Duff McKagan is the founding bassist of Guns N’ Roses and the leader of Seattle’s Loaded. His column runs every Thursday on Reverb.I’m writing to you during my flight home to Seattle from L.A. this morning. Just as I plopped myself down in my seat on the plane, I started to have a nice chat with the gal in the seat next to me. I’ve got my dog Buckley with me, and he has the ability to disarm people who just see tattoos or whatever (people sometimes get bummed when I sit next to them).This nice lady’s name is Madeline Eddy, and she is flying back to Seattle to see her son, Tom Eddy, graduate from the University of Washington. A banner day in the Eddy family for sure.As Madeline and I progressed in our conversation, I told her that I play music and whatnot, and she professed that her son Tom was about to set out on a rock tour of his own–basically the minute after he graduates. It turns out that Tom Eddy is the lead singer for Seattle favorite Beat Connection.Mom is a bit worried, of course, and that is the reason us sons love our moms. Mom’s always and unquestionably “got your back.”But what she didn’t know, and I tried to inform her as best as possible, is that traveling musicians almost always have good support groups in the towns they tour through. There seems to be an unwritten law in our fellowship that there is always a place to crash or a barbecue in someone’s backyard that we are invited to.And Tom Eddy and Beat Connection are about to embark on a whirlwind dive into the realm of hope and belief in themselves. Some things artists have in droves: belief, hope, and, most times, some serious type-A drive.Beat Connection did SXSW a couple of months ago, and have been touted as a favorite by our own Seattle Weekly. Many of you reading may have indeed seen this band play somewhere in town or elsewhere.I still get enamored by the romance and hope of some new band taking those risks and getting out there on the road to those scary proving grounds of those uncomfortable places where only a very few may have heard your music. You have to prove yourself then and there, and on that strange stage in that strange new city. This is what new music is all about.Good luck to you, Tom Eddy, and to your band. Madeline? Everything is going to be fine, and I trust that your son’s band will be just fine. It seems they have scribes and fans pulling for them, and they will never be able to fully know what they are capable of as a band until they actually go out there and suffer on the road, for their art. It’s all just cute as a damn button . . . (A word on my dog Buckley. We are at 30,000 feet, and his snoring is getting a bit embarrassing.)