Month: November 2018

This Thanksgiving holiday was a quiet one, delightfully quiet. Snuggles with the pug, delicious food, and mild flu-like symptoms that gave me a good excuse to do what I wanted to do anyway, which was to lay on the couch and watch movies and read and doze. The rain was a gift.

I needed to do something “productive” so I decided to go through old music I’ve recorded and update my YouTube channel. Talk about going down a rabbit hole. 11 years ago I started writing songs. I had a day job in a law firm and when I had a weekend off from the band, I would head to my studio on Friday night and just camp out there for the weekend. The door would close and I was in Playland, with instruments and the computer and drums and my voice and all my little black books of scribbled lyrics. Continue reading “Our Default is Joy”

Home from a 10-show tour to Denver and the Pacific Northwest. My bandmate and I flew in and out of Colorado in 24 hours and then starting driving North from San Francisco. This is a relatively new project, just the two of us, so we took it on the road to break it in.

I was not playing drums, but triggering electronic tracks and singing. I’ve written before here that singing has been a long process for me. The technique of singing is like that of any instrument: it can take a lifetime to develop. Then, letting go of technique and of self-consciousness, doing the internal work to really own the performance, this has been the biggest hurdle to being a decent front-person. Playing drums, I have had stage fright exactly once, at my first show. Singing, I have overcome a ridiculous amount of terror, shaking violently on stage and sort of blacking out during performances. Continue reading “Stepping Out of a Box, Singing”