Spring has alighted on New York City, calendar be damned, and over a weekend at that—cloudless blue above, coatless swarms in the streets below. I’m sitting with the window open. Went for a run yesterday, along the East River and across the Brooklyn Bridge, then caught the F train back to my neighborhood. [...]
March 8, 2010Categories: general6 commentsFall is my season, a sunset in slow motion—light ceding time to dark, blazes of color as the air grows edges. The things you love become more precious for their sparseness, for the fact that they won’t last. Fall means the beginning of things for me—there was school for sixteen years there, of [...]
October 15, 2009Categories: general4 commentsIt occurs to me that when it comes to songs, good in the reviewer’s sense and good in the sense of mattering to someone are two different things. A critic is rightfully concerned with originality; a listener wants a friend. You can write the cheesiest most cliché-ridden love song in the world, and a cancer [...]
September 25, 2009Categories: generalNo commentsHere’s the Q&A we did on Twitter last month, cleaned up for easier reading. Many thanks to Twitter users trialia, roofboy179 and kalenabear for archiving, formatting and sorting!
September 2, 2009Categories: generalNo commentsI really like the clothes you wear at your performances and photo shoots, and was wondering what designers and stores you shop at. For example, I love the dress you’re wearing in this video and the outfits in this photo shoot.
-danseuse
Why thanks. Cleaning up nice has been an acquired skill for me, so that [...]
What was the electronic looping device you used? (brand, model, etc.) Would love to get one to play with—gave you lots of flexibility in the show.
-bill
What is that beautiful shiny red keyboard you tour with now-a-days? I did enough investigative work to figure out it was a Nord something or other.
- roofboy179
Here’s the gear [...]
I’m writing this afternoon in a blind stumble. I’m combing through scraps in folders labeled “recycle bin” and “workdesk,” wondering why I thought I could come up with songs for a living. I’m no good at this. The disconnect between the thing that wants to be, that elusive might-as-well-call-it-a-soul wandering around looking [...]
July 31, 2009Categories: generalNo commentsI love airplanes. Well, not really. The recycled air gives me a headache after a few hours, and sleeping at a 5-degree recline leaves me with a crick in my neck and drool on my shirt. There are the lines, the delays, the staggering fees to check music gear. And there’s the thorny problem of [...]
June 3, 2009Categories: generalNo commentsBremen, Germany
Sitting in the third row of Die Glocke’s Kleiner Saal, the smaller recital hall: candle sconces lining the walls, glimpses of stone arches out the window. They have a concert Steinway on stage for me, one of those beauties that’s sparkling bright up top and a bit growly in the low end, so that [...]
We’re in the endgame for the album now. Everything’s been recorded and sung, and most of the choices are behind us. These days my work involves hovering at a respectful distance while the engineer turns knobs, listening for hours so I can give a few seconds of input: turn the horns down here, more of [...]
October 13, 2008Categories: generalNo commentsWe’ve been in the studio for about three days straight—I didn’t step outside for any of the 20 hours I was awake yesterday. Not advocating this as a lifestyle. You can take the kids out of Silicon Valley…
Around 5:30 a.m. this morning we finished recording St. Stephen’s Cross, a song that I wrote last fall [...]
A friend told me about a book he once owned: one-page summaries of different jobs, including three intelligent questions you could ask someone in that line of work. The questions are surprisingly useful, he said, especially in small-talk situations. No bluffing required, no need to draw tenuous connections to your own experience. Just a bit [...]
July 15, 2008Categories: generalNo commentsNo, I can count; yes, it has been over a month since we started. It’s a fits-and-starts recording process. Lots of location scouting, practicing, phone calls and emails in between. Not to mention trips to the bank and crossing fingers that my deposits clear in time.
It’s been a fantastic week: keyboards and one glorious day [...]
Greetings from a business park in San Clemente, one of the unlikelier places to find a recording studio. I’ve been getting my tacos de pescado fix every time we break for a meal. There are two small windows in the live room; from the piano bench I can see blue sky, edges of palm [...]
May 16, 2008Categories: generalNo commentsBackstage in Montclair, New Jersey. Stephanie White is rehearsing with Robbie LaFalce in the other room—what a voice.
I took the train this afternoon: the J out of Brooklyn, then the F up to 34th Street, walked one block west to Penn Station, then hopped on NJ Transit’s Montclair-Boonton Line. From Walnut Street station [...]
Things are brewing nicely around here. The leaves of album #4 have dropped into the water. It’s ambitious, this record, on pretty much every front; at times I already feel I’m in over my head but in that exhilarating way, like falling in love with someone way out of your league.
More on all [...]
Working on Sid Arthur this afternoon and getting stuck. Setting meditation sessions to music is tricky business. Rehearsals for a reading begin tomorrow, so I’m hoping this traffic jam clears up soon.
Meanwhile, I’ve stumbled upon this:
There are thousands of different definitions of religion. But I like to think of three main ways of understanding it. [...]
Yes, it’s true—I’m finally going to have a video for an album track!
Fat Monster Films picked the song several months ago, developed the concept and shot half the footage before approaching me about being in it. A bit of a gamble, but it was a brilliant move; as soon as I saw their 30-second rough [...]
I write to you, way past my bedtime, from here.
It’s truly amazing—chaotic yet orderly, functionally frivolous. The man who created it gave us a comprehensive tour of the interior when we arrived, and promises an odyssey into the several acres of outdoor marvels when it’s light out.
More about what on earth I’m doing here [...]
Hello from Northern California, where I’ve been camped since mid-December or so. I swear I didn’t orchestrate this as an escape from the East Coast winter; at any rate, the house here has its thermostat set to 58 degrees Fahrenheit, which gets my teeth chattering rather effectively. Late last night the power went out in [...]
January 28, 2008Categories: generalNo commentsLife finally slowed down enough for me in September to sort through the mound of receipts, reports, bank statements and envelopes that comprise the Green Caravan tour paperwork. I have such a highly organized, scientifically engineered system of accounting, it’d make any CPA proud. Really. That’s why it took me three months to gather the [...]
November 24, 2007Categories: generalNo commentsThis tour was an experience like no other. So much work, so much fun. Learned a lot about the bigger world out there, both musically and environmentally/socially. Met some remarkable people, reconnected with others, played for some really outstanding audiences.
I think I am also done with not having a tour manager. Marika, Dina and Alex [...]
Lexington KY, backstage at the woodsongs radio broadcast… met a lovely young lad named ben who sheepishly asked to play marika’s cello, saying, “yeah, i’ve studied a little”… turns out hes going on tour with some guy named bela fleck in his sparrow quartet later this month. besides that, he can play his ass [...]
May 6, 2007Categories: generalNo commentsa powerful, heart wrenching look into the darkest hours of the fried caravan tour. around the time this was filmed the band was seriously considering eating the opening act. sorry, jenny.
May 5, 2007Categories: generalNo commentsafter weeks of fruitless experimentation, the band finally discovers the precise combination of three words that can break marika’s stoic exterior and send her into uncontrollable spasms of laughter on command: LET – HER – BE (said with generous carolina drawl). try it sometime.
May 5, 2007Categories: generalNo comments