Milestone Mania
Notable Moments From A Creative Life
Live a creative life long enough and the winding path behind you will be littered with interesting artifacts.
In my little corner of that universe, 2025 marks two important anniversaries—the debut Tsar album turns 25 this year, and my first crime novel turns 10.
Leading up to the recent calendar flip, I found myself thinking a lot about what those two projects meant to me then and my relationship with them now. Both were the culmination of a lot of dreaming and a ton of hard work.
Neither set the world on fire upon release, but each marks an important milestone in my personal evolution as a musician and writer—and, in many ways, led to the creation of Remember The Lightning in January 2023.
If nothing else, this will give you a brief glimpse behind the curtain at this newsletter.
It has always been about music, books and music books for me.
⚡️Are You Celebrating Any Milestones In 2025?💥
The Self-Titled Tsar Album (2000)
My band Ridel High had recently been dropped by A&M Records when three old friends and former musical collaborators asked me to fill in on drums for their new glam punk group at two upcoming gigs: A live performance on LA’s legendary college radio station KXLU, and a show at famed Silverlake club Spaceland.
That’s how I started playing with Jeff Whalen, Dan Kern and Jeff Solomon again (the four of us had performed in various configurations before, but never as this line up). The energy between us was undeniable and the songwriting was so exciting that I left Ridel High to officially join Tsar not long after.
The band already had a high-powered management team behind them and local buzz continued to build when we embarked on a series of shows around SoCal, including a couple monthlong residencies at Spaceland.
The labels came sniffing around pretty fast by late ‘90s standards.
We signed to Disney’s Hollywood Records and recorded our debut album with superstar alt rock producer Rob Cavallo (Green Day, The Muffs, Jawbreaker, et al.).
We tracked and mixed at a few noted LA studios where the walls were lined with platinum records, and Gwen Stefani, Weezer or Brian Wilson might be in the room next door. I got to play the “November Rain” snare on one unused take, and Diane Warren stopped by to say hi to Rob at some point. We chased overpriced sushi down with hot sake and tried to make the most of our good fortune.
The album was released in July 2000. We hit the road opening for a Taylor-less line up of Duran Duran who had just released their album Pop Trash on Hollywood Records. We also toured with bands like Marvelous 3 and Eve 6 in the U.S., and Rachel Stamp and The Cooper Temple Clause in the U.K.
Reading reviews of the first Tsar album was how I found out we were a power pop band, which deepened my interest in the genre.
And like many power pop bands before and after us, we seemed to suffer from the “curse” of commercial failure. We got a little traction on mainstream and college radio, but the album was far from a chart-busting success.
I think we were back on the road with Eve 6 when the label officially pulled the plug. We headed home to start writing songs for a second album. That one was recorded with David Katznelson in a rundown home studio slated for demolition. (No platinum records on those walls, but Greg Dulli from Afghan Wigs stopped by to say hi. We chased our delivery pizza down with Bud Light.)
We got dropped by Hollywood Records after handing in the decidedly darker album that became Band, Girls, Money (I personally think that stripped-down collection sounds more like the live band we were back then). TVT Records released that one in 2005, but Solomon and I had left by then. A talented new rhythm section learned our parts and Tsar rocked on for a few more exciting years without us.
In 2010, James Gunn used “Calling All Destroyers”—the first song from our debut album—as the title track for his film Super. The original line up reunited to release The Dark Stuff EP in 2012 and did a short West Coast tour with Nerf Herder.
Tsar has been mostly silent since then, but Whalen, Solomon and I—with Os Tyler and Dylan Callahan—have released two albums as The Brothers Steve in recent years.
My First Crime Novel, Bad Citizen Corporation (2015)
I vowed to write a novel when I left Tsar, but starting a family and getting sober took priority. I switched jobs a few times, my wife and I had another child, and we became homeowners before I revisited that publishing dream almost a decade later.
One night in late 2012, the rest of my family fell asleep while I drove home after a family holiday in Northern California. With the car wheels humming beneath us and the radio playing quietly in the background, my brain started concocting a story.
It was about a former punk singer who becomes a private investigator and tries to solve his bandmate’s murder. The setting was based on the SoCal beach towns where I grew up and the backdrop was the multi-generational punk scene started by Black Flag, Descendents and Circle Jerks, and carried forward by bands like Pennywise.
It felt like a good enough foundation to build on, so I committed to writing throughout 2013.
I named the lead character Greg Salem and titled the book after his fictional band Bad Citizen Corporation. Greg’s sober (like me) but his drummer/sidekick Marco is a total waste case (like I was for many years). Several scenarios are heavily fictionalized versions of things I experienced or witnessed in my teens and twenties.
Write what you know, right?!
In 2014, armed with a manuscript that I hoped would land me a Big 5 contract, I queried countless agents. The form letter rejections rolled in almost quicker than I could send them, and what little feedback I received wasn’t encouraging. Turns out my dark and violent punk rock PI novel wasn’t exactly bestseller material.
I continually tweaked the manuscript while adjusting my expectations. Based on some research and advice from other authors, I shifted my focus to indie publishers. I wrote and placed a few short stories under my snazzy new S.W. Lauden pen name and went to a SoCal writer’s conference where I was introduced to a local publisher.
She generously read my manuscript, ultimately passing—but suggested I submit it to an edgier LA indie called Rare Bird Books. I was introduced to publisher and musician Tyson Cornell who immediately understood what I was going for with Bad Citizen Corporation. The first Greg Salem book was followed by two more, Grizzly Season (2016) and Hang Time (2017).
After that trilogy wrapped up, I edited three non-fiction essay collections for Rare Bird—Go All The Way: A Literary Appreciation Of Power Pop and Go Further: More Literary Appreciations Of Power Pop (both with Paul Myers, who recently launched his own Substack), and Forbidden Beat: Perspectives On Punk Drumming.
My publishing journey started with music-themed crime fiction (which I still write and self-publish these days with the Power Pop Heist series), but led me to the kind of music nonfiction that became the foundation for this newsletter.
Which makes me wonder—where will Remember The Lightning lead me in 2025?
Congrats on the milestones! Here's to many more rad books, newsletters, and sounds!
The Salem series is amazing. I'd love to make space on the shelf for an addition to the series. As for Tsar? Hmm. I feel like I may know something about them.