Scratch

In December of 1944, a 22-year old Japanese intelligence officer named Hiroo Onoda was sent to Lubang Island, in the Philippines.  A couple months later, the island was overrun and Onoda, and three other soldiers escaped into the jungle. where they fought a guerilla war that didn't end until 1974.  When Onoda emerged from the jungle, the war he had been fighting had been over for *29* ye...

Hotels are these vessels for sacred, precious, lives, and their jobs are to be as blank of a canvas as possible.  All traces of the inhabitant that yesterday slept in the bed you will sleep in tonight are gone by the time you walk into the room.  And all you’re left with are starched white sheets, empty coat hangers, and mass-produced art bolted to the wall.

The apocalypse I had been expecting, as I had been told in countless bible stories and schlocky action movies, was dramatic - or if it wasn’t dramatic, it was at least defined.  It had a clear beginning - an asteroid striking the Earth, plagues of locusts - and a clear end - a hero saving the day, or a towering inferno that roasted all of humanity.  What I had instead was the worst thing...

My tank was completely empty this week, so I inverted my process.  Most of the time I write a song and hang production over it - this time, I did the production, and laid a song ontop.  I love the result.

Désolé is one of the first songs I've experimented with writing (partially) in another language.  And, boy, did I learn a lot on the way 😂

This song could be good at some point, but - it ain't now. The story of how it's made is an interesting one though.  And this is the first episode of the podcast that has been made 100% on the road :-)

My song Muscle Shoals tells the story of the legendary Rolling Stones session in the town of the same name.  In just 3 days, the band produced "You Gotta Move", "Brown Sugar", and "Wild Horses" - it's an amazing story, and I really like the song that came out of it.

I have a privileged set of things I've been able to run away from in my life.  I remember, as a kid, if I felt like a person was going to ultimately be toxic in my life, I’d wholly cut them out.  On the surface, they would cease to exist to me (even if, in my head they still did).  I wouldn’t mention them, wouldn’t talk to them, wouldn’t even look at them.  And after a while, t...

Our lived environments are to me purpose-built extensions of our bodies.  The proportions of a steering wheel, or the way you palm fits against a doorknob - these objects are all constructed to parallel their creators.  And cities!  Cities are bodies, seemingly infinitely long, running in place.  The roads and train tracks, veins and arteries, the commuters the red blood cells,...

Our lived environments are to me purpose-built extensions of our bodies.  The proportions of a steering wheel, or the way you palm fits against a doorknob - these objects are all constructed to parallel their creators.  And cities!  Cities are bodies, seemingly infinitely long, running in place.  The roads and train tracks, veins and arteries, the commuters the red blood cells,...

I think that you can ultimately boil a person's life into seven people.  Those seven people stand at an inflection point in the arc of that person's journey - signposts directing that person's fate.  Sometimes it's the people you think it is - a partner, a child - other times it's someone like Philip.

There are a few types of people who are attracted to classes on dead languages: Those interested in the intersection of something like Latin and English - or the “maybe it will improve your SAT score” camp. Those thinking it’ll improve their chances at learning other Romance languages in the future - or the “hopelessly optimistic” camp (that was my camp) People who are really interested in Catholi...

I moved to New York in 2011, and ended up straight in Williamsburg, a neighborhood in the northern end of Brooklyn.  The area had been Italian, then Polish, and was then colonized by artists in the early aughts, who opened a seemingly endless string of independent art spaces and music venues.  As is so often the case, after the artists did the grunt work of occupying decaying warehouses...

I moved to New York in 2011, and ended up straight in Williamsburg, a neighborhood in the northern end of Brooklyn.  The area had been Italian, then Polish, and was then colonized by artists in the early aughts, who opened a seemingly endless string of independent art spaces and music venues.  As is so often the case, after the artists did the grunt work of occupying decaying warehouses...

I loved my friend Lisa for her west Texas drawl and for how dashing she looked in a fitted suit, like some tomboy Virginia Slim.  We grew up in different parts of the country, and while her youth of armadillos and Shiner Bock differed greatly from mine of manta rays and Budweiser, we shared a few things in common: A Middle School spent dealing with some of the more ardent forms of Pentecostal...

3 short stories about a grocery store

3 short stories about a grocery store

The Solomon Railroad company spread throughout Ohio, Michigan, and into eastern Illinois under Uri's empathetic eye.  And while his rails continued a westward expansion, he found a modest home in the Shaker Heights area of Cleveland.  He did his best to live simply, directly. But his railroads went everywhere, and such was his fame that, when his children would later introduce themselves...

The Solomon Railroad company spread throughout Ohio, Michigan, and into eastern Illinois under Uri's empathetic eye.  And while his rails continued a westward expansion, he found a modest home in the Shaker Heights area of Cleveland.  He did his best to live simply, directly. But his railroads went everywhere, and such was his fame that, when his children would later introduce themselves...

I hitchhiked to Santa Fe once and spent the day wandering around the art galleries and adobe huts.  The pueblos felt simultaneously modern and primitive - like space ships built a thousand years ago - and I lost track of time.  I started making my way back - 30 miles in one car, 10 miles in another.   The afternoon turned into a brilliant sunset that radiated an azalea green fr...

I hitchhiked to Santa Fe once and spent the day wandering around the art galleries and adobe huts.  The pueblos felt simultaneously modern and primitive - like space ships built a thousand years ago - and I lost track of time.  I started making my way back - 30 miles in one car, 10 miles in another.   The afternoon turned into a brilliant sunset that radiated an azalea green fr...

I'm not aiming to write a finished song when I write an hoursong.  I'm aiming to get a piece to a point where I can be comfortable either abandoning it, or investing more time.  And in the case of Lena, I thought I had the start of something.  This episode tells the story of how the song went from an interrupted idea, to an abandoned sketch, to ultimately, a finished song. In this e...

The ambient religious background of our town started to change when I was in Middle School and the Brownsville Revival happened.  I started hearing stories about the Revival, and it sounded like something out of a movie - altar calls, full-water baptisms, people writhing around on the ground speaking in tongues.  Over time, the religious fervor that was focused on the Church started blee...

Everybody writes songs differently - some people write words first, and then write music that goes along with the words (the idea of this makes my brain hurt - I have no idea how people write songs this way).  My technique, most of the time, is to improvise on an instrument and sing nonsense ontop of it until I find something that feels right.  I build out the structure from there, and t...

I can't escape my hometown.  My Sunburned Town.  Its coves and shorelines, its pine trees, its summer rain.  It is a constant drip drip drip that seeps out of me and into my songs. And part of that, for me, is hurricanes.  I remember printed maps of the Caribbean distributed with every purchase by the Albertson's grocery store, where I had my first job. I remember sleepless nig...