Music

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…

When I applied for the coveted Hy-Vee Triathlon Des Moines Register Blogger gig, I described myself as a “reluctant weekend warrior.” Warrior might be a bit of a stretch. I’m more knave than night, more corporal than general. But it is fairly apparent that the bulk of my distance training occurs on weekends. Here’s a…

In 1910, director D.W. Griffith and his acting troop (Lillian Gish, Mary Pickford, Lionel Barrymore, amongst others) were sent west by the Biograph Company. There, in a small village named after landowner Harvey Wilcox’s summer home, Griffith filmed the first movie ever shot in Hollywood, “In Old California.” Movie-makers began heading west in droves, largely…