BACKSTORY:
I've been what they call a professional musician going on fifteen years now. Prior to that I'd been a secret musician most of my grown life, writing songs just to fend off the loneliness, trying to make sense of my nonsensical existence. I wrote slowly, carefully working my way across a good-sized minefield of worrisome psychological issues. The songwriting helped, like a form of therapy. I wrote hundreds of truly terrible songs in a long procession of dismal apartments and hotel rooms, scattered across the USA and over in Europe. Wretched song after wretched song I wrote. The few people who heard them ran from the room when I started playing, but I didn't really care. It was therapy. I was trying to get better, doing what one friend called "the talking cure".
In the late 80s I moved to New York City. I'd quit writing songs after my fretting hand got mangled in a table saw accident. I was thirty years old and had never been to college. I was dirt poor, destitute in fact, eating out of dumpsters and selling junk I found in garbage cans at thieves markets. Eventually I found work driving a cab full time, then I talked my way into a scholarship at NYU which was a few blocks from where I was staying at that time. It still boggles my mind. I just walked into NYU and demanded a scholarship. And they gave me one.
I did well in school, graduating near the top of my class. but was too experimentally disposed to really benefit from what NYU had to offer. It was more of a mainstream program. After graduating from film school I fell sick with a mystery illness. I got worse and worse and at a certain point thought I might die. I was bedridden for great lengths of time, and to fend off the deadly cocktail of boredom and crippling depression I started writing songs again. I was surprised---the songwriting came much more easily this time. There was a clarity and focus that was previously lacking in my work.
At last the songs I was writing made sense, and not just to me. A friend from school heard me playing them and asked me to record these new ones for him. That was a first. So I made him this crappy, hissy little tape, recorded on a busted Fostex 4 track tape recorder. Six songs performed with me banging on pots and pans in my kitchen, singing through the top of a 2 liter Pepsi bottle that I sawed in half to create a sort of megaphone effect. It was so far beyond lo-fi. My friend loved it. He passed this hissy tape on to his musical prodigy girlfriend, who also loved it.
It was so strange, apparently there had been some seismic shift in my psyche and suddenly I was capable of connecting to others through this previously implosive medium. What had happened? The girlfriend passed the little tape that could on to Melanie Ciccone, Joe Henry's wife. She was managing Daniel Lanois at the time. She also loved my crazy tape, a tape engineered so poorly that sound only came out of one speaker. Melanie passed my little lopsided tape to David Byrne, and suddenly there I was, shaking his hand and talking about making a record. Soon thereafter I was signed to a six record deal. I had never performed live, played in a band, or "jammed" with other musicians. In all those years I'd sung a scant few times in the Assembly of God church I attended for ten years and nearly died from the terror of it. And yet a short time later there I was, opening for David Byrne in front of thousands of screaming fans. Life throws some weird shit at you, if you let it.
After that there were miles of musical highways, hills and dales, ups and downs. Big breaks that added up to nothing, slight detours that became deeply enriching. Too long a story to tell. But a good one nonetheless.
Below you'll find a list of my upcoming concert dates. Come out and say hey to me if you can.
I've been what they call a professional musician going on fifteen years now. Prior to that I'd been a secret musician most of my grown life, writing songs just to fend off the loneliness, trying to make sense of my nonsensical existence. I wrote slowly, carefully working my way across a good-sized minefield of worrisome psychological issues. The songwriting helped, like a form of therapy. I wrote hundreds of truly terrible songs in a long procession of dismal apartments and hotel rooms, scattered across the USA and over in Europe. Wretched song after wretched song I wrote. The few people who heard them ran from the room when I started playing, but I didn't really care. It was therapy. I was trying to get better, doing what one friend called "the talking cure".
In the late 80s I moved to New York City. I'd quit writing songs after my fretting hand got mangled in a table saw accident. I was thirty years old and had never been to college. I was dirt poor, destitute in fact, eating out of dumpsters and selling junk I found in garbage cans at thieves markets. Eventually I found work driving a cab full time, then I talked my way into a scholarship at NYU which was a few blocks from where I was staying at that time. It still boggles my mind. I just walked into NYU and demanded a scholarship. And they gave me one.
I did well in school, graduating near the top of my class. but was too experimentally disposed to really benefit from what NYU had to offer. It was more of a mainstream program. After graduating from film school I fell sick with a mystery illness. I got worse and worse and at a certain point thought I might die. I was bedridden for great lengths of time, and to fend off the deadly cocktail of boredom and crippling depression I started writing songs again. I was surprised---the songwriting came much more easily this time. There was a clarity and focus that was previously lacking in my work.
At last the songs I was writing made sense, and not just to me. A friend from school heard me playing them and asked me to record these new ones for him. That was a first. So I made him this crappy, hissy little tape, recorded on a busted Fostex 4 track tape recorder. Six songs performed with me banging on pots and pans in my kitchen, singing through the top of a 2 liter Pepsi bottle that I sawed in half to create a sort of megaphone effect. It was so far beyond lo-fi. My friend loved it. He passed this hissy tape on to his musical prodigy girlfriend, who also loved it.
It was so strange, apparently there had been some seismic shift in my psyche and suddenly I was capable of connecting to others through this previously implosive medium. What had happened? The girlfriend passed the little tape that could on to Melanie Ciccone, Joe Henry's wife. She was managing Daniel Lanois at the time. She also loved my crazy tape, a tape engineered so poorly that sound only came out of one speaker. Melanie passed my little lopsided tape to David Byrne, and suddenly there I was, shaking his hand and talking about making a record. Soon thereafter I was signed to a six record deal. I had never performed live, played in a band, or "jammed" with other musicians. In all those years I'd sung a scant few times in the Assembly of God church I attended for ten years and nearly died from the terror of it. And yet a short time later there I was, opening for David Byrne in front of thousands of screaming fans. Life throws some weird shit at you, if you let it.
After that there were miles of musical highways, hills and dales, ups and downs. Big breaks that added up to nothing, slight detours that became deeply enriching. Too long a story to tell. But a good one nonetheless.
Below you'll find a list of my upcoming concert dates. Come out and say hey to me if you can.
RADIO APPEARANCE IN IRELAND
No shows presently scheduled! Making a new record!
PLAYING LONG NECK BANJO ON ALEX'S RECORD
YEP ROC 15 YEAR ANNIVERSARY BASH
