Mule

This is my new buddy, Ivan.

Ivan, my friend Jack @baumwerkj and myself are cooking up something special for the NAMM show. Historically I’ll have some ridiculous idea, usually while on long solo car drives, and once I have an itch it’s got to be scratched. I’ve developed a skill, perhaps unsurprisingly, of finding people more capable than I of pulling off these ideas. It’s not self-deprecation. I haven’t met a maker yet who doesn’t see himself at the beginning of the spectrum of capability. It’s the necessary fuel of the curiosity that powers passion. Ivan offered sage advice from the cartoon-tome Adventure Time, “sucking at something is the first part of being good at something.”

What we are making wouldn’t be done by anyone else. Firstly, it’s not worth the time. Both Ivan and Jack have lost sleep, put necessities on hold, have wrestled with the experience. But they’ve done it with smiles and grace and humor and that’s part of their inspirational natures. When someone was asked why he climbed a very, very large mountain he said, “because it’s there.” I think if you were to ask these guys why they did it despite the cost they would say, “because it wasn’t there and now it is.”

Secondly, and this will sound boastful , it wouldn’t make sense for anyone else to do this. It’s a unique culmination of aspects of Mule that are made by the people included in it. Including you. Humor, effort, failure and skill. It’s taking things seriously while also not. Bukowski said, “If you’re going to try, go all the way. “ All the way to Anaheim.

-Matt