For the last month or so, I’ve been playing music with Greg Hagel on drums, keyboards and vocals, and Pedro Hernandez on bass. I’m super excited about how it’s been going. I’m not sure how much I should be sharing here, I’m afraid that if people listen to these rough, first-take demos, they’ll assume that this is what we sound like in perpetuity, when in fact, we’re going to get better. But truth is, I’m so stoked on these songs, I’ve been emailing the demos to friends anyway, so I figure I may as well share them here. So, keep in mind, this song was recorded on a cell phone.

• The Book I Read (Talking Heads cover)

This is a show that I played with Jerry Encoe (Residual Echoes, San Francisco Watercooler) on electric guitar. Also playing the show was Jake Mann and the Upper Hand, and I think it went pretty well. See for yourself, I suppose. This might be the last time I play this acoustic material for a little while, now that I’m working with a new rock band.

• Laundry Day
• Galilee Hitchhiker
• The Moon
• Jesus
• Gin & Lime
• New Brown Jacket
• There’s a Place

In the summer of 2007, I traveled back to Davis, CA to work with Andy Pastalaniec and Teddy Briggs on recording some of my new songs. We spent two weeks down in the basement of Freeborn Hall, recording tracks at KDVS’ Studio A. We got ten or so songs tracked with bass, drums, and acoustic guitar. I took the recordings back to New York and worked for a couple of months on adding electric guitars and vocals. In December, Sholi stayed at my place in New York while they played shows. While they were in town, bassist and wizard Eric Ruud mixed the recordings, and now we were cooking with gas! I took the bus up to Boston, where my sister Rachel sang some vocal harmonies on some of the tracks. I burned a few CDRs and traveled back to California to play some shows with this band and get the music out there. I don’t think we sold a single CD at the shows (OK, maybe we sold two), but the shows were a blast, and hopefully there will be more. Til then, here are the recordings.

• San Francisco
• New Brown Jacket
• Party On The Roof
  
• Money Off My Mind
• There’s A Place

• Kiss from a rose

In March of 2007 I got the following email from my friend Eric:

Hey all,
So after 8-10 years of secretly obsessing over Seal’s “Kiss from a Rose”, I decided to come out with it. I love it. I know I’m not the only one…..
I’ve been discussing it with a few folks, and we’ve decided to have a competition to see who can make the best cover of Seal’s masterpiece. It’s open to any format, musical or otherwise. If you have any friends who might want to join in, please invite them. I know its intimidating, given Seal’s silky smooth voice and Trevor Horn’s intricate yet tight production, but don’t be afraid. I believe there are unexplored facets of this song that are dying to be uncovered by your original interpretation!
I know we’re all busy with “real” music or “real” work or whatever, so let’s set a nice relaxed date of May 1 for the deadline.
Eric
p.s. Don’t tell anyone I like Seal.

Me and Griffin and my roommate Teresa were jamming a lot at that point, and we decided to take a crack at this. I think I’m playing guitar on this and Griffin is on banjo and mandolin. Teresa of course is playing the tambourine (best tambourine player I know.)

These are a few songs I wrote when I was laid up in bed, recovering from a broken back. It was a relatively bleak time, as the songs’ subject matter demonstrates, but playing music definitely helped.

• Cigarettes in Bed
• I Hear the Stairs
• The Moon
• Let it Go
• Hey Joe
add a comment

This is a song I started working on in the summer of 2006, when I was living in Brooklyn. I wrote the melody and some of the chord changes there, but couldn’t find the right words for it. The band I was playing with at the time was called the Wild Kindness, and we were about to play a bunch of shows across the country. With a week before we hit the road, I started working on some recordings, so that we’d have something to sell at the shows, maybe make a little gas money. The problem is, we only had one new song. I started recording this song, playing the bass and guitars myself. I don’t play drums, so I recorded each drum individually, and then edited the recordings on the computer, shifting around each drum hit to sync them to the beat. At about 2am, I had a recording I was pretty happy with, but still no lyrics. I was drinking a bottle of gin, and I started singing lyrics off the top of my head. I didn’t like the words too much, but I was thinking it would be a placeholder vocal track, something to hold the song together until I could come up with something better… I never really did.

• Gin & Lime

This was a show we played at my house in Davis, CA, in the fall of 2004. Our friends Gnartoon were playing first, but the cops came and shut us down within 15 minutes or so. Somehow, we managed to move all the gear and the entire crowd to a house down the street and Gnartoon was able to finish their set. Afterwards, everyone returned to the Pirate house to keep partying. Around 1am, it occurred to me that the neighbors were probably asleep, and by the time they woke up and called the cops, we’d probably be done playing. Jaizi, our drummer, had passed out already. She put on a bathrobe and stumbled to the stage in the living room. We played a short and tight set, and foiled the cops once again.

• It’s A Train
• C’mon Everybody (Eddie Cochran cover)
• Sodapop
• Don’t Break My Stuff