Crazy Nephews
My brother, Christofer, called Sunday morning.
"Dude, is there any way you can watch the boys this afternoon?" he asked breathlessly. Jen took Ella to the hospital. I'm running up there to meet her."
My pointer finger was on their Upper West Side buzzer fifteen minutes later. I could hear Ethan and Edward's tiny feet scurry on the hardwood above me as I climbed the four flights of stairs. I knocked on the door to the sound of giggles. The door swung open mysteriously to an empty hallway.
"Boo!"
The boys leapt from behind the ...
Golden Slumbers
Last night, just before her eyes turned heavy after her traditional page and a half of reading, I slipped a pair of Sony headphones onto Abbi's belly, and pushed play.
I was running two hours behind my "Forever Young" recording schedule when singer/songwriter Misty Boyce finally took her seat at the piano. She banged out "Morning Has Broken" with just seconds of practice in three takes. Moments later, we began recording our cover of The Beatles, "Golden Slumbers."
"Do you think I'll be hung in effigy if I added an extra chorus?" I ...
… But Now I See
Jamie Leonhart and I arrived to our "Forever Young" recording session a few minutes early, so set out for a cup of coffee.
The sun was broken free of the weekend's snow-choked clouds. The trickle of melting snow hummed beneath the rumble of passing subways, far off-music and a faint inkling that birds were beginning to return from their winter hideouts.
Galuminum Foil Studio sits at a crossroads of Brooklyn neighborhoods south of Williamsburg's newly-gentrified lofts and studios, north of Bed-Stuy's Marcy Projects, and west of Bushwick. ...
“Forever Young” LP Due This Fall
I began recording my eighth studio LP (and sixteen solo album overall), "Forever Young," Saturday night in Brooklyn. The ten-song LP is scheduled for a fall release.
Though the idea behind this new record gestated slowly, it ultimately came together pretty quickly. It starts, I guess, with Ethan.
My brother's first son, Ethan, was born seven years ago this June. I was eager to expose him to the joy of making music from the start. I bought him bongos, a piano and guitar all by his first birthday. Few things have made me happier in ...
Keep Breathing
Abbi and I went to our first birthing class the other night, a three-trimesters in three-hours mini-marathon spanning everything from reflexology to relaxin.
The class was held at Real Birth, a pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding and new parent community center born of the Elizabeth Seton Childbearing Center (where Ethan was born). It's a brick-walled, hard wood-floored storefront on Eighth Avenue bookended by a laundromat one one side and sushi joint (West Side Sushi, which I've been patronizing for years) on the other. I paid special ...
Baba O’Riley
"It's not about us anymore."
Tarrytown, New York, is a quaint little village tucked into the eastern bank of the ice-choked Hudson River, some 25 miles north of midtown Manhattan. One of my earliest NYC-pals, John Rosenblatt (he of SNL Shorts fame) his wife, Marnie, and son, Wylie, hosted Abbi and me for brunch.
There, forty minutes of breathtaking Washington Irving-style, Metro North-delivered beauty later, we witnessed an alternative universe: three bedrooms, river views, an silence as far as the eye could see. Wylie's perfectly ...
The Wave
Funny story from Dominican Republic. Sort of.
Our hotel, Casa Colonial, was wedged in the middle of Playa Dorado, a World Bank-funded hotel, golf course and mall development roughly half-way between the Puerto Plata Airport, and Puerto Plata itself. Again, I can't say enough nice things about the hotel itself, and particularly the staff. Playa Dorado, was oddly-contrived (horse-drawn carriages to shuttle pedestrians the literally dozens of feet between hotels, for example) and antiseptic, though. It took me less than twelve hours to ...
Nuestra Magnifica Luna Del Bebé A La Casa Colonial
Remember those single-panel "Family Circus" cartoons where illustrator Jeff Keane drew a rambling, dotted line to indicate little Billy's often-mischievous and always-circuitous routes around his neighborhood?
Were Mr. Keane to illustrate Abbi and my week in the Domincan Republic, he wouldn't need to use much ink.
Casa Colonial provided VIP treatment from the start, ushering us through customs, into a waiting van, and straight to our room. Suite Six (or Doña Rosa, so named for the owner), was a five-room affair: living room, dining ...
Baby, Light My Way
The twenty-week ultrasound is the big one; organs are measured, digits are counted, gender is determined (if you're interested in that sort of information).
Our appointment at New York-Presbyterian (the neonatal unit is located in the historic Lying-In Hospital dating back to 1799) loomed large on our calendar for weeks. That it marked the edge of our long-planned "Babymoon" -- one week in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic booked long before that island shook in sympathy with Haiti -- only added to its heft.
My brother encouraged us to ...
“Hope For Haiti Now” Behind The Scenes
Some twenty-four hours after its original airing, and some 150 miles from the earthquake's actual epicenter, I finally watched the "Hope For Haiti Now" telethon.
Like most of these sorts of live productions, it's rare that I actually see the event itself.
Friday night, I was at Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens, one of four locations for this ambitious, last-minute, charitable broadcast. MTV News was conducting interviews in New York, Los Angeles and London, then serving them unbugged, unflagged and unbranded to the world's press. ...
