Gonna be one hell of a day
Bios… don’t we all just love them! I’ve come to the conclusion that bios are just mostly a smoke screen to give you the absolute best perception of a person at a glance and not what in fact is reality!!! So I’ve decided to keep it real for all of you and give you what I believe is a more accurate description of Derek Herman and the music I make!!!!!!! I grew up in a small town (like everyone else) -Union City, Michigan. I have great parents who did the best they could to raise my brothers and sisters and me. We didn’t have a lot of money and when I say a lot… I mean we were poor!!!!! I remember years when Dad would sell coon furs from hunting to pay for Christmas presents and we always seemed to have a great Christmas every year. Most of what we got were things we needed plus a few things we really wanted. My parents were also foster parents and so we had a lot of extra kids running around. Some of them were horrible and some were really great, but both came from very troubled homes. I have 2 adopted brothers, 1 adopted sister, a biological brother, and a sister. I also lost one half-brother, who we all called our brother, in a car accident in 1989. He was only 19 and to this day I carry the memory of him with me. I started working at a farm when I was 13 and paid for a lot of things with the money I made that we couldn’t afford. I remember buying a pair of Nike tennis shoes that cost $85 and my mother about went through the roof and told me I was taking them back. I didn’t take them back and I loved those shoes more than anything I ever bought. I continued to work at the farm on and off until I graduated from high school. I worked a few odd and end jobs and left the farm a few times, but I always went back. I tell everyone that that was the best job I ever had. I worked on the farm for about a year after graduation when my dad convinced me to come to work at Shipshewanna Hardwoods in Indiana. I got a job as a real lumberjack. My dad had been working in the woods ever since I could remember, and the woods are his life. Blueticks and chainsaws- that’s Dad. So I started cutting trees and skidding them with a skidder from sun up until sun down. The hardest work I’d ever done. Anyone who has a tougher job than that, I’ll tip my hat to you. I did have a little run in with a chainsaw one hot summer day. When after being out way too late and being careless, I cut my foot with the saw and I have the scars to prove it. I could have easily cut my big toe off… so close!!!! I can remember it like yesterday. My dad was not very happy, and my mom wasn’t either. I spent twelve weeks that summer on the couch letting it heal. In 1993, I decided it was time to move on from that small town. The memory of my brother, the feeling of never being anyone, and never finishing anything I ever started left me looking for something more. So sometime in mid-April of that year, I joined the Marine Corps. I DID WHAT??? I looked the recruiter in the eye and told him not to give me any B.S. and to give it to me straight about how bad boot camp was gonna suck. I was signing no matter what he said. He told me it was gonna be one of the toughest challenges I would ever face. He also told me I’d lose my girlfriend, and that I would be so homesick it would hurt. All true and all happened. It was one of the toughest times in my life. I realized during those 13 weeks what kind of man I was and the kind of man I would become. Tested daily mentally and physically it would push anyone to their breaking point. I came out of boot camp a whole new person and for the next eight years it would become my life. I’ve been around the world, seen a lot of good and bad places, and met many great people. I’ve also met some of the worst as well. So in 2001 I called it quits and settled down here in Tennessee just south of Nashville. I got a job at CSXT Railroad as a diesel mechanic where I was employed until November of 2007. †So what does this have to do with the music???? Everything you do in life has a purpose. And until I was 28 years old, I had no idea who or what I wanted to be. I had done a lot of things and never could get a grip on who I really was and even after everything, I still felt a little bit lost. So in June of 2001 someone had convinced me to pick up a guitar after they had heard me singing. I refused to get one for nearly three weeks. Finally, I bought my first guitar from Mike E’s Guitar Shop in LaVergne, TN and the rest is history. Not a day has gone by since then that I haven’t known what I wanted to do. It seemed that music had always been there in good times and bad times. It was a place I ran to whenever I needed a boost or whatever the mood may have been. All I know is that since I started playing, I feel like I have a purpose. It drives me. And all the hard work I’ve done in the past, all the days on the farm, the days in the woods, and the grueling days of boot camp and military life have prepared me for something that takes every bit of nerve and discipline and every ounce of courage that any one human being can face. The music business is one of the most brutal things one can face. With constant pressure telling you that you’ll never make it or the constant “no, we are not interested,†pushes one to the brink of self- destruction. So here I stand today… staring at the mountain and climbing to what seems to be an unreachable mountaintop. I am no longer working full time but now writing songs full time for Songscape Music in Nashville on Music Row! Robyn Taylor-Drake was kind enough to give me an opportunity of a lifetime and a chance to finish what I’ve started when she signed me to a publishing deal in January 2008. I’m not playing as much as I used to instead I’m now concentrating on writing and trying to make as many contacts as I can. But I still and have always written my own music (sometimes with others and a lot more often these days), played shows as much as I could, managed, booked, promoted, and whatever else I needed to do to make it in this business with barely enough time to think. I’ve opened shows for big acts and I won’t name them because so has everyone else. I’ve played places anyone would be proud to play, and so has everyone else. Life has not been great everyday and I’ve had plenty of bad days. I have bills, problems and everything else that everyday life brings and I grind it out just like everyone else and still get up everyday to face that mountain. I love music. I’m a fan and always will be. It drives me like nothing else has before. I love what I do and I bare my soul every time I walk out on that stage or write a new song. I’m not the greatest or claim to be and there is a good chance I never will be. All I know is that if you’re gonna be something, be something you’re not afraid of being and be something that moves you. Don't worry about the paycheck at the end of the week. It helps, but you get nothing out of a crappy job other than another paycheck at the end of the week. So listen to my music, and if you like what you hear… great!!!!!!! But if it’s a bio you want, a real bio that you want to hear about me, come check out my show!!!! I’ve heard a lot of music that sounded great on those shiny little discs they call CDs, but when I got to their shows, it was not as I had imagined it would be. You can’t learn about someone from a piece of paper or something written on a web page or from a shiny little disc. My bio will only let you in my head and allow you to understand where I came from… and I’m DAMN proud of it!!!!! SEE YA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!This layout was handmade with love by the folks at My space or yours? using original artwork by Marah Johnson. Go get one!
