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It’s easy to hate the city on mornings like this. My morning run was gross. I was ill equipped in shorts, a windbreaker, and baseball cap. The wind blew right through me. It was relentless. And wet. I ran headlong into the wind and rain. Worse, the entire sprint to the park was hampered by…

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Everything was still. The frost was sparkling in the morning sun. I could see my breath. I wedged myself behind the wheel of my mom’s little red sports car, and sped off to the local coffee shop. I love to drive the old roads. They’re quiet, and scarcely-traveled, and wind and roll through my hometown…

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I’m going home. Chris’ best friend Keith’s father died in his sleep Wednesday morning. So we’re catching a train to Philly in a few hours. There’s a family visitation this afternoon. I expect to be at the local tavern, Casey’s, eating one of their famous roast beef sandwiches and washing it down with a Yuengling…

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It’s two o’ one a.m. when my cousin Andrew says, “Wait a sec, let’s save this shot ’til it really counts.” He steps away to speak with Perry, World Leader Pretend’s Warner Bros. A&R rep. I wait by the bar with Katia and Liz. “OK, let’s do it,” he says. The Petron does not go…

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I’ve spent a lot of time in headphones. Not the hip, white Ipod ear buds. I’m talking about the clunky, heavy ones that lock the world out, and keep the music in. My earliest experience with music was via a powder blue Fischer Price record player. Later, my grandparents bought me a bright pink Radio…

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I’m gonna call it harbinger. Cuz I need a sign, a prophecy, an omen… anything. A couple of hours ago now, Chris, Walker, Tony and I are rehearsing for Tuesday’s big ‘Heartland’ CD release show. We’re at a middle-of-the-road space called Ultrasound on 30th Street. It’s not the best space (thirty bucks an hour), or…

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I woke up well before normal this morning, and lie there on my back a while looking up at the cloudless blue sky, worrying. By lunchtime I was sweating. By dinner, I was nauseous. Right now I am, well, too tired to feel much at all. I released my debut CD, “Bloom,” in 1994. I…

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It’s not very rock n’ roll, I suppose, to want to be a college professor. But it’s on my short list of things to do, right there next to South By Southwest, the cover of Rolling Stone, the Nantucket Film Festival, and The New York Times Best Seller List. Oh, and Mt. Everest. I took…

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At the time, opening for The Samples seemed like a pretty big deal. The year was 1990. I was a 19-year-old junior at Syracuse University. In its first year, my band, Smokey Junglefrog, had already made something of a mark (primarily because we bombed the campus with posters, but whatever). We had released our debut…

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