East Coast

The East Coast is just a little bit different than Colorado and New Orleans. For one, the concept and logistics of transportation are on people's minds constantly. "Where are you going" and "how do you get there" are questions heard hourly if not more frequent. The geography of the city makes it such, millions of people packed, overflowing onto an island like it's the last place drinking water is available on Earth or something.

There are some serious common misconceptions about NYC which I noticed are blatantly false and should be disproved.

1. New York is hard to get around... Do you have two feet? Can you put two dollars (twice that of a soda machine!) in a little turnstile device that let's you onto a train which goes anywhere and everywhere for a paltry sum? If so, this myth is clearly just that. The web of trains, shuttles, cabs and your own bi-pedal movement makes getting around a breeze, with just a little forethought.

2. New Yorkers are assholes... Couldn't be farther from the truth. From the guy who sold me falafel in his late-night cart, to the jolly 16-year old with her belly hanging out of her undersized pink t-shirt, jamming on her iPod as she skips down Park Ave... everybody is busy, busy, busy, but certainly not an asshole. "Excuse me" would get pretty old if you bumped elbows with 21 million people daily, too.

3. New York is expensive. Two blocks from the apartment where I spent several nights in NY you could get a slice of pizza for 99 cents. I can't even find the hot key for the "cents" sign on my computer, that's how cheap the za was... And OK, maybe this pizza wasn't the health quality standard for the 21st century, but in an economy of scale, that's some cheap food people. Stay out of SoHo shops and trendy restaurants (which you should be doing anyway, you blue-blooded American penny pincher of our newly inherited economy! Let's go get a dog at Coney Island anyway, which we did... more on that later.

Point is, go to New York! It's only the commercial and cultural center of the conceivable universe for crying in the milk...

Visit the rest of the dense area, too. So much to see.

That's what I did by traveling to Boston first with my fuzzy-headed, musical companion, Portwood. After staying up all night post- side project show, sliding down the mountain to DIA, we were off to Boston town last Monday.

You have to understand how hilarious our friends' the Healey's are. Proud parents of two gorgeous children who have an insatiable appetite for play with their "uncles" (us), we party and pontificate with our friends and mentors about everything in life. I lived on their couch for a number of months last fall, and let's put it this way: my tweezed uni-brow hairs on your bathroom counter is the fast track to getting to know me, intimately. We are the best of friends and they are they perfect companions and catalyst for attending an amazing live show.

Phish did not disappoint in Boston. Rejecting their label by popular media, the band plowed through song after song of strong structure and the jams sounded like true, conversational improvisation, not noodle-like time wasting. Trey ripped and Gordo/Fish provided the backbone of a brontosaurus. Somehow we made it back to our Red Roof Inn and even after closing my eyes, I could hear the party continue in the hall, pool, foot of my bed and of course, behind my own eye lids.

Our time in Boston was all too short. Beyond enjoying a much needed day at the beach and a pleasantly shocking, shrinkage-inducing romp in the Atlantic Ocean the next day, it was time to head down to NYC the next day on the bus.

Greyhound is a great option if you don't mind seeing the country like most of us do, on the open road with all the other gas-guzzlers. My apologies and regards to Carrie-Anne, sitting behind me, who in my excited nervousness I had asked to stay the whole time in New York with us, pestering her by the minute. I liked her smile and radiance (I have this issue with brunettes...) but was so excited for the city I could have asked the whole bus to party with the crew all week....

Party we did. After taking a few nights off, this is my vacation after all, we hit the town. First night out, I stumbled into a jam session where a guitar was promptly rented for me and the jam was on. It's always interesting improvising with musicians from around the country and this was no different. Rock and roll is alive indeed in New York and it came through the vibe that night. Soulful city rock with street noise and steely blues....

Another night I found myself in a bumper-car like charade through west Greenwich Village, THE village, with my always adventurous friend, Laura. We met up with her hilariously sarcastic brother and his fiance, had expresso's with cognac and dove down into THE dive, a dark bar straight from the time of dark colonial taverns, with a beer list to match.

In a randomly amazing sign that this was my personal East Coast music tour where I finally got to just listen, rather than produce and play, a very smart (Masters in Math something incredible....) Emily hooked us up with Furthur tickets on Coney Island. After rollicking hard, I mean hard, in the oldest, most famous roller coaster in the world, The Cyclone, we watched the surviving members of the Grateful Dead do what they've been doing best for thirty years under a warm Coney Island sky. Fireworks followed, bookending my trip perfectly.

I had enough hot dogs, the classic at Coney, to burst on the long train home.

Sitting in LaGuardia, I'm sad to leave this place. The energy and human creativity and drive is tangible everywhere. I plan on returning in the fall to produce some tracks with up-and-coming Brooklyn producers and play some showcase shows for those in the know. Until then, back to Colorado for a show tonight and the continued push to deliver "Actual Natural" to the masses.


Keep on pushing on , people, pushin' on.

Home

I just moved into my apartment. During the winter I lived with a family (my best friends and mentors) and since then commuted around the state, toured around the nation in an RV, and lived in New Orleans where little sleeping goes down anyhow.

But this place.... My own loft apartment in one of my favorite towns, down-valley from Vail. This spot let's me stay relatively stationary while playing weekly gigs in the valley, where our fans have dictated that we play early and often this summer season. But more importantly (I really never minded the mountainous commute, although my body might tell otherwise) I have my own space to create. To be loud, quiet, exacting in my practicing, sloppy in my writing, whatever I choose at any time or never at all. I can see the Eagle River out my window and already have a modest studio set-up in the corner of my room for new demos.

I've entered into a nice, steady period of songwriting recently. Like anything, songwriting takes practice and only a few gems can be mined from years of consistency. Except consistency is creativities' sworn enemy. You would think (and if you read this blog, you're right most of the time) that special occasions, situations or circumstances spark the creative process. Well how then can you expect to wake up and feel so special every day? Tasting the same coffee, toothpaste, reading the same paper, engaging in the same awkward morning ritual with your co-workers every morning makes one feel pretty regular. Sure I'm happy to be alive and recognize the immense beauty around me (especially in this here valley), but waking up at high altitude after long nights filled with overly-appreciative, whiskey-bearing fans makes me less inclined to write that hit tune, filled with the exuberance of life itself...

The key is to realize you're not special. That's right. Mom was wrong. She might have said you were the cutest boy at school but then you graduated and this is the real world, son. So when songwriting, don't stretch for the special, unless the feeling really hits you that you've stumbled upon divine lyrical wisdom, something everyone MUST hear. Instead, shoot for the common denominator, there are only a few human stories to be told: love, death, money... what am I forgetting here?? But those concepts are all so grandiose. Everybody wakes up groggy, goes to work stressed, comes home and hopefully has enough energy to maybe ponder those other grandiose concepts. So write for those people.

Either write about how you understand what their life is like, empathy some call it. Or write about love and death and life in a way that in that spare second between chewing his meatloaf and the start of the season finale of Lost, someone might understand what in god's name you're babbling on about, and see the world like you do, through your eyes.

Oil Spill

I can't really fathom the oil spill. For several reasons, I can't wrap my mind around it. I think part of that is some sort of emotional response my immune system impinges on me to keep my literal cranium from exploding into a fine pink, brain-colored mist, or from flying over to BP headquarters in jolly-old and raising the issue personally.

Part of it is not being able to comprehend the literal physics and physical size of the disaster. I understand that a methane pocket caused the Deepwater Horizon to explode and sink and that there have been half a dozen methods to stop the poisonous sludge from gushing into our ocean waters. By far the worst part of this disaster were the hard working guys who perished as generators and rigging exploded around them like the materialization of hell itself.

The ocean and its immensity have always frightened me on a primal level. Have you ever looked at a ship-wreck in dim, under-water light while scuba diving and not had the immediate urge to be topside? Throw in some barracuda and I'm officially soiling my wet suit during my hasty ascent. Not to mention we haven't explored more than about five percent of the ocean, one percent when talking about the sea floor itself (where I hear only the most terrible sea monsters prefer to spend their days). The National Ocean Service says that the vast majority of the ocean is dark, no light can penetrate below 3,000 feet. Dark AND unknown? No thanks.

The ocean's getting even darker, with oil. It's all I can think about, trying to comprehend how it happened, and more importantly, how the hell it will be stopped before the August relief-well dig completion. The worst part? There is not much I can do sitting here, high in the rockies, except send hair clippings for oil-absorbent buoys (done the day after I got my customary post-tour hair cut).

This sense of helplessness led to great satisfaction when I read this morning that the feds will be investigating both civil and criminal cases against BP. And while we are talking about the current administration (isn't this a music blog?) I'd like to say, unabashedly, that Obama is doing a good job. He's pragmatic, responsive, doesn't make America sound like a bunch of red-necks, and has pushed legislation through which will make Americans healthier and prevent bankers from getting too much wealthier. Bush sat on his ass while domestic issues like Katrina ate at the soul of our country, while lying to the public on the premise of starting wars of aggression, a war which has gone on to be the longest engagement in our history, unless you count the pointless, counterproductive money waste we call the "war on drugs".

As it turns out, nature herself might be the saving grace of this whole situation. While BP rejects inventors and scientists, the ideas of those who've known something like this was going to happen and put their dollars into stopping it, there is a multitude of thought and innovation being put into how to fix this. You can find it all over YouTube. But the real fix might be nature's built-in protections against oil which is, after all a naturally occuring substance itself. Scientists say plant-matter can recover from one good oiling, although the second or third will kill it off. Microscopic organisms in the ocean can eat oil particles. Warm sea water facilitates the evaporation of the oil off the surface.

In the interim BP needs to stop using environmentally harmful dispersants, keep the oil off the coastline and let nature do what she does with the thousands of naturally occurring oil leaks on the seabed floor all over the world.

If it is found that BP management was criminally negligent in their safety precautions, precautions protecting the very world which allows them to breath air, taste their caviar or feel the wind in their hair while riding in the Rolls, all while blindly preparing to decimate a region already embattled with nature, then heads should roll as an example that the Earth, our Mother, is not to be fucked with.