Blog Posts

Last spring, on what would be the first of a dozen Friends & Neighbors documentary shoots, I sat alone in a Chicago hotel room, stuck in my newly sober body, missing my family and wondering if what I was doing made any sense at all. Ding! A text message from my friend, cellist Patrick Riley, lit up my iPhone.…

When what I thought was anxiety and depression was diagnosed as PTSD last fall, I suddenly saw trauma and its impact all around me: I noticed how little we talk about it, and remembered Fred Rogers’ oft-repeated mantra, “What’s mentionable is manageable.” And when my friend and neighbor, Senator Sarah McBride, reminded me on our…

The very first thing outgoing Online News Association CEO, Irving Washington, remembers buying with his own money was a $400 video camera for a local Indianapolis thrift store. “The big camera with VHS,” he tells me, laughing. “The one you put on your shoulder.” For “hours and hours,” Irving would “create shows” and sketch comics…

Whether as touring guitarist for the avant garde rockers, Psychic TV, or producer for artists like Boy George, Lenny Kaye, Pharoahe Monch, Jeff Berner makes a safe, creative space for those around him to make great art.  “Unless you’re the most self-assured, confident person in your own artistic capability, at some point, you’re going to…

It wasn’t until Friday morning, some 35 years after writing my first song and scarcely eight hours prior to the first on-stage performance of my new album, Constellations, that it occurred to me that songwriting is (for me, anyway) pure alchemy.  What begins in and is typically an expression of sadness and isolation, becomes, with…

In college, my favorite rock shows were blurry, buzzy, glorified keggers with three-dollar Solo cups, a rickety attic and a winning lineup of bands. By the end of the night, we were all playing together, the audience was onstage, and the bands were in the audience. Singer/songwriter Lily McKown grew up not far from me…