Happiness (More Less)
I woke up on the East Side this morning.
I stepped onto First Avene just before sunrise. The sky was pink and blue. The air was crisp. I hailed a cab, and searched my iPod for a cross town soundtrack. I settled on The Verve’s “Lucky Man,” I thought of Casey Shea and my Open Center performance of the song, and wondered if we should record it again, then stared out the window and let my mind wander…
Pedestrians were scarce. 79th Street was still in shadow. The street were slick from snow. Delivery trucks were double parked, their flannel-clad drivers wheeling pushcarts of produce, office supplies, and cases of beer. Central Park was blanketed in white, its trees bare. A jogger ran over the transverse. I unconsciously reached for my knee.
At 81st and Columbus (“Near right, please”), I tipped my cabbie $1.50, and walked into the cold air. I crossed Columbus, and stepped into Starbucks. Just inside the door, a piece of trash — an insert — lay in front of the cream and sugar. i reached down, picked it up, and tossed it in the trash.
“G’morning,” the young barista said.
“Hey, man. How are you this morning?”
“Good,” he answered. “You?”
“Well I’m just fine,” I answered, then followed quickly, “Vente mild, please.”
He turned to fill my cup. I fumbled for my Starbucks card, and worried that I’d rudely dismissed our pleasentries too soon. He placed my cup on the counter and smiled. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, waving off my payment.
I paused, confused. Had he noticed my clean streak? Did he think I was cute? Was he rewarding my daily habit? I flashed back to my days behind the counter at Uncommon Ground, and remembered the small joy of derived from the gesture of giving away a cup of coffee.
“Well jeez,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”
Back home, one of my neighbors turned down the steps as I began my five flight ascent.
“Oh, sorry,” she said.
“Not at all,” I replied, stepping aside and gesturing. “After you.”
She passed, and thanked me sheepishly.
“No problem. Have a lovely day.”
Upstairs in my apartment, I sat a while and read Linda Ellerbee’s recent memoire “Take Big Bites.”
“I was much younger then” she writes. “Though we never know it at the time.”
I looked out the window as I undressed to shower. The buildings were warm with the morning light. Above them, the sky was clear, bright blue, and nearly cloudless.
Sunken Treasure (Or, The Unabridged Pocket Guide To Lightning)
I want to be Jeff Tweedy when I grow up.
I don’t hide my reverence. I’ve recorded his’s songs more than any single songwriter’s (save maybe REM). I’ve covered “I’m Always In Love,” “A Shot In The Arm,” and “California Stars” (which is really Billy Bragg and Wilco covering Woody Guthrie) on three separate albums, and plan on recording “How To Fight Loneliness” for my forthcoming “Live At Rockwood Music Hall” CD.
I ordered his “Sunken Treasure: Live in the Pacific Northwest” DVD after work on Wednesday. For fifteen bucks you get the DVD plus access to 24 MP3s. I was so eager to get my hands on Tweedy’s solo acoustic performances (presumably of higher fidelity than the “Live At Lounge Axe” tracks that surfaced online a few years ago), that I paid twenty bucks for next day delivery.
I mentioned my excitement about the Wilco front man’s new DVD/CD to Nadas’ front man Jason Walsmith on Thursday afternoon.
“He’s married with kids but still manages to be a heartbreakingly staggering genius,” I said.
“Yeah,” Jason replied, “But he does have that whole drug addiction thing going on.”
Tweedy’s recent (and well-chronicled) rehab notwithstanding, he consistently rolls out lyrics and melodies that dazzle me on the first listen, grow with me through the fiftieth, and floor me on the five hundredth. Songs like “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart,” “Handshake Drugs,” and “Jesus, etc” absolutely knock my socks off. They are simple, and smart, full of curiosity and insight, anger and pain.
Take the DVD’s title track. I first heard the song, “Sunken Treasure,” on the aforementioned Lounge Axe bootlegs. Accompanied by just an acoustic guitar, he wails, “I am so! I am so! Out of tune.” Then he refrains with a twist: a soul-crushing punch line. “I am so! Out of tune… with you.”
It’s Tweedy’s coda, though, that piqued my interest as I listened (and listened, and listened, and listened) this weekend.
Music is my savior
I was maimed by rock and roll
I was tamed by rock and roll
I got my name from rock and roll
I’ve been a singer as long as I can remember. In high school, rock and roll became part of my identity. It fit my psyche: dark and light, depressed and obsessed, always seeking approval, always wondering, and always looking for meaning. It fit my style: denim, Chucks, Camel Lights. And it fit my creative impulses. Songs gave shape to my thoughts and fears. They were something to pour over, and pour myself into. College cemented it. I loved being on stage, but loathed being in the audience. First thing I did when I graduated? Recorded a solo album.
It’s been a strange story arch ever since. I’ve been releasing records since I was nineteen. It’s tough to tally a number. Many were recorded prior to independent CD replication went mainstream. Bunches of them never made or have barely seen the light of day (though most of those tracks will be released as “Besides” in the coming months).
The major releases, though, are easy to spot, and easy to catagorize. “Bloom” (my first CD), “Out Of Your Head” (which I released within a year of moving to New York), and “The Deluxe EP” (aka the ill-fated “Jackie Chan EP”) are all borderline embarrassing. By “Deluxe,” I’d tried everything: slick music videos, celebrity name-dropping, leather pants, green lamé, and fingernail polish. With the demise of my band of the time, Benjamin Wagner Deluxe, I thought about giving up.
I persisted, though. I found bassist Tony Macelli through The Village Voice. He helped me form a bolder, better, more nimble band. With “Crash Site,” then, I began to settle into myself. And I think you can hear it. The advent of my thirties, a long distance relationship, plenty of Xanax, and a great producer (Kevin Anthony) brought great inspiration and great results. I’m proud of that era. “Almost Home” and “Love & Other Indoor Games” are sonically and lyrically cohesive, at once harrowing and uplifting (for me anyway).
When Kevin Anthony moved to Minneapolis, then, it should have been the end. Enter The Nadas. They took me under their collective wings, shared their bus, their audience, and helped make “Heartland” something really special.
Which brings me here: nine o’clock on a clear and cold Sunday night. I’m listening to Tweedy perform “In A Future Age,” and considering one simple, undisputable fact: I got my name from rock and roll.
For twenty years I have been standing in front of a microphone with a wall of amplifiers behind me and a handful of strangers in front of me. I have been electrocuted and bloodied, adored and mocked. I have passed out and puked, scissor kicked and tripped, duck walked and ducked flying bottles. I have crashed and soared in equal measure.
For twenty years, the words and music that I have written and performed have come to define me, to give me my name. Even now, at thirty-five, I am greeted with the same familiar, half-hearted inquiry, “Still doin’ the music?”
Now, though, I’m on the edge of a great change. I am willingly babysitting my nephews. I am eagerly pricing engagement rings. And I am enthusiastically searching apartment listings — two bedrooms, of course; I need one for my recording equipment.
I dug through my kitchen closet — the place where I stash my skateboard, camping gear, old photos and master tapes — this afternoon. I threw away a box full of “Out Of Your Head” and “Deluxe EP” CDs. I sorted through rejected press photos, and tossed the extraneous. Afterwards, I felt a little bit better, a little bit lighter.
This clean sweeping, house keeping, everything-must-go feeling is pervasive these days. The 30-track “Besides” CD, a collection of unreleased recordings that Nadas’ bassist Jon Locker is mastering for me, is a direct result. So is the forthcoming “Live At Rockwood Music Hall” CD. I keep the potential track listings for those releases — currently slated for a future age — on a yellow Stickie on the desktop of my Powerbook. There is a third sticky there, too: a track listing for “The Best Of The Morning Mix. And there’s a fourth, the title of what might come to be my next brand-new, full-length CD.
But not yet. Which is the point of the previous
1, 065 words. Right now, in the immortal (and oft-quoted) words of Morrisey, is all about “Repackage, reissue, repurpose, re-evaluate the star.”
Re-evaluate.
Who are you? What matters to you? What do you do?
And what’s in a name, anyway?
When The Aging Magician Should Begin To Believe
I woke up suddenly this morning, anxious with a thousand thoughts for the day ahead.
Illness, injury, and weather have kept me off my feet in the last thre months since the New York City Marathon. Something about this morning, though, said, “Now is the time.” So I got out of bed, and went for a run.
A light dusting of coarse snow blanketed everyting outside. The sun had not yet risen. The sky was smudged gray and brown. Everything was in monochrome: bare branches, bleached concrete, pedestrians.
The cobblestone sidewalk along the southern edge of the Natural History Museum was fenced off. The building’s great stone edifice was rapped in scaffolding.
My lungs burned from the cold as I strode into Central Park. The lake was frozen at the edges. The usual population of ducks squawked for their place in the center. West Drive was nearly empty.
Crossing Bow Bridge, I noticed a pile of wood chips the height of a small child. The adjacent ground was chewed by tractor treads. A few feet on, chain link broke the hillside where fresh landscaping had been layed.
‘Everything is under construction,’ I thought.
‘I’m under construction,’ I thought.
These days, my knees still ache from last fall’s injury. My body has grown soft around the periphery. My lungs heave after a few blocks, or a few flights of stairs. My muscles won’t carry me far.
These days, my mind is a constant buzz of planning, strategizing, and calendarizing. The Grammys, the engagement, the live recording, the vacation, the move, the live recording’s release, the job, the “Besides” project, the triathlon, the marathon, the documentary, the wedding, and everything in between: staying fit, staying well, staying sane.
These days, I too am under construction. I am cleaning out my closets. Everything must go. I am stretching my limbs, and strengthening my muscles. I am tearing down old institutions, and sketching blueprints for new ones. I am pouring a foundation for whatever lies ahead.
Most mornings, I think I can.
I seek the edges when I run, the corners of New York where most pedestrians fail to tread. This morning, as I descended the steps below Shakespeare’s Garden, and skirted the edge of the Great Lawn, the sun broke through the clouds over the East Side. And for a second — one of those infinate, fleeting moments of clarity where the sky lights up, the city is aglow, and everything is illuminated — I knew I could.
The State Of Our Union
The Malpeques were deliciously briny, and I didn’t have to listen to the president mispronounce “nuclear” once.
My father, having read my previous entry, “Blue Monday,” suggested I not watch the State of the Union.
“Order a nice bottle of wine,” he suggested. “Have some oysters; January is still a good month. And skip the speech. No reason to get upset, and you’ll still have a smile on your face!”
Seemed like a logical suggestion to me. And then came the clincher.
“And send me the check. It’s my treat!”
And so 9:13 PM ET found Abbigail and I at a corner table by the window at Atlantic Grill. We started with a glass of wine (for her) an amber ale (for me), and a dozen oysters (Malpeques, Captain Cooks, and the aformentioned Kumamotos). Being Restaurant Week, I went with the prix fix: a Hawaiian shrimp roll (with papaya, jalape–o, and a miso glaze, followed by dobo rubbed mahi mahi (with fire roasted pepper and a fingerling potato hash, drizzled in an orange-mango vinaigrette). Abbigail enjoyed the horseradish crusted organic salmon (though it was the
pumpkin ravioli that clinched the deal). We finished with a banana caramel sundae (spice ice cream and caramelized bananas on cinnamon oat crunch toast).
Delicious? And how. Decadent? You bet.
Back home, I avoided CNN, flipped through a back issue of New York, and slipped into a deep, peaceful sleep with a large, caramel-fueled smile on my face…
I avoided the television again this morning, pulling on my shoes in the relative quiet of the pre-dawn. The New York Times greeted me at the doorstep. The headline — “Bush Insists U.S. Must Not Fail in Iraq” — spiked my heartbeat. “‘We?’ I thought. ‘It’s your war, George. And you already have.’
I slipped my earbuds in my ear, and pushed play on Wilco’s “Jesus, Etc.” which I had specifically selected to ease me into my day.
“Don’t cry,” Jeff Tweedy sang.
You can rely on me honey
You can come by any time you want
I’ll be around
You were right about the stars
Each one is a setting sun
Thanks, dad.
Captive
I understand that capitalism abhors a vacuum. So it didn’t surprise me when ad-strewn programming began popping up on pint-size monitors above urinals, and flat screens materialized in the subway. But the elevator? The last bastion of anxious, corporate silence?
The shiny, silver monitor screen first made it debut just before the end of last year. The “news” content it delivers is light weight: brief, generic, feel-good CNN headlines, weather, and sports scores. On the right side of the screen, full-motion ads are in constant rotation. The copyright on the bottom center of the screen reads, Captivate Networks.
Captivate Networks describes itself as “an innovative marketing vehicle for media properties. Our network delivers a very desirable demographic of more than 2.2 million business professionals in Class A office buildings across North America every day.”
While some great ideas are hatched in boardrooms, others are born between floors. What began as a flash of inspiration during an elevator ride has grown into a leading alternative media company that delivers more than 48 million impressions a month, and is backed by Gannett, an international media powerhouse.
Today. Captivate delivers its national news, entertainment, and advertising to more than 2.2 million viewers via more than 7,300 wireless, digital screens located in the elevators of premier office towers in 21 of North America’s top markets. Captivate partners with a number of major media partners to provide programming for the network, and helps hundreds of leading brands transform downtime into Captivate Time.
Captivate Time. Love that.
Our viewers are better educated, and enjoy an annual household income nearly double the national average, giving them the purchasing power necessary to drive sales of advertisers’ products and services. Because we deliver your message to a captive audience in a focused, distraction-free environment, we have an average ad recall rate that exceeds that of most other media. We’re memorable and measurable Ð and consistently generate strong, tangible results on behalf of our clients. When it comes to keeping your story top of mind with your target customer, Captivate takes your marketing efforts to new heights.
I do my best to avert my gaze when I step into the elevators here at 1515 Broadway. But eyes respond to movement. The brain responds to stimulous. It’s a biological imperative. And more and more, it’s difficult to get away from advertising in all its forms.
You are what you consume, so chose wisely.
Or, as President Gerorge Walker Bush said on September 12th, “Keep shopping!”
Blue Monday
Experts say unpaid Christmas bills, nasty weather and failed New Year’s resolutions combine to make January 22 the gloomiest day on the calendar.
I read it on Fox News, so it must be true.
I gotta say, though, that all’s well. No gloom here. For now, anyway.
My Christmas bills are in order. In fact 2006 might have been my most fiscally responsible year ever (trips to Roatan and Bonaire notwithstanding).
My New Year’s resolutions? Didn’t make any.
And the weather? Everyone keeps commenting on how cold it is, but I grew up with Chicago winters. I remember wind chills in the negative eighties, and snow drifts taller than the garage. And I went to Syracuse University, where lake affect snow could bury a car for weeks on end. Thirty degrees and cloudy I can manage.
In fact, today was just fine, thank you very much.
Tomorrow, though, might just rank the gloomiest day on the calendar, what with President Bush’s State Of The Union and all.
Starting Today – MP3
I spent a few hours trying to multi-track this one, then returned to the original demo.
I was trying to write something that balances the protest of Bob Dylan or Billy Bragg or Woodie Guthrie with the romance of… well, everyone else. Which was a dangerous proposition cuz no one hates preachy, dogmatic songs worse than me. And no one is more sensitive to avoiding treacle.
But I had this idea — inspired by a great song written by Smokey Junglefrog guitarist Jamie Dunphy years ago — that nothing could be more romantic these days the going ex-pat with someone you love. Unfortunately, the song presented itself in 3/4, which always sounds like a sea shanty to me (and renders it unlikely that I’ll ever record it for an album). And the verses are suspiciously like a song I recorded years ago, “The Michael Song.”
But I like some of the lyrics (“I’ve sketched out a map on a napkin / And sewn up a flag from some clothes / That I’ve thrown in a bag I’ve been packin / For a trip that tomorrow might know), and, well, it beats watching football.
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A Million To One, Part II
It’s killing me to be in New York City, not Park City.
I started at Berwyn Video, a ma ‘n pop video store in suburban Philadelphia, the year before Steven Soderbergh’s “Sex, Lies & Video Tape” and Robert Redford’s Sundance Film Festival put each other on the map. And while my tastes ran more “Die Hard” than “Das Boot,” three summers at the video store exposed me to the depth, bredth and diversity of film that I relish to this day.
I was beside myself with excitement when the day job found me walking Park City’s snowy streets for the first time in 2005, and again last year.
True, the festival had the trappings of the worst, most-exclusive Hollywood party. But when I dug a bit deeper, there was plenty of substance to be had (see “Challenging Discussions Keep Star-Studded Sundance Grounded” on Mtv News Dot Com). I would even go so far as to say I was inspired. Neil Young told me to go ahead and get lost.
“You might crash,” he said. “But at least it’s gonna be fulfilling to you.”
The Edge and I discussed the nature of creativity.
“I think Charles Bukowski said, ‘Nothing worth a shit was every written in peace and quiet,’” he said. “I think there’s an element of truth to that. It doesn’t work always for us to be somewhere silent, but you have to somehow eradicate the din of what’s going on out there to be in yourself quiet, to find those things.”
Beyond personal, creative inspiration, seeing the festival first-hand motivated me to jump-start the “Mister Rogers & Me” documentary. ‘If these guys can do it,” I reasoned, ‘Why not me?’
This year, though, there was too much going on at Headquarters to justify decamping to the mountains for a week. And so here I am, equally cold but wholly uninspired six stories above 80th Street.
Worse, we have been dreaming of submitting “Mister Rogers & Me” for ’07 consideration in time for the festivals August deadline. With at least one potential interview declining our request (for now), and at least a dozen more to conduct before we even begin to post, well… I’m dubious that we’ll even wrap principal photography prior to the Sundance deadline.
And so it goes. I am home now. This is what today finds me: peace and quiet. I guess it’s where I’m supposed to be. Maybe I can figure out how to find fulfillment within, instead of without.
Reach The Dawn
Christofer and I spent yesterday morning interviewing esteemed journalist Linda Ellerbee for our “Mister Rogers & Me” documentary.
Read all about it here:
“One May Not Reach The Dawn Save By The Path Of The Night”
She was great: super substantive, and super inspiring.
So I’m super grateful.
Besides
I know it looks like gold lamé, but trust me, it’s lime green lamé. And yes, I know that lamé and lame are virtually the same word.
The photo in question was taken in the fall of 1996 by my pal John Rosenblatt. The location was a then-shuttered, long-since razed theater on 42d Street — back when The Deuce was still just a little bit dangerous. It was my first New York headshot.
I’ve been making records for fifteen years. Many of them are available on CD Baby. Many of them are available on iTunes. Some of them (Smokey Junglefrog’s “Crumble”) are lost forever, which might be for the best. A few, though, never really saw the light of day.
My closet, though, is stuffed with master tapes: DATs, CDRs, Hi-8, Beta. Saturday night’s housecleaning excericse reminded me just how many unreleased EPs I had.
Take “The Happy Not Happy EP.” Recorded with producer Steve Feldman in Palm Springs, CA, this collection of six songs included a cover of Matthew Sweet’s “I’ve Been Waiting,” as well as my brother’s favorite original, “Debris.”
Never been released.
Take “The Christopher Street EP.” Recorded with producer Kevin Antnony in New York City, this collection of five songs includes the demo of “The Rest Of My Life.” Unless you were one of only a handful of people, you’ve never heard any of it.
And there’s more.
Which got me thinking. In this age of iTunes, the long tail, and niche programming, why shouldn’t everything I’ve ever recorded be available?
And so it is that I’ve decided to re-master and release a collection of my previously unreleased material. I’m calling it, “Besides.”
The Rest Of My Life
Christopher Street
Beholden
Untitled No. 1
Wishes
Annalia (Come Back Home)
Who You Are
Afternoon Calling
Swallowed By The Cracks
Manifest Destiny
The Michael Song
I’ve Been Waiting
Debris
Black Hole
Running Away
Long Way Down
Message In A Bottle
Blue Eyes Cryin’ In The Rain
Nada’s bassist and “Heartland” producer Jon Locker is mastering it.
And yes, it will contain at least two new, previously unreleased tracks.
Previously unreleased tracks on an album of previously unreleased tracks.
How meta.
Look for it sometime prior to Q3.
