Starting my 3rd Band

This unique lifestyle of working, parenting, playing music, and enjoying live, professionally produced music really helped me get the most out of life. I began playing open mics and solo shows throughout the rest of the fall onto the winter as Victory Swig.

My only intentions for that project was to keep me practicing and playing shows around town.

My car mechanic, whom I jokingly called my “karma-chanic”, found out that I was a musician, and said that he wanted to get back into playing music. Bret came to one of my shows at a local grub pub, Broken Top Bottleshop, and told me he was really interested in starting a band with me.

After about six months of playing solo, I decided to take Bret up on the offer after some confusion about my solo project.

I was booked for a brewery patio show at Crux, a very popular brewery that has a spectacular view of the sunset and mountains. “Wait a minute,” said the brewery house manager while I was packing out my gear, “We thought Victory Swig was a band, not a solo act.”

I had the tendency to say “We’d like to play…” for my pitches to venues, as if Victory Swig was this fully staffed music project with agents and managers. Understandably, they took it as a full band wanting to play.

I thought it would be nice to have a dad band again anyway, and went over to practice in Bret’s living room. He plays the bass, and after few practices we had a drummer over who also was an amazing singer. After a live show, we had a steel drum player who filled in as a drummer when needed. After a month, we had a great guitar player. The whole band appeared out of nowhere, and we sounded amazing. It really showcased to me how much I have grown as an artist to work with seasoned musicians and build an entirely new project from scratch, and end up getting booked on the same stages that took me seemingly ages to book earlier. It was a great feeling of accomplishment to finally be at the level I had always aspired to be.

As I started to get more involved in the tourism industry, I also started making more connections with tourism leaders, and started to explore business opportunities outside of performing. I started taking side jobs that were directly tied to music, like being contracted to book out the bands for a local beer festival at the Old Mill District.

I also started exploring booking top name bands to perform a high-dollar house concerts in large vacation rentals. It was a cool launch back into creative entrepreneurship. I finally had the confidence to tell people that I was a local musician with the track record to prove it, and I had the energy to start making money from a passion I discovered within the decade that I knew I was going to enjoy for the rest of my life.

New adventures were around the corner that would soon take me down yet another career path, taking me around the globe again. My wife and I would continue to be loyal live music vacationers, and our young children would grow to become happy live music fans with us.