Clips

Two falls ago, we were rehearsing at a space on Rivington Street for a month-long residency at Arlene Grocery. It was a gray fall day on Manhattan’s gritty Lower East Side. It was perfect for songwriting. I came equipped with my Rickenbacker, and an A-to-D progression ripped straight from ‘Dear Elizabeth’ played with a healthy…

I walked into the studio at 7:00 pm with two six packs, two Quizno subs (the Official Sanwhich Maker of Benjamin Wagner’s ‘Almost Home’ LP), a DV camera, and Jonathan Goldner, cameraman extraordinaire. Kevin was almost done mixing ‘Radio.’ With a few of my edits, it was a wrap. I wrote ‘Radio’ shortly after September…

I had an afternoon to kill in Chapel Hill during last fall’s Summer’s Gone Tour, so I found the local coffee shop. I met Lisa behind the counter. We got to talking about music (she was playing The Pixies), painting, books and such, and she mentioned that she was working on a novel called ‘Intent…

I spent a good part of last year working in Los Angeles. I fell in love with the place: the beach, the mountains, the desert. I fell in love with the dream: the celluloid, the sunshine, the spotlight. And I fell in love with a girl. She lived in West Hollywood. We met at a…

My iTunes is always set to shuffle. Wilco comes on a lot, and always seems to match the mood. Right now, ‘The Lonely One’ is playing… for the third time. It’s not just that it fits lyrically. Moreover, I’m an acoustic guitar, pedal steel, piano and violin kinda’ lonesome. The absence of work, a race…

About five years ago, my buddy Rob won a trip for two to Aruba in a contest. He has two twin brothers, so he couldn’t take just one. So he took me. On our taxi ride from the airport to our villa, the driver was effusive about her 16-year-old daughter who had just been voted…