A huge thank-you to everyone who came out on Saturday for the release show, and everyone who sent messages or left comments. The support is much appreciated. 

We did have a rockin' good time, and while I din't have it in me to set up streaming for the show, we did take a lot of video. So for those of you who feel like you missed out (and you did), make yourself a sandwich, turn up the volume, and enjoy the whole first set on youtube! I left all the bad jokes and rambling stories. It's almost like being…

Where are we from? Where am I from?

What does that even mean?

My mother's side of the family is from Delaware and Pennsylvania. My father's side is from Virginia and North Carolina. I grew up all over the place. I was born in Pennsylvania, lived overseas as a kid, spent my adolescence in the midwest, and have lived in Colorado on and off for thirty-five years now. In my family history are plantation owners, confederate soldiers, Quakers and abolitionists. Thats quite a mix. 

I'm a fifty-seven year old white…

Episode Eight of The Story Behind The Song!

Get in the damn van. 

This song, Econoline Van, pretty much wrote itself except for one part. The prompt in my songwriting group was ‘econoline van,’ and I was off and running from the get go. Really I just listed out a bunch of musician stories, and wrote a chorus. The ford E350 was a staple of the music world for a really long time. Basically a can with a motor, it was cheap, reliable (sort of), simple, and functional. It was not unusual to have six or seven…

Episode Seven of Story Behind The Song

In the winter of 2021, we were all mid-pandemic. I was working from home at my then day-job, my kid was going to school from home, we were all hanging around an awful lot. 

My friend and colleague David Coile, a terrific songwriter and raconteur over in Longmont, had a podcast called Raw Songwriting. The podcast really focused on the nuts and bolts of songwriting- David would send the guest a prompt, both David and the guest would write a song to the prompt, and the…

Episode Six of The Story Behind The Song

Have you ever had it with all the advetising? The constant vomit stream of bullshit? Yeah, me too. In the fall of 2020 (incedentally in the middle of an election cycle when the bullshit was at peak bull), I had one of those moments. I find the political bull especially nauseating. The idea that it's all 'messaging' kinda makes me want to puck or riot, dempinding on the day. 

So I wa splaying with this little blusey guitar riff in A. Nothing ground breaking, sounded…

Welcome to Episode 5 of the story behind the song!

This week I'm looking at 'Mostly What We Ain't' which was released as a single about a year and a half ago. I wrote this song as a part of my songwriting group (shout out group!) several years ago. The prompt that day was 'selfless loving saints.'

Yeah. I saw that and thought ‘nope.’ We aint' that. And the song was off from there. It's fun to lean into a very misanthropic point of view sometime, though I'm mostly a pretty positive guy. But sometimes people…

Story Behind the Song: Ep 4

Ah, trains, and blues, And trains. What a great combo. 

Sometimes you just get messing around with a riff on the guitar and come up with a song to go with it. That's pretty much what happened here. Blues as a form is deeply embedded in my thinking as a player and a writer. I'm not saying I'm great, but blues and blues influenced rock have always been something I really loved. 

The speaker of this little narrative, is, of course, a classic unreliable narrator. It isn't the train that…

Story Behind The Song: Episode 3

Sometimes you start at the end and work to the beginning. There was this phrase rolling around in my head about leaving too soon or too late. And I got to wondering who would say this and what would lead them to say it? What circumstances would have to happen? Also, I really like stories where that bad thing is coming no matter what you do (I'm a big fan of Cormac McCarthy's novels). And, I do love a classic western. 

So I ended up with a song about a guy who falls in love…

Well here's episode 2 of the story behind the song. 

This song isn't released- you can only hear the studio version when the record comes out, so pre-order now and you'll get it first! 

I wrote last episode about the online songwriting group I participate in. The challenge weeks start on Sunday- the first prompt goes up Saturday night. The goal is to write a song every day for a week. Some weeks that gets hard. Maybe I'm not feeling it, maybe I'm busy, maybe I'm just lazy. Who knows. 

In 2024 I was doing a…

I though I'd do a little writing about the songs on the upcoming album, so here's episode 1! This isn't the first song on the record, but it's the title song, so that's what I'm starting with. 

I'm a member of a songwriting group that gets together online every other month or so. We do a challenge week in which we write a song a day for a week. There really aren't any rules, it's just a mechanism to get the work in motion. The trick is to write the song and post it to the group, and not worry too much…

This is the Seinfeld of blog posts. Its about nothing.

I mean, not nothing. But I hate trying to come up with some sort of ‘headline’ that makes it sound more exciting than it is. You know all those bands posting ‘big things’ or ‘new announcement’ or ‘buy our branded socks’ (do you want socks? I could make socks…note for later).

This is Olive to your left, doing nothing, except wondering when lunch will be served.

Of course things are happening. It's spring, trees are getting a little green. I'm thinking…

On March 12 it will be the 10 year anniversary of releasing my first solo record. 

I have no idea how time went by so quick. Making that record was a huge learning experience for me- Brian Schey and Brian McRae really helped me understand the process and both of them helped make it the best thing I was capable of at the time. Of course, other folks helped, but those two Brians have their fingerprints of every second of that record. 

Making recorded music in this time is a funny thing. The idea that we can…

I know it's a bad coffee joke, but that's kinda on brand don't ya think?

After a little ‘end of the month/beginning of the month’ getaway it's back to work here in Colorado. This Saturday we're at The Lion's Lair in Denver with our friends White Rose Motor Oil and All Through the Night. It will be an alt-country lalapalooza! If you haven't hear of either of these bands, click the links- they're both awesome. 

I don't know about you, but if it weren't for music I would be totally nuts right now. The world is…

I don't know about you, but the passing of 2025 came as a bit of relief to me. Did good things happen last year? Yes. Were there also a loooooooot of challenges? Yes again. Some were artistic, some were personal. I won't bore you with the details, it's all part of the human experience. 

So on to 2026!

Big things I'm excited about in 2026:

The main one is there's a new record coming. Yes I've released a lot of singles, but it will be great to have a clear set of songs all packaged together. Don't worry, there…