Moms Don't Make Records

(This was originally shared in fall of 2024, but so many moms have joined the community since then. I wanted to share this with you all.)

Feeling Like An Outsider

If you’ve been reading my posts for a while, you know I’ve worked in the music industry my whole life. You know I have a passion for helping musicians build real fanbases through honest branding and regional growth.

You might not know that I’m the world’s dotingest mom to the world’s most hilarious second grader. You surely don’t know that I feel like an outsider with the other SF moms because I’m divorced (happily coparenting), young (mid-30’s is young for being a parent in SF), queer, & tattooed.

I absolutely love spending time with my son. And I’m high key fried from juggling daily tasks like working, cooking healthy, well-rounded meals, shopping, keeping the house tidy, and kid-based activities like extracurriculars and volunteering at my kid’s school. That’s that mom life, though, right?

Pressures of Performance

But because I feel different, and often less-than in my role as a parent, I feel a lot of pressure to volunteer for field trips and other school events, host sleepovers that will 100% cover my house in sand, plan travel that I’ll spend weeks recovering from, and otherwise give my kid a very normal and mainstream life. I want him to feel like he has a stay-at-home mom, not a single working mom.

And honestly, we’re in a privileged enough situation so that I can almost kind of swing that.

Pressing Pause

One thing I haven’t done very much of in about eight years is play music.

In this way, I’ve been languishing.

When I started playing guitar and writing songs in middle school it took over my life. There was an incredible all-ages punk scene in Oakland where I lived, and the thing of doing music for real felt plainly accessible to me. I remember sitting in science class, trying to pay attention, and being unable to hear what was going on because the music in my head was too loud.

Music became everything to me in a way that I had no control over. I was of it.

My Origin Story

I was fifteen when I signed my first record deal with a small Bay Area pop-punk label and dropped out of high school after freshman year to move to San Francisco and play in bands. I taught music lessons for money. I formed my deepest friendships through music. I met my kid’s dad through music and we started an awesome band and an awesome PR company together, where we got to work with many of my musical heroes. All of the best things in my life have come to me through music. Music brought me my beautiful son.

The Cost of Passion

But doing music also came at a cost. Nontraditional life choices I made in my teens created a painful and lasting rift in my family. And some part of me has always felt that dedicating my life to music was something I was getting away with. Even when I turned it into a successful desk job, some part of me felt it was selfish and frivolous, not adult, not respectable. And working in music is one thing, but playing music? What’s more selfish than that?

And so anyway, I haven’t done much of it since becoming a mom. Moms make pancakes from scratch. Moms do yoga. Moms don’t make records, everyone knows that. And before you come at with the feminist tsking, please remember that I am a liberated non-binary divorcee with hand tattoos. If this kind of societal programming impacts me the way it does, think about how much stronger it must be for moms living more mainstream lifestyles, in more traditional areas.

What I Realized

Lately, I’ve been reflecting on how overwhelmed I feel in life—with volunteering for field trips and the various after-school activities. Feeling like I’m not a real mom because a real mom would have the energy to handle it all. Feeling like I don’t fit into the roles I signed up for and feeling like I don’t know how to bring music back into my life even though it's the backbone of who I've always been.

The realization I've been having is that I don't have it in me to volunteer at school fundraisers. That’s not an authentic gift I have in my heart for my son’s school. And so when I show up, it’s harried, overwhelmed, scattered, and I basically hate it.

And while I’m telling myself that volunteering on the PTA is for my son, it actually takes up time I could be spending with him, or getting stuff done so I can give him my full attention when we have time together.

By neglecting to prioritize music, I’ve been cheating myself and my son out of the massive benefits of the person I truly am and the gifts I have to offer.

The Shift

Since realizing this, I haven’t written any amazing new songs yet. But I have gotten together to try playing with a few different musicians. I’m even auditioning for a post-hardcore band next week. And I have decided to leave my guitar/amp out set up in the living room every day so I can sit down for 10 minutes or so and remind myself what I’m even doing here. Like, on earth.

But I did have one huge creative breakthrough, which is what this post is about.

Becoming a Music Mom

I began to imagine a new version of myself. A music mom. Someone who gave up on the futile task of reading every school email and allowed the living room to be messy and full of art supplies and instruments. A mom who had a joyful world of music to share with little Otto and the other people in our world.

I've always known that Otto's happiness and wellbeing are my #1 priority. My second priority used to be performing momhood to the best of my ability. Now my #2 is and always will be music.

My Son, the Musician

The craziest thing in the world to me is that I had never even imagined a version of myself like this before. It’s crazy for a few reasons, but one agonizingly obvious one is that my son is obsessed with music.

I’ve always been very cautious to not push Otto toward music. It’s my thing and his dad’s thing, but it doesn’t need to be his thing.

And yet, in Kindergarten he begged for an electric drum set for his birthday. Almost daily he picks out tunes on the piano. He even has started asking me to teach him simple songs on guitar (bless his doughy little baby fingers). Last year he wrote a rap about ocean animals and beat-boxed impeccably, if I may say, in front of the whole school while his classmates took turns rapping the lines. When he got off stage, he came up to me, all excited and glowing and stated simply, Mom, I’m just like MF DOOM.

After school the other day, I took Otto with me to Guitar Center to pick up a 58. He spotted a shiny purple Ibanez and fell in love. We spent maybe 20 minutes exploring the guitar together. I showed him how the different pickup settings work. He played the Come As You Are and Seven Nation Army riffs over and over and over and then he cried all the way home when he learned that we wouldn’t be taking it with us that day.

(update, I did buy this for him for his birthday)

Prioritizing Creativity

In addition to my art stuff, I’ve also been prioritizing Otto’s art stuff. Supporting him in his creative discovery is probably the thing that comes easiest to me as a parent, unlike more traditional mom stuff, like baking muffins with my son, which is a fucking nightmare.

As I’ve started to get things off my plate and turned my own #2 priority toward music, it’s freed up more time (and precious emotional energy) for me to help Otto on his #1 priority, which is making comics.

seen here: Teekle B’deekle (left) facing off his sworn enemy Micky-D Unit 7134 (right)

A New Chapter

I’m very aware that part of why this is all clicking into place for us is that my son is now nearly eight, arguably the sweetest, most fun age. Trips to Guitar Center and photo comics are a whole different thing when you have a toddler. But I do wish I’d been steering toward being a music mom this whole time.

Shifting my priorities immediately relieved the constant sense of dread and self-judgement I’ve felt for years around not being a put together enough mom. It was swimming upstream, plain and simple.

I’ve experienced so much angst over the kind of adult I want to be as if it was something for me to invent rather than something for me to allow. In a certain way, dedicating my life to music requires giving up on that dream and surrendering to the reality of who I’ve always been.

I wish I’d been able to envision myself as a warm, happy mom whose main thing is loving and caring for their kid, and whose main second thing is cultivating for my self, for my son, and for the people in our life, a beautiful life dedicated to music.

Who Is This For?

Each week it becomes more hilariously obvious that I started writing this newsletter as a way of talking to myself and dealing with my own blocks around music and fear and everything. Thank you all so much for reading it. I hope this post today nudges you toward breaking up with whatever is making you feel not good enough, and helps you dedicate even a tiny bit more of your life to something that feels as easy and true to you as music feels to me.

As always, have a great week and may you find yourself on stage among friends.

Love,

Cass