Here we are, still debating whether or not the plague is a politically-motivated hoax and whether or not people of color are… yaknow, people. This was not the 2020 Gene Roddenberry promised us. I suppose as long as we don’t get the future Galactica 1980 promised us, we’ll call it even.

Since I refuse to fall into the clickbaity “10 Things You Can Do In Lockdown” style of posting, why don’t we share one thing we’re doing with ourselves these days? (No, not that, pervert.) I’ll start: In a word, my answer is simplification.
Burning Man People
I’ve always felt that there are two kinds of people out there: Checklist people and Burning Man people. I’m solidly one of the former, tho a lot of my friends are in the latter literal camp. Those friends function well amid chaos– impulse driven, right-brained, free-spirited. I’ve seen people flourish amid fluid guidelines and plans.

Not me.

I am the man with a thousand Google Keep notes, all of them pinned. I have checklists for my checklists. The routine comforts me where it might make one of the Burners feel trapped. So, as you can probably guess, the chaos of the past four years and the concentrated chaos of the past four months has thrown me off at a visceral level.

I want my Federation future– ordered, peaceful, respectful, fact-based, scientific, clean. This Galactica future– chaotic, survivalist, unequal, and reactionary –just makes my neck tense.
Generating The Procedure
I’ve mentioned before that art and creation, to me, is all an effort to solve some big equation. Taking that concept a step further, how about this: It’s more satisfying to me to tinker with the procedure that creates the art than it is to tinker with the art itself.

Lemme back that up a bit… Every song I release is like a lump of clay that has to be molded into a sculpture. Rather than get my hands dirty squishing the clay itself, I’m far more inclined to machine some kind of mold. Technical, procedural, not “this doesn’t look right so I’ll adjust it a little.” There’s something satisfying about a process that just works. Reliably. Repeatedly.

I don’t want a hit song that’s accidental, I want it to be the result of a method. As with everything else, I want the system to create positive results every time. And if the results don’t work, it’s better to fix the system than just patch up the problem areas.
Less Is More
To that end, I’ve been trying to cut the chaos from my life. As a self-employed artist, every morning is chaos if you don’t have a procedure. Every morning I stare at my screen with a sense of “what the fuck do I do now?”

Okay, so… that’s probably how most of you feel as well. But most of you have a boss that can answer that question to some degree or another.

Right now I am working on the Procedure of My Life. Identifying bad habits, inefficiencies, and time-wasters, and eliminating them. More than anything else, I’m trying to distill the strongest spirits from the chaotic mash of my daily routine.

It’s the same hard lesson I’ve been learning for twenty years now in music: Less is fucking more. Life is poetry; the more you can say in fewer words, the more effective you will become. Fewer steps, fewer instruments, fewer moving parts. Clean, well-let LCARS control panels, not Galactica’s sea of buttons and switches.

Einstein knew a simple equation was the ultimate goal, maybe that’s why he was a genius.

If this pandemic has given me nothing else, it’s an opportunity to reorganize and prioritize and work on the procedure that drives my life. It’s time to fix the system and stop reacting to symptoms. So while I’m busy reprogramming Bird One, what are you doing?

Hello again, old friend. It’s been too long. Let’s catch up.

Usually people say that as a means of politely begging forgiveness for their inability to maintain a relationship with no intention of actually following through. Right now, I need to follow through and catch you up on what’s been going on for nearly thirteen years now. It’s not an easy story for me to tell, but I promise there’s a happy ending. Grab a cup and let’s do this.

Depression, Addiction, and Cognitive Dissonance

Ignore the dramatic headline, I already told you there’s a happy ending.

I didn’t realize how addicted I’d become until maybe 2016. I suppose that’s normal; most addicts don’t jump head-first into dependency. It creeps up on you. Back in 2005 I wrote a lengthy song about addiction to caffeine and beer that seemed to resonate with some people, but I was never addicted to either. My drug was more pernicious. I’ve been mainlining the same publicly-accepted drug since I was a kid, in fact: Attention.

So when the podcast wave of 2005-2008 carried me to a magical land with no day job, I was ecstatic. Attention came easier than coke in Miami. The Furries also took me in as their star performer and, finally, I found myself touring the nation. Every time I looked out into a dark ballroom to see hundreds of people singing my songs back to me, I felt the kind of rush that makes addicts forget to eat or sleep. The peak of this attention— which we’ll lovingly refer to as “rock bottom” —was probably Anthrocon 2013.

Fuck, Runtt and I looked good on steadicam.

But that was the beginning of the crash. Podcasting and live streaming went from the hot new technology with a tight-knit community to everyday background noise. The Furry fandom got tired of seeing me and my amazing bald companion at every convention, but I wasn’t ready to let go. I had tasted that high and I wanted more.

From 2012 right up until 2017 I kept grasping for that attention-high only to have it dissolve in my fingertips. I tried everything I could think of– writing songs about trendy geek topics, spicing up the live shows with Sci-Fi themes, but no one outside a small core of followers seemed to know who I was any more. The high just couldn’t reach that 2013 peak, and I couldn’t face a future without all that glorious attention.

Fortunately the path downhill was paved with lyrics. My last foray into the world of piano rock emerged in June 2017. I’m still proud of Cognitive Dissonance, even if it reminds me of just how depressed I’d been for that half of the decade. Like most folks fighting their demons, it holds up a whimsical façade and a veneer of optimism, but everyone can see the darkness within.

Thank God I had a strong, steady man in my life all this time, I’m not sure how I would’ve fared without him.

It got to the point, near the end of 2017, when I just stopped booking shows. I stopped blogging and sending you emails. I would sit at my desk in the morning and stare at the screen with no clue what to do. Wasn’t I creative enough to make people pay attention any more? Wasn’t I good enough to be the center of attention again? Shit needed to change, and fast.

So we moved to Seattle, but that’s another story.

As I packed all of my belongings, I realized there was a lot I needed to throw out… first and foremost, my addiction to attention. But what would that leave me with? I had to redefine my identity in a way that was both healthy and sustainable. I had to ask myself a difficult question: Why did I get into this business in the first place?

An Apology to the Robot Army

People still ask me if I’m ever going to release another piano rock album. I know, if you’re reading this, it’s probably because you saw me on stage at a convention banging on a keyboard, not spinning turntables. The only answer I can give you is gonna sound like a copout: Maybe.

EDM wasn’t that far of a leap for me, to be honest. The event that sparked my love for making music was a single night with a piece of gear that plugged into my digital piano. If you want to hear that story, let me know and I’ll spin up another blog post. Suffice it to say, however, that I probably should’ve gone into electronic music genres right from age 12. No matter what, I never ever should’ve dabbled in Christian pop (sorry, Mom). But I’ve already made a major genre-shift once before, and I needed to now.

I had to decide if I was going to die on the hill of piano-geek-rock or retool the factory to make a product that would actually sell.

(Spoiler: I did not, in fact, die.)

You see, part of the healing process was what I call “retooling the factory.” When a company makes a product (let’s say 8-track tape decks) and the world starts listening to cassettes, they have to decide what their product is going to be. Actually, to be more specific, they have to decide what their identity is going to be… an 8-track deck company, or an audiovisual gear company? I mean, there are always going to be 8-track enthusiasts, but do we cater to that niche or change our product? Why did we get into this business in the first place?

And here’s where we swing back around to that pesky attention addiction of mine. In this business, attention is both a drug and the primary source of income. What a fucking dilemma, huh?

On one hand, the need for attention is an unhealthy way to gauge one’s self-worth. On the other, it’s the primary indicator for how well a performing artist is doing.

It took a lot— a lot –of soul-searching to realize dance music could decouple my addiction from the real business necessity of growing my audience again. Switching my primary instrument from keys to turntables made it easier for me to get out of the way and let the music itself be the center of attention.

And Avian Invasion was born. You should go check him out… more on that at the end of this long-ass update.

So, for those of you asking if I’ll get back into piano rock… I want you to understand that I cherish you greatly. I love you. I want to make the music that made you happy back then, I really do. The hard business truth is that there simply weren’t enough people like you to keep me in business. More important than that, though, I am once again engaged in the creative process. I don’t think I’ve been this focused on making music since the early days of Matthew Ebel dot net

I won’t say that another piano rock album will never happen, but right now is the only thing on my radar. The Bird, effectively saved my life. I hope you can appreciate that, at least.

Now What?

Here’s where you, a part of my beloved Robot Army, come in.

I need you to go and show your support for [url=https://avianinvasion.com]Avian Invasion. Remember, Bird One saved my life. Without him, I’d still be staring at that blank screen wondering why I even bother to try any more. Like Leeloo Dallas, he needs your love to survive, just as I always have. And I need him. Please go to avianinvasion.com right now and do… the usual stuff: Add him on Spotify, Like him on Facebook, etc. There are icons on the website and you know what they do.

Matthew Ebel, aka Hali, will still be here, updating you on the behind-the-scenes side of things. If you want to peek behind the bird mask and explore this new frontier with me, I’ll try to share as much as I can with you. In fact, I’ll be spending the summer building my own recording studio from scratch, and this is where I’ll be sharing photos and videos and blogs about the experience.

Maybe this decade will be one to celebrate.

It's 2017 and there's still no way to post video on FA?

It's 2017 and you can't even search for a username on FA?!?

Everyone knows the internet has been a mixed blessing for musicians. Whatever; it’s the reality we must accept, piracy and all. But one thing I’m thrilled about is the ability to work with musicians from… ANYWHERE.

This new album, #CognitiveDissonance, brings in local talent like Matt on Bass and Runtt on Drums, as well as a new friend from Texas. I looked at mastering engineers in Nashville, Chicago, and here in Boston. I was THIS CLOSE to adding vocals from a Florida friend, but that song didn’t make the cut.

The best part is that all of us are capable of recording pro-quality audio in our home studios. I make up a hasty demo with fake instruments, send the song to Korozjin, and he sends me back some mind-curdlingly-good guitar parts for reamping.

Sometimes it feels a bit… inorganic. It’d be great if we could make like the 1960’s and all pile into the studio, playing in perfect sync and feeding off each other’s energy… but the fact is that I’d rather have access to the global talent pool.

There are some amazing people out there, far away from the big music hubs. And they're making my music sound SO GOOD.

>> Listen and Pre-Order the new album, Cognitive Dissonance, at matthewebel.com/cogdis <<