Posts by admin
Who You Are And Who You Could Be
I strongly considered calling it quits last week. I was over being The Musician in about fifteen seconds. Coupled with a few other existential challenges that came my way concurrent the being outed in The Gray Lady, the whole week, well, the whole week just sucked it. Hard. I considered changing my name back to…
Read MoreSixteen Miles To The Promise Land
I don’t visit mountains with frequency. I haven’t stood with my arms outstretched in years. This is a problem. I was eight-years-old when I first saw a mountain. My father drove my brother, my cousin Bruce, and me across the great Midwestern plains to the edge of the Rockies in a brown Oldsmobile station wagon.…
Read MoreShut Up
I released my first solo album three months after disbanding my college band, Smokey Junglefrog. I was 21-years-old. The record was called “Always Almost There.” It was recorded in the weeks following my graduation from Syracuse University, and engineered by my friend Steve Feldman (who engineered the first Queens of the Stone Age record). It’s…
Read MoreBurning Photographs
I got glasses and braces at virtually the same time: just a few days into my first year at Conestoga High School. The glasses were big ole’ tortoise shell horn rimmed things. They were big. Like, each lens was as wide as a pint glass. I loved ’em. I wore ’em all through high school.…
Read MoreI’m Not Broke (But You Can See The Cracks)
To say that resetting my broken jaw without anesthesia was painful is a monumental understatement. To say that showing my face at school later that summer was somehow worse is straight up fact. It was, perhaps not surprisingly, a love triangle that found me in a bloody heap on the sidewalk in front of the…
Read MoreModern Love
I will never date in this town again. Ok, let’s discuss surreal. Location: Las Vegas McCairn International Airport. The din of slot machines chimes loudly over U2’s “A Man And A Woman” on my iPod. The Strip shimmers just across the tarmac. I’m waiting on Jet Blue Flight 192 to John F. Kennedy Airport less…
Read MoreLeaving New York (Not Easy)
24 hours in Vegas. How psyched am I … sigh. My colleague (and Cockfight bandmate) Robert Mancini is getting married tonight. At the Ballagio. In Las Vegas. How ‘Ocean’s Eleven,’ right? I’ll be the Brad Pitt character. It was a tuxedo, or my black circa ’99 Banana Republic three button. I went with the suit.…
Read MoreAll Because Of You
Some doctor on CNN just said that if I would just stop with the coffee, start with the green tea, and eat more colorful vegetables, I would lose ten pounds in ten days, minimize the bags under my eyes, and gain luminescence in my skin. So I finished my coffee, ate my bagel, swallowed a…
Read MoreTitle & Registration
Every album that I’ve ever released has had a pullquote of sorts, a hidden (or not so) lyric that seems to speak for the entire body of work. Usually the line is hidden somewhere in the liner notes. On ‘Almost Home’ and ‘Love,’ though, they’re a little more prominently featured. It’s not too difficult for…
Read MoreLosing My Religion, Part II
I’m not a huge Danny Glover fan, but when he says, “I’m too old for this shit,” in ‘Lethal Weapon’ (1, 2, 3 & 4), sister, I hear him loud and clear. I jumped off the NR at Union and Fourth and walked to Great lakes for another Smith Family show. I’m not sure if…
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