Joshua Ray Summey

It has been a long while since I have posted. I am doing so now because I made an adult decision that is leading to more and more adult decisions. We will get to that later though.

So the world stopped. A couple years happened. And then it started again.

Here is an abbreviated explanation of my experience:

There are 3 days early in that year of which I only remember 1. I don’t know if that was COVID or not. I can’t remember being that sick in my adult life. Even so, I was still in peak physical condition because my friend Aaron and I had trained for months to do a three mile obstacle coarse called Terrain Race. But the day before the race we were all quarantined.

There was the ubiquitous since of foreboding that I believe the species felt… if not equally, at least completely. Though it was underlying everything, it didn’t initially outsize the relief my wife, daughter, and I felt about getting some rest. It was a little 3 person honey moon that coincided with a fierce need to sleep due to getting a brand new puppy on the right side of the clock and chewing the right things(as well as having a new school administrator in the family). It was heaven. I wrote Lust Story, Love Story, and Life story, the songs, to go with their respective albums. We played games, we learned, we went on walks, we participated in the weird social experiment nationally referred to as “distance learning”. We were spitefully having the collective time of our lives.

Then the world was reminded all at once of problems that we like to pretend are behind our species are still clear and present in 4d every day all over. Friends fought friends, families stopped talking to each other. Some protested, others turned away, and everyone was arguing or fighting with someone. We as a species went from ignoring each other, to yelling at each other over night. I found myself more angry with some of the people I care very much about than I have ever been with anyone. Truth be told, some of those friendships still remain fractured… but then an acquaintance died. Then a friend of my wife passed. Then an entire family of a former co worker of my wife died. Then my wife’s Aunt died, whom she considered a second mother. Then another Aunt. And so on.

I maintained a strange situation where I still played one of my regular gigs. This restaurant sustained their weekly re-supply in order provide groceries to a socially distanced line of people in need. I played for the lines. It was a weird experience, and a valuable one. I started playing with a musician here in San Antonio named Michael, an early presenter of long covid. He and my brother in law’s wife got the virus around the same time and very early. Where my young sister-in-law’s long Covid has left her with sometimes severe physical ailments that made her unable to execute her chosen profession; Michael (early 50s maybe) was left with a kind of nominal aphasia (I think). The words he speaks and writes don’t match the ones he intends to say. For the most part, the beginnings of sentences seemed right, but after two or three words, they simply headed off course. But he needed music to make it through so we made it work and it was a regular bi-monthly performance with a weekly practice. Feeling all this loss, and seeing these two extraordinary individuals find there ways through their new realities helped me right size my anger and refocus on my responsibilities to my girls.

All the while I was getting increasingly anxious. I thought I understood it; thought it made sense. But the road-worn bard in me was trying to tell me something. I had a dream about a guy named Chris Hochkeppel. I don’t remember much of the dream, but I remember him emotionally out of sorts, and in a big way. This was opposite my experience with the soulful New Orleans crooner who fronts the amazing group of musicians dubbed “Burris“. In real life, he is a pretty cool customer as song writers go. In the dream, he was a mess and clawing at the walls and loosing it over not being on the able to perform.

I woke knowing I wasn’t the only road hound who was off kilter. So I began Quarantine Open Mic, a Facebook open mic group. I was correct in assuming that musicians needed an outlet. The group quickly grew to 3800 members with 3 to 4 hundred performers. We all made many friends. I ran a Sunday lunchtime interview with random participants in the open mic and met the coolest people from all over. An acoustic duo I am half of, Coffee & Alcohol, got back writing again. I reconnected with one of my favorite New Orleans acts, Mighty Brother, for a how-to-stream post, then a lunch hour interview, then a weekly songwriting group, and finally a tuesday cover tribute night. I’ve done this music thing for 26 years now. The first six months of QOM might be the most valuable thing I have done to date. I have come up with some crazy ideas to ‘give back’ and when I look back at the beginnings of that one, I feel I did some genuine good there. And that expirience makes it easier when things don’t go as planned.

Things began to open up. My first San Antonio friend, and current Manager (the aforementioned adult decision), Justine Del Toro, and her then-boyfriend, John Wallgren, asked me to be a part of something called Summer Swolstice. Turns out there is an indoor climbing gym in San Antonio called Armadillo Boulders. Summer Swolstice was a strictly-for-fun-summer climbing competition. Every Wednesday we went and tried to earn our team points and every wednesday I got more addicted. I’m chatty to a fault. But in a sport where you must rest in between reps, all of a sudden, this trait I have been embarrassed of for so long is good for everyone. I climb, I need 5 minutes, so does my neighbor, so we talk for 5 minutes. Then we climb again. I may not ever be a good climber, but I have found a way to practice patients while I excercise, and I have found my tribe. One day Lina, then 5 years old, asked me why I was missing bedtime on Wednesdays. So Thursday morning, I brought her. We have been climbing together for a year and a half and I don’t think we are stopping anytime soon.

My 2021 new years resolution was not say no to gigs of any kind. The result was what I intended. I was back north of 100 performances in 2021 and 2022. I did it with eight different acts, but if felt normal. More importantly it was educational. Upon leaving New Orleans, Willie McCullen, drummer for Hazy Ray, drummer on “The Door”, and to this day the only person I have been in a band with who I was friends with first, he dropped this nugget on me: “You could be a good leader, but you need to follow some more first.”

So I didn’t say no to anyone.I can honestly say, these old musts like: 100 plus performances every year or bust and play on New years Eve no matter what, don’t mean anything anymore. Preparing to perform music with other people and then putting on a show… that process brings me so much joy and satisfaction. And their remains an intense need to create songs, and get them to a point where they are ready to be heard.I have played others setlists, and others music nearly as much as my own since I have been in San Antonio, and never more than I have in the last two years. Its one thing to know why it sucks to play for me, but its another thing completely to experience all of those things from the other side for myself. I got all my best and worst traits in high-definition in all the people I have played with and for and I am eternally gratefulfor the opportunities. It was a much needed reminder about what it is like to be on the otherside. I am not saying I am ready to lead another band. But, universe: If you are listening, I know what I don’t know, I am more patient than I have ever been, I know my limitations, I know the situations that I should stay away from, I not afraid to put myself in the ones I need to be in, I have more originals and more covers than ever, I am…

Screw it. I am ready to be in an original music band and make new music with others again. So go ahead and drop those players in my world and I’ll make it worth it LOL

In November 2022, I got strep throat. And as I got over it the thanksgiving-getaway was back in effect. The Summeys went to Prague! It was a blast. I saw the worlds largest Metronome. I got to learn another far away city with the love of my life (still my favorite thing to do), I got to know my brother-in-law and his wife better, I watched my daughter’s eyes light up so many times, and for the first time I 100 % definitively acquired

COVID.

Strep>Prague>Covid= no performances for 6 weeks. I was 16 and depressed about sounding like absolute crap the last time that happened.

What has followed is:

Doing Sam’s Burger Joint with Nashville touring artist (Thank you EG Vines and company!)

Arranging music for and playing a full wedding ceremony for the first time (thank you so so so so so much Justine and John)

Building a Fuzz pedal! (thanks again John! and for the discount Dipped in Tone)

Playing on a local hip-hop artists upcoming album (thank you Paintbrush Mickey)

Playing and running sound for a blues band (thank you Joker and The Thieves)

Performing a season opening for a community theater with my favorite voice to listen to (thank you Andrea Elizarraras)

Live looping experiments with one of the best drummers and engineers I have had the pleasure of knowing (thank you Rob Fruth, hire Sonus Magna)

Hosting an open mic for the first time in two decades (thank you Summer Camp Bar)

Consulting on sound design for a new venue (thank you Dulce Suenos)

Acoustic collaboration with an absolutely mind blowing singer (thank you Queen Bre)

Opening up a Tejano Fan Fair after party with another mind blowing singer (thank you Crystal Torres)

Doing a soundtrack for an artist advertisement (thank you Bri!)

Shooting a podcast (thank you everyone involved)

Performing with Coffee & Alcohol again.

A trio gig of originals (thank you Alan and Sean)

AND FINALLY, getting a manager. Justine, you are a complete saint for going on this journey with me.

So there it is. Covid shutdown to finally getting Covid. My little family is doing well, I have learned and experienced a ton, and in spite of so many challenges, I love this music thing more than ever 🙂