I’m a refugee of the music business. It ate me up and expelled me out its anus - like insoluble fiber. 

The deals in the music biz happen between 9 and 5 … that’s 9pm and 5am. That’s fun - until it isn’t. 

My biz partner, Sean, and I spent a decade and a half running a label and managing bands. Running and managing sounds about right.

I loved live music - not just the music itself but the scene - the conviviality of the backstage, running into old friends, the discovery of new place. Music is an escape from dull care. 

And, at its best, it can make everyone feel the same. 

Austin was a second home for me during these years. The city sweats music. Twangy guitars ooze out of barbecue joints and sawdusted dive bars. 

The city crescendos a couple of times of year. My old label, Velour Recordings, put on annual showcases at SxSW when the conference was still mostly just about music. 

Austin was also the Chinese finger trap between my music and wellness life. 

When Sean and I launched Wanderlust in 2009, we sought financial support. The new need friends. 

Charlie Walker and the folks at C3 took a chance on us. They had founded the Austin City Limits music festival. 

We had trawled the back of house for a decade but we didn’t know shiznit about actually operating a festival. Boy … they did. ACL is massive.

With C3’s help, we launched Wanderlust. By 2016, we had 68 large-scale events in 20 countries. We even opened a yoga studio in Austin.

It was a wonderful, wicked, awesome, awful decade of my life. My girls grew up in the traveling yoga circus called Wanderlust. 

This past weekend, Schuyler and I returned to scene of the crime - the ACL Music Festival. I didn’t recognize too many of the names on the program but there are some amazing musicians out there ... @doechii @the_lalom @oliviadeano  

ACL is a young person’s game. But it’s fun to drop in. To smell the olfactory elixir of smoke and hot air and beer and sweat. For a couple of hours, you feel like you’re 20 again - you step back into the unrecoverable past when you were drunk on life and things seemed simpler.