January 2026: "Yes Man & Good Luck"
Hey y’all,
Here’s the Austin B. Sweeney newsletter coming in hot for the month of January. I put these out once a month to keep you updated on upcoming shows, what I’m listening to, general musings, lyric breakdowns, and much more! I hope this newsletter will provide value for you, if for no other reason than it may introduce you to music you haven’t heard before!
Let’s quit wasting time here and jump into it, here’s what I’ve been listening to in the last month:
Song: “You Can’t F****n’ Tell Me When It’s Christmastime” – Laura Hamlin
Album: “A/B” - KALEO
Artist: The Droptines
I hope y’all had a very Merry Christmas and got to spend quality time with your loved ones!
My new EP, “WAGON” is available NOW everywhere you get your music.
Also, if you want to read any past newsletters, click here
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I did an interview in Tucson with my good buddy PJ Bidwell on Rock102.1 KFMA with Beef Vegan, you can find clips from that here
I read something the other day that I’ve been thinking about a lot. I can’t remember exactly what it said (I should’ve screenshotted it), but here’s a paraphrase: “When confronted with two choices, always pick the choice that contains a better chance of good luck occurring.”
Essentially, if you have two choices and one is to stay home and the other is to go out, you should choose to go out.
You never know who you might meet. You never know where the night might take you. Sure, we all work very hard and have earned the right to stay home and become the couch watching Netflix once in a while. Nothing wrong with that. However, as a general rule, I think it’s good to take the invitations of life when they’re presented to you.
I remember being in high school when the Jim Carrey film, “Yes Man” came out. I was a pretty social, well-liked, and outgoing high-schooler, but even so, that movie was a revelation. It’s a funny thing to say that a Jim Carrey movie has changed your outlook – although as a kid, Ace Ventura and Dumb & Dumber also shaped my young sense of humor to a pretty tremendous degree – but “Yes Man” was a realization about how much luck is simply out there waiting for you in the world if you could only get yourself out there to grab it.
To summarize the movie, Jim Carrey is a depressed, single guy living in the city. His girlfriend has left him, and he spends the first bit of the movie heartbroken, only leaving his apartment for work and to go to the video store – yes, the video store. He dodges phone calls from his friends to hang out and is generally just a mopey bummer of a human being. He winds up at a conference where the keynote speaker implores the audience to say yes to life. Which essentially means saying yes to everything. Everything.
He begins this experiment of agreeing to participate in everything that is presented to him. He’s not allowed to say no, as this would be breaking a promise that he made to himself. Long story short, through many strange coincidences, he meets a girl (of course). They fall in love. His life is made immensely better. Yada yada yada. Go watch the movie.
It shows how life will constantly present you with opportunities for experience. They may not seem like anything significant at the time, but you never know how any given moment may manifest in something greater down the road.
I’ll give y’all a quick-ish story of how random circumstances and saying yes to opportunities led to me meeting my wife, Laura.
I used to play lead guitar for Drew Cooper – you all know Coop, right? Go give him a listen. I still play music with him periodically, but since I’ve got my own music career, I don’t get to play with his band nearly as much as I did a few years ago.
First of all, my opportunity to play with him came on a whim. He needed a guitar player for Rooster’s Fest at Rooster’s Country in Mesa. I was in the Salt River String Band with Laura Hamlin at the time, and she told Coop to give me a call. I hadn’t ever played with Coop, but I figured I’m a decent improviser and could hop onstage and play the show with him. Long story short, that one improv gig turned into playing many, many shows with Coop. I’ve played with him as we’ve opened for Cody Johnson at the Prescott Rodeo Arena, Randy Rogers Band, Jason Boland & The Stragglers, Mickey & The Motorcars, Neal McCoy, etc. He’s also become a tremendous friend of mine, as well as a mentor.
A couple of months down the road from that first gig at Rooster’s, he invited me to play with him at the Roger Clyne Campout down on the Mexican border. My mantra when I got into Arizona was “Say yes to every gig” so of course, I said yes to this campout. I didn’t know if I was going to sleep in a tent, in my car, or in Coop’s camper, I just knew that I would make it work somehow.
Right before we went onstage, somebody came up to me and told me that they heard that I enjoy mushrooms from time-to-time. So I said yes, yes I do. He proceeded to give me a couple of caps right before we went onstage (that person is subscribed to this newsletter, he knows who he is).
Anyway, I just figured that if The Grateful Dead would do it, I should too.
The first part of the show went great, by the way.
Of course, with it being a Coop show, he soon brought onstage his signature handle of whiskey. This was where I might have wanted to reassess the situation.
I took a slug of the whiskey, maybe a little too much, and just figured “that’s showbiz, baby.”
I played a little sloppy from that point on, of course.
It was not my most professional moment, but we were camping in the middle of nowhere, I was young and reckless, and I was pretty deadset on abiding by my “Yes to everything” method, for good or ill. After all, it had gotten me this far.
Much of the rest of the night was a bit of a blur, but – in part or fully – due to those earlier decisions, I found myself at 2am hanging out with Coop in his camper. If things had gone differently, I probably would’ve been asleep at this point.
Side note: As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to go to bed before late-night shots start being proposed. This is what the kids-these-days call a “pro tip”.
Anyway, while we’re hanging out, these two ladies knocked on the camper door and were looking to hang out with us as well, just chatting and cracking jokes. One of these ladies – who is now my very dear friend, Tricia – seemed to get a kick out of me.
I saw Tricia periodically throughout the weekend and we developed a friendship. She would come out to some of my shows and I would see her now and then as the years went on.
One night – probably two years down the road – I was going to be playing a show at The Stillery in Chandler. Tricia texted me and said she wanted to come out to the show. As the show started, when I was onstage, I saw her walk in and she had a friend with her. Little did I know, Tricia was attempting to set us up. When I walked offstage during a set break, I went and talked to them. The girl she brought was pretty, had a great smile, and happened to be wearing a shirt from Old County Inn (where I have played the first weekend of every month for the last 6 years), which was my talking point to engage in conversation with her.
This girl, of course, was Laura (NOT Hamlin), and I had no idea that I was meeting my future wife that night. This was two years and countless shows after that chance meeting with Tricia at the Clyne Campout. Laura didn’t know that it was a setup either. She told me later that she didn’t meet up with Tricia very often and this was a spur-of-the-moment decision to go out. She was surprised when the musician onstage came down and headed for their table. And the rest, as they say, is history.
It still blows my mind to think about all the pieces that had to fit together just right to manifest in Laura and I meeting that night.
· I had to move to Arizona.
· I had to play the show at Yucca Tap Room the night that I got introduced to Laura Hamlin (different Laura).
· I had to join Laura Hamlin and the Salt River String Band as a bass player (I lied and said that “of course I know how to play standup bass.”)
· I had to demonstrate that I was actually a lead guitar player.
· Coop had to need a lead guitar player for Rooster’s Fest.
· Hamlin had to recommend me to Coop.
· I had to accept that Rooster’s Fest gig, having never played with Coop before.
· I had to accept the invitation to Clyne Campout and participate in all the subsequent things that transpired that weekend.
· I had to meet Tricia.
· Tricia had to invite Laura out to The Stillery.
· Tricia couldn’t mention to either of us that she was attempting to set us up.
· Ultimately, the entire chain of events could’ve been halted by a simple no: Laura could’ve declined that night. Maybe she was too tired or busy and wanted to stay in.
Laura and I probably would have never crossed paths if Tricia hadn’t invited her out that night. After all, she worked for the school district and frequented country swing bars, and I did not. A million variables contributed to that one chance meeting at The Stillery. It makes my brain hurt if I actually try to break it all down. As a believer in fate, I do believe that this was meant to happen. However, fate can’t manifest if you never leave your house, refusing to accept the life that fate is attempting to hand you.
Bob Dylan would just be some guy going by his actual name, Robert Zimmerman, if he had never picked up a guitar.
This goes for everything in life if you try to pinpoint all the decisions that led to good things manifesting in your life. If you hadn’t done X, you wouldn’t have been invited to Y, which meant you never would’ve met Z. All the little decisions we make in our lives can have a huge impact when you extrapolate out.
This is what brings me to my original point. When presented with two options, always take the option that has a better chance of manifesting good luck.
As a married man now, it has become easier to turn down offers to go out on a given night. As the meme says, I’ve already got what I need at home.
Except luck. Luck isn’t manifested in a comfy night at home. Luck is manifested through the deliberate volunteering of stepping into the unknown. What if things go wrong?
Fair enough, but what if they go right?
We all reach a certain point where we recognize that we’ve settled comfortably into our lives. We’ve got our routines, our hangouts, our TV shows, etc. and I don’t know about you, but don’t you often feel like you’re missing something? Doesn’t it feel like there’s something out there right now that you could be experiencing that would add richness and vitality to your life?
FOMO (fear-of-missing-out) is a real thing, and not always a helpful one. It’s that nagging sense that whatever you’re doing right now isn’t as good as something else you could be doing that people out there are currently doing and you’re missing out on it. Us Millennials were fed a pretty steady diet growing up about not missing out on life. Travel the world, experience the wonder, “you can be anything you want to be when you grow up”, etc. We were told often that if we’re not changing the world, we’re missing out on life. FOMO on overload.
Yet, on a small scale, it’s kind of true. A real fear of mine is getting to my silver years and realizing the chances that I could’ve taken, but didn’t. The opportunities that were handed to me and I chose to stay at home that night.
This is not some Nike “Just Do It” campaign, because there’s real value in enjoying the peace and serenity of a simple life. However, I do believe that there’s a force in the universe that helps those who help themselves.
I believe strongly that if you want to be more lucky, you can actually manifest good luck by simply going in and getting it for yourself. It’s been said many times, but there are those who life happens to, and those who happen to life.
When I first moved to Arizona to fully pursue music, I had a mantra: “The door doesn’t open to those who don’t knock.” I felt that if I wanted luck to cross my path, I had to walk as many paths as I could find. I said yes to everything. I had a full-time job that had me setting my alarm for 4am every weekday, and still played shows 3-4 nights a week, often until late into the night, because hey, I never knew which of those gigs might be the lucky one. Turns out that one gig at The Stillery was the luckiest one yet.
To sum it up, luck isn’t simply luck. There’s a formula for creating more of it every single day. There’s an old saying from Seneca that luck is simply preparation meeting opportunity. Hard work and openness to experience manifests luck. We don’t know what life could truly become if we put ourselves in the way to be struck by luck more often. Life never turns out like we imagine; it can surprise us every day. So it becomes our duty to our future selves to put ourselves in more situations where life-changing luck can occur.
Speaking of which, I think the Power Ball is over a billion bucks right now, I’ll be right back…
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Here are the shows that are coming up in the month of January, I might book another couple so keep your eyes peeled on my socials.
· 1/3 – Old County Inn, 6-9pm (Pine, AZ)
· 1/8 – Valley Bar (supporting Chris Housman on tour)
o This show is tentative at the moment. I’ll keep ya’ll updated.
· 1/9 – Lazy Bird (duo), 6-8pm (Peoria, AZ)
· 1/10 – Muks, 6-9pm (Payson, AZ)
· 1/11 – Horse & Hyde, 3-6pm (Arcadia – Phoenix, AZ)
· 1/23 – Back Alley BBQ, 8-11 (Chandler, AZ)
· 1/24 – The Lewinski’s at The Maverick, 7pm (Tucson, AZ)
o If you see one show this month, come to Tucson. It’s me, Drew Cooper, The Cole Trains, The Pompous Beggars, and PJ Bidwell, and we “Make the 90’s Great Again”, by bringing classic 90’s country songs and perform them in our best 90’s attire. It’s one of my favorite shows of the year and it gets wild, don’t miss it.
· 1/25 – Mandy’s Wine Bar, noon-3pm (Maricopa, AZ)
· 1/30 – Roadrunner, 5-9pm (New River, AZ)
· 1/31 – Grapeables Wine Bar, 6:30-10pm (Fountain Hills, AZ)
Stoked to see y’all soon.
Austin
Listen now!
https://open.spotify.com/artist/433eTr5V5LEv1VtP1ejbkt?si=Jlzl5oz8RvulN-ocxrGqyg
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