Writing with a collaborator is like weird science. It’s not like I haven’t done this before. I have successfully. It’s about chemistry but the right chemicals in the wrong place can run from ineffective to volatile. Two front men collaborating? Like who is gonna sing this baby, for one thing? I don’t know how Lennon and McCartney did it, really. No wonder John became a junkie. Two amazing talents who were both used to being front men. Yet the chemistry was special until they could’t stand it anymore. I really don’t blame them. I completely understand. You can’t blame it all on Yoko. I’ve learned that for me, at least, the best collaboration is one where each party brings something different yet needed to the table. Knives and forks. Appetizer and entree. Milk and honey. With Jax Resto and me it’s words and music. Melody and groove. Beauty and the beast. It’s working out great so far. We can’t wait to get a good recording and release this stuff. But there’s still a lot of work to do. You can argue that nothing is ever finished and you’d be right. But in this case, it’s only just started, past infant stage, all the way up into adolescence actually. But I’ll wait for at least young adulthood to show the world what we have here. My own recording skills are much too sub par to inflict this on anyone. Must have some pro help and we will get it. This collaboration discovery is the second most important thing I’ve learned since being in the biz. The first was that every writer or artist of any sort, needs a trusted editor. I need somebody I trust to tell me when I suck. Thankfully, I have my producer, Helen Avakian for that. It’d probably be a good idea to find others like Helen to help me with other genres but I haven’t started that search yet. And Helen and I were years in the making. I pass this advice on to every writer of any sort I know. Get a Helen. And get a Jax. Then you’ll get your groove on.
