Goodbye, Lance

This morning I found out the singer/songwriter/guitarist of one of my favorite bands, J Church, had passed away yesterday. Lance's health problems were no secret to anyone, as he'd been in and out of the hospital for heart problems for the last decade. Things got worse last summer when he suffered kidney failure and had since been undergoing numerous surgeries and medications in an effort to get better. As you probably know, I joined a project with some other good samaritan punks to release a benefit CD full of bands covering songs he wrote with his bands Cringer and J Church (I even recorded a song for the CD, which i'm simultaneously proud and embarrassed about). I figured things were gonna bounce back for Lance as they had always done. Then I get an email from Chad, the guy who spearheaded the benefit project, entitled "lance's funeral" which I took as a morbid joke very unlike Chad. Sure enough, he asked if anyone knew when and where the funeral was and that he'd come from Dallas for it. I went to Myspace and quickly found out from a comment left by Lance's girlfriend that he had passed away on Sunday afternoon. Apparently he'd been in a coma for a week after collapsing due to loss of blood pressure. I was unaware of the coma, so his death came as sudden shock to me. Hell, I emailed Lance two weeks ago after he posted a blog on his Myspace asking for help with scanning some old copies of his zine. I offered to do it and return the hard copies to him, seeing as how I live in biking distance from his place. He's never once replied to any of my emails over the past three years, so I wasn't surprised or hurt. So I didn't think anything of it when he hadn't updated his blog in a while either.

After I had confirmed that Lance was now gone forever, I immediately teared up and jumped face down onto my bed and bawled for a while. As lame as it may sound, Lance's music and lyrics changed my life. It opened my eyes to the world I couldn't see and put into words things I couldn't previously explain. It spurred my intellectual growth in many ways, and even expanded my musical horizons and solidified music as the most important thing in my life. I always felt that I owed him so much, and I was always ready to help him in any way I could. I even volunteered to donate a kidney when he needed one, which I'm sure he didn't take seriously. It kind of fizzled out anyway when I realized we may not be the same blood type, and even my own mother doesn't know my blood type. The two times I met him face to face, he was an extremely friendly and open guy. You would think someone as smart as him would come of as pretentious, but Lance did not in the slightest. A musician, an author, a kindhearted and talented soul. I'm not gonna be the only one to miss him, that's for damn sure. Thanks for everything, Lance.