HOW I GOT HERE

Every business plan starts somewhere, and this one starts in a bathroom when I was sixteen years old. Not writing a business plan — writing a poem on the wall about a Spanish teacher I didn’t like. I’m gonna be honest: her name was Mr. Brada, and she looked like a pig. I didn’t like her. She was a prick, I was a prick. So I wrote a terrible hate-crimes-speech-of-a-poem on the bathroom wall. Don’t tell anybody. It was probably pretty bad and pretty good at the same time. But that was the first thing. Before the system, before the catalog, before any of it — that was the origin. That was the first poem.

Around the same time, my father drove me to the laundromat in Danversport and Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” came on the radio. I heard that and thought: that’s what I wanna do. I came home, found the album upstairs in a stack of cassette tapes, and started listening to everything — Dylan, Beatles, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Jimi Hendrix, Canned Heat, America, Rolling Stones. I found all the sixties greats. And then at the same time, I was a rap kid. NWA, Tupac, Ice Cube, Ice T.

Those two worlds — the literary side of rock and the raw directness of hip-hop — became the DNA of everything I would write. I was rooted in the historical greats of sixties rock, straight tied into the fundamental best rock and roll music ever made. But at the same time I had this new edge — the realization that you can say anything, write anything, nothing is off limits. That’s where it started. A bathroom wall and a laundromat. Sixteen years old. Wired for life.

Middle school: I went to the same school for nine years with thirty kids in my class. Very sheltered. I was from Lynnfield and Swampscott, so even in my own school I was an outsider. In middle school I didn’t get picked on, but I was a loser. More of a bully than anything in seventh and eighth grade. I’ll own that.

Freshman year: all my friends went to Bishop Fenwick in Peabody. Me and one other kid went to Saint John’s Prep in Danvers. Great school, but I didn’t know anybody there. I was the second biggest loser in my entire grade — next to a kid nicknamed Bilbo. Me and Bilbo basically had to fight each other to not be the biggest loser in the whole grade. That was my freshman year.

Sophomore year, I transferred to Lynnfield High School. I had no identity. I was overweight, chubby, definitely a loser, searching for who I was. Then one morning I woke up, weighed two hundred and eighteen pounds, and said: that’s it. It’s over. For the next year and a half, all I did was eat rice cakes, quit smoking cigarettes, started dipping chewing tobacco, got in shape. Lost the weight. Ran cross country. Played JV basketball. Joined the wrestling team. Started to get my act together.

And I met this amazing girl — one year younger than me, after school. Beautiful blonde, blue-eyed, German and something else. Absolutely the nicest person you ever met. Absolutely stunning, way out of my league, but an amazing person. Religious. National Honor Society. Just a sweetheart. And I said to myself: whoever I have to be — who does she want to be with? That’s who I want to be. At sixteen and a half years old, that’s when I got my head on straight.

Senior year: me and my clique got in a fight, everybody chose sides, and I ended up at the loser table at senior prom. I created the loser table. Normally I wouldn’t have been at the cool table, but I wouldn’t have been at the loser table either. So senior year kind of flubbed out. But that gave me the opportunity — from the end of senior year through to freshman September at Framingham State University — to turn it around. And I did.

When I got to Framingham State University, I had big broccoli hair. I was just starting to go bald, but you couldn’t tell yet. I got along well socially. I didn’t do that well in school — flunked out of all the classes — but I was having the time of my life.

Then I lost my license for drinking and driving. And the girl I was into was going away to the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine. So from that point on — eighteen to twenty-five, roughly — I started really writing. I was working construction, going to night school at Salem State. I’d fill notebooks in the landscaping truck between jobs. I graduated college at twenty-five going nights and working days, after failing out a few times. That shift got me to being somebody positive, somebody who wanted good things.

Then I started writing for the Peabody-Lynnfield Weekly Times covering sports. And then something happened — I had an article due on a deadline, and I had a poem in my head, and I had to make a choice.

I chose poetry. I stopped writing for them.

That was the fork in the road. That’s when I committed to being a poet and lyricist for real.

Then when I was twenty-seven, I met a Belarusian girl — twenty years old, amazingly talented and bright. She was on a work-travel visa and we hung out and didn’t want it to end. I realized she was way out of my league. For her to be happy I would’ve had to be somebody different, or for me to be happy she would’ve had to be somebody different. I got her through school, and then we went our separate ways.

Then here I am — thirty years old, on YouTube, turning my words into songs.

When YouTube first came out it was human-friendly. You could direct message every artist. I had the idea to use YouTube to find the best musicians in the world, because I thought I was one of the greatest lyricists in the world. I’d make a video about my lyrics — say “this is a poem called Dead End” — and somebody would find it and say, I can make a song out of that. Those are good words. I’ll make it into music.

I was doing that a lot. Attracting good musicians from around the world. I built up to ten thousand subscribers on YouTube. I was making music, making songs, well on my way. I was making a song with a dude named Justin Olszewski called “Dead Silence,” and he said: hey, you gotta check out this Lady Weaver channel. She’s amazing.

I checked it out.

The greatest songs I had ever heard. I went from being obsessed with finding musicians to speak my words to stumbling across this rock god. Think Susanna Hoffs in her musical and physical prime. Think the female John Lennon. That’s what I’m talking about.

She was the entire musical package. Best singer I’d ever heard. Best songwriter I’d ever heard. Nobody writes songs better than she does — some people tie, nobody’s better. And then I found out she was Danish. I found out she was Denmark Girl.

Imagine you’re best friends with Beyoncé. That’s how I would explain it to people. I found that, and I was like: this is the best thing in the world.

I started messaging her. We started messaging. Then emailing. Then Skyping, talking on the phone. After two or three years I went there and lived there for three months.

I dedicated my life to her — not in a demanding way, in an altruistic way. The premise of me going to Denmark was: look, I love you. I know you’re going through a rough time. I’m gonna go there, do my best to take care of you. Your son is there, I’ll give him a role model.

I went to Denmark and we lived together for three months. It didn’t work out romantically. We were too emotionally connected for either of us to really be fully with anyone else. I spent three to six months of my life — when you add up the hours — actively writing to her, typing to her. An hour here, an hour there. The best things I’ve ever written are in her email inbox, and nobody has ever seen them except maybe her mother. Unconditional love pouring off every page.

In the grand scheme of things, it’s love all the way down. I know that. She knew that. The intentions were always right.

I came back from Denmark at thirty-one, thirty-two, and I was crushed. I was never the same again. I lost my passion for most of the next fifteen years.

I had periods where I’d be artistic and write and capture ideas. But basically, everything in my life went sideways for a good ten, fifteen years. I didn’t hang out with a lot of people. Just me and my cats. I deleted my YouTube channels — ten thousand subscribers, all the music, all the songs, gone. I just went down the drain.

Then — two and a half years ago, 2022 or 2023 — I got an email. Not from Lady Weaver. From her mother.

She had died of cancer.

She left a young adult son and babies with her fiancé. She left quietly, without nearly enough notice.

Now I’m at a point where I’ve healed from that emotionally, and I don’t have hindrances and hang-ups from it anymore. But I want the world to hear her music. That’s part of why I’m doing all of this. This whole free lyric, blockchain, profit-from-the-bottom-up idea was cemented in her honor — taking the most devastating thing that ever happened and building something hugely positive out of it. If one thing comes from all of this, let it be that the world finally hears her music.

During the lost years, I had two people I had real feelings for. Both of them were trans. One relationship taught me I can be around somebody and be normal — which I was genuinely worried about for a while. I’m a seven to live with, on a scale of ten. That’s not bad.

My mother died during this time too. So I’m free of that obligation now. I don’t say that without feeling — but it’s the truth, and it freed me to build.

I came back to life about four or five years ago. Got a job doing maintenance for a year or two — that was good. I’ve been a full-fledged weed person for years and years, but I don’t drink anymore. No other substances. Just weed. That’s it.

I now have one real friend — my roommate. He’s been in my life for a few years now. We are the complete opposite of each other in every possible way. I’m loud, he’s not. I tell people where to go and how to get there, he doesn’t. We don’t hook up. But we work together perfectly.

He’s been at the same restaurant for twenty-five years, pays his taxes, and he is genuinely one of the nicest human beings you’ll ever meet. Very compassionate. Very hospitable. The kind of person who will always help you.

He’s my personal assistant, and I’m his. He does all the things I hate doing, I do the things he needs done. He knows camera, knows photography. He’s half Martha Stewart, half Bob Vila — he can create pretty much anything. He likes to drive, so he can be my chauffeur. When my project expands and I have capital to work with, he’s going to have an expanded role as an ambassador of Tom.

There’s just one thing: we have to get him citizenship. He’s not an American citizen and I am not losing my guy over that. If they try to boot him from the United States, I say: where are you going? Get my passport. I’m coming too. Wherever he ends up, the project goes. That is how non-negotiable this is — it is TOP OF THE LIST.

Plus a three-year-old black cat who is a real challenge when I go out of town. She saw me pack my computer and hid somewhere in the apartment. When I came back she was not happy with me. I love her, but she’s on my list. The cat wants a yard.

This ends in ten days. This life of working alone, building in the dark — it’s over. My new life starts in the middle of May, and what that means is going out to public venues, finding people, looking them in the face and saying: this is what I do. This is what I want to do.

I’ve done everything I could possibly do by myself. Alone, sitting in front of a computer, away from everyone. That section is done. I’m not going back.

I am a free agent until September 1st. That gives me May, June, July, and August to get people excited, start a bidding war, and have a deadline. September 1st is when the words open up — all 434 lyrics available for anyone to use, free, to make music.

I need an investor. I need a venue. I need a CEO. I need healthcare. I need a weekly salary. The window is forty-eight to fifty-eight. Five years for sure. Ten years if I don’t die. That’s our window.

Thirty years of writing material.

Two thousand poems. Two thousand lines. Fifteen to twenty books in PDFs scattered across hard drives. Song ideas. Books of ideas. Sports writing. What survived from the wreckage of my life became 434 core song ideas organized into 34 albums. Not random piles — structure. Each album is a mood, a direction, a different emotional weather system. Some are beautiful. Some are broken. Some are funny. Some are dangerous. Some are both.

Already, over 120 songs have been recorded from these words by musicians from all over the world. China, Denmark, everywhere. So this is not theory — this is already happening.

The 35th album I haven’t written yet. The first 34 are the loss leader. The 35th is where the real money comes from. After the first 34 make my name known everywhere, the bidding begins. I retain writer credit and future rights. The check better be big, and it better clear.

Non-exploitative model. Scalable — from seventy-five people in a small room to tens of thousands online. Bottom-up profit. That is the rule.

My lyrics are the trees. The raw material. Free land that people can build on. Once you add anything to my words — melody, arrangement, vocals, production — that’s yours. Whatever you build, you own. Whatever you earn, you keep a fair share of. The blockchain tracks every contribution, every contributor, every build on top of a build.

You can’t exploit fans. You can’t exploit creative talent. The credibility is the whole ballgame. Once this goes full corporate-push, once we become the bad guys — it’s over.

The venue runs four nights a week. This is the entire engine. Improv songwriting nights. Give two or three musicians twenty minutes on a topic, go around the circle. Once you get me and some talented people in the same room, you could do anything.

Tickets run from free to a hundred dollars at the high end. The goal is ten thousand people at ten dollars, not a hundred people at a thousand dollars. The door stays open. That is the whole point.

No private equity. No board of directors. No shareholder ownership. I’ve spent thirty years critiquing the system. I do not want to become it.

As far as what I actually need to live: my cat wants a yard. I want a house with a fence where she can go outside. Healthcare, a weekly salary, a sign-on bonus, and a percentage of revenue from live appearances. I’ve been poor by choice for long enough. I don’t need billions. I need enough to not worry.

The stuff that didn’t make the first draft.