Blog Posts

For the first time in thirty-three years, I have a plan. Well, not really. I always have a plan, sometimes to a fault. But this time, I’m way ahead of the ball. I have dates. I’m buying plane tickets. It’s the summer of neo-hippie weddings, midwestern recordings, and plenty of bicoastal, red eye travel. Here’s…

It stands to reason, somehow, that a wholesome afternoon would be followed by a spontaneous evening of debauchery. The upshot? 3:01 – Ethan and I walk (ok, stroll) along the Hudson to the 70th Street Pier. He learns the word “boat,” and proceeds to use it successfully all afternoon. Yes, women do notice him and…

I just had the oddest night of sleep in years. First, I wake up at 3:57 a.m. from a strange dream. I have to get from Philadelphia to New York City with a bunch of high school buddies, including my L.A. James. I forget my passport and miss the last train, so we have to…

My grandfather had families all over the state of Iowa. Of course, none of us knew this until his funeral. I was sixteen-years-old. It was one of those scorching, midwestern summer days. The wind was steady and hot like a convection oven. I was standing over his casket at Mt. Holyoake Cemetery in Waterloo thinking,…

Kevin and I began playing country songs together in the final days of recording “Almost Home.” He was teaching himself to play fiddle, and, well, I appreciated the diversion from the mind-numbing mixing process. Late one night a few weeks later, I was behind the mixing board, Kevin was in the iso booth tracking his…

When I walked in from an hour-long MTV Overdrive programming meeting, everything was lit up like a Christmas tree: my office phone, my cell phone, my email inbox, my Blackberry, my AIM. Something was awry. Wes got to me first via AIM. “Your show with Casey is cancelled.” I checked my email. Deena had written…