I remember the moment Derek and I came up with the name for The Cancellations. We immediately did a web search, a Facebook search, we even doubled back and checked Myspace. I searched the USPTO registry and we were in the clear. No one was using the name. Not for music, not for anything.
Derek bought the domain and I set up The Cancellations Facebook page, and we posted a few jokes back and forth without adding much in the way of music.
Then Derek died. We played the songs we’d worked on with him at his memorial. Live for the first time. A month later we moved to Nashville. A move he was supposed to be here with us for.
I didn’t think I’d get the domain back since I didn’t even know what registrar he used, so I kept checking to see when it would expire. It did in November of 2018. I bought it, even though we hadn’t played music since moving to Nashville. It was one method of holding on to something we had with him.
In 2019 I started playing again, writing more. I put up a placeholder site on thecancellations.com that was nothing more than a photo of an empty chair in a large room and text that read “EP coming 2020…?” We had no plans. But we weren’t letting it go.
Then The Year That Shall Not Be Named hit. We were locked inside. We started recording. Some new songs and some we’d worked on with Derek. And they were coming out great. We released two singles that year, one being a song we’d worked on with Derek (“All My Heroes”) and one brand new one (“Four Lights”).
In the fall of 2021, a friend came to visit us. We took her to the 5 Spot for Motown Monday. That’s the night Joe showed me a picture of a show flyer he saw in the men’s bathroom. It advertised “The Cancellations” along with a couple other artists. It was not us.
I was in shock for a few days. I looked them up. I argued with myself over whether or not we’d let go of the name because I felt defeated. I thought about deleting our releases from YouTube, because we hadn’t distributed them elsewhere. I wanted to give up.
And then I thought back to 2017, a few years after I had quit playing professionally to pursue a career in the culinary arts. I realized I hated pattying burgers for a living, and I quit that too. I was bartending again, my forever fallback career. I hated it. And Derek would come into the bar I worked at on Fridays, and goad Joe and I into coming to the studio after my shift.
I’d be done by 9:30 and we’d head about a mile down the road to Derek’s studio. We’d regularly play until three or four in the morning. Even though I didn’t want to play anymore, Derek kept me invested in myself when I wanted to give up.
And that’s why I can’t give up now. I can’t give up music. I can’t give up the name. I can’t give up because Derek would never let me give up. And if I do I give up his memory.