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There are two kinds of games—those with finite boundaries and those without. This is the subject of James P. Carse’s book Finite and Infinite Games. It is also the reality former NFL All-Pro tight end Darren Waller is living today. Waller, who is also the great-grandson of the famed jazz pianist Fats Waller, excelled at the game of football. In 2020 with the Las Vegas Raiders, he finished with nearly 1,200 yards from scrimmage and nine touchdowns. And over his nine-year NFL career, he earned tens of millions of dollars. But he gave all of that up at 31 years old. Now, he is pursuing a new dream. He is following in his great-grandfather’s footsteps to become a musician.

Before they were a family trio, the group known now as Los Lonely Boys was a family quartet led by their father, Ringo Garza Sr. Today, the band, which features brothers Henry, Jojo, and Ringo Jr., is a Grammy Award-winning group famous for songs like “Heaven” and “Onda,” in the mid-1990s, before all the fame, they were backing up their dad in local clubs and learning the ropes. But as the brothers became more and more proficient as musicians and as a unit, their father realized something. He saw that it was time to let the birds out of the nest and watch them fly on their own. And soar they did, ever since their 2004 self-titled debut LP, all the way to today, some twenty years later, with their latest offering, Resurrection, which dropped this summer on August 2.

Amos Lee can’t quite think of the word. It’s something like obsessed. Maybe all-encompassing. It’s funny—for someone so verbal and acutely capable of communication, he has trouble locating the exact term for how he felt when he discovered the power of songwriting. 

As a teenager, he found himself listening to artists like the Beastie Boys and KRS-One. But it was a bit later in college, hanging out with “stoner kids” and playing guitar, when he realized the power he had in his hands the whole time. He learned a few chords, and he was subsumed. He began writing books and books and books of songs without any real end game, he says. He didn’t think it would be his job, let alone his vocation. “It was just a nice place for me to go with my emotions,” Lee tells American Songwriter, “because I didn’t have that before. I was locked away for many years.”

In the popular NBC comedy The Office, actor and musician Creed Bratton plays paper company employee Creed Bratton, a mysterious older man who’s lived many lives, has secret identities, and grows mung beans in his desk drawer. But as they say art imitates life and the real-life Creed Bratton indeed has seen a great many things in the world over his 80-year lifespan.

But for Bratton, whose latest album Tao Pop is out Friday (September 27), his creative journey started as a kid with brass instruments. First it was the French horn, then the tuba, and then the trumpet, which was his first love. He was first chair in high school, excelling in the blind auditions and beating out upperclassmen in the process. But it was on a summer visit to see his grandparents as a teenager when he discovered country and western music. At 13, Bratton got himself a Silvertone guitar and he was hooked for life.

In the Pacific Northwest, there’s a culture of vibrant creativity. Hopeful artists flock to cities like Seattle and Portland, congregating in ramshackle apartment buildings or old houses, splitting the rent, trading shifts in coffee houses, pubs, or restaurants, and, in their off hours, spending time manufacturing their dreams. 

Poets, sculptors, musicians, novelists, painters—they make homes in the region and cultivate their creativity. The Helena, Montana-born Colin Meloy is one of those industrious people. The frontman for the folk-rock band The Decemberists moved to Portland, Oregon, more than two decades ago and took up residence in a warehouse with friends. And from those beginnings, so much of his life today has been built. That includes his band’s newest album, As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again, which dropped on June 14.