These Are Ghosts, Not Spirits
Protecting your soul amongst the soulless
Just want to take a moment to say that this tour so far has been so fun, legitimately putting us all in such a good mood, band and crew. It’s a lightness and energy I have not felt on stage in many, many years, and I hope you all can make it out to some of the remaining shows. A lot of these are close to if not sold out—to any paying subscribers, we can hopefully try to find a way to get you into these shows if you’re on the annual tier or have been a a paying subscriber for longer than a few months. That being said, I can’t make any promises, other than I don’t think we’ll come close to letting any of you down with this new show. It’s been such a blast building PP up again. Join us if you can!
Sunday, July 19 @ 7:00PM Minnesota Yacht Club Festival 2026 Harriet Island Regional Park, Saint Paul, MN
Sunday, July 19 @ 8:00PM Minnesota Yacht Club Minnesota Yacht Club, Saint Paul,MN
Monday, July 20 @ 8:00PM Riviera Theater Riviera Theater, Chicago, IL
Wednesday, July 22 @ 8:00PM Electric CityElectric City, Buffalo, NY
Friday, July 24 @ 8:00PM House of BluesCitizens House of Blues, Boston, MA
Saturday, July 25 @ 8:00PM The Rooftop at Pier 17 The Rooftop at Pier 17, New York, NY
Sunday, July 26 @ 8:00PM The Fillmore The Fillmore Philadelphia- Stage door, Philadelphia, PA
Tuesday, July 28 @ 8:00PM 9:30 Club 9:30 Club, Washington, DC
Wednesday, July 29 @ 8:00PM 9:30 Club 9:30 Club, Washington, DC
Friday, July 31 @ 8:00PM The Ritz The Ritz, Raleigh, NC
Saturday, August 1 @ 8:00PM The Eastern The Eastern, Atlanta, GA
Monday, August 3 @ 8:00PM Tower Theatre Tower Theatre, Oklahoma City, OK
Wednesday, August 5 @ 8:00PM Van BurenThe Van Buren, Phoenix, AZ
Friday, August 7 @ 7:00PMUp In The Sky Music Festival 2026Buttermilk, Aspen, CO
Saturday, August 8 @ 8:00PM Up In The Sky Festival - DJ Set (aftershow) Up In The Sky Festival - DJ Set (aftershow), Aspen, CO
Sunday, August 9 @ 8:00PM Ogden Theatre Ogden Theatre, Denver, CO
Tuesday, August 11 @ 8:00PM Complex - Rockwell The Complex, Salt Lake City, UT
Thursday, August 13 @ 8:00PM Showbox SoDo Showbox SoDo, Seattle, WA
Friday, August 14 @ 8:00PM Roseland Theater Roseland Theater, Portland, OR
Sunday, August 16 @ 8:00PM Fox Theatre Fox Theatre, Oakland, CA
Tuesday, August 18 @ 8:00PM The Bellwether The Bellwether, Los Angeles, CA
Wednesday, August 19 @ 8:00PM The Bellwether The Bellwether, Los Angeles, CA
These Are Ghosts, Not Spirits
Who upon the precipice of reentering a brutal and competitive profession in the arts could possibly be miraculously immune to all the darkness that infamously shrouds those who endeavor to do the same? You—what point are you at in your life, at thirty-nine years old, knowing nothing but rejection or low-balling while eyeing the very numbers that would indicate otherwise, and what are your weaknesses in moments of despair?
In answering, I’d say typically, for me, it’s just been my loneliness. All dark paths I’ve gone down, all darkness in general has befallen me in some kind of isolation. Whether from illness or from the scheduling and realities of my business, lack of willpower to overcome it or the massive forces compelling me to surrender to the arresting forces of feeling lost and unwanted, not good enough or just too much baggage for others, there I’d be. And alone.
This is an enormously common, very familiar feeling. It just becomes exaggerated when from the earliest points of your adult life, before you could even legally drink, you’d walk out to a sold out crowd singing all your songs and heaping praise upon you. Conflating that praise for your work with praise for you is not so hard to understand in a younger person, but unfortunately that becomes the templar. If not a roaring crowd and the business booming behind you, who are you?
It took me years and years to begin to understand the toll this had taken on me and in many ways everyone around me. Nobody really prepares you for this kind of thing, each artist carves their own distinct path and, indeed, I carved an incredibly distinct and frankly distinguished one, but you’d never guess I did from how I felt about myself or my work or my performances. As I’ve said before, each night I’d get off the stage, at the peak of my carer even, and ask my friend Sal “how bad was it?” in one way or another. I’d never believe anyone when they said it was good.
And when I’d return home after these massive jaunts finding you plopped in front of thousands of people roaring back at you, you’d feel no different. There you were, on a bus with your friends and colleagues, another bus with the crew, a semi with your gear—just as we were last month and just as we’ll return to being in the next few days—and then there you are in a living room with your ex-wife, feeling just the same. I knew something was off, I knew a few circuits had been blown, I just didn’t know where it’d lead me. I wish I had.
It first led me to wanting to kill off touring essentially after some international issues with some festivals left me with less money than I needed, and then suddenly touring and the way we had been presenting the show (which was artistically and financially exhausting and boring) just made no sense. Really, if you saw the backend and truly understood what piques me interest artistically, this was a smart move but not smart without having a plan for what would be next.
But I had money, and a lot of money coming in. I had no financial planning, I was going through a needlessly expensive divorce (to me ex-spouse’s credit, she did suggest mediation, though on the subject of weakness, there’s a reason why I resisted, in no way speculating as to their intentions at that time at least), I had a former colleague doing the exact opposite of what everyone else who went on to do other things after the three album push and suing the bejesus out of me with a lawyer I came face to face with (and my lawyer and I marveled at his insane demeanor), I was not speaking with my family, I was confused about everything and anything, and lo and behold: less than a year later, I was broke.
I went broke not just because of my spending—it was a lot of things, but for years I’d be paralyzed by the shame and guilt of it all.
I bought anything and everything for people. Most people just assumed I would, honestly. It was weird. If we dined at a place that was more expensive at my choosing, I’d take the bill, but no one chipped in even the slightest bit. I remember each and every person that would attempt to, and I’d brush them off. I was powerful. Buying food and treating my friends was a delight to me. I still do not hold any of this over anyone’s head, it was my choice and 95% of the time it truly brought me joy. It was not a power dynamic thing—sometimes I just wanted a great meal.
But then it became buying the company of friends, and you find this with many artists at all kinds of different levels, maybe even other weirdos who make lots of money but have no social skills. The latter, through my friend who works in nightlife, really buy their friends, but their friends are complete strangers; hot girls looking for who knows what, strange guy tag-alongs usually witty and charming and who bring the drugs, powerbrokers or people in town looking for a good time who they’re doing business with.
Yeah, none of that on my end. Well, maybe drugs sometimes. Just…buying projects to work on with people that were my dreams, always sullied by the laundering of my feelings of loneliness through the companionship these collaborative works would appear to provide.
My friends, the old friends from college, the other friends I had made, were so had to make plans with. Was I too demanding of their time? What did I expect of them? Had everyone become an employee?
I was doing trauma therapy in 2020 with someone who noted “michael, you don’t pay people to be your friend” but in my industry, go ahead: ask most artists who build camps after a certain point if they haven’t wrestled with the same feeling. Because it was never, ever a way to impose power over or demand unnatural things of them. It was just that…I didn’t feel worthy, or didn’t know how, to just be a friend anymore.
At the core of myself is an earnest desire to feel safe and without ever impeding on anyone else’s safety or desires. Always wanting, as I said to Damien Jurado in our chat the other day, the feeling of having a team, having friends around the protect me. That earliest templar was extremely blurry as to where the friend ended and the employee began—everyone, everyone who I considered a friend at that point, having left my college life and friends behind, was in some way profiting off of me. Not that this was a bad thing, but certainly at the age of twenty-one is it not the greatest thing when the reward for this type of relationship was in effect the same as what friends do, but the friends don’t go away when the money dries up or the project ends. And as these were older people, they’d gone through these processes before. I just thought it’d never end—I was naive.
In the event that I’d ever impede on someone else’s safety or desire, it often was tied to some sort of mood related thing but by the time I hit my early thirties this just wasn’t an excuse anymore. So if itever happened, perhaps when I was younger like in my twenties, I would probably freak out and not be able to compute but would always come down and be frank about it at some point—the ego of the twenties is a monstrous thing, may it rest in peace.
It took a lot of humbling experiences to break the shell around me only to reveal that I am…just like everyone else, everyone else is just like me, nobody really cares, get over yourself. But then in such a reversal did it wallop me with the reality that people do not always view me in the same way. They see opportunity, something to gain, something to profit off of.
Well, I’d forgotten that I had so many people on double-guard duty for me thanks to my sheer dumbness—I just don’t see how people can think this way. Each and every time I would, I would actually take a step back with my doctor’s and be like, “I think I’m getting a bit deluded in terms of self-importance, grandiosity, borderline paranoid” and we’d talk it out. A lot of times it was just a “leave it to the people who do this for you” situation or I’d get a stern talking to from my psychiatrist in particular. She was always right.
But even in better health, with more “wisdom” or lived-life experience, I cannot say much has changed, and this concerns me as a partner. I care for my wife. We are early in our marriage, but for the amount of time we’ve been together, have faced and tackled down a lot. Like, a lot—a lot of getting stuff out of the way, understanding our weaknesses, finding the best ways to equal things out.
It’s exactly as I imagined, I didn’t see it going any other way save for how we'll we’ve managed it. We’ve exceeded my expectations and continue to, mostly I’m proud of my how much I’ve been willing to develop. Leaps and bounds, I think.
The most joy I’ve had besides musical and artistic breakthroughs has been in sharing them with her, for our work together on ourselves, independently and collectively is what drives my desire to take the risk and get back into things at all. Mistakes, errors in judgement, and miscommunications melt the closer we get to doing what years and years of dealing with similar types of people have taught us not to do: to trust.
But you can have those moments of weakness. You can have anger and pride well inside you as the pressure is put on and the stakes rise and you feel, like a child, unsupported. No matter how much you think you know it costs in those moments of being difficult, you still discount that those periods are when you are most susceptible to being taken advantage of, and despite protestations from everyone, you still think you’ll be proven right and they’ll be wrong, and then always, when borne during these periods, are they proven right.
Interestingly, so used am I to having my ego totally shattered in front of everyone that I’m not so sure that’s really what registers, but rather its the underpinnings of that pride that do, and they’re real life issues.
As a partner, you want to always provide safety and stability, to not allow outsiders in to access incredibly personal information, especially about your wife and your business, the business you both rely on as you’re building a future together.
So what message does it send? To her and to everyone else? Even when she says she doesn’t judge me for it, it would be insane of her to not count it towards what we’ve both agreed as the need for developing an interceptive system.
What drove people away was a bit overkill beforehand, the managerial system that kind of did a lot of good work but also, in today’s age, counteracts how we mostly do business and is just enormously costly at the same time.
But as we build a team and learn from these mistakes and I explore my weaknesses further, I just go back to the same thing every time, and in this situation I am a man married to a woman I want to protect and that’s not something being disputed insofar as intent or power dynamics are concerned:
In my weakest hours, I know truly, deep down, I never simply think solely of myself now. Everything is me in relation to my partner at the least, a choice to answer to or merely defy.
And maybe now is the time to really learn the lesson that when I am at my loneliest, even when together, even in a crowd, I am at my most self-serving and self-soothing—essentially compromised—and if in that moment our partners, family, and friends are not providing that, we should first consult them, have harder conversations with them, before adding strangers into the mix.
We’d certainly want them to do the same.
Because alone, we are eager and excited. So excited am I to embark on a new project with a new friend that would appear that way to me, that I’d sell to anyone who’d listen, while essentially inviting parasitic wolves into my den, always being available, always stirring up trouble, mirroring my earnestness, sometimes following through but always, always capitalizing on my isolated loneliness.
It would take lawyers, long periods of extrication, multiple hospitalizations, and rehab to severe ties. Some ties have not been able to be fully severed—completely baffling, as it only implicates parties more. But I thank those who peacefully parted ways with me and left me in in peace. They know I’m not vindictive, and some even majorly contributed in meaningful ways that I’d never discount, but in the end, these few exceptions are outnumbered by the rest.
The images of abundance you see are from all these famous people now talking “honestly” on podcasts about their loneliness is just part of a whole dark and sinister world that Nathalie Martinek PhD does a fantastic job of describing.
They are everywhere, and to all those seeking success and fame, I truly suggest you prepare yourself in a healthy manner. Nothing can compare to the beauty of reaching many people, but nothing’s more important than protecting yourself and your loved ones.