Archive for October 2003
Tired & Fat
Yeah, so I’m a little bombed. So what? You’d be celebrating too if you’d just finished mixing your brand-new record. We finished ‘Hollywood Arms’ — guitars, vocals, and piano all — within an hour of my arrival at the studio. (Of course, Kevin had it well under way prior to then.) We added one last…
Read MoreThe New York City Skyline
My brother Christofer and I met on the corner of 57th and Tenth this morning at 5:30, loaded to bear with a DV camera, a tripod, one guitar case, a map of the five boroughs, and plenty of coffee, then pointed the truck east towards a sun that would never rise. The occasion was the…
Read MoreOn ‘I’ll Be Waiting’
Two falls ago, we were rehearsing at a space on Rivington Street for a month-long residency at Arlene Grocery. It was a gray fall day on Manhattan’s gritty Lower East Side. It was perfect for songwriting. I came equipped with my Rickenbacker, and an A-to-D progression ripped straight from ‘Dear Elizabeth’ played with a healthy…
Read MoreOn ‘Radio’
I walked into the studio at 7:00 pm with two six packs, two Quizno subs (the Official Sanwhich Maker of Benjamin Wagner’s ‘Almost Home’ LP), a DV camera, and Jonathan Goldner, cameraman extraordinaire. Kevin was almost done mixing ‘Radio.’ With a few of my edits, it was a wrap. I wrote ‘Radio’ shortly after September…
Read MoreOn ‘Intent On St. Paul’
I had an afternoon to kill in Chapel Hill during last fall’s Summer’s Gone Tour, so I found the local coffee shop. I met Lisa behind the counter. We got to talking about music (she was playing The Pixies), painting, books and such, and she mentioned that she was working on a novel called ‘Intent…
Read MoreCalifornia Slips Away
I spent a good part of last year working in Los Angeles. I fell in love with the place: the beach, the mountains, the desert. I fell in love with the dream: the celluloid, the sunshine, the spotlight. And I fell in love with a girl. She lived in West Hollywood. We met at a…
Read MoreHiding Out
My iTunes is always set to shuffle. Wilco comes on a lot, and always seems to match the mood. Right now, ‘The Lonely One’ is playing… for the third time. It’s not just that it fits lyrically. Moreover, I’m an acoustic guitar, pedal steel, piano and violin kinda’ lonesome. The absence of work, a race…
Read MoreAbout five years ago, my buddy Rob won a trip for two to Aruba in a contest. He has two twin brothers, so he couldn’t take just one. So he took me. On our taxi ride from the airport to our villa, the driver was effusive about her 16-year-old daughter who had just been voted…
Read MoreRecording “Shiver”
I started the day at Food Emporium’s Coin Star. Being in financial dire straits, as I am, I finally dragged my bag of quarters, dimes, and such down there for redemption. I was hoping for enough cash to make it through Tuesday (pay day). Instead, I found myself with… $63.74. In New York, that’ll get…
Read MoreBethesda
I passed a Nike poster hyping the NYC Marathon tonight and wondered, ‘How am I going to finish?’ I stared at the studio calendar and wondered, ‘How are we going to finish?’ But that’s just because I’m shredded at the moment, here in the desk lamp half-light, now, at 12:18 on a school night. I…
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