Every year, I set out to write a song a month. And every year, I fail. What goes wrong, you might ask? Well, it’s more a matter of what else goes right: there are books to read, vacations to take, money to earn, friends and family to see, and of course there’s my beloved wife, She Who Must Be Taunted, who commands every ounce of my loyalty and attention, even when I’m doing something else (inconvenient for me, convenient for her). And in that sea of priorities, my commitment to write a song a month ranks somewhere below cleaning the toilet (which, frankly, isn’t even my job – SWMBT is in charge of bathroom sanitization and vermin control, and no, you do not want to know why we have a special category for that).

As I write this, my wife, She Who Must Be Taunted, and I are lying in our hotel room in Rockville, MD, holding our bladders because the water is off until 4 PM. So, not the Ritz. Rockville is the last stop on our latest automobile journey, this one a relatively brief three-week loop through the Midwest, visiting friends and family and consuming various bits of art. The ideal vacation involves forgetting about your actual life, but this time, I’ve found that my actual life is fairly insistently elbowing me in the ribs on an almost daily basis.

I miss my hair.

It’s not like it was impressive hair. It did not flow in lovely tresses, like Fabio, nor did it stick out in interesting directions. It was just…hair. It covered my head, like hair is supposed to do. But nowadays, when I stand under the spotlight (or the bald spot illuminator, as Tom Bianchi likes to call it), my head shines like a beacon (and I’d write a song about that, but my old pal John Schindler beat me to it). And I get a little sentimental.

My wife, She Who Must Be Taunted, and I were over at Albemarle Field in Newton last night, listening to people sing the “Star Spangled Banner” in an octave only dogs can hear – and watching the fireworks, of course – and SWMBT was discoursing upon Barbra Streisand’s 700-page autobiography, which apparently is 50 pages of tell-all gossip and 650 pages of vocal care instruction. Me, I let my voice do the equivalent of play in traffic, but if you want to sing duets with Mariah Carey at the age of 83, you probably need to up your game a little bit.

As you all certainly know by now, I’ve just finished my album Bad Apple, which I’m sure you all have a copy of. I’m immensely proud of it (those of you who know me are aware that I’m immensely proud of everything, so no great surprise there), and in many ways, it’s the album I’ve always wanted to make. There’s not a lot of anything you’d call “folk” on it – I’m a carefully disguised rock’n’roller, and it’s a full band album with a lot of great songwriting on it, and a good deal of anger, and more than a couple genuine bangers (thanks, band!). But this is not everybody’s jam.

My wife, She Who Must Be Taunted, is on the garden committee for our condo association. Now, I should be clear that there are three units in our building, and every single unit has one person on the garden committee. And since that person is not me, I did not get a vote when the garden committee chose to slaughter our beloved (by me) yews and completely wipe out every other living thing in the yard and start over. I am not bitter about this. Really. (I’ve processed my rage and moved on.)

Just showing up, so they say.

And it’s true! After all, where would George Washington be if he hadn’t just shown up at Valley Forge? Where would the Beatles be if they hadn’t just shown up on the Ed Sullivan Show? Where would Caesar be if he hadn’t just shown up to the invasion of Gaul? (Of course, on the other hand, where would he be if he hadn’t just shown up in the Forum on the day he was murdered, so, maybe, not the best example.)

So the album is out on Bandcamp and on my Web site – so not entirely out, just release-curious – and I could not be happier. But it occurs to me that you may not know why it’s called Bad Apple. So pull up a chair.

The more Greekly sophisticated among you may be familiar with Zeno’s paradox, which amounts to arguing that you can never quite get anywhere, because, well, there are an infinite number of tiny, tiny bits of progress you have to make, and since you can’t do an infinite number of things in a finite amount of time, you might as well lie down on the sofa and binge “Stranger Things” until you melt into the fabric. OK, that can’t exactly be Zeno’s paradox, because Netflix wasn’t around back then (I’m pretty sure the ancient Greeks only had Paramount+), but you get the idea.

Coincidentally, I’m finishing my album.

The album, she is basically done. Everything is mixed, and it all sounds fantastic (and I mean all of it – I’ll fight you, I will!), and the cover art is ready (also fantastic) and Doug Kwartler has mastered the first song, and I’m hoping I’ll get the rest of it soon. And then I will release it into the ether, where it will live forever in Spotify, amen.