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The CDs of
Michael Purington
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CDs of recovery music dealing with alcoholism, drinking problems, alcoholic recovery stories, and the personal recovery from alcoholism.
ABOUT ALCOHOLISM RECOVERY MUSIC (ARM) The message is simple: quit drinking and learn to live sober. Often life is at stake. Alcoholism is a fatal disease, and the message saves lives. Marrying music to the message makes the message more powerful, easier to digest and, perhaps most important, FUN. And exciting and humorous and joyful and emotional and open and free. This work began when Michael Purington released "I Think I'll Quit Drinkin' Today" in April 2001. Since that time a second CD, "People With No Last Names" has been released, many shows have been performed, and connections have been made worldwide to develop a network for recovery music. The process can be credited to a vast array of sober alcoholics everywhere, working together to further the mission of Alcoholism Recovery Music (A.R.M.) At least four sobriety radio stations broadcast on the internet, airing music by dozens of artists. A.R.M. plans to work with these artists and stations to develop a stable of performers around the country. Our aim is to bring recovery music into schools, clinics, rehabs, jails and any other facilities where alcoholics suffer from their disease. We also hope to help educate potential alcoholics about the pitfalls that lie in wait.
MAKE A DONATION TO ARM Alcoholism Recovery Music (ARM) now accepts donations through PayPal. If you would like to make a donation to ARM, please click the button below:
ARM MISSION STATEMENT Alcoholism Recovery Music's purpose is to record songs pertaining to alcoholism recovery and produce live events to perform those songs to help alcoholics quit drinking, stay sober and live healthy, happy, productive lives. We hope to do this by marrying music to the message: don't drink one day at a time, talk and listen to other recovering alcoholics and live life simply. Music and lyrics can serve to convey this message with repetitive themes that will resonate in the listener intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. Live events will provide a forum to celebrate sobriety and the joy of a new life.
THE STORY OF ALCOHOLISM RECOVERY MUSIC (ARM) My first sobriety song was a typical sobriety song: heartfelt, "deep", sentimental and very pretty. I played it for my sponsor, and he really liked it. For a live audience it would have drawn polite and sincere applause. I was nine months sober, and I didn't write another song for five years. I did, however, put new words to "Born In The U.S.A." I re-named it "Born To Be In AA" and performed it with a karaoke-style backing track for an AA talent show when I'd been in recovery a year and a half. The song was supposed to be a joke, and people did laugh and smile, but that wasn't what caught my attention. These folks came to the front of the stage, raised their fists in the air, sang along at the top of their lungs and celebrated sobriety. "Hmmm…", I thought. "What have we here?" But things emerge as they emerge, so it was in my sixth year that I pictured an average Joe coming to, hungover, deciding to quit drinking , and I put it in a George Jones-style country song. Shortly thereafter my only long-term sponsee said at a meeting, "I never wanted to come to AA, 'cause I figured it was all gloom, doom, 7-Up and Jesus." One day I showed "I Think I'll Quit Drinkin' Today" and "Gloom, Doom, 7-Up & Jesus" to a good friend in my early-morning group. He brought a blank cassette the next day and said, "Put those songs on there for me, wouldja'?" Um, OK. When? How? As I considered this dilemma I began writing more tunes. They were piling up, like little waifs at the door saying, "Hi. We've come to stay at your house." I had nothing to feed them, but I didn't mind them hanging around. They were pleasant little things. At this point my mother had died, my daughter decided to go live with her mom in L.A., and my job was going very badly. A few months earlier on my sixth sobriety birthday somebody had told me I was an "AA poster boy" (!), and now here I was in the midst of a classic "opportunity for growth". I have a metaphor for those two phrases. "AA poster boy" is that moment suspended in time when you're nearly motionless at the very top of the roller coaster; "opportunity for growth" is the gut-tumbling ride down. Plus, my home group had grown into a huge meeting with very little talk of what we used to be like and quitting drinking, so I was getting further and further out to sea. A few of us started a small group, and one day I announced that I realized the reason I was SO MAD was because everything was REALLY HARD and I COULDN'T DRINK!! Well, something had to be done, and I was going to meetings, reading the literature, calling my sponsor, helping others and doing service work, so I was at a loss. For some reason I called a local recording studio and booked a session. The next day I announced at the meeting that I was at the end of my rope so I was going into the studio to record. The group responded in typical AA fashion that that was OK with them if it was OK with me. That first session began with just me and my harp player, Phil Hamilton. Phil had played music with me since 1971; he'd been there through my drinking and my quitting. Again, the song was supposed to be funny, but something strange started happening from the first line. I sang, "I think I'll quit drinkin' today…" and Phil's harp said, "Yeah, right." He'd heard it so many times. From that point it just got realer and realer. After the first run-through Tim Ishler showed up with his dobro and we played the song. I mean, We played the song! As they say in the biz, "Stick a fork in it, it's done." In later sessions we tried it with bass and drums and settled on the original take. I've never replicated that experience. It's a different song now. Anyway, we cut "Drinkin'" and "Gloom, Doom", and I gave copies to my friends, two of whom agreed to finance a full-band 12-song CD. I went to work. My bass player, Paul Kelley, had been in recovery two months when we started recording. Tim's mom was in the hospital dying. Phil is a drug and alcohol counselor. The sessions were interesting. My wife Joy and I took our kids to the Bahamas in March of '01, and I came down with a horrible cold on the flight back. Upon arriving home I sat down with the engineer and mixed my first alcoholism recovery CD. People in my hometown bought it and bought it and bought it. Then…nothing. Dang. What to do? Ah…web site! How? A lady named Geri had the only recovery CD I could find at the time, and she got me online and visible with search engines. One day I received two checks from different parts of the country for two CD's. Then…nothing. Geri put "Paypal" on my site and I started getting orders. As Bobcat Goldthwait says, "I lost my job. Well, I didn't really lose my job. I still know where it is. It's just that when I go there someone else is doing it." That was my experience. You can imagine my wife's reaction. There I was, unemployed, explaining that I was going to sell CD's. I bought a list of recovery stores around the country, contacted them, sent demos, wholesaled CD's and ended up stocking 30 stores in 21 states. I also contacted famous recovering alcoholics and got absolutely no reply whatsoever. In that area you really can't get there from here. So, it was the summer of '02, I was out of work, out of my tree, lost at sea and doing an interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the local paper. What to do? My sponsor said to put out another CD. I consider this to be one of my sponsor's many lapses in judgment. Sponsors know how to stay sober, not start a career where there is no market. But, in all fairness, nobody knows how to start a career where there is no market. So I put out another CD. This was greeted with a massive local yawn. The novelty of it all had evaporated. I was expected to do one CD and knock it off. However, the recovery stores and internet buyers didn't know me from Adam, so they merrily bought two CD's instead of one. OK, good. Now, in the spring of '01 I had been invited to play at a beautiful old auditorium in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, opening for a one-man show doing Bill Wilson's speaker meeting on the night of Doctor Bob's death. This guy was good, but I was a tough act to follow. I played for about 500 people and got my first taste of what little big time there was in recovery performance. Actually, it was a wonderful and uplifting experience, and they flew my daughter out with me, so she got to share it, and I sold a truckload of CD's. That same spring I played the local round-up for 700 people with the whole band. It was great, but I think the recovering drunks were a little mystified. It's an AA tradition to close an AA round-up with a dance that features a bar band. Here we were playing songs about quitting drinking and living sober. Most people didn't know what to think. In the summer of '02 when I released "People With No Last Names" I booked two shows in upstate New York and a gig in San Jose. That Christmas I released a free CD with "Born To Be In AA" and "Lifeline". Since that time I've played another show in Cherry Hill and a conference in Indianapolis. Mostly I've been writing. And writing and writing and writing. I've got almost 300 songs to choose from for "Promises", a 24-song CD that I just released. Also, I've set up a tax-exempt corporation. My goal is to produce a series of recovery CD's (the next one's a first-step CD) and produce live events. It's all about the message and the music working together. And it's even more about having fun doing that. Michael Purington
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