Java Jo’s in Milton had a big fire a couple weeks ago. It’s not clear what’s going to happen to it; my pal Mike Delaney tells me that the owner is building a new restaurant down the street, so I imagine that the chances he’ll rebuild the coffeehouse are pretty slim. I’m not used to losing a venue like this – most of the open mikes listed in my open mike graveyard went out of business, or just decided not to do music anymore. A fire – well, that’s a first. Read more »

Now it can be told. The reason that I’ve been in radio silence for the last two months is that my wife, She Who Must Be Taunted, and I have been on a two-month automobile junket around the US of A. We’ve touched thirty states or so, seen virtually all of our friends (some of them twice, due to their own travel schedules), beheld many great wonders of natural beauty, and discovered one hellhole (Mesa, Arizona -105 in the shade in September, drivers with the manners of pigs, an ecosystem consisting entirely of concrete and chain stores – never, never go there). Our new heroes are the folks at the National Park Service – the vast variety of this great nation of ours is well and carefully entrusted to these folks, in spite of whatever happens with the chuckleheads who allocate the money. We are exhausted, overly tan on our driving arms, and thoroughly satisfied. Read more »

Many of you have probably noticed that I don’t play many covers. My repertoire contains very few of them, actually. For a Beatles night at TCAN many years ago I worked up a cover of “She Said, She Said”, which I’m quite taken with, and I do a mean “Time After Time”, and on an old tape I recorded a couple of Todd Rundgren tunes, but that’s pretty much it (well, that’s not exactly true, but we’ll get to that later). Read more »

A number of you have already purchased my latest CD “Thirds” (thank you). Although it’s not a planned album per se, it is a full-length recording (9 songs, 48 minutes, although a chunk of that is extraneous but charming stage patter), and it’s got shrinkwrap and a UPC code and everything, thanks to our friends at Kunaki (props to Chip Quinn for the recommendation). I could sell it on CD Baby if I wanted. But no, there will be no CD release party, and yes, I’m going to tell you why. Read more »

Jeannie, you owe me an album. Scott, I’ll never be as bald as you, no matter how much hair I lose. Pete, I gotta say, the Harley fits you like a glove. And Dave, well, I see you all the time. Read more »

I have no gigs scheduled. Read more »

Last time, I told you about how I’d written my new song, “The Fire Tribe”. The back story was a bit involved, as you saw. Lots of people, lots of cryptic references. So what happens when this song hits the stage? Read more »

In the summer of 1994, my friend Jack, who was living in England at the time, invited me to attend a songwriting workshop with him at a place called Fen Farm, in a little town called Bury St. Edmunds. The interesting thing about this workshop was that it was run by Ray Davies, yes, that Ray Davies – I think I was singing “Waterloo Sunset” to myself for about a month beforehand. Although meeting Ray was an experience, my favorite part of the week, by far, was the gang of other people I met: Woodstock, Marc, Helen, and the rest. I’ve been back to visit them a couple times, and it’s always like summer camp again – time stops, we have our play date, and then time starts up once more. One time, we had a reunion concert in a small town between London and Brighton, owned by a friend of Woodstock’s who happened to have a concert hall. Nobody came, of course, but we had a blast doing it. We called ourselves the Fire Tribe. Read more »

Last time, I shared with you my travails in the hosting arena (cue the world’s smallest violin). Here’s one of the things I said: Read more »

As some of you probably recall, I had a couple of hosting gigs in December (Amazing Things open mike) and January (the Nameless Coffeehouse). For some, I think hosting is something that you graduate to – it seems to be a lot like how teachers aspire to be administrators so they don’t have to deal with those goddamn kids anymore. If you’re hosting an open mike, you know you’re going to play two songs, or more, every week, same day, same time. You might get paid a little something to do the night, maybe more than you’d normally find in the hat after a feature (I don’t know anything about the economics of doing this on a regular basis, so I’m guessing here) – for some, probably a good deal. Read more »