Blog Posts

The New York Times just confirmed some sad news: Tim Russert has died of a heart attack. You’ll recall that Chris and I visited Tim in his NBC offices in November, 2006 to interview him for our documentary, “Mister Rogers & Me.” We scored the interview courtesy of my uncle, with whom Tim had worked…

“Are you chewing gum?” Jason asked. “I might be,” Mike responded. And so it was that The Nadas began another New York City performance. Were Des Moines’ favorite sons on their home turf, the room would be spilling forth with fans. Last night, though, the founding duo, Mike Butterworth and Jason Walsmith, was performing an…

The band was recorded in Soho, overdubbed in Hell’s Kitchen, then mixed in Des Moines via Hollywood. Let me explain. That photo of me pointing to my laptop? That’s Jon Locker and me recording Patrick Riley and Cecile Forsberg’s string parts for “The Invention Of Everything Else” — despite 1,689 miles in between the four…

My brand-new, ten-track CD, “The Invention Of Everything Else,” is now available for preview at iLike.com and exclusive download at Authentic Records Online. For one week only (June 11-18), download the entire album plus two online-only bonus tracks at Authentic Records Online. We’ll ship your signed, limited-edition CD plus autographed poster and 1″ collector’s buttons…

If you asked me to script a better preamble for the release of “The Invention Of Everything Else,” I’d be hard pressed. I dropped the album art (created, like most things, in that three-hour zone of sleeplessness that strikes me most nights) onto Engine Room Audio’s FTP, dashed off an email (“Leaving Now!”) and raced…

I was standing on the 79th Street subway station just a few days prior to the release of “Heartland” in November, 2005, when the phrase “giving up the ghost” came to me. “Somehow,” as I wrote a few years later, “It summarized everything that I was (and still am) going through, specifically, letting go of…