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 »

A while back, She Who Must Be Taunted and I saw a movie called “Stranger Than Fiction”. Will Ferrell plays Harold Crick, an IRS auditor without much of a life who turns out to be a character in a book being written by a novelist named Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson). Karen is trying to kill him off, but she’s got writer’s block, so Harold has a bit of time to face his own mortality, during which he frees himself of his bonds, learns to live his dreams, and finds love. Go see this movie – I haven’t ruined it for you at all. And I’m telling you about it for a reason. Read more »