Charlottesville (Day II) “Summer’s Gone” Tour Report

Exhale… it’s Sunday. Today, I rest. I’m still in Charlottesville, back in the UVA computer cluster with my cousin. I’m much, much worse for the wear. Same clothes as Friday. Dehydrated (sympathetic dehydration — there’s a draught in the region despite Isadore’s recent rainfall). Head ache. You get the picture. It’s the basic residual affects…

Read More

Charlottesville “Summer’s Gone” Tour Report

It’s 70 degrees, sunny and beautiful, but my cousin and I are bathed in weak AC, bad floursecent light and the hum of hundreds PCs here in the outside the UVA computer cluster getting our marketing plan together for tonight’s Charlottesville show. Of course, it was supposed to be last night’s Charlottesville show. It was…

Read More

Raleigh/Durham “Summer’s Gone” Tour Report

Breakfast at the La Quinta Inn: Raisin Bran and Mello Yello. I looked down at USA Today just now and thought, “What day is it? Where am I?” Ooooh, right. Raleigh/Durham. North Carolina. Friday morning. Ok, allgood. Everything in it’s right place. This time yesterday morning, everything looked pretty bleak. I was exhausted. My brother…

Read More

Philadelphia “Summer’s Gone” Tour Report

I’m sitting in my mother’s kitchen eating a bowl of tuna fish and a fistful of tortilla chips. So rocknroll. Jut in from The Point show afterparty, which was at the Wayne Pub (where half the patrons were alumni of my high school). Weird. Anyway, tonight’s show was, as Bono would say, some sort of…

Read More

Leaving New York Is Easy

Here’s what the rock star does moments before the tour: pays bills. How un-rocknroll. Oh well. There’s room on the cards, and that’s what I need. I’m supposed to pick up my rental car in four minutes, grab my brother, and head south to Philadelphia. I’m on in 8 hours, and would like to squeeze…

Read More

New York “Summer’s Gone” Tour Report

It’s 1:28 a.m. I’m running on three hours of sleep (on an airplane), a turkey sanwhich and four Vitamin Waters (in the following order of consumption): Energy, Stress-B, Focus and Balance. I’ve been home from the Mercury Lounge show for about an hour. So I’m all about the balance. And, any minute now, all about…

Read More

Short, Sweet, And Beautiful

I sat on the beach in Santa Monica last night and watched the sun fall into the Pacific. And hour later, I was on a plane to Las Vegas where I laid over a while, then caught the midnight red eye back to New York. We landed at JFK at 7 a.m., and I was…

Read More

Last Night I Dreamt

I dreamt last night that I was flying in a military-style silver propeller-powered airplane. I was up front with the pilot. We were flying low, between mountains and over a harbor filled with sailboats. The pilot said to me, “Most of the guys are afraid to fly up front because when the enemy attacks, he…

Read More

Welcoming Benjamin Wagner

New York City singer/songwriter Benjamin Wagner may be one of the music world’s best kept secrets. Wagner has been writing, performing and recording music for more than 10 years and released his fourth major self-released album, “Crash Site,” in 2001. He is also about to release “Summer’s Gone,” the second single from the album, which…

Read More

Everything In Its Right Place

Everything in it’s right place. I picked up the “Summer’s Gone” CD singles on my way home from work today. They look gorgeous. I love how the purple in the waves picks up on the purple in the sky on the “Crash Site” LP — they’re connected. I love how the plane that is missing…

Read More