George Washington, Rufus Scott & Me
Few vistas afford the sweeping panorama of New York City like the George Washington Bridge.
The Bridge was opened for traffic on October 24, 1931. It spans some 4,760 feet from the sites of Fort Washington (on the New York side) and Fort Lee (in New Jersey), fortified positions used by General Washington and his American forces in his unsuccessful attempt to deter the British occupation of New York City during the American Revolutionary War. The bridge’s great shadow marks the route by which Washington and his troops fled the British in 1776.
I’ll never forget the first time I crossed that bridge. It was 1992, the dark winter of my senior year at college. My band, Smokey Junglefrog (who, incidently, my four-year-old nephew Ethan just discovered with some help from his dad), was playing its first (and last, as it ends up) New York City gig at The Nightingale (birthplace of Spin Doctors, Blues Traveler, and Joan Osbourne). Drummer Tod “Fish” Salmonson was at the wheel of my Chevy Celebrity; I was too anxious to drive. And so I was afforded the best view in the house, er, car, facing downtown as we crossed eastward from New Jersey.
Speeding along on that steel perch some 200 feet above the Hudson River, the island of Manhattan spread before me like a limitless, dystopic Oz. For miles below me, all I could see were the great glass, concrete and stone spires of commerce. My vantage point was half Snake Pliskin, half Little Orphan Annie. I didn’t know whether to flee, or break out in song. I was terrified, and thrilled. Fish and I opted for song, breaking into Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” before falling silent in the crush of Midtown traffic.
Just three years later, my brother, Christofer, and I moved to The City from Saratoga Springs, New York. Again, we crossed the George Washington Bridge. And again, I was terrified and thrilled. This time, it was for keeps. I wasn’t sure I could make it here. But if I could…
I was reading James Baldwin’s “Another Country” that spring, a sordid tale of sex, drugs and race relations amidst the West Village jazz scene. In the first third of the novel, drummer Rufus Scott leaps to his death from the George Washington Bridge. As a young, struggling musician myself, the image struck me, and stuck.
Thirteen years later, the GWB has become a frequent and welcome part of my life. The edges of New York City have become beautifully groomed greenbelts, affording everyone access to the river. The roughly eighteen-mile round trip from my apartment to the bridge has become a staple of my shorter training rides. Chris and I like to take Ethan to the fabled Little Red Lighthouse just below its eastern tower. And for longer trips along the Palisades and beyond to Piermont, New York, the GWB is our escape hatch.
Rare is the crossing, though, that I don’t stop mid-span, stare out at The City, and think of all these things. It is an awesome place, this massive steel and concrete strip in the sky. It’s the edge of something great, connecting the island to the mainland, and binding together earth, air and water. Even as I am struck by vertigo looking straight down to the gently rolling current below, and even as I imagine that fall in the pit of my stomach, I feel alive there.
This blog post was first published as part of The Des Moines Register’s Hy-Vee Triathlon training series.
Ten Reasons I Should Have Taken Up Needlepoint Instead
The last few weeks in the studio have been sort of painful. It all came to a bit of a head last night when I found myself preparing dinner between takes and swearing under my breath — well, maybe not so much “under.”
Abbi said, “I’ve never seen you so moody!” Which was a really sweet way of telling me to pull my shit together.
So I was tracking vocals just now thinking about why the recording of “The Invention Of Everything Else” has been so difficult, my obvious and tiresomely over-documented over-commitment notwithstanding. Here are ten reasons, in no particular order.
1- I’ve never self-produced an entire album. The closest I came was “The Desert Star EP” which made me feel the same way: insane. This is twice as many songs, and three times as many tracks.
2- There’s no producer or engineer to say, “Enough already; you got it!”. So I just keep trying for better and better takes.
3- I have virtually no musical or vocal training at all, so I just poke around my muscle memory and try and find some sort of sweet spot that I couldn’t identify if I tried, but always know if its off.
4- The arrangement and instrumentation behind this set of songs affords me very little place to hide. There’s virtually no electric guitars, and the drums are clean and neat (not huge and bombastic), so I hear every little sharp, flat, creak and groan.
5- Moreover, for some reason, many of these songs have serious high notes, and some super-tiny little “American Idol” style vocal flourishes (let me hit “super-tiny little” again before we move on), the landing for which I don’t always stick.
6- I’ve spent at least twelve hours overdubbing in an 8×5 walk-in closet.
‘Nuff said.
7-I’ve released nearly twenty albums (may of which are long since out of print) since my high school band, Underground, dropped “Dark Globe” in 1989. And none of them have been perfect. There are moments when this one threatens it, but then I spot a beat out of place, or a noisy string, or a creaky chair, or a sqeaky vocal. So I keep fine-tuning and tweaking, trying to buff and polish everything up.
Worse, there’s the distinct sense that this is my last album. As such, I’d really like it to be great. Most great albums – “Pet Sounds,” “Dark Side of the Moon,” “Murmur,” “Exile on Main Street,” “Let It Bleed” – were made with massive budgets in massive studios where the sole objective of every day was make a great record. My record? Well, wedged in between everything else. But the pressure’s still there, and it makes me nuts.
8- Remember how U2 booked the PopMart tour before finishing “Pop,” then years later — after disappointing sales and reviews — admitted that the pressure affected their creative process? Well, I don’t have much of a tour planned, but the release date (June 18th) is in ink, and approaching quickly. I’m sure that sales and reviews will be positive (ha ha), but I’m definitely feeling it.
9- My recording environment is bone dry. That is, I’m not tracking to reverb as many studios do. There’s no forgiveness, no sympathetic waves in a bone-dry recording. Which is why Jon Locker will add reverb. For now, though, I hear everything.
10- I mentioned that I’m overdubbing in my walk-in closet, right?
Of course, the results will speak for themselves. And best as I can tell at this point, “The Invention Of Everything Else” is going to turn out just fine.
In fact, it sounds more like me — that is, how I imagine my music manifesting these days: acoustic, melodic, cathartic — than anything I’ve done.
Come to think of it, it’s like the Cosmopolitan or Glamour version of me; I’m the dude on the cover, sure, only the blemishes have been Photoshopped out.
Which, as a permanent document goes, is probably best.
Studio Chicanery (Or, My Weekend In The Closet With Chris)
Just how long does it take to nail a guitar solo?
Even if you’re only a casual Rolling Stone or Spin reader, you’ve probably read the same B.S. I have about first takes. Yunno, Slash is talking about the “Sweet Child Of Mine” solo on “Appetite For Destruction” and he’s all like, “Yeah we just rolled tape and nailed it on the first pass.”
It happens… sometimes. Over the course of fifteen records, I can count such occurrences on exactly one finger.
I wrote a simple little song called “Glider” during the (drug addled) recording of 1996′s “Out Of Your Head” that we recorded in one pass. In fact, if you listen closely at the end, you can hear an airplane fly over the studio which (in our stupor) we thought was genius. (I never really considered it until now, but the lyrics and lackadaisical recording aptly characterize that entire era: “Time spent gazing at a circular flight / Is squandered away.”)
In my experience, unless you have the resources to spend months in the studio rolling tape 24/7, the process is far more laborious.
As Chris Abad and I were reminded this weekend.
Now, calling my walk-in closet a studio is a stretch to begin with. But for all intents and purposes, the proof is in the pudding. The tracks we’ve recorded there for “The Invention of Everything Else” (due June 18th on Authentic Records!) sound great. But that doesn’t mean they went down easily.
It’s no secret that I wasn’t terribly pleased with some of the tracking or mixing of “Heartland.” It was cobbled together in two studios and mixed at a third. And it sounds like it. Guitars come in from all over the place. Solos are odd. Vocal levels are weird.
So I’ve been extra careful to nail my overdubs. Example: My primary guitar style is strumming, which gets garbled pretty quickly when you have a few different strum tracks. So I’ve been sure my strokes have been in synch. You won’t notice, but that’s the point.
This weekend, Chris Abad and I wrestled the “Giving Up The Ghost” solo for an hour. Imagine: Chris jammed into my hot little closet while I give direction from just outside the door — nebulous stuff like, “Do the triple thing again, but then find a way out that builds to the last verse.” Real helpful stuff.
At one point, when we’ve literally tracked the section thirty times, sweats beading down his furrowed brow, and we both know he’s got to get home to tend to his wife’s fever, I say, “I’m pretty sure this closet’s build over an ancient Indian burial ground.” It’s frustrating stuff.
Singer/songwriter Andrew Bird summarizes the process and its challenges pretty succinctly in The New York Times’ “Measure For Measure” blog.
“I have this intense aversion to canned emotion,” he says. “Yet that’s exactly what recording is: a reconstituted, canned facsimile of a performance.”
In the studio, a number of things can conspire to turn the natural act of making music into an awkward dance. First there is no audience, no one to impress. Second is the temptation to be too careful, to isolate every sound and not let it mingle with other sounds. The third deals with the voice, the most personal and vulnerable instrument. Recording vocals can be fraught with aural illusions akin to the weirdness of hearing your own voice on your answering machine. “That’s not me, is it?” You sing into a device that converts your voice into an electric current, which travels through wires and gadgets to a tape machine. You scrutinize that voice, make adjustments to your proximity to the microphone, switching between “head voice” and “chest voice.” When you belt it out it almost always sounds thin and small but when you sing quiet, close and intimate it sounds thick, warm and huge –but then it can lose gusto. Recording is full of counterintuitive stuff like this, so you can see how quickly the original sentiment of a song can get derailed.
I listened to a scratch mix of “Giving Up The Ghost” this morning. It’s the first track on the CD (due June 18th on Authentic Records!), so it’s gotta’ sound great. It still needs backup vocals and keyboards, still, it already sounds great. Best part? Chris’ solo. I emailed him as I walked down Tenth Avenue.
“Your ‘Ghost’ solo is superawesome.”
He replied, simply, “Holla!”
My Perfect Storm Of Poor Planning (Or Hubris)
Four miles on four hours of sleep is not an ideal training scenario.
These days find me in the center of a perfect storm of poor planning (or hubris).
I’m in putting the finishing touches on my forthcoming CD, “The Invention of Everything Else,” due June 18th on Des Moines’ own Authentic Records. I’m still tracking vocals and mixing before shipping off to Nadas’ bassist (and Sonic Factory Studios engineer, Jon Locker) for mixing. Then comes mastering, replication, and marketing — to say nothing of putting together release parties and rehearsing for said performances.
Meanwhile, I’m working feverishly with my brother, Christofer, on a rough cut of our forthcoming documentary, “Mister Rogers & Me.” The film chronicles my brief friendship with and lessons learned from America’s most beloved neighbor, Fred Rogers. We have a film festival deadline in just ten days.
And of course I’m training for the Hy-Vee Triathlon, the starting cannon for which goes off just five weeks from Saturday.
Did I mention my day job? I basically do product and business development for MTV News. So there goes another twelve hours a day.
So I find myself eating Balance bars for lunch, canceling dinner plans, and catching up with my wife in the three minutes we’re both awake somewhere around three o’clock in the morning. Mostly, though, I just find myself not sleeping.
I suppose this sounds like most of you would describe as “parenthood,” right?
My brother reminded me last week that this is all elective. I’ve am the rainmaker of my own storm. I acknowledge and appreciate that.
For some reason, though, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Just as I feel more energized on days that I train, I feel more energized on days that I’m active with everything else.
Besides, it’s finite. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all these races I’ve done, it’s that there’s always a finish line.
And sometimes there’s a minor epiphany. Like this morning. My head was foggy. My limbs just didn’t want to do my bidding. My stride was off. When the sun crested over Midtown Manhattan as I reached the Hudson River, and the chorus of The Damnewells’ “I Am Leaver” hit my iPod in glorious four part harmony, I thought, “I can do this.”
Which explains the whole darned thing.
This blog post was first published as part of The Des Moines Register’s Hy-Vee Triathlon training series.
Extra Pickles, As Always
Years ago, when I was recording the first of two albums (“Almost Home” and “Love & Other Indoor Games”) at my pal Kevin Anthony’s Control One Studios, I began most sessions with a delicious, toasty Turkey Ranch Sub from Quiznos on 23d Street.
Tonight, Chris and I are editing just a few blocks from there, so I reprised the ritual… with extra pickles, as always.
The neighborhood feels a little different. Madison Square Park (where I recorded the city sounds you hear throughout my cover of John Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane”), for example, use to be dark and sketchy. Now, there’s a trendy little outdoor dining venue (Shake Shack) beneath a canopy of bright-white lightbulbs.
Tonight, the Flatiron building was dark, but the Empire State Building was cast in a warm, purple glow. The trees were in nearly-full bloom. The city was bustling with spring energy.
Please visit “Making ‘Mister Rogers & Me’” to enjoy the rest of this blog post.
The Dirty Life And Times Of Warren Zevon
I’m pretty sure I’m not a tortured artist, though I may be a masochist.
Most readers flock to best sellers, pap like Joseph Hellerman, Dean Koontz, or Scott Turow. Nothing wrong with that; I enjoy a blockbuster page-turner like the guy in the next seat on the plane.
My pap, though, is the rock bio.
Last year, I devoured “U2: At the End of the World” by Bill Flanagan (a CBS Sunday Morning contributor and MTV SVP over whom I emphatically and somewhat embarrassingly gushed when I bumped into him in an elevator recently).
A few weeks ago, I tore through Dean Wareham’s “Black Postcards: A Rock & Roll Romance.”
Yesterday, I reluctantly finished “The Dirty Life And Times Of Warren Zevon,” an oral history compiled by the late singer/songwriter’s ex-wife. In addition to 300+ pages of chronologically ordered remembrances from family, friends like Jackson Brown and peers like Bruce Springsteen, the book excerpts Zevon’s own journals. The result is a painful, compelling read.
Unlike U2 or Luna (or even Semisonic, whose drummer, Jacob Slichter wrote the great “So You Want To Be A Rock & Roll Star?”), I knew very little about Zevon when I began the book. In fact, I think it all added up to just a handful of songs: “Werewolves Of London” (of course), “Lawyers, Guns & Money,” “Tenderness On the Block” and one I covered a few summers ago, “The French Inhaler.”
From covering “The French Inhaler” alone, it was apparent that the guy had a gift for both musical and lyrical composition. It was tough for me to work out the melody, and even more difficult to figure out the chords. Moreover, though, it was clear that his sensibilities were a bit off-center.
How’re you going to make your way in the world
When you weren’t cut out for working
When your fingers are slender and frail
How’re you going to get around
In this sleazy bedroom town
If you don’t put yourself up for sale
Whether he’s writing about himself here or not, an author is always implicated by his text. He’s clearly wrestling some demons here: malaise, success, integrity. Ends up, he was wrestling with all that, and a whole lot more.
By all accounts, Warren Zevon was a musical genius held in high regard by many. Springsteen I would rarely see Warren that he hadn’t written something that I wished in another lifetime I’d written.” Jackson Browne said, he “said the things I wish I could say.” Gore Vidal said, “There was simply no one else writing like him at the time.”
Far more often then not, though, he was a complete jerk.
April 22, 1985
Checked out of Cedars [Sinai Hospital] early afternoon. Went to my room at Le Dafy. Made high priced ($300) call girl after passing on two… she left 5ish. Flew to Rochester.July 9, 1992
… Boring show. Good fuck afterwards… then she left so I could pack… total class act that girl.January 29, 1995
…David Keith’s Superbowl party. Steak and strippers — a few lapdances (one felt obliged)… went to Annette’s and made love.
He gobbled pills, snorted coke, polished off bottles of vodka before noon, alienated his kids, obsessed over minutia (he purchased thousands of gray Calvin Klein t-shirts in his 56 years, many of which were still in their original packaging when he died), and collected and disposed of lovers like dirty laundry.
And yet, throughout the books 431 page arc, I found myself drawn to the man if not just sympathetically, then maybe even empathically. I’m not sure there was any way out for him; he was hooked on turmoil to fuel his art.
And I’m not sure that some of those more base behaviors — the addictive personality, the womanizing, the morose, obsessive compulsive — are not just below the surface of many of us.
Or maybe just me.
I may have passed through some of it, but it’s there. It happened.
With Zevon, though, one gets the sense he couldn’t move through it. Or he simply wouldn’t. He was too weak, too needy, to sensitive. Or maybe just too lazy.
So it was a dirty life. And a sad one. And ends as sloppily as it began, in an apartment strewn with empty liquor bottles or closets full of pornography (self-produced, natch). But it also ends with a flourish of creative energy, a last gasp of exposition (or explanation).
Am I a tortured artist? Maybe just a little bit. I know those thoughts. I hear those voices. But — better or worse — the volume’s turned down. I hear other things. I see other possibilities.
Am I a masochist for reading rock bio after rock bio after rock bio, subjecting myself to what might have been but never will be? Maybe. Call it an exercise, an exorcism — decadence via proxy.
Whatever it is, it is; there are no innocent bystanders here.
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Top Five Boneheaded Sports-Related Injuries
I’ve made two fairly boneheaded training mistakes in the last two weeks.
Two weeks ago, I decided it would be fun to jog up then sprint down a mountain above Los Angeles just two hours before boarding the red eye to New York, and two days before the Brooklyn Half Marathon.
And yesterday, I set out for a quick five-miler having not eaten dinner or breakfast, with no money in my pocket, then got carried away and stretched the run to eleven miles.
The ramifications for both were minor. Two weeks ago, I limped around with sore quads after siezing up on that cramped overnight flight. Yesterday, I drank a lot of Gatorade and popped a few Advil.
Of course, I’ve suffered worse injuries in these 36 years of largely self-coached athelticism. Here, then, are my “Top Five Boneheaded Sports-Related Injuries.”
5. The ’82 Slider. It was the first game of my first year of fast pitch baseball. I was on second base, when Mike Jeffries popped a solid shot to right field. The third base coach waved me around< so I dug my cleats into the dirt, and dashed for home. As I slid into home (possibly the first time I'd ever really done so), I jammed my left wrist under my body, and cracked my radius. I sat out the rest of the season, and never really made it back into the game.
4. The Load-Out. It was the first night of a one week tour opening for my pals, The Nadas. We were loading out of The Hub in Cedar Falls. It was late. Town was empty. Snow was falling. And I was, um, giddy. I was also a relative newcomer to hauling massive roadcases, which explains how I woke up with a torn muscle in my lower back that nearly knocked me out of the 2005 NYC Marathon. Except I didn't let it.
3. The '03 Raspberry. I'd been home from a three week trip to Hawaii for less than three hours when I decided to take a sunset bike ride along the river. As twilight became night -- that precarious time when one's eyes have yet to adjust to the darkness -- I hit a patch of gravel that laid my Cannondale and me out in the middle of 58th Street. The road rash on my hip took over a month to heal (but I ran the Stone Harbor Triathlon the next weekend anyway).
2. The Great Rock & Roll Wipeout Of 1997. Many a warning has been issued about CBGB's, the famous punk venue in New York City's Bowery; it's patrons were once pretty tough, it's restroom's notoriously filthy. Still, no one warned me about that last step, the one that comes at the end of the show when one's adrenaline is extra-strength and the cute girl you haven't seen since high school is walking your way waving. I went down with a beer in one hand and my guitar in the other. Both emerged unscathed. My left ankle? Not so much. It still cracks every morning.
1. The 2006 Playground Tragedy. It was a beautiful October afternoon, just a few weeks before my sixth NYC Marathon. I was at Riverside Park with nephews, Ethan and Edward. I'll stop at nothing to make them giggle, including full-fledged tomfoolery. Which is why I was on a slide made four five-year-olds. And which is why, midway down that slide made four five-year-olds, the sole of my size eleven Converse All-Star caught on the edge and stopped cold. Trouble is, the rest of me kept going. My taper came early, and lasted longer, but I still finished the marathon. And my right quad hurts every day.
This blog post was first published as part of The Des Moines Register’s Hy-Vee Triathlon training series.
The Rock & Roll Husband
I distinctly recall standing next to Abbi in Brooklyn, staring way down Flatbush Avenue towards downtown Manhattan. We were testing the waters together, trying to find a neighborhood in which to move. The process, though, was pushing some other buttons.
“But it’s so far away!” I whined.
Later, on the subway, I articulated what I was going through only slightly better.
“This is about who I am, what I’m worth, and what it all means,” I said.
For some reason, I just couldn’t imagine how I was going to do it all: hold down a day job, remain creative, and be a good partner.
A little more than a year later, now, Abbi and I are happily married and living in Hell’s Kitchen. She’s in Delaware all weekend, a well-timed trip that affords me plenty of time to overdub vocals, guitars and percussion for my June 18th Authentic Records release, “The Invention of Everything Else.”
Just as I aspire to make a great record, though, I aspire to being a good husband. Yesterday, that meant keeping an eye on half a dozen loads of laundry as I was recording.
I wasn’t thrilled about it; it was difficult to get into a real groove with my recording. And six loads of separating lights and darks is kind of a pain in the ass. But I made the best of it. I spent the afternoon alternating between my new record, and various NPR podcasts. It was kind of edifying, and even somewhat relaxing.
Now, Abbi has a far more rigorous approach to laundry than I do (hell, most people probably do). So I used her special soaps, and I air-dried her running clothes and underwear, then folded them like she likes, and tucked them away exactly where they belonged. And the really amazing part to me was realizing just how carefully I was doing so, and how much I wanted to do it the way that would make her happy.
Like Rob says in “High Fidelity,” “For the first time I can sort of see how it’s done.”
I can do the record, and the laundry.
Maybe that’s what it all means.
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 Leonhart 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 loving this idea!”
Then “Mister Rogers & Me” AP Kathy Kim forwarded an email from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences regarding a crucial clip for the doc:
Since your subject matter is so near and dear to the Academy’s mission of excellence for programming, particularly for children, we’d be willing to waive the fee for a donation of any amount to our Foundation. In addition, when the film is complete we’d love to take a look and perhaps feature the work on our site with a clip and a profile of the project and filmmaker.
Then, I got an email from Jimmy Landry with whom I shared a rough mix of “Breathe In” (sans Raining Jane’s forthcoming vocals). “Dude,” he said, “You have ridiculously great pitch.” Better yet, he’s game to help me mix “The Invention of Everything Else.”
And that’s to say nothing of the really crazy corporate situations I find myself in at The Office, one after shockingly awesome experience after another.
Or posting my first blog to The Des Moines Register.
So…
So sometimes that’s how the cookie crumbles.
Thank goodness.
You Feel Like Home To Me
I blame Jason Walsmith.
It was last June. The 30th, to be precise. My wife, Abbi, and I had flown into Iowa City that morning, then streaked westward on I-80. My pal, Josh Davis, was performing on the Authentic Records’ stage at the Des Moines Arts Festival when we pulled up to Western Gateway Park. Jason met us backstage, then whisked us off to do a radio interview.
Fast forward a few hours. The sun is setting on a sky choked with barbeque smoke. Everything is cast in deep, warm reds. I’ve performed my solo acoustic set to a lawn dotted with family members, friends, and strangers alike. I’ve run into an old friend from high school who is now teaching high school. And I’ve dipped liberally into the backstage keg.
“Yunno’ there was a triathlon over in Grays Lake Park last weekend,” he said.
“Really?” I replied. “How long?”
“No idea,” Jason said. “But you should do it next year. Authentic will sponsor you.”
I pondered his proposal for a quick second, imagining myself breaking the finish line tape in an Authentic Records jersey, then turned my attention back to the stage he was about to occupy with his band, The Nadas.
* * *
I was born in Iowa City, Iowa, on September 4, 1971. My family moved to Washington, DC, a few days later. I didn’t stop moving (it seems) until landing in New York City thirteen years ago.
By day, I am a media executive (VP MTV News). By night, I am a singer/songwriter, blogger and documentary filmmaker (“Mister Rogers & Me” is in post-production). When Saturday comes, I am referred to — reluctantly — as what one race director once called, a “weekend warrior.”
This November will mark my ninth New York CIty Marathon. I’ve competed in six New York CIty Triathlons, plus numerous other sprint and olympic distance tris in California, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Overall, I’ve competed in roughly 250 scored races in the last ten years. Not to mention three RAGBRAIs.
Through it all, Iowa has remained only place to which I have returned religiously. With grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins in Waterloo, Cedar Rapids, and Grundy Center, it is my geographic and existential home.
And I’ve developed an even deeper sense of home in Des Moines over the last few years. Jason and I met at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and found immediate rapport in each other’s values and interests. Later that year, I recorded my sixth LP, “Heartland,” with The Nadas, released it on the band’s Authentic Records imprint, and toured with them for three weeks. I performed at Nada Silent Night III, at last year’s DSM Arts Festival, and in March at the band’s “Ghosts Inside These Halls” CD release. In fact, I’ve spent more time in Iowa in the last three years than the previous twenty combined, and I’m glad; I always feel warm, welcome, relaxed and inspired.
And so, when my friend, Simpson College Assistant Director of Alumni Relations, Tricia Martin, sent me an email that the esteemed Des Moines Register (for whom, given his druthers, my father would have me work) was looking for triathletes interested in blogging about their training for the Hy-Vee Triathlon, I thought, “Blogger? Triathlete? I’m in!”
So here I am.
My goal for the Hi-Vee Triathlon is a modest 2:40:00.
More important than my time, though, will be my time with others. I’m pulling together some fundraising plans around the event, and hoping to host a party with some performances afterwards. Stay tuned for details on that.
Meanwhile, I think Jason owes me a jersey. Eh, I’ll settle for a beer.
This blog post was first published as part of The Des Moines Register’s Hy-Vee Triathlon training series.
