The Bump
These days, it takes me about one minute to tell people that Abbi and I are expecting.
Take last night for example. I walked out of my office around nine o'clock. The building was nearly empty, so my elevator went express. When the doors opened 29 floors below, I bumped into a familiar colleague. I couldn't remember her name, nor in what department she worked, but I said hello anyway. By the time we hit the escalator, I'd somehow found a contextual way to tell her the news. That lead, as always, to the following exchange:
Person: ...
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 ...
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 ...
Manhood For Amateurs
It says something about who we are and how we manage transitions, I think, that, while Abbi patiently and methodically reads "The Girlfriend's Guide To Pregnancy," I am preparing for fatherhood with Michael Chabon's "Manhood For Amateurs."
Though the book is lean on the science of what's to come, it ably address the psychology and philosophy. Chabon recounts with levity and sensitivity the inevitable sense of loss, and failure inherent to the gig. And not a moment too soon.
I often recount standing there with Abbi on Flatbush Avenue as ...
So This Is The New Year
Well, this is a first.
After a quick circuit in the gym (my wife, orthopedist and physical therapist all tell me I need to a) build muscle while b) allowing my body to recover from last year's two marathons), I went for a short run through the city.
It was, not surprisingly (if you know me), a themed run. And the theme was (not surprisingly), New Year's Day. My playlist was programmed accordingly (Ian Axel's "This Is The New Year," Semisonic's "This'll Be My Year," U2's "New Year's Day (USA Remix)," etc etc), as was my route (south ...
And Baby Makes Three
I woke early -- too early -- on account of a message from my younger self.
Well, not exactly.
It was 29-year-old singer/songwriter Casey Shea (nearly ten years my junior) texting me in the small hours of the morning as he sauntered home from a rock show on the Lower East Side (as I have so many times before). The sound of his text shot through Abbi and my bedroom like a sonic boom. She stirred. I woke.
He suggested that we could hook up in Brooklyn to hand off a flash drive full songs for my long-gestating documentary, "Mister ...
