Blog Posts

I know ya’ll think making records is all hookers and blow, but I got news for ya’: it’s hard work. Case in point: today. Jon, Justin and I got started on the new album Jon’s East Des Moines studio. And while it was fun, and productive, and we had our laughs and such, peoples, I’m…

Saturday was a head-spinning rocknroll tour of Des Moines. Sunday was all about getting my bearings. I didn’t leave my bedroom-turned-recording studio until well after noon. I wasn’t sleeping, though, I was working: recording a new song that came to me in my sleep (“Long Way Down”) and uploading my first batch of photos. When…

I am in the Walsmith’s guest bedroom on Ashby Street in Beaverdale, Iowa. The house is silent save for the ceiling fan whirling overhead, and a bird chirping just outside the window. I am some 1014 miles west of New York City, in a quiet neighborhood just northwest of Des Moines. I am barnstorming the…

Minos may control the land and sea, but not the air. And so I will fly. I will soar in the clouds, up where I am safe. My wings will be aluminum and steel, graphite and wire. I will drink jet fuel. I will travel faster than sound. I will race the dawn. And when…

I hear laughter as I climb the stairs. I knock loudly, inhale deeply, and wait. The door opens quickly. A reddish-blonde rock star stands before me and says in an Aussie accent, “You must be Benjamin, eh?” I am two hours late for Neil and Aaron’s dinner party. I have an excuse, but it’s not…

I’ve never really been one for games. Just ask my brother. He spent a childhood wrestling with my apathy. I grew bored with jigsaw puzzles, lost interest in Monopoly, and walked away from pick-up flag football. Not surprisingly, when he and his bespectacled friends began playing all-night sessions of Dungeons & Dragons, I was not…