Clik here to view.
tales of wonder
I’m taking to the road again, more live shows. Tonight when I stand at the center of the lit circle with my guitar, open my heart-shaped mouth and inhale, it will hit me: I’m the kid who ran away with...
View ArticleClik here to view.
otherly beauty
On the final stop of the weekend tour, I played in the atrium of an early church. People sat in concentric circles, light joined the sound … it was grace. I have long drawn strength from the reverence...
View ArticleClik here to view.
love + respect
I’m never 100% sure what they want, ever. Sometimes an audience wants to cry. They’re warm and compassionate. They wait with quiet gazes for something to come through me. They want my vulnerability....
View ArticleClik here to view.
unrepeatable beautiful
This morning, I sit in my little studio and write with a view of the birch-lined road and the light let loose in the garden. I’ll work until 11:30 or 12, then we’ll take the children to the library for...
View ArticleClik here to view.
a deconstruction
If you deconstruct my music, you will in the end see a white shirt, scattered papers, and a few violets with wind above them remain. You will also see: The precise notes I use to commit the air to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
between life and art
One of the remarkable things about being a musician is that there are no rules. There’s no right way or wrong way to be one. You can experiment with every aspect of making up a song, and there’s no one...
View ArticleClik here to view.
dream + automobile
Honk if you Like my Elvis cookie jar. Fundamentally, I believe that the beautiful can’t happen twice. This must be why I make records. If I am recording a song, I’m recording: There is no such thing as...
View ArticleClik here to view.
love + time
Being a musician is useful for family life in many ways. I can be counted on for: A jaunty little tune to whisk us from point A to B as we drive … A happy number to get us through the dishes … A...
View ArticleClik here to view.
silence
I was four when Music came for me. Suddenly, I understood silence. Silence is the language of the beginning of a song, when I hold an intruding melody to my chest for the first time. It vanishes at the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
my biggest fan
Songwriters worry a lot about finding their voice. We all find our voice, though. By the time you’re ten or more years into your art, you find it. But that’s not the trouble. The trouble is getting rid...
View ArticleClik here to view.
beginning with O
The new song is in fragments, both becoming and fact. I think about its evolution in shapes: A blank sheet lying flat on the table forms a simple plane, a shape with surface but no volume. Now my...
View ArticleClik here to view.
bleecker street
I was walking the street last night after a gig and it was jammed with beautiful, beautiful people. Looking south from Abingdon Square and north towards West 10th Street and west from the Bowery, I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
how to tune a guitar
You go for a drive with the top down and let the guitar sit in the passenger seat. Make the first left, that way your destination is farther and the road to it prettier, the blossoms absurdly violet....
View ArticleClik here to view.
voices
Which came first, memory or voice? Early in life, you find certain voices that speak to, nourish and guide you. What I always remember about my childhood is my grandmother whispering to me, telling me...
View ArticleClik here to view.
intros + outros
H was singing the song I wrote for her a summer ago on a college station this afternoon, restoring my faith in FM radio for now. I remember working on the intro, that foray into country-western...
View ArticleClik here to view.
the book of song
In the school where I studied as a boy I learned Math and English, History and Geography, but not other things like: How to leave a melody singing on a person’s skin. Or how to daydream by the open...
View ArticleClik here to view.
a beautiful echo
Echo has been my singing partner as early as I can remember. At a young age I realized that the bounce-off-the-wall echo effect known as reverb puts sustain on my notes and gives my voice a lush, wet...
View ArticleClik here to view.
there are mermaids
To compose a melody, pretty as a ladybug — this is the most important thing to me as a songwriter. But what astonishes is the singing. It helps to have a voice that can pack a lifetime’s worth of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
all things invisible
For the next two days I’m living in a sunny, spare room over a bookshop, in a one-pump, two-church town by the sea. It’s a kind of self-imposed exile; I have to finish this song I’m making up for N. I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
unlistening
I pass a roadside hay field on my way home from the studio where a few of us are hiding out this week (we refuse to call ourselves a “band”). They just cut and left it to lie, this last cutting. I...
View Article
