Check out the interview here: http://theundergroundsite.com/index.php/2009/05/tracing-the-daystracing-the-days/

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James Wait, the Underground staff writer interviews Lonnie Boss, the lead singer for Tracing Days

JW: What age did you start playing music?
LB: I was forced to take piano at 6. I quit until I was 17.
I also tried and quit the following: drums/violin/saxophone (although I played Sax through high school).
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I found the wide variety of instruments helpful in hearing various parts of composition later.  The lack of discipline was less helpful.  It wasn’t until I realized you could play by ear that I enjoyed playing any of those.  It was more like practicing math tables, until I learned that I could create.

JW: What are some of your influences in music?
LB: My mom played piano when I was little, and sang, and my brother and I always asked her to quit, so we could hear the tv. 

Now my kids look dismally when they see me sit at the piano, knowing they’ll have no tv tonight.

I sang with Neil Diamond, Glen Campbell and others in my parents red 70 something station wagon, until someone saw me, at which point I hid. 

This terror of singing in public followed me through high school, and remains to this day in a smaller form.

I heard 80s bands like Journey, Def Leppard, Sting, U2 and others that hit my music passion switches. Nirvana, DC Talk and others influenced me later. 

Now Switchfoot, the Killers, Franz Ferdinand hit the same switches.  It seems my ears hear melody/music and lyrical nuances before I hear meanings of songs.

I have to work to pay attention to the messages. I was terrible at poetic interpretation in school.  It’s different when I’m doing the writing, since the meaning is critical for me to get across- though some struggle understanding my songs at times.

JW: Can you tell me a little about you? Where did you grow up? What you like doing for fun? When did you get saved?

LB: I grew up in Bozeman on a farm.  We had every animal you could imagine, and my dad taught me how to drive a team of horses when we’d feed the cows (just for fun).  I rode a real horse chasing real cows, and laugh at Hollywood ’s take on that scenario.

I played basketball in high school (which was my second religion, since I’d no inclination towards music at the time.

I listened to country music with my dad until I was about 11, and then discovered rock, which suited me better. 

I loved Indiana Jones and Spiderman, and wanted to be both of them.

I asked my mom and dad questions about predestination and other hard subjects when I was about 7.

God put that desire to understand spiritual things in my mind pretty early.  I could tell when our teachers were blowing smoke, and didn’t really know what they were talking about.  That grew into a firm distaste for clichés and pretending, which I saw as a temptation in my own life.

I also saw that I was a jerk to my brother, and knew God saw that as sin.  I asked him to forgive me over and over, not realizing that it wasn’t my thoroughness that gained the forgiveness, but his faithfulness.  Jesus became alive to me at about 15.

I was tested for Epilepsy in 8th grade, which leveled me.  I realized I couldn’t keep this whole thing together, and it jeopardized me getting a drivers’ license. ( I was able to get it, and had good health throughout high school).  I find it interesting that the day I had to go get tested for it was the day I planned to get into trouble with some of my friends.  Those same friends walked away from the Lord and into the partying scene later.

JW: What is your favorite bible verse?

EB: Ephesians 2:10 “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”

It’s the ultimate pride killer verse.  We belong to God.  He made us, and then remade us in Jesus for his own purposes.  God has even seen to it that our works are waiting for us.  It goes contrary to our pride, where we want to be the ones thinking up the plan and getting the credit.  It also shows God’s concern and care for us in our daily living. It’s where real joy lies.

JW: Are you coming with any new albums or singles? Or doing any touring days?
EB: I’m always writing and they always feel like a single when they start.
Not touring much.  We set out with a specific plan to serve our local church and our families primarily, and leave the other stuff up to God.  We push radio and video hard, and I occasionally do radio/video tours to do interviews.  If a single takes off, we’ll hopefully play some larger venues.
Our Tracing Days marketing plan got sidelined when the economy tanked.  My wife and I funded our music by building/selling a house every couple years.  We ended up losing all of our equity in 24 months, and with it our Tracing Days budget.  It’s one thing to theoretically wonder if you would still walk with God if you lost all your money, it’s another to lose it, and find him faithful.  He is, and Tracing Days will only go forward as He provides.

For more information on Tracing Days, visit www.tracingdays.com or www.myspace.com/tracingdays.

–James Wait, the Underground staff writer

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My sister came to visit me the other day. She’s my best friend, but I hadn’t seen her in a while. So as we were catching up, for some reason I told her about my disillusionment with the recording industry.

I told her how the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, the organization that represents the interests of the recording industry worldwide, just won its lawsuit against the Pirate Bay, a popular BitTorrent tracking site, for copyright infringement.

Why did the IFPI single out the Pirate Bay? Why not shut down all the torrent trackers around the world, I asked her.

The Pirate Bay doesn’t even host any of the files. It’s just a search engine for the files. If anyone is guilty of copyright infringement, it’s not the people who run the site.

Silence.

I also told her how the Recording Industry of America, a member of the IFPI, sued Jammie Thomas, a 30-year-old single mom of two for sharing 24 songs with peers using Kazaa, a popular piece of peer-to-peer file sharing software.

The RIAA won the suit, and unless she wins her retrial in June, it looks like Ms. Thomas will have to pay a ridiculous $220,000 in restitution to the multi-billion dollar industry — just for sharing two albums worth of songs.

As I was telling my sister this, she just stood silently listening to my ranting.

I asked my sister what she thought of it all. She just shrugged her shoulders and walked away.

Sadly that’s what many people do when they hear about the excessive litigation of the recording industry.

When they learn that Web sites and single mothers are being sued by the recording industry for copyright infringement, they just say "Oh, that’s messed up" or shrug their shoulders and walk away, never realizing that the recording industry just took away another piece of their freedom – their freedom to choose. The tragic part of it all is that the IFPI and the RIAA have been slowly eating at our musical freedom of choice for years.

In the United States, in the early years of recorded music, when it was confined to vinyl, the music industry was safe from so-called pirates, as it wasn’t very cost effective for people to bootleg records.

Then in the 1980s, the power unwittingly ended up in the hands of the people with the advent of the dual-deck cassette recorder. People used this new technology to make "dubbed" copies of the tapes they purchased. They would also record songs off of the radio and make mix tapes to share with friends.

With such slogans as "Home Taping is Killing Music," the music industry saw this invention as a threat to its hegemony and launched a very unpopular campaign against dubbing.

A decade later, the music industry was at it again when it famously sued peer-to-peer software pioneer Napster for copyright infringement. The RIAA won its case in part because Napster’s file-sharing model wasn’t fully p2p, it relied on a system of centralized, Napster-owned file servers.

Instead of deterring people from illegal downloads, many people signed up for Napster due to all the media attention the case received. These people were introduced for the first time to a whole new world of music – music they had never heard before … beautiful music.

With Napster’s demise, people embraced other p2p software such as Kazaa, Morpheus and BitTorrent.

Using the Gnutella file-sharing network, Kazaa and Morpheus are truly p2p in that with the software, one person can give another person files off of his computer.

BitTorrent technology is a decentralized distributed p2p system in which many people contribute portions of data to create a complete file.

When the music industry saw that they couldn’t stop people from sharing mp3s, they began copy protecting compact discs, so that people could not rip compact disc audio tracks. Though people eventually found work-arounds, this was a disaster with even musicians like Switchfoot boycotting the technology by teaching their fans how to rip the audio tracks off of their cds.

British band Radiohead is a great example of the power of file-sharing. Their experimental 2000 release Kid A made it to number one on the Billboard 200 chart in its first week of release because it was leaked on Napster.

Because the music industry tries to prohibit file-sharing, people are not being exposed to new artists, and the record companies are losing money.

They try to blame file sharing, for a decline in cd sales without taking into account the sales of digital-only music.

–Tiffany Orr, the Underground, editor

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