The last time that I rehearsed with my band was one of the worst rehearsals I’ve ever had. I was visiting New Jersey for my bachelor party back in February 2020 and had been looking forward to the first opportunity I had to jam with my bandmates since our tour in April/May of 2019. We had lots of new material to work with and were planning to sort out how we’d be attacking things moving forward. The day started well enough as I caught up with a couple of my bandmates and got my gear prepped to play. One of my bandmates showed up an hour late and a cloud of negativity quickly filled the room. It was hard to escape the feeling that no one wanted to be there and my own enthusiasm began to deflate. How did we get here? What happened over the last 9 months where this band went from being at a career high to this? Luckily, I was able to steer the ship in the right direction before the rehearsal ended by switching gears to one of my tunes. Smiles returned and heads were "banging" but it all felt like too little too late. This was the last time that I played music with other people for over 3 years. Suffice it to say the taste in my mouth had soured considerably. 

Last month, I flew back to New Jersey for my sister-n-law’s wedding and was able to schedule a rehearsal with ITPOW mk.2, as I’ve been referring to my band, In The Presence Of Wolves, since losing 2 of our members a couple of years ago. My longtime bandmate, Mason Ingling, and I were equal parts nervous and excited for this practice as there were lots of questions that needed answering. Would Mason feel comfortable switching from drums to rhythm guitar and vocals? Would we be able to get along personally and musically with the players who were rounding out the band? Would the same excitement be there that we used to enjoy with our old bandmates? Amidst all of these, I had an additional question that was far more personal that I was eager to have answered. What does it feel like to play in a band again?

The last few years haven’t been the kindest to my musical expression. I’ve had countless stops and starts, hopes and letdowns, and I’ve found myself almost cocooned in musical solitude. The creative process is one that requires a certain degree of vulnerability and I’ve always struggled with letting other people in. This was counter to my bandmates, who usually thrived on collaboration. Before moving to Atlanta, my comfort zone within the band turned into one where I was acting more like a producer helping develop music the other guys were coming up with while I’d hoard my own musical ideas and keep them close to the chest until they felt just right. This method was only compounded by my geographical distance from the rest of the band AND a global pandemic. I could retreat into the perceived safety of my studio away from the world and tweak away until I reached perfection.

Through all of this, I found myself ending up in a place that was far from where I wanted to be. As I had to shift the focus of my music time to writing vocal parts and lyrics for our new material, I became less likely to do anything band related. It also didn’t help that I was dealing with depression, something that’s still very new to me as of the pandemic. Music had lost a fair amount of its luster and the time I’d usually spend on it was now being spent begrudgingly playing with my demanding cat or, worse, in bed looking at my phone. Luckily, I recognized how I was feeling and was able to make a concerted effort towards getting better before the upcoming Jersey trip. The depression eventually broke and I found myself not only reinvigorated but greatly looking forward to the wedding and the band rehearsal. 

I drove over with Mason and I was feeling nothing but excitement. Truthfully, there were a lot of elements to jamming that I’d forgotten about: the slightly awkward time setting up your gear, trying to set levels while everybody plays an open E chord as loudly as possible, not being able to hear anything remotely clearly. I relished in all of it. We launched into the first tune, “The One Who Fell To Earth” off of our last record, and we were off to the races. It was fairly rough as some cues were missed, some time signature changes flubbed, the drummer overplayed through most of the song, and I couldn’t hear 99% of what I played, but let me tell ya… it was so much fun. There’s something visceral about a bunch of people playing loudly in a room that has to be experienced to be understood. It’s one thing to be in the crowd at a concert but it’s another thing entirely to be a participant, controlling the vibrations that surround your body and feeding it back through your playing. It was near impossible restraining my face muscles from smiling like Jack Nicholson’s Joker in the 1989 Batman movie. Perhaps most importantly, though, was that everyone was excited to be there. I could feel it in the air, I could see it on their faces, I could hear it through the cadence of their speech between songs. In times like these, I try to remember a quote that showed up in every one of author Kurt Vonnegut’s commencement speeches that resonated with me so vividly, “If this isn’t nice, what is?”

Since then, my success rate of keeping myself open to collaboration has been hit or miss, but at least I’ve made strides to be more willing to indulge in it. Mason and I will be planning more regular chats to work on music remotely, which I’m hoping will help me open up more as we continue work on our next album. Just as importantly, I’m looking forward to backing up Maple Street’s own John Cable for an upcoming performance at Waller’s Coffee House in August (more info in next month’s newsletter if not also in this one!). Aaron will be joining us as we reinterpret John’s songs for a new group and it’s been so helpful to be able to do some guitar-related things when the motivation for working on vocal parts isn’t there. It’s been over 4 years since my last public performance and I’ve been craving the opportunity to get back out on the stage. It’s not quite the same context I’m used to, seeing as how I’m trading the aggressive music and stage antics of ITPOW for John’s Americana-tinged singer-songwriter approach, but I’m looking forward to it all the same. Music is better when it’s shared with other people and that’s a lesson that I appear to constantly be relearning. Hopefully, I’ll make it stick this time. 
Chris Capitanio, 2023