In 2012, I lived with at least 4-6 people in an old and weird house. Our band recorded music videos in every room in that house, and in every room in the house we moved into after that. I don’t think we ever paid for a music video location, at least not for the first 100 videos we made. We also didn’t pay for a director, or editor, or cast, or music mixer… we did it all ourselves. I didn’t really know how to ask for help (or what to ask for) so I never did… which honestly, saved a lot of money.

It’s 2026 now, I live in Los Angeles, and I am astounded at the excuses people have for not “putting themselves out there” to start their performing careers. There are a lot of good reasons: the Internet makes us actively sad, social media incentivizes rage and devision. But the bad reasons make me sad: I don’t have a ring light, my camera isn’t nice enough, it’s too expensive to hire an editor or a cameraman or a costume designer…

If you let things like that stop you, you’ll never make $26,000 a year as an indie musician! (joke)

Honestly though, the real thing that actually makes me sad: if you let things like that stop you, and you never tell your story… you may never meet the best people in the world.

I sometimes think I may never re-capture the alchemy of being in my early 20’s in a basement making music with my sister, when my rent was $400 and the Internet still felt like it was young and exciting. I’d check the youtube comments and see all my little friends in my phone. I’d go to the post office and mail t-shirt orders to Malaysia and Boston and Leeds! I knew all our fans’ names because I’d write them on the mailing labels, and read them in my email, and see them in the comments, and enter them into the weird javascript automation I hacked together for our fan club.

I am very, very thankful for the years I had as a full-time indie musician. Being a rock star was a lot more fun than my former job of cold-calling government offices and being yelled at by my boss, even if I was an extremely minor rock star. Even if I never figured out how to pay quarterly taxes and cried every time I talked to an accountant.

Truly, y’all — we made a lot of mistakes. So many mistakes. Mostly because we had no idea at all what we were doing.

And we also had a lot of success, and a lot of wonderful memories — precisely because we had no idea what we were doing.

It has taken me a long time to learn how to ask for help, and that I don’t have to do everything alone. More embarrassingly, it’s taken me almost as long to realize just how much help we had along the way—maybe not from “the industry”… but from our audience. They/you saw us and understood our souls, and gave us advice and direction, and love, and support. People opened up their homes and called their local libraries to put on shows. They made music videos with us. They gave us money to make albums and t-shirts and videos. They picked us up from the airport and bought us burritos. They introduced us to their families. And as a result, we created a “music career” not based on what an industry mentor would’ve told us to do… we made one based on what our community imagined would be cool. Which was awesome.

The Doubleclicks weren’t really a band, we were a community of beautiful freaks, weirdos, queers, and nerds who wanted a concert where we could all sing together, ideally sitting down, and not too amplified. It was an community who helped, even if you didn’t ask. I was a huge fan of this community, and it was an absolute honor to be part of it.

As much as I miss these golden days, I am so grateful I had them. I am very sad for all the artists today who may never get to have that experience, whether because they have one excuse or another about owning the wrong microphone, or just because the Internet is so big these days, and people are so scared, and the world is ending. Dang, you know?

What a beautiful time we’ve had together, friends. I’ll cherish you forever.

Laser