ANYONE WHO WANTS TO COME TO THE GRATITUDE-THEMED ONLINE SHOW SUNDAY AUG 9, CLICK HERE TO JOIN IN ON PSONGS AND I'LL SEND INFO OUT SUNDAY MORNING!

We had some songs, but we weren't really a band yet. I remember I was walking down Geary when the word 'gratitude' popped into my head as a potential band name. I figured it had already been used a bunch, but when I searched, the closest anyone got was a band called Gratidude. The fact that no one else had just used such a great word made me want to use it that much more. It turned out to be a perfect name for us on so many levels. I wanted the music to sound like the band name: sincere & wide open. On a personal level, the band name kept me grounded through the crazy ride the band turned out to be. I write about it lots in Alone Rewinding, but the short version is that we got signed to a pretty big record deal (relatively speaking) just as the age of the big record deal was ending. For a few months, we were the band that the whole label was pushing. We'd been signed by the president of Atlantic, which was one of the more iconic labels of my childhood. They had just changed their logo, and I worked it out so we could use the old logo that was on the early Zeppelin stuff. I had as much fun as I could with all the promotion, and as usual, I didn't do well with the pressure that came with the industry part of the music. I had a real good thing going with my indie/DIY solo stuff, and I didn't want to lose that trying to get famous. As I tried to live in both worlds at once, they both pretty much collapsed, and so did I. In the end, the thing I love most about the band name is that it reminded me to appreciate all the ups and downs of trying to make things for a living. It still does. Guess I'm a gratidude after all.