Scratch

2023 saw 20 episodes (really 20 new songs) on Scratch. In this episode I'm joined by my primary collaborator on Scratch - Mike Tierney. And while these Year-In-Reviews always feels one-part reflection and one-part report card, this episode is mostly just a good conversation with someone who I really value. Enjoy, and see you in late March!

"Honor thy mistake as a hidden intention" and more nuggets of wisdom as we explore punk

It's possible heroic efforts will be made and some piece of the statue could be preserved for another few millennia.  But eventually, whether its in a museum or out in the elements, atom by atom, it will fade.  In a way, its already suffered one kind of death.  At its creation, it was a statue of a ruler its people viewed as a God.  It had a talismanic power.  Now it's only relevant becaus...

I'm more excited about this song than maybe anything else I've done in Season 2. Starting with a sample from a Hewlett Packard Word Generator, "To Hope" blends the poetry of 17th century Mexico with a meditation on the foolishness of hope - the singular importance of today.

How infatuation relates to Sharpie pens, gasoline, and aerosols - the kind of things that give you a momentary high (and an awful comedown). Also in this episode -the "subconscious assembly" technique is a new songwriting technique I'm test driving on this song.

Characters are like buckets of water, dropped from above and left to settle in the natural valleys created by the topography of the setting. Discussing Barbara Kingsolver, Bruce Springsteen, and analog delay <3

There are a lot of safe spaces for me in music - form, instrumentation, and many others. They're useful, but pushing out of those spaces is where the *really* interesting stuff happens. In this episode I cover the creation of the song Demain - one of my most electronic songs to date.

Very excited to introduce my new single, launching today on all platforms - Nothing In The World Can Stop Us Now. This episode is a rebroadcast from the original airing several months ago - I hope you enjoy.

Nummo are the ancestral spirits of the Dogon people of Western Africa. Hermaphroditic, fish-like creatures that were human from the waist up, fish from the waist down and inhabited a world circling the star Sirius. While I couldn't make the music of the song half as interesting as the lyrical content, I attempted to mash up the Malian desert blues inspired by a chance encounter with Vieux Fark...

There are lots of ways to do a cover. This song takes a character from the Zombies song "Care of Cell 44" and imagines he writes a different type of letter.

The National-style electro-rock, with an old Timbaland "Woo" sample ontop - what could go wrong?

One half Kinks, one half "The Epic of Gilgamesh".

Our first single in 4 years - about when the potential becomes kinetic.

I've unfortunately been in the hospital over the last week, so didn't have time to put together this week's episode - BUT. There will be a special episode next week :-)

The culmination of my debatably healthy Radiohead obsession - "Replica" is my journey of influence through the worlds of Thom Yorke and Johnny Greenwood.

1/2 Cormac McCarthy, 1/2 Jock Jamz Volume 4

A velvet lined, fully appointed 1970 Plymouth Barracuda rolls down the Vegas Strip, looking for a date for the evening

A song about my friend Steve - honestly, I think a pretty dang good song about my friend Steve.

This song sucks . In this episode, I'll say why - we'll talk about Marshall McLuhan, butchering French, and how I should trust myself to make things that are weirder.

I grew up against a background of casual racism. It was a background heartbeat, a constant ostinato - so socially normalized that it was practically imperceptible. And while I never felt like I was actively part of the problem, I definitely wasn't an active part of the solution. I think of the jokes that shouldn’t have been laughed at, but were - or the off-handed comments that were ignored, i...

When I was a kid I used to play a game in the backseat of my family’s Aerostar during long trips out west.  I’d look at every passing car and try to take a moment to imagine the inhabitants as independent people - that woman’s kids had left for college and she was finally leaving her hometown.  That man was bored in his marriage, and had an undiagnosed thyroid problem. And the cars would pass by,...

Season 2!  MREs, racking out, scuttlebutt, dress blues - the first song this year is about the language of the military, and a squadron bonded together over shared purpose.

And after one year and 26 episodes (really 26 songs) the first season of Scratch is done.  There were a lot of late nights, early mornings, and lessons learned along the way.  In this episode, I'm joined by Mike Tierney (https://www.miketierneymusic.com/), a key collaborator on the first season of Scratch.  We'll talk about what we both learned through the first season, and give som...

I cannot believe I made it a whole year :D "Make Me New" is a reversal - that's what I call songs where the music and production comes before the melody and lyrics - it’s a completely backwards way of working for me, but also a good way of shaking things up.

To me, sirens are best described as "evil mermaids". They lure passing sailors in with their song, and then pull them into the water.  In The Odyssey, Odysseus’s ship passes by the sirens.  Every other sailor had their ears plugged - but Odysseus wanted to hear their voices.  So he had his crew tie him to the mast and told them that, no matter what he said, not to untie him as he wo...