s important to note, I think, is that our ability to gorge ourselves on information is relatively new. Our responses to all this data are still evolving. I’m encouraged by sites like Longreads, where longform content is king, and publications like The Awl, where it’s part of a balanced diet. And, of course, this little site right here, where we’ve always tried to follow our collective muse — and been lucky enough to attract readers who appreciate it. (Case in point: Judd Marcello’s column about Levon Helm’s Midnight Ramble, which was one of the longest — and most highly read — posts in our recent history.)

My response to all of this — for now, anyway — is to try and slow down. To be willing to miss things, if it means having the time to truly experience others. To try and recalibrate my listening — to reconnect with what music’s always meant to me, and discover what it really means to me now. And to apply all of this to my writing by focusing as much as possible on the most timeless aspects of our shared experience.

In the short term, at least, this means more profiles and interviews. I started Popdose because I wanted to be connected to something more than just a lonely blog, and I can’t tell you how proud I am of the group of writers we’ve become. But collaborating is messy, and writing is a pretty solitary activity by nature, and it’s easy for us to drift into our separate corners. Too often, I’ve lost sight of that collaborative ideal. Similarly, I think it’s easy to shrink away from the thought of reaching out and discussing art with the artists who make it — as I said earlier, it’s a pretty nerve-wracking process, even if you’ve been doing it for a long time.

But it’s also where we illustrate the connections that keep us coming back to the art. I’ve recently started re-reading Paul Zollo’s Songwriters on Songwriting, and it’s been a breath of fresh air. I don’t know how we let ourselves get away from in-depth, music-focused pieces like these — either as writers who have forgotten about writing them, or consumers who didn’t support the magazines who ran them. Reading the wisdom of songwriters like Mose Allison and Bob Dylan, patiently extracted by a fan’s fan like Zollo, has helped reawaken me to the possibilities of a place like Popdose.

So let’s slow down together, shall we? Stop worrying so much about what’s coming out next week, and take a minute to listen for the echo of a song that taught you something about yourself, or helped you realize a truth, or brought you the kind of joy that lasts a lifetime. Or just made you feel something. What happens next might surprise you.

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I dutifully spent the evening scribbling witty insults in my reporter’s notebook. But at a certain point (after I’d fulfilled my quota of witty insults) I turned my attention to the folks all around me. They were enthralled. And what I realized as I gazed at them was this: I was totally missing the point.

The very idea of music criticism — of applying some objective standard to the experience of listening to music — suddenly struck me as petty and irrelevant. I spent several more months as a critic, but my essential belief in the pursuit evaporated.

Now, critics have always been a pretty defensive bunch, mainly because it’s always been pretty difficult to pinpoint the purpose of what we do. In fact, there are some critics — some really well-known ones, in fact — who publicly cop to their belief that professional criticism is essentially worthless. My own opinion on the subject has wavered over the last 20 years. But Almond’s essay arrived at a particularly sensitive time; writers have been losing their jobs at a frightening rate for years now, and when an institution like Variety’s Todd McCarthy isn’t safe — or when Stephanie Zacharek leaves her longtime gig at Salon by saying it’s “nearly impossible for a smart, experienced professional to make a living wage as a journalist or editor” — well, you know. To lift a phrase from Positive K, critics ain’t trying to hear that, see?

And so the pitchforks and torches have come out, with people saying Almond sucked as a critic (which is kind of dumb, since he cheerfully admitted it) or penning anti-Almond editorials. Which is unfortunate, I think, because however you feel about this particular excerpt of the book, Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life is a hellaciously entertaining read — one that speaks the language of the passionate music fan in funny, down-to-earth language, one that shares Almond’s life-changing enthusiasm for music via a series of anecdotes about his many years as, in his words, a Drooling Fanatic. The life of a music lover (or Drooling Fanatic, whatever) can be kind of lonely, because music can be a lot more all-consuming than most pursuits, and you can go years without meeting someone who really speaks the language of the liner notes-obsessing fanatic — but Almond’s book offers rush after rush of recognition.

It also has practically nothing to do with the essay everyone’s up in arms about. I mean, yeah, it serves as a kind of introduction to Almond’s embrace of music’s utter subjectivity, but it really has nothing to do with the book’s point — you read the essay and you come away thinking Almond is launching a broadside against criticism, but really, Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life is all about love. Personally speaking, it actually did a little to remind me of why I’m in this crazy business to begin with, and reconnect me with the Drooling Fanatic at my core. (Also, it made me wish I could have a few beers with Almond, which is probably about the highest compliment I can pay — we love a lot of the same artists, including Joe Henry and David Baerwald.)

Do I disagree with Almond’s statement that criticism is essentially useless? Well, yes. His point goes back to that famous quote that says writing about music is like dancing about architecture — that it’s impossible to really capture what music means, how it makes you feel. His examples, essentially, are himself at the low end and Sasha Frere-Jones at the other, with the caveat that although Frere-Jones is a fine writer, his descriptions of the music are too clinical to really get at the heart of the matter. And if Steve Almond and Sasha Frere-Jones were the only music critics in existence, then he’d have a point — but they aren’t. Not by a long shot.

What I think Almond misses is that critics, even at their absolute worst, generate discussion about art. Yes, enjoyment of music, film, and literature is wholly subjective, but opinions generate opinions — in some cases, the further afield the better, as Armond White‘s editors could tell you. And this discussion is even more fun to have on the Internet, despite the embittered protestations of old guard scribes like Richard Schickel, who once famously compared blogging to finger-painting. I think what these guys — and Almond — miss is that the essential ingredient of a good critic is passion. This is what people respond to in typo-ridden, punctuation-deficient music blogs like Captains Dead — it isn’t the writing, per se, which is as unfortunate as it is understandable. It’s the shared love. It’s the possibility of forging an instant connection with someone who shares your passion. And lack of passion is what probably makes Stephen Thomas Erlewine such a miserable hack.

So that’s what makes a good critic. What makes a great critic is a little more complicated, and I think it’s a combination of depth of experience, understanding of musical context, and a grasp of the good old-fashioned rules of grammar. It’s what makes guys like Thom Jurek (who I never miss an opportunity to make fun of, but I’m a jerk) more of a “great” than a “good” critic, and I think it’s what makes Rex Reed — who’s actually a technically sound writer — something of a barely readable hack. I suspect Steve Almond has spent more time with the Erlewines and Reeds of the world than the Jureks and Captains, and I also suspect that either he or his publisher (correctly) spotted an opportunity to drum up pre-release publicity by doling out a pointlessly inflammatory piece of the book. It’s just too bad, because all this hullabaloo has distracted from the real point of what’s actually a very warm-hearted and terribly well-written book — a book that I think could have helped generate discussion about the ways we respond to art, and how criticism in general is in a state of flux.

Are we still dancing about architecture? Sure, but before, even the most widely read critics were dancing alone, and now, to risk a seriously cheesy statement, we’re doing it with partners. We’re engaging with our readers in ways that simply weren’t possible before. The decimation of the professional critic class is horrifying, but there’s less money everywhere; jobs have been drying up for a long time now, and to make a bogeyman of the blogosphere is misguided. Now we’re in the early stages of a culture of critics, and instead of dismissing all bloggers with a contemptuous sniff, I think it’s important to recognize the infusion of passion this brings to the discipline, even as we identify the meritocratic nature of the Web. In other words: Yes, blogger culture has given a forum to plenty of shitty writers. But that forum isn’t particularly useful for anyone without an audience, and you aren’t going to build one if you aren’t saying anything of value. Look at sites like Addicted to Vinyl, the wonderful music lover’s outpost run by our pal (and Popdose contributor) Matt Wardlaw. Look at Dave Steed’s amazing Bottom Feeders series. Without the Web, they probably wouldn’t exist, and neither Dave nor Matt are “real” critics — but they have something valuable to say about music, and their readers add immeasurably to the conversation. I think this helps balance out the commodification of the arts we’ve seen as a byproduct from stuff like on-demand cable, mp3s and iPods, and that’s only a good thing.

Steve Almond is scheduled to be a guest on the next episode of the Popdose podcast, and I’ll try and discuss some of this with him then, in between mother jokes and stories about Joe Henry and Bob Schneider. In the meantime, who are your favorite critics? And how do you feel about the future of cultural commentary?

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None of which is a complaint, but rather an explanation of why I’ve become a ruthless inbox purger, making snap decisions about what stays and what goes with little more than a glance at the first few words of the message. It’s an imperfect system, to be sure, and I’ve doubtless let plenty of wonderful music slip through my fingers this way, but there’s just so much of it out there. You need a filter. Or several.

One of my filters is my friend Pigeon O’Brien, who is, aside from being my favorite publicist and one of the funniest folks on Twitter, a woman of such impeccable musical taste that I don’t even tense up when she pitches me on one of her artists. So when she sent me a message the other day telling me I needed to hear a song, I didn’t question, I clicked. As it turned out, the song in question was from an artist I like (Steve Poltz) and an album I didn’t know was out (Dreamhouse, buy it now), but the “what” of this story isn’t as important as the “where”: To share the song, Pigeon sent me a direct Twitter message containing a link pointing to the album’s Lala page.

If you’re not familiar with Lala, it’s a music service that started life as a CD-swapping outpost for people with tons of hard drive space and no use for jewel cases. You opened your free account, told your fellow members which albums you were looking for and which ones you were willing to let go of, and for a dollar and change per disc received, you could build a pretty impressive collection of CDs in plastic clamshells (sometimes the album artwork came with the discs, sometimes not). I had quite a bit of fun with Lala for awhile; we got off to kind of a rough start, seeing as how I stuffed my “want” queue with old Bob James releases in what may or may not have been a drunken giggle fit (don’t you dare judge me, and by the way, if anyone wants a Bob James CD, I now own like a hundred of them), but I ended up acquiring some really neat, rare stuff through Lala.

As you can probably imagine, Lala wasn’t terribly popular with some people — anyone who sold used CDs on eBay or Amazon must have sighed and rubbed their eyes when Lala started to take off, and the labels are never exactly thrilled when consumers trade/buy/are aware of the existence of used music. Eventually, for whatever reason, Lala started to change; it gradually phased out the CD-swapping, in favor of an online music store/repository that allowed you to upload your personal collection and listen to it anywhere, as well as buy new music, either in mp3 form or as “web albums” that were a lot cheaper, but that you could only listen to, not buy. It was at this point that I lost interest in Lala.

It wasn’t for any one reason, really; partly, I was just pissed that I was losing the opportunity to avoid paying exorbitant prices for rare albums on the used market, but this was also at the tail end of the era when companies were still openly obsessed with overtaking iTunes, and charging people for music they didn’t really own still seemed like a viable business plan. Lala seemed like a horrible combination of both. I mean, I’ve gradually come to terms with the death of physical music media, but I still miss the days of spending an hour or two poring over an album’s liner notes, and I really have zero interest in being told how and where I can listen to my music. I do a lot of listening on my computer because it’s convenient to listen while I write, but I also like to take music with me in the car, or God forbid, occasionally play it on the stereo. Paying for the privilege of listening to something strictly at my desk is about as appealing as watching a movie or a TV show on my computer. I know a lot of you nutty kids like to do it that way, but as far as I’m concerned, TVs are for television and computers are for porn. Or computing. Whatever.

Except here’s what happened: Instead of being just another online music outlet nobody needed, Lala was really laying out the middle ground between DRM-free, a la carte superstores like iTunes and Amazon’s MP3 store, and idiotic monthly-fee sites like Napster and Rhapsody, all while the music industry was cracking like an egg. Once the shell lay splintered to bits, all that gooey content spread wherever gravity took it — to YouTube, to MTVmusic, to Pandora, and dozens more. And as many times as Edgar Bronfman might have screamed at everyone in the kitchen that the mess on the floor was an omelet, and that goddammit he was going to be paid for it, there was no going back.

Of course, people have been heralding paradigm shifts in people’s relationship with music (and the music industry) for a long time now, and most of the time, they don’t seem to amount to much; a little more than ten years after MP3.com triggered mass insanity with its IPO — closing at $63 a share after its first day! — the URL is good for little more than a reflexive giggle from people who remember its heyday. (Or a sad sigh from people who bought in at $9 and held on a little too long. Ahem.)

MP3.com didn’t end up winning the revolution, but it helped start one, and for every “new model” delivery method that’s flamed out in the last decade, others have stepped in to learn from its mistakes. We’ve had to deal with all kinds of stupid shit in the interim — DRM, labels freaking out over video embeds, Auto-Tune — but steadily, and in spite of the shrieking of entitled clowns like Bronfman, a new model has started to emerge — a shiny blend of downloads and streams, paid and free, all driven by a less-is-more ethic that ties together new technology, social networking, and good old-fashioned love of music. The democratization of recording and distribution has led to a music explosion, but it’s gone hand-in-hand with a commodification of music; I’m not just talking about the ongoing issue of filesharing, torrenting, and illegal downloading in general, but a general tearing away from the intense, personal pleasure human beings have always derived from song. As labels and artists have rushed to cram their wares into everything from ringtones to video games, people have grown sort of numb to the thrill of discovering new music — it’s just more data to absorb, more entertainment in a culture already saturated with it.

But maybe not. Maybe illegal downloading, the rush to the ringtone market, and the half-exciting, half-sickening explosion of Guitar Hero-style tie-ins is more a symptom of the hangover that the industry, and its consumers, are suffering after decades of music being pumped into the market at artificially inflated prices. Maybe all that pie-in-the-sky bullhonky about how the Web is going to finally free music (and the people who make it) from the rusty shackles of an outmoded business is really true. And maybe it’s companies like Lala that are going to make it happen.

So here’s what happened when Pigeon sent me that message: I hit the link, saw that Poltz had a new record out, and promptly backed out of Lala and headed to Amazon to see if I could download the album there. Finding that it wasn’t for sale there, I gave up and went back to Lala, where I realized what a dope I’d been for walking away from the site when it stopped doing what I wanted it to do. Because not only was Dreamhouse available below the traditional iTunes/Amazon price point ($7.49 to own), I could listen to the whole thing for free before I bought it.

Did you catch that part? Before downloading the album (or buying the “web” version, playable in my browser, for the ridiculous price of $.99), I could play each track once, at my leisure, for free. This isn’t the kind of (admittedly quite awesome) cruise-control streaming you get at places like Pandora, where you punch in the names of your favorite artists and hope whichever algorithm is DJing gives you something you actually enjoy, and it isn’t the flat-fee listening you get at Rhapsody. You look for music, you listen to it, and if you like it, you buy it. It’s so fucking simple that a baby could have diagrammed it the day DSL started rolling out, but the music industry has thrown up so many knee-jerk legal hurdles that there hasn’t been any point in even trying something like this until now.

What’s even smarter is that Lala has made it dead simple for users to share and recommend their listening choices — either by sending links to your in-site followers, or by plugging your Lala account into Twitter, Facebook, so on and so forth. So follow the chain: After Pigeon sent me the link, I bought Steve Poltz’s Dreamhouse, and because I used Facebook Connect to log into my Lala account, it asked me if I wanted to publish a message to my Facebook wall telling my friends that I’d purchased the album. Shit, you can even scrobble your Lala playlist to your Last.fm account. Clap your hands and sing it with me now, people: Brilliant.

Even though Lala’s various components are all sort of passé, at least for people who are always searching for what’s next, it’s how they’re put together that makes the site special. In spite of the fact that I just used the word “scrobble,” I’m not an early adopter — so if Lala can convince a grumpy old dog like me to spend an entire weekend browsing the virtual racks, they’re doing something right. Admittedly, I’m sort of an ideal customer — I’m a critic in the Internet age, and I still enjoy paying for music — but even if there aren’t enough consumers like me to turn Steve Poltz into Taylor Swift, that’s okay; there doesn’t need to be. As Lala makes clear, the technology of Web distribution is finally catching up with the technology of cheap home recording. Put another way: I started recording music in the early ’90s, when two-inch tape was the rule (and very, very expensive); by the end of the decade, we’d migrated to the much cheaper ADAT and rudimentary Pro Tools. By the time MP3.com exploded, you could record and manufacture a really nice-sounding album for $10,000, but your options for actually distributing it were still rather slim and sort of depressing. Yes, you had MP3.com, CD Baby, and Amazon’s recently launched affiliate program, all of which allowed artists a first step on the bramble-strewn path from studio to marketplace. But once you had your record on one of those sites — then what? How did you stand out from the increasingly crowded pack?

These days, there are a lot of answers to that question, and most of them are dirt cheap, if not free; in the meantime, recording music has only gotten cheaper, and manufacturing is now an option instead of a necessity. If you’re talented, and smart, and willing to work like a dog to earn a living with your art, your odds are better than ever. Even as the marketplace’s endless splintering has made it damn near impossible for an artist to achieve true cultural ubiquity (and to enjoy the astronomical sales that go with it), it’s also made it clear that there are endless niches waiting to be served; hence the 1000 True Fans school of thought — and sites like Lala that make it easier than ever to connect hungry consumers with the artists they’re waiting to hear.

Is the system perfect yet? No. Lala’s catalog still has plenty of holes, and the percentage of listeners proactive enough to share their habits with their social networks (and, in turn, those proactive enough to seek out what their friends are enjoying) is relatively small. And there still isn’t a lot of money in Lala’s business model — hence its acquistion by Apple late last year, which could end up leaving the site a husk of itself by the time everything’s sorted out. But even if Lala dies on the cross, other companies will learn from its mistakes and find smarter, cheaper ways of serving the marketplace. Recommendation engines will get smarter. Artists will grow accustomed to their new options. The bonds between art, commerce, and social media will strengthen. And as the wider music-purchasing public starts to really understand how much control they now have over what they hear, music might even reverse its trend toward thoughtless commodification, bridging the gap between blog-devouring, mp3-hoarding addicts and QVC-shopping Streisand fans. We all know how fashionable it is to complain about whatever’s popular and pine for the good old days, but I humbly submit that if you aren’t excited about music today, then you aren’t listening hard enough.

Now if the Web could only find a way to bring back those liner notes. PDF files just aren’t the same…

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This helped winnow out some of the really crappy bands, but certainly not all of them, and when I received a tape from a New York duo calling themselves the Rails in late ’92, I wasn’t expecting much. In fact, if the letter that came with the cassette hadn’t mentioned that the Rails knew some friends of mine, I might not have listened to the album at all. Instead, not knowing what to expect, I popped the tape — titled Wonderfull — into my stereo, sat down at my desk, and listened. It’s been 17 years, but I still remember it vividly, because I didn’t get up from my chair until the album was finished — I just sat there, watched the late afternoon turn into early evening, and fell in love with the Rails one Wonderfull track at a time. The production was lo-fi and the drum machine tinny, but the songs radiated with all the yearning and anguish you’d expect from a pair of twentysomethings laboring into an eight-track recorder in an apartment over a sausage factory — and they were smart and tuneful besides. They still resonate with me now. I was hooked from the opening lines of the first song, “Far & Wide” (download):

Where you lead I will follow
And the clues you lead I will find
But I guess I’m always a step behind

Nearly ten years later, I even covered “Far & Wide” on my solo album (download). By this time, I was more than just a Rails fan — in 1994, I put my money where my mouth was and backed the production of their second album, Happy Summer; four years after that, I signed Fred Wilhelm, the chief songwriter and vocalist in the band, to a publishing deal and solo recording contract. Needless to say, that tape I heard in ’92 has had a profound impact on my life, professionally and personally: Fred is not only my favorite songwriter, he’s one of my closest friends, and I consider myself lucky to know him.

All of which explains why I hopped in my car two Fridays ago and drove to the little town of Granby, Connecticut, to watch a benefit concert in a high school auditorium. Fred grew up in Granby, you see, and he’d helped organize an “in the round” performance featuring himself, Catie Curtis, Mark Erelli, and Lori McKenna. I had at least a passing acquaintance with the music of all the other artists, but I was going primarily to see Fred perform — he lives in Nashville, and we both have young children, so it had been a few years since I’d seen him, and even longer since I’d been able to catch one of his shows. Honestly, the music was secondary.

That might sound funny coming from someone who listens to music for a living, but the sad truth is that I remember the first time I heard Wonderfull so vividly because listening experiences like that are so rare. I know they’re rare for everyone, but as much as I love what I do, this job makes it easy to lose the emotional connection with music that makes you want to be a critic in the first place. Most of what I listen to, I listen to for review purposes; these days, when I don’t have to listen to anything, I’m at a loss as to what to play for pleasure. There are so many albums — and the pay grade, quite frankly, is so low — that if you aren’t careful, you can end up just plowing through albums by the fistful, taking notes, writing reviews, and moving on to whatever’s next. It isn’t a very balanced approach, but it’s a hard trap to avoid.

It’s also the headspace I’ve been in for most of 2009. Don’t get me wrong, I think this has been one of the best years for music I can remember, and plenty of albums have gone into heavy rotation around here in the last 12 months — but many, many more have come and gone without leaving any kind of impression. It’s left me feeling uninspired without really realizing it, which is why it’s such a good thing I drove out to Granby, and found myself in the audience for an evening full of music that broke me into a thousand glowing, grinning pieces.

Part of the evening’s thrill was simply the format. I love watching musicians work together — I love seeing the language of song pass between talented players. And playing in the round creates a lot of opportunities for artists to sit in on each other’s songs, adding new instrumental and vocal layers to wonderfully intimate performances that strip the material to its most essential ingredients. On this particular night, the audience was treated to four performers who are not only ferociously gifted songwriters in their own right, but who have worked together often enough to develop a real appreciation one another’s work. I knew what to expect from Fred, obviously, but I hadn’t spent much time with his co-headliners’ music; ironically, I was most familiar with Mark Erelli, and that was only because I’d bought — and mostly rather disliked — his 1999 debut.

I also knew that in addition to being recording artists, Erelli, Catie Curtis, and Lori McKenna are all Nashville pros — and writing for hire, like listening for hire, can deaden your creative batteries pretty quickly if you aren’t careful. McKenna, for instance, is arguably best known as the singer/songwriter that Faith Hill plucked from obscurity when she covered three of her songs for her Fireflies album; I was expecting the kind of songwriting savvy that helps pay the bills, but doesn’t necessarily rewire the listener’s emotional hardware. Fittingly, it was McKenna who destroyed my low expectations with her opening number, “How Romantic Is That.” Here’s a video from an earlier in-studio performance:

To badly paraphrase Bill Cosby, those of you with children will understand.

Fairly straightforward Nashville blue-collar storytelling stuff? Sure. Under different circumstances, I’m not even sure the song would have resonated with me at all. But there in the Granby Memorial High School Auditorium, I was blown away — first by McKenna, then by Mark Erelli’s ferocious, mandolin-backed “Baltimore,” and so on and so forth, on through the night. I was never anything less than captivated. I was probably most surprised by Erelli, simply because of my (totally incorrect) pre-conceived notions of his work; my favorite number of the evening was “Once,” a song inspired by the birth of his son:

Catie Curtis’ music is sunnier than Erelli or McKenna’s, but she’s just as deft at communicating the largely unspoken truths of an ordinary life. I thought the highlight of her set was “Dad’s Yard,” an old number about a packrat of a father whose emotional inventory runs just as deep:

He can see the beauty beneath the dust and the grime
He can see potential where the rest of us are blind
He will polish the grey until it shines clear blue
And if you know my dad, well, he won’t give up on you
So if you need something when times get hard
You can probably find it in my dad’s yard
And if you need love, if you’re coming apart
You can surely find it in my dad’s heart

Yes, it’s your garden-variety folkie ballad, and if you aren’t in the right frame of mind to receive its message, it’s very easy to roll your eyes. But who hasn’t benefited from the kind of love that never gives up…or wished they had? And just that sweet little line — “And if you know my dad, well, he won’t give up on you” — it sums up the spirit of the song so beautifully, hearing it actually made me smile with surprise.

I was smiling a lot that night, actually, and remembering something I hadn’t realized I’d forgotten: the joy of watching musicians commune on stage, and the joy of listening to music purely for pleasure. Yes, I was taking notes during the show, but mostly just so I knew which songs I wanted to download when it was over. I spend so much time listening with an ear toward whichever article I’m writing that something as simple as just watching songwriters ply their trade in a darkened auditorium for a couple of hours felt like an epiphany. It knocked me back into alignment, and reminded me that keeping ourselves open to that joy is just as important for Popdose as it is for us to try and cover the latest music, movies, books, television, current events, and more. That’s something I’m going to try and carry with me throughout 2010 — to remember the emotional connection that keeps bringing us back to music, and worry less about new releases, publicist pitches, and site traffic. Not that any of that stuff has ever been Popdose’s primary reason for being — staying on top of it all requires hipness levels never reached by sites run by guys who get swoony at folk shows in high school auditoriums — but when you get lucky enough to experience the kind of growth we’ve enjoyed over the last couple of years, it’s easy to get wrapped up in trying to give your audience what you think it wants instead of just following your muse.

So thanks for being here. I’m grateful for your readership, and I never stop getting a kick out of the idea that my favorite group of writers entertaining themselves also entertains you. Over the last two years, we’ve come a pretty fair distance together, and I’m looking forward to finding out where we go from here. Who knows? If we’re lucky, we might even get to share one of those magical listening experiences along the way.

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Well, I don’t know. Maybe it does if you’re Eric Clapton, or Barbra Streisand, or one of the very few artists who have sold a ton of records and/or haven’t been divorced often enough to ever have to worry about money. But really, for most stars — even the ones who have been lucky enough to score some hits and earn some name recognition — music is still a job. It’s a really cool job, but still, it doesn’t keep you from having to worry about ordinary stuff like professional security, career advancement, and financial stability. It isn’t very glamorous, but it’s about the best anyone who’s dreaming about “making it” in the music business can hope for — a rewarding life, but one not without many of the same workplace anxieties the rest of us experience. Most of us don’t know what it’s like to hear ourselves on the radio. We do, however, know what it’s like to look for work, or lose a job without warning; it’s a nerve-wracking ordeal, to which many of the people appearing on our favorite albums can relate.

It’s a side of the dream we don’t think about or discuss much, and in order to explore it, I reached out to three musicians who have experienced the ups and downs of a career in music, and they were all gracious enough to take some time to discuss what it’s like for a rock star to lose a job — and where to go from there.

For Dawayne Bailey, rock & roll was a ticket out of the sleepy Midwest and into stadiums around the world. Born in Manhattan, Kansas, Bailey moved to Los Angeles in the early ’70s, where he gigged for over a decade before getting his first major break as the guitarist in Gerard McMahon’s band. (Though he isn’t a household name, McMahon’s work will be familiar to anyone with a deep love of ’80s and ’90s melodic rock; his songs have appeared on albums by KISS, Roger Daltrey, and Chicago.) This, in turn, led to Bailey being asked to audition for Bob Seger’s Silver Bullet Band. Bailey joined Seger on his tour for The Distance and played on Like a Rock before leaving to form his own band, Private Parts, which released one album before Bailey received another call to audition — this time for Chicago, which had parted ways with guitarist Chris Pinnick and was gearing up to tour behind Chicago 18.

Bailey stayed with Chicago for nearly a decade, touring steadily with the band and making limited appearances on three albums — Chicago 19, Chicago Twenty 1, and Stone of Sisyphus, which remained unreleased until last year — before being dismissed in 1995. In the years since leaving Chicago, he’s appeared on a number of albums for other artists (including Pat Boone’s In a Metal Mood) as well as releasing several solo projects, such as 2006′s Joyland.

Early in your career, you went from playing with Bob Seger to joining Chicago near the peak of their ’80s resurgence. Was this a shocking introduction to the business side of rock & roll, or were you prepared for it?

I wouldn’t say I was shocked. I grew up in Kansas and have always been close to Kerry Livgren and he always gave me advice about the business side of things — so I was somewhat prepared. I’ve also followed Frank Zappa’s advice by studying his interviews as well as reading lots of music biz books and keeping my eyes and ears open. I also hired music attorneys when I first moved to LA trying to sell my songs, and they taught me a lot about what to do and not do.

In addition to the Seger and Chicago gigs, you’ve performed in a hired hand capacity for other artists. Does working from that role affect the way you’re treated by performers? Does it impact your passion for the music?

It depends on the boss. I’ve been lucky. Bob Seger was a great boss and really fun to work with. Chicago was interesting because when I joined the band, I was the only sideman with seven bosses above me. It was fun but sometimes a bit frustrating. When they hired me, I had my own band where I was the boss and wrote and sang all the songs. Just 3 weeks before they hired me, I had just hired Martina McBride as a backing singer for my band.

As for the passion, that’s always been there, regardless of the business set up. The passion is what has driven me from day one. Performing music on stage and writing music off stage has always been very intense for me and not about the money.

Along those lines: you were a contract employee of Chicago’s for many years. How were you able to emotionally balance being an employee of a corporation with being a member of a — for lack of a better term — rock & roll brotherhood? Did it create any conflicts for you?

I was there for nearly a decade, so eventually as you negotiate your annual contract with the accountant, it could get tricky…having to stand up for yourself and not get trampled on.

There was also the element of the brotherhood, which I never really felt a solid part of. I understood, though — they go way back with each other — and I knew I was standing in the spot they were used to seeing Terry Kath stand in. Overall, though, it was a blast playing with that band. Every band has conflicts, no matter the business setup. We’re all humans trying to stay positive on the road and have a good time. You also have the band crew/techs who help keep things light with the daily ups and downs of constant touring.

Did you always look at your gigs for other artists as potentially temporary, or did you feel like you were “home”?

With Seger, I knew he didn’t tour that much anymore — not as much as he did in the ’70s. So that always felt kinda temporary, but Chicago felt like home. They tour all the time and you travel the globe. Even though I didn’t feel like a tight member of the corporate brotherhood, I felt like as a job, it was stable, solid and home-like in that we just kept working and working non-stop.

If a person in most career fields wants to find a new job, he looks at listings online or in the paper, but a musician looking for a new gig has to take a different approach. Are there established channels, or is it more of a strictly “who you know” type of situation? What were your first steps after leaving Chicago?

Old school places for musicians and bands to find each other like Musenet and Musicians Contact have been replaced with the usual social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, etc. It’s much more immediate — especially for younger, new, indie bands.

They can create an instant community with their fans who will house the band at their homes on the road instead of having to pay for some cheapo motel in the middle of nowhere. Musicians can find bands and vice versa much quicker than ever before. Older established bands still rely on the “who you know — word of mouth” model.

When I first left Chicago, I didn’t try to connect with yet another established road band as much as I tried to start a new band I was scheming while still on the road with Chicago. That evolved into working with an acoustic-based band (Shayna) that was a deliberate stark contrast to the brass pop of my former band. It was a healthy needed change of pace, and yielded new songs that are still some of my favorites today.

I discovered that world not online, but by networking face to face with bands in L.A. clubs and socializing with friends who knew someone who knew someone.

What are you working on now?

Love and positivity. Music has taken me away from my family way too much for way too long and I’m putting them first. That has also helped nurture the new music I’m writing and recording and given it more depth, meaning and purpose.

You have to cut out all of the BS and get to the core of what and who is most important in your life and for me, that elusive magic chemistry lies in family and friends. Not in some corporate band who will abandon you after years of service in the blink of an eyeball. I can’t think of anything better to be working on at this point in my life and career as embracing my family, which in turn enriches the music…and that ripple effect will resonate with everyone else.

Do you have any business advice for musicians who are just starting out?

Nice guys don’t always finish last. As a sideman or woman, hire an attorney to negotiate your contract, don’t do it yourself. As a songwriter, keep your publishing — just ask Paul McCartney. Invest in real estate — just ask Paul McCartney. (Always get a pre-nup — just ask Paul McCartney.)

Murphy handled lead vocals on a string of five Feat studio albums — including 1995′s Ain’t Had Enough Fun, 1998′s Under the Radar, and 2000′s Chinese Work Songs — before departing the band in February of this year. She’s landed on her feet, though, assembling the Shaun Murphy Band with Randy Coleman, Larry Van Loon, Mike Caputy, and Kenne Cramer, then heading into the studio to record the recently released Livin’ the Blues, a collection that includes rock and blues standards (“Hound Dog”), covers of a more recent vintage (John Hiatt’s “It Feels Like Rain”) and Murphy originals (“Rock and Roll Everynight”). On the road promoting Blues, Murphy paused to reflect on her time in one of rock’s hardest-touring bands, the tumult of 2009, and what lies ahead.

You started working with Little Feat after the band had been around for some time, and saw your role expand after Craig Fuller left. Because of the way you eased into the group — and/or because you were privy to Fuller’s departure — did you look at your position in the band as something potentially temporary, or were you prepared to finish your career there?

I actually found out about Craig’s leaving the day they asked me to join the band. I had been a friend of theirs for a number of years, and had worked on all the reformation CDs. I was extremely happy to find myself on a bus in the middle of nowhere with six guys…(12, if you count the crew.) I’ve always had hopes of sliding off for the occasional solo CD, but until this time, it hadn’t come to fruition.

Rock & roll can be a glamorous career, but it’s one in which artists can operate entirely without a safety net. Were you financially prepared for your time with the band to end?

These are such troubling times for everyone, and it has touched the entire world, not just certain groups, like it has in the past. I think we were about as close to the collapse of the planet’s economic systems as we’ve been since the Great Depression. So to answer your question, no — things were pretty stretched thin. But there was nothing else to do but hike up my high heels and start to steppin’!

What have been some of the positive side effects of the change — either expected or unexpected?

I would have to say that the people I’ve met, and who have helped me bring all these fantastic events about, are so uplifting and inspiring. All of us coming into this project with hearts open and with spirits so high — it’s been one of the best experiences I’ve had.

Now that you’re establishing yourself as a solo artist, you must be assuming more responsibilities for every aspect of your career. Do you find it more difficult to balance everything, or is it more liberating?

It’s very exhilarating, and a heady feeling, to say the least. Having been part of groups all my life, being the boss is like changing species almost…I have the best of both worlds. The guys in the band are down to earth musicians who’ve seen the whole gamut in the music world, and are very seasoned. They keep me very centered.

Can you give us a few words about the new album?

I’m so proud to be able to give voice to some of the most incredible, indelible blues songs around — some of which I’ve been singing for a long, long time, others I’ve always wanted to put to disc, and some from new friends that I hope will have more in their arsenal for my next CD. Maybe even a co-write here and there. The budget was small, but I think the sound, production, and playing transcends anything any big budget could provide. I’m so happy the emotion came across — through everyone.

Starting with 1992′s Aqua, Payne and Downes led Asia through five studio albums and almost 15 years of its existence before the original lineup reunited, capping off years of rumors and leaving Payne the odd man out. While the reformed Asia went on to record the reunion album Phoenix, Payne soldiered on with a new band, called GPS, before ultimately returning to the Asia name — sort of — through an agreement that allows him to record and tour as Asia featuring John Payne. It’s an unusual situation, to be sure — muddling band/brand names like this is what has gotten guys like ex-Toto vocalist Bobby Kimball sued — but one that oddly suits Asia’s strange and twisted path over the last 25 years or so.

Payne is currently prepping the release of a pair of new studio albums — one from GPS, and one from Asia featuring John Payne — but he made time to discuss the highs and lows of life as a professional musician.

Earlier in your career, you went from thinking about taking the “Jeff Lynne” spot in ELO II to taking over lead vocals in Asia. This must have put you in a position to deal with lawyers and paperwork at a pretty formative stage in your artistic development — how has this affected your ability to stay rooted in the joy of making music for music’s sake?

I started making music because it is my passion — I remember, at seven years old, wanting to be in a band. Lawyers and contracts, etc., are a necessary evil in this career. You can’t just bury your head in the sand and ignore the business side, otherwise you are left with no creative canvas to paint on.

I enjoy the music as much as I did when I started; in fact, I feel I have more to prove now — and I realise how lucky I am to have a channel to output my thoughts.

Did you always look at your time with Geoffrey Downes’ version of Asia as something potentially transitory, or did you approach it as more of a musical brotherhood than a business partnership?

It was a brotherhood. We worked solidly together for 16 years. It was a fantastically creative time and I’m proud of what we did — I did no external projects, only Asia. I learned and grew so much artistically in that time, and don’t regret a second of it.

Following along from the previous question, were you prepared when Asia’s original lineup reunited? I don’t just mean emotionally — I mean financially, which is something a lot of rock fans don’t think about. Put another way: For most of us, an unplanned career shift can have a pretty devastating impact on a person’s lifestyle. Is it any different for someone in your position?

When you have put all your forces into something for 16 years…when that form of Asia was over for me, it had a huge impact on me. I wasn’t prepared for it emotionally or financially. I knew it was always a possibility. However, it was fairly devastating on my life, as all of a sudden I had no touring income or recording income — and added to that, I had a couple of years of legal bills to resolve the name ownership.

What have been some unexpected blessings from the path your career has taken since the Asia reunion? What’s next for you musically?

They say every cloud has a silver lining. I had two paths ahead of me: One was to roll over and give up, and the other was to push myself further and grow. The first project I did was the prog band GPS. GPS featured my two Asia buddies, Guthrie Govan and Jay Schellen, plus Spock’s Beard keyboardist Ryo Okumoto. Our fist album, Window to the Soul, received a lot of critical acclaim, and we’re planning a new CD for next year. Next, I was asked to perform as the Parson (formerly sung by Phil Lynott) in a UK stadium tour of Jeff Wayne’s The War of the Worlds. It was an incredible experience, with a symphony orchestra and many of the original singers and musicians from the groundbreaking album.

Then, I finally finished legal negotiations over the Asia name — hence the birth of Asia featuring my good self. So far, we’ve toured successfully in the U.S.; I’m also pleased to announce that we’ve just finished writing a new Asia featuring John Payne studio CD to be released on Sony and a yet to be announced, high-profile U.S. label. The album is going to be called Arcana, bringing back the A to A titles again. And finally, I’m also working on an incredible project called Decoding the Lost Symbol, which is a concept album to be released within the special edition of the Dan Brown companion book. I’m writing, producing and singing on it, but there are also four very famous guest vocalists also planned for the album. The book’s author, Simon Cox, is a genius — he also wrote the bestseller Cracking the Da Vinci Code. So it’s been very liberating being fully in charge of my own destiny.

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I first heard Bohlke’s work when I was working on my interview with One Life to Live music supervisor Paul Glass. Though our discussion focused mainly on the artists Glass has booked to perform on the series (a list that will expand to include Lionel Richie in September), Glass also uses a fair amount of songs for the show’s ever-popular musical montages. Most of them are by artists who, if they aren’t exactly established, still have some kind of label backing, but that changed when Bohlke’s “The Weight of Us” popped up on One Life‘s May 22 episode:

It’s a hauntingly lovely song — and one that, in contrast to a lot of similarly moody, montage-friendly ballads you hear on TV, rests heavily on an acoustic guitar and understated lead vocal. It isn’t without its melodrama, particularly toward the end, but it reaches its crescendo sensibly and honestly. Television music placement has increased to the point where probably a fourth of the press releases I get say something about how the artist’s music has been featured on an episode of some show or other (usually The Hills), but most of those songs sound like they were made for TV; in contrast, “The Weight of Us” sounds like a stark personal statement that just happened to find its way onto the screen. Once Glass told me about the song, I was intrigued, and set about getting Bohlke’s perspective on his unorthodox career.

Since getting ahold of “The Weight of Us,” I’ve played it for a number of people, and they almost always say “I think I’ve heard this before.” This isn’t a case of mistaken identity; as it turns out, the song has been used by more than one ABC show: It has also been heard on Grey’s Anatomy and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, and made enough fans along the way to inspire a number of YouTube mashups. It’s the kind of cross-promotional bonanza that artists like U2 spend months planning and pay out the nose for, but for Bohlke, things came very differently.

“I was overwhelmed,” he says during our phone conversation. “I wasn’t expecting this at all. I thought it was just a nice little song I was putting out. It just got into the right hands at first, and it was all — it was a lot of phone calls, where someone would say ‘Hey, you want your music to be on this show?’ And I’d say, ‘Yeah!’ So it was really kind of a fortunate thing.

“It wasn’t as planned out as it may seem,” he adds, “or as I probably would have liked.”

Of course, it didn’t all happen by magic. It helps that “Weight” is a drop-dead gorgeous song, and one whose mysterious sadness lends itself well to the tear-soaked travails of your favorite television characters, but there are lots of unsigned artists making plenty of wonderful music; the key ingredient, in Bohlke’s case, was working with the right people — and doggedly following his muse after releasing his self-titled debut in 2006.

“I’ve been on this journey to find the next record for three years now,” he says, “and have recorded all sorts of demos with different people, and it wasn’t coming together. None of it was cohesive, it was all different pieces, and part of it was a result of not having enough money to just go into a studio for a solid couple weeks or month, or whatever.” He eventually started demoing with a songwriter named Chris Keup, and those sessions produced “The Weight of Us.” “We gave it to the guy who’s producing my quote-unquote ‘record,’ and he turned it into what it is now,” Bohlke says. “Chris’ publisher got it into the right hands, and all these people latched onto it. It was one of those things where we have our little ways of getting it into the right hands, but we weren’t overly pursuing getting it onto TV. It was like ‘Okay, here’s a couple of songs, if you like ‘em, use ‘em’ — and it ended up being awesome.”

Part of what’s fascinating about all this is that it wouldn’t have happened 25 years ago — partly because the technology wasn’t in place for artists like Bohlke to give themselves free distribution, and partly because no serious performer wanted his music used in a commercial or as part of a serial drama. It’s a change Bohlke is acutely aware of. “As an artist, you don’t want to be the guy people remember as, ‘Oh yeah, that’s the dude from The O.C.‘ — I know I don’t, really. But at the same time, it’s great. It’s a great avenue for people to hear your music, and I’m for it. But you want people to buy your music because it’s great, and it does something to them, and buy the whole album and be a fan for life. And TV is a good way to do that, but it can be used in different ways, and you never know how it’s gonna be…people could see it on something that’s ‘not cool.’

“I think it’s a great way for people to hear it when they wouldn’t necessarily go find new music,” he concludes. “I put the first record out and thought it would be a stepping stone to the next album, but I never hired anyone to go and push it. We wanted it to be real grass roots. I like that way — people get attached to the stuff that they find on their own, that isn’t shoved down their throats. I like music that I find, more than music that comes through an outlet.” And along those same lines, Bohlke isn’t using his TV-derived success to try and attract the attention of the major labels. “We haven’t really been seeking a record label,” he tells me. “When it comes along, when people are interested, then that’s great, but it hasn’t worked out that we’ve had that. I’ve had some mild success without a label, and it’s been kind of neat not having that. The right label would be great — instead of just having people with a lot of money. Not a lot of labels have been pursuing us, which is fine, but we’ve just been able to do what we do and make a little bit of money at it.”

That “little bit of money” — which will no doubt multiply as the residuals from “Weight” start arriving in Bohlke’s mailbox — has been accrued through regular gigs, as well as the steady stream of downloads of his first album. Assembling a satisfactory full-length follow-up, however, has been problematic.

“We just continue to record music, and it keeps changing,” says Bohlke. “My style keeps changing, my writing — what I like and don’t like changes.” In order to give his fans some new music, and to make sure the strongest tracks actually saw the light of day, Bohlke decided to start releasing a series of digital singles (such as “The Weight of Us”) and EPs. Next up is a pair of songs, “Somewhere” and “The War,” that were written with former Remy Zero guitarist Jeffrey Cain. “We thought these songs needed to be put out, and I was getting afraid — with all the songs I’d done with Jeffrey — that they weren’t going to come out on an album,” Bohlke explains. “Because I lose interest real fast. If I record it and I’m real excited about it, a month later I can change my mind, and that’s what’s been happening. This way — you know, people are buying one song at a time now anyway, so this is a way to still have a cohesive EP or whatever you want to call it, while keeping people happy with short attention spans. The plan is to keep pumping out songs this way — this hodgepodge of songs that doesn’t fit, that are just songs.

“I haven’t really done anything else that sounds like ‘The Weight of Us,’” he adds, “and it would be kind of hard to put that on an album, so now it’s just a single — you know, ‘The Weight of Us’ is just ‘The Weight of Us.’”

Visit Sanders Bohlke at his MySpace page.

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In front of me is a woman named Marcia, who is proudly displaying an album of photos she’s collected from her years as a founder of the “Tahoe Angels,” a group of fans that congregates at the American Century Celebrity Golf Championship every year. It’s a huge undertaking, as you can probably imagine, and one that would be an impressive feat of organizational tenacity even if Marcia were going for the golf, which she isn’t. In fact, for all I know, she actively hates the game; she’s just there to see one of the players. To my left stands a pair of men who spent the previous night on the floor of a casino. And to my right stretches a long line of people — mostly women that might be referred to as “cougars” — who have firmly committed themselves to standing, more or less stock still, in the middle of said casino for the next several hours. Next to me is famed producer and A&R man Peter Lubin, who is incredulously shouting, “You mean there are bootlegs of these shows?”

We are deep in Jack Wagner territory, we are in plain view of the stage where he will perform tonight, and excitement is in the air. It’s mingling with cigarette smoke and the scent of Social Security checks being pissed into slot machines, but it’s still there, and you can still feel it.

To explain how we got here, it’s necessary to travel back in time a little — 25 years, actually, to 1984, when anyone with a solid set of pipes and a decent power ballad had a shot at getting on the radio, and, perhaps more to the point, when ABC’s General Hospital was still just three years removed from setting daytime ratings records with the wedding of its quintessential star-crossed couple, Luke and Laura. It was an era when the soaps, though still the subject of just as much ridicule as they are today, were big moneymakers for the networks, and still — under the right circumstances — a valid platform for launching a pop singing sensation. Quincy Jones certainly thought so; his Warners-distributed Qwest label, then still in its infancy, was eyeing ABC daytime for a good old-fashioned teen idol to market, and they found him in the person of Jack Wagner, a Missouri-born actor who was brought onto the show as a sort of foil for the soon-to-depart John Stamos. With an impressive vocal range, an exquisite mullet, and an expanding role on daytime’s most popular show, Wagner was a star in the making.

Qwest set him up with Glen Ballard and Clif Magness, a production and songwriting team that essentially built the songs for Wagner while he taped General Hospital during the day, then recorded his vocals at night. With a team of session musicians, they completed an EP designed to tie in with Wagner’s on-set performances as Frisco Jones, with one song — the pillow-soft ballad “All I Need” — serving as the love theme for his character’s brief infatuation with a woman who eventually married his brother. (To continue the “singing daytime actor” theme, the character of Frisco’s brother, Tony Jones, was played by Brad Maule, who went on to release a number of country albums. Though Wagner departed GH repeatedly, Maule stayed behind, a loyalty that was rewarded when the show killed his character with a monkey virus in 2006.)

As a song, “All I Need” isn’t much more than a trifle, a moon-eyed souffle of synths and sincere, crystalline vocals with a dash of rock guitar; though certainly quite catchy, it’s no better or worse than, say, Bryan Adams’s “Heaven” or Survivor’s “The Search Is Over” — which is at least part of why it ended up becoming a #2 hit (prevented from reaching the top spot only by Madonna’s “Like a Virgin“). It was absolutely perfect for the era — and perfect for Wagner’s voice, which combined the elastic range of Daryl Hall with the polite Midwestern diction of Kevin Cronin. The type of song, in other words, that’s exceedingly difficult for an artist to follow up — something that became apparent the next year, when Wagner released his second album, Lighting Up the Night.

By this time, Wagner’s GH character was a beat cop, making cross-promotional opportunities less plentiful, and since Qwest had never commissioned a video for “All I Need,” he was nothing but an anonymous balladeer to anyone who wasn’t watching the show. By the time he put out his third record, 1987′s cheekily titled Don’t Give Up Your Day Job, he had flown ABC’s coop for the theater — he starred in productions of Butterfly, West Side Story, and Grease in the late ’80s — but his pop career had gone cold; his last charting single, “Weatherman Says,” petered out before it reached the Top 40.

Wagner continued plugging away at the musical side of his career for a few years — he signed a deal with MCA in 1989, around the time he returned to General Hospital, but left before an album was released, eventually ending up with the tiny independent label BFE Records for 1993′s Alone in a Crowd — but nothing much came of it, and given that he continued to find steady employment as an actor, going from Santa Barbara to Melrose Place to The Bold & the Beautiful over the last decade, music became less of a priority. He became one of those artists people say they’ve never heard of until they hear a few bars of the big hit, and he popped up on a VH1 retrospective or two, but that seemed to be it for his singing career. Until, that is, The Bold & the Beautiful asked him if he’d be interested in cutting a new album, one which would be bankrolled by (and performed on) the show, sold through its website, and — here’s the part where we start making our way back to that casino — promoted with a series of gigs.

That album, Dancing in the Moonlight, is now four years old, and the fact that you’ve likely never heard of it is all we need to say about its commercial fate, but a funny thing happened on the way to Wagner’s re-retirement as a recording artist: He reconnected with the folks who still remembered — and still enjoyed listening to — his records, and discovered that not only were they enthusiastic about coming out to the shows, but they were willing to return every year — particularly at the Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, CT, where he’s been booked every summer for a number of years now.

I’ve always thought (and stated publicly on numerous occasions) that Wagner deserved a fairer shake as a pop singer — partly because my mom’s afternoon viewing habits exposed me to his GH derring-do at that crucial, impressionable age when melodramatic pop songs were like catnip and Shatneresque acting was a pardonable offense, but also because unlike, say, Don Johnson or Michael Damian, Wagner can actually, you know, sing. His first three records were wholly in step with the trends of the day, not to mention impeccably assembled by top-shelf teams of producers and musicians; during the ’90s, when those records were only available on CD in Japan, they commanded obscene prices, even by the usually ridiculous standards of West Coast pop collectors.

As I said, I’ve written about all this before, which is why I was contacted last year by a Wagner fan named Pat who tried to interest me in coming out to 2008′s Mohegan gigs. I declined after learning that Wagner wasn’t interested in doing an interview about his music, but the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that there was an interesting feature in all this, with or without Wagner’s input — and so, when this year’s engagement was announced, I got back in touch with Pat, as well as his friend and fellow fan J.B., and asked them if they could give the Wagner interview another shot — and, barring that, introduce me to some diehard fans.

Which is how I ended up at the Mohegan Sun on July 31, hours and hours before the show, meeting folks like Marcia, or Chrissy and Caroline, the twins who have seen at least 40 Jack Wagner concerts since falling in love with him at a car show in 1984, or Kathy, the petite, doe-eyed blonde who unintentionally sent our pal Mr. Lubin into near shock when she started casually discussing the underground market for 20-year-old Wagner concert bootlegs. It is, in short, every bit the scene I hoped I’d find — I’m surrounded by people who have devoted their entire day to standing in line for a musical performance by a man whose lone hit is a quarter century old. It’s the kind of thing that fascinates me to no end, and even if I were the type of writer who dons sheep’s clothing in order to trick people into giving me quotes that will make them look stupid later on, I think I’d be too charmed by the Wagner fans’ extreme friendliness to ambush them. Is all this devotion a little weird? Indubitably. But none of these folks have that Squeaky Fromme glaze in their eyes; they’re perfectly aware of Wagner’s place in the pop culture universe, and at this point, they seem to be here almost as much for each other as they are for him. As Marcia puts it, “Whether he realizes it or not, he brought a lot of people together as friends.”

That friendly vibe extends all the way to the performer himself, as it turns out: Shortly after Wagner and his band start soundcheck, his manager informs me that Jack’s made time for an interview, and ushers my party — which now includes Michael Parr from Ickmusic as well as the still visibly incredulous Pete Lubin — into a booth where we can watch a final run-through of a set that includes originals as well as a few covers, some of which come off better than others. Watching a spectacularly square rendition of “Before You Accuse Me,” someone at the table remarks, “It must be hard to get the blues on a Bel Air golf course.”

Which is a pretty apt observation, actually; though his music career may not have had very long legs, Wagner’s been able to land an enviable number of high-profile gigs in an industry where lightning doesn’t often strike more than once. He’s a scratch golfer, he’s been on Broadway, he has a pair of healthy kids, and he’s reportedly engaged to Heather Locklear. Whatever disappointments Wagner may have shouldered, you’d expect him to be a guy who understands that his life is pretty good — and he certainly comes across that way in our chat.

“It was really based around the hopes of combining music and television again, like Quincy Jones and I did in the ’80s,” says Wagner of 1993′s attempted comeback, Alone in a Crowd. “It didn’t work out, and that’s where that album went. It isn’t that it wasn’t a good album, it’s just — you know, pop music had changed by that time, in ’92 or ’93, and the Jack Wagners and Richard Marxes weren’t on the radio anymore. So I kind of just stepped out, and then I started on Melrose Place, and I just had to let go of it. It wasn’t something I wanted to chase. I had young children, and to go out on weekends and play around the country 10, 15 weekends a year would just be taking a beating, especially if you don’t have a hit. Now,” he adds, “music for me is just a gift. It’s always been, but now I can just come out and relax. I’m not trying to sell albums, I’m not trying to get on the radio. It’s much more of an enjoyable process for me.”

Touching on the relative invisibility of 2005′s Dancing in the Moonlight — which isn’t available on iTunes at the moment, as rights to the recordings shift from the original holders to Wagner — he makes no bones about the impetus behind the recording, saying The Bold & the Beautiful “asked me if I’d consider getting back into music and combining music and television again.” Reflecting on the album and its commercial performance, he says, “It was a good attempt, and I think overall it was a pretty good record, and it was used a lot on the show — but the music business now is such a strange business. It isn’t like you get the deal, you cut the record, and the A&R people go push it; now, I don’t know what happens. The managers I run into now, and the guys I worked with in the ’80s — they’re confused too. We had pretty decent success — I think I did eight songs from the album on the show, and internationally, we tried to generate something, but there was never any real quarterback behind it to get it into Australia, or these countries where The Bold & the Beautiful has a 60 share, and that was really the goal. But at least from that, I started touring again, and doing some concerts, which is why I’m here; I think we’ve been here six years in a row now, and it’s one of those little treats that gives me a chance to go out and have some fun.”

Given that tying music into his television roles has been such a recurring theme — and because of my own familiarity with his time on General Hospital — I had to ask him how in the world someone who studied acting could wrap his head around the day-to-day reality of playing characters who manage to sing as they’re doing things like saving the world or running a fashion empire. It’s a question that probably should have been answered with a touch of defensiveness, but instead, Wagner laughs, “Well, on General Hospital, I played a guy who was in a band and joined the police force all of a sudden — the ‘singing cop,’ we called him. And Peter Burns on Melrose Place was the chief of staff of a hospital who never did surgery. All he did was have sex. And now Nick Marone on The Bold & the Beautiful is a sea captain turned fashion mogul-slash-singer. So … you know what I mean? You just go with the flow on TV. ‘Yeah! I’ve got it. That’s what I am! I’m a sea captain!’ I grew out a beard for that role, and I had the alcohol and the cigar — you know, a real man’s man — and then, of course, he’s a fashion mogul now, and I went, ‘That’s absolutely what he is. That is absolutely what he should be.’”

Wagner seems to have carried that easygoing attitude over to his outlook on any kind of future for his recording career. When I ask him what the odds for another album are, he shrugs and says, “You know, there aren’t any plans in the works right now, and I don’t know what would really push me to do that. There’s nobody saying ‘Let’s make a record.’ I still write two or three songs a year, and demo them, and play them live sometimes, but … right now there’s nothing in the works.” He adds, “It’s great, though. I’ve accomplished a few goals I set out for myself. For instance, my kids have heard me play my music. Not that it necessarily means anything to them, but I just … you know, like a pro football player who wants his kids to see him play before he’s finished, it may not have an impact on them, but they’ll have an understanding of who their father was. That was a big step for me. Now it’s just about having fun. If I have fun, the audience has fun.”

When I tell him the angle I’m planning for my piece — the idea that even though we like to think an artist’s career is over once the hits dry up, fanhood often proves surprisingly long-lasting, and the fans who are lined up outside the theater to see him perform are an example — he hastens to remind me that he’s been luckier than most, saying, “Well, a lot of that has to do with the fact that I’m still visible. I’m still on TV, and you can never discount that. Everyone will tell you that you always need to stay on the boards. As long as you’re still out there, you’re still alive. If you’re not working, you’re easily forgotten — I don’t care if you had a hit or didn’t have a hit, it’s just a simple fact of the entertainment business.”

He’s certainly right. But as I return to the VIP booth secured by Pat and J.B., I can’t help but be impressed by the sheer good-heartedness of the people I’ve met here — we get a visit from one of the twins, at one point, making sure we’re having a good time — as well as the cuckoo devotion behind it all. One woman, we’re told, straps on a fake neck brace every year, just so she can try and get a better seat; not to be outdone, others fake injuries or disabilities to secure a motorized cart from the casino to make waiting in line more comfortable. Most of these people, as far as I can tell, have been following Wagner’s career for 20 years or more; many of them know each other, and they’re all screaming like lunatics by the time he takes the stage shortly after 8 PM.

Much as I’ve often defended Wagner’s vocal talent, and much as I think he could’ve made a bigger name for himself as a singer if he hadn’t been an actor, I can’t necessarily vouch for a lot of the stuff on those albums; I admit, I was expecting a performance that gave off the slight whiff of Velveeta. But here’s the thing: As I sat at that table with Michael and his wife, and listened to those people scream, and watched Wagner and his band grin and dance like ninnies, any sense of ironic detachment I may have had about the whole thing just melted away. Wagner said it best: If he has fun, the audience has fun, and that’s what that night was all about. Though the set list made room for a deadly run of “unplugged” tunes that included an extremely ill-advised cover of “Down by the River,” there were also a lot of high points, like the new song “John Wayne,” or the unreleased fan favorite “The Right Key.”

The last member of our party, Popdose’s own Jason Hare, arrived too late for the stronger opening set and too early to miss some of the more unfortunate numbers (including, yes, “Before You Accuse Me”), but he didn’t miss the undisputed highlight of the evening, a set-closing rendition of “All I Need” that Wagner performed in the original key — no small feat for a song that was tough to tackle 25 years ago — hitting all the high notes. Jason’s cynicism was running pretty high before the opening chords of “All I Need” — I was actually starting to feel kind of bad for getting him to come out from New York for the show, and I’m the guy who made him listen to Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music — but at the end of the song, when Wagner reached that fluttery falsetto run, Jason jumped to his feet, dropping his phone on the floor in the process and instantly creating an anecdote that’s already been re-tweeted several dozen times.

I repeat it here to embarrass Jason, and also to provide a sort of example of what keeps these folks coming back to the Mohegan Sun every year. Wagner isn’t the world’s biggest star, I’m guessing he probably isn’t daytime’s finest actor, and as a songwriter, he’s no Bob Dylan. But he most certainly is an entertainer, and one whose gifts have most likely never been given their due. I think there might be something sort of noble about that. And even if it isn’t, at least now I can say I’ve seen Jack Wagner floss his crotch with a sweaty towel and throw it to a woman who may or may not have been wearing a fake neck brace.

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All of which is my way of telling you that, if you live in the Connecticut area, next Friday is your chance to do two things:

1. Meet up with me, Jason Hare, and our pal Michael Parr from Ickmusic
2. See television heartthrob Jack Wagner perform live and in concert

What’s that, you say? You didn’t know that the guy who played Dr. Peter Burns on Melrose Place was a singer? Oh, for shame! You must not remember his #2 hit “All I Need,” which clambered up the charts in late 1984 while Wagner was making love in the afternoon as General Hospital‘s singer/adventurer/cop/superspy Andrew “Frisco” Jones. Allow me to refresh your memory:

Anyway, here’s the deal: 25 years after scoring his biggest hit, and more than 20 years after making his last appearance on the Billboard charts, Wagner — who currently spends his days playing the occasionally tuneful fashion magnate Dominic “Nick” Marone on The Bold & the Beautiful — is still packing ‘em in for his periodic concert dates. He’s mostly abandoned his music career (his most recent album, 2005′s Dancing in the Moonlight, was released as a sort of promotional tie-in with his B&B gig), but when he decides to get the band together and hit the road, his fans show up in droves…as they surely will on July 31, when Wagner makes what is becoming his annual pilgrimage to the Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, CT.

As I’ve mentioned several times before, I am not ashamed to admit that I spent my youth as an ardent fan of Wagner’s music, not to mention his globetrotting, bad-guy-busting antics on GH. (Okay, maybe I am ashamed. But when you’re 10 years old and the show your mom is watching when you come home from school features a character who foils Aztec treasure thieves, prowls the catacombs of a quaint New York burg while pursuing the head of the Chinese mafia, and scores a hit single, well, you’re pretty much done for.) I listened to All I Need, 1985′s Lighting up the Night, and 1987′s Don’t Give up Your Day Job more times than I can count, and interviewed him prior to the release of 1993′s Alone in a Crowd. Though I rarely listen to those records anymore, I still maintain that, had he not been saddled with the “singing actor” stigma — particularly in the era that gave us Don Johnson and Bruce Willis albums — he would have been able to score at least as many hits as, say, Glenn Medeiros. He can sing, after all, and although his ’80s records may sound…’80s now, they fit right in with the aesthetic of the day.

So my plan is to head out to Uncasville early next Friday and set up camp at the Mohegan Sun, where I’ll be talking with some of the Wagner fans who will be cooling their heels in line for (free) tickets, knocking back some libations with Jason and Michael, taking in the show, and maybe — hopefully — speaking with Jack Wagner himself. I come not to bury Mr. Wagner, but to give our readers a look at just how persistent fanhood can be, even for artists commonly regarded as footnotes. If you can make it out, we’ll see you there; if not, I’ll see you here in a couple of weeks with my report from the show. ‘Til then!

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