Blog Posts

Most major music careers begin on modest stages. Springsteen cut his teeth at Asbury Park’s Stone Pony. Elton John made his stateside splash at LA’s Troubadour. And Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta became Lady Gaga at Rockwood Music Hall. Of course, Rockwood’s been my home turf since founder Ken Rockwood (the Professor half of one-time Bar/None…

It was a cinematic, spring afternoon.   The sky was unwaveringly blue, shot through with bleached-lemon sunlight, all framed by the piercing, green canopy of a long-slumbering Central Park.  A cool breeze blew from the northwest, scattering pollen like snowflakes on a blanket of fresh grass. In the middle of it all, my eleven-month-old daughter…

Few things bring out New Yorkers’ lesser selves than the Penn Station taxi line during an Easter downpour. It’s also one of just a few scenarios capable of adding insult the injury of a late train and an exhausted ten-month-old. We were nearly three-hours behind on a one-hour trip by the time we stepped off…

Maggie took her first, tentative steps last week, slowly, deliberately and clumsily wobbling across the bedroom from her startled mother to her amazed father. She waved like a homecoming queen to steady herself, then collapsed on her bottom. Abbi and I were flabbergasted. Maggie was nonplussed. Still, it was a colossal milestone for all of…

When I woke up, the sheets were peeled back, my wife was gone, and in her place a small, toy bear was blurting out to the blurry, inky night, “I’m a bear!” Abbi burst into the room. “It just turned itself on,” she said in a whispered-frenzy. “And it won’t turn off! Maggie’s wide awake…

The best things that happened at SXSW were the least-expected. Like bumping into then recruiting a former colleague to join me at a live taping Marc Maron’s hilarious “WTF” podcast (where he called the seminal music fest, “The Hipster Alamo”). Or wandering into the premiere of “Outside Industry: The Story Of SXSW,” a fantastic documentary…