On Everything Else
Sometime just before I asked Abbi to marry me, I cracked open a fortune cookie that read, "Everything will soon come your way."
Not to gloat, but today felt that way.
First, Jamie Leonhardt and I made a date to sing "Killing The Blues" next weekend.
Then, Chris Suchorsky's Damnwells' documentary, "Golden Days," hit my mailbox.
Then, I got an email from sometimes-Nada keyboardist (and otherwise badass pianist) Tony Bonenkhamp who said of my proposal for some sort of post Hy-Vee Triathlon benefit show at his Des Moines venue, "I am ...
What Happens On The Upper East Side…
Yes, that's Ashton Kutcher with his arm around my wife.
I should've seen the signs: her new Kabalah bracelet, "The Butterfly Affect" in our Netflix queue, "Punk'd" on TiVo. And she's been wearing a lot of leapard prints.
If only I weren't at the office all day, then in the edit all night. If only I were taller, and had more facial hair. And more money.
Oh well, at least he's a nice boy from Iowa. And we do both wear baseball caps.
I kid, of course.
While Chris and I were editing "Mister Rogers & Me," Abbi was enjoying a ...
The Astronaut’s Lament
It's Friday night at 6:43 and I'm still at the office when it dawns on me.
'Shit, I still have to pick up the master tapes.'
Master files, really, but what's a little nomenclature between friends?
All I want to do is go home, grab a beer and hang with the wife. But Travis Harrison and "The Invention of Everything Else" is waiting for me at Serious Business Studios. I make haste for the N train.
Trouble is, I'm a wee bit crippled on account of sprinting down a small mountain. So I'm taking the stairs down to the subway like an ...
Killing The Blues - Video
We're twenty minutes into the "Invention of Everything Else" recording session when we start hearing a loud, arrhythmic clicking sound in our headphones.
Travis stops rolling.
"Ok," he says. "Who's got the bum cable?"
Chris and I aren't plugged in. Tony protests.
"I checked everything before we started," he says.
"Battery?"
Chris and I are mic'd.
"Um..."
There are four microscopic screws between a bass and its nine volt. This was gonna' take a sec. Given that I was gunning to record at least eight tunes in as many ...
Superman In Reverse
That was some serious Clark Kent shit.
I left the Santa Monica office at 5:43, pointed my Nissan towards Temescal Gateway Park (as I've done so many times before), and reasoned with myself the entire way there.
"If I get there by 6:30," I thought, "I can run 'til 7:00. That'll leave me an hour to fill the tank, get to LAX, and drop off the car. It'll be 8:15 by the time I hit security. I'll have a cold beer in my hand by 8:30, with plenty of time to chill before boarding."
It's 8:53, and I'm three paragraphs in.
But that's not ...
You Are The Star Tonight
Mulholland Drive follows the ridgeline of the Santa Monica Mountains from Hollywood westward all the way to the Pacific Coast Highway.
The two-lane, meandering road was built in 1924 by a consortium of Hollywood Hills landowners hoping to turn a buck by bringing development to the Hollywood Hills.
There's David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive," and Lee Tamahori's "Mulholland Falls." "Point Break," "Lost Highway," and "True Romance" all feature scenes here. And Michael Knight's first ride behind the wheel of the Knight 2000 took place here ...
Rio Grande Vista
The Rio Grande River descends some 13,000 feet over the course of its 1885 miles journey from Southern Colorado to the Gulf of Mexico.
I've crossed this, the third largest river in America, at Interstate 25 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, twice -- on the return leg of my first cross-country road trip in 1990, and on my way home from my post-collegiate vision quest in 1993 -- but never paused on her shores.
And while it wasn't the wide, reed-lined banks that drew me here this some fifteen years later, somehow her patient, lumbering journey ...
I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead
I'm not sure it's the Xanax, the exhaustion, the altitude, the soundtrack, or the odd, suspended-animation of transcontinental air travel, but something's going on here.
Suddenly, I feel immensly blessed.
Sitting here in my exit row seat next to the galley soaring some 33,000 feet above the sun-bleached desert southwest, I feel like I'm in a deleted scene from "Donnie Darko." There's a convergence of some sort unfolding in slow, glowing motion. I don't know how, exactly, but all of the disperate threads are coming together. I'm ...
Inventing Everything Else
Nine songs in eight hours. Not bad.
Whether it was nerves, or a lack of sleep (probably both), I was sick to my stomach all day. I dashed out of the office around five o'clock, and hopped the NR.
Stepping out of the subway at Prince & Broadway is a little like stepping into a Middle Eastern bazaar. The streets are narrow, the sidewalks are crowded with tourists and vendors. It's not a good place to be when you're in a hurry. I took a deep breath, and endeavored to take my own advise.
Serious Business Studios is on Spring & ...
