December 2012
4 posts
Kettle whistle cuts cold air I see my breath, I fix my stare Mercury falls like an angel cast from Heaven high And it’s not any warmer in my heart You sprained your ankle at the start Of the beginning of the end of this fool race we’ve run The highway’s slick and mirror-black I cut my teeth on heart attacks Half-empty glass of bourbon in my shaky hand I’ve lionized your lying eyes Torn you down...
A Christmas Music Story...
Last year I wrote a narrative essay for website Myoo.com introducing a playlist of nontraditional Christmas music I’d compiled. Then I decided to turn the whole thing into a holiday radio play featuring Andy Williams, Frank Sinatra, Mannheim Steamroller, The Ramones, OutKast, Dodd Ferrelle, and Neal Holman as The Ghost of Christmas Past. It takes place almost entirely in a bar. You can...
Playing pinochle after hours on Bull Street cross-legged, slumped against the wall with a girl from Wooster Lured by Moe Tucker’s velvet whisper we drink a toast to never She shuffles the deck asks if I believe in God… I nod This game could last forever
1 tag
Chasing the dragon...
Every time I sit down to write I’m like a sculptor staring at a giant uncut mountain of stone. The first 2/3 of the experience is almost always brutal, painful, overwhelming and exhausting. I start and stop in fits. Hide out in my room for hours, sometimes days. I forget everything I’ve ever learned. I curse the path I’ve chosen in life and myself for following it. But then,...
November 2012
1 post
Untitled (song)...
There’s an emptiness in this cold, cold house There’s an emptiness and I gotta get out of my own head There’s a void in the wake of what never was I’m a failure, baby, just because I was born Confess your sins and call it art Drag the depths of your black heart I’ve got nothing left to lose Are the last words of a fool Blood in the doorway of my old house We’re...
October 2012
1 post
21 tags
Help bring new music doc on the band Morphine to...
Trying to get the word out about an event I’m bringing to the Plaza Theatre.
It’s an excellent new documentary on Mark Sandman, mysterious/iconic frontman for the band Morphine. The film explores the band’s impact and artistic merit as well as Sandman’s tragic story and untimely death (onstage, of a heart attack). I appear briefly in the film along with Sandman’s...
March 2012
2 posts
18 tags
7 tags
SEX BBQ!
Here’s a sneak peek at my new band Sex BBQ. We’ll be making our debut Thursday, March 15 at the Peoplestown Palace. Stay tuned for details.
LISTEN NOW - Sex BBQ (Untitled cell-phone recorded demo)
This track features…
Kate BBQ - Lead vox, guitar Steele BBQ - Bass Bunny BBQ - Backing vox, cowbell, vibraslap Steve BBQ 1 - Lead guitar Steve BBQ 2 - Shitty surf casio, backing...
February 2012
1 post
January 2012
3 posts
2 tags
“Wave of Beatbox (Tropical Paradise...
Satchel Paige's "Rules for Staying Young"
1. Avoid fried meats which angry up the blood.
2. If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts.
3. Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move.
4. Go very light on the vices, such an carrying on in society—the social ramble ain’t restful.
5. Avoid running at all times.
6. Don’t look back—something might be gaining on you.
- Originally published...
3 tags
My ’50s obsession continues with this...
December 2011
1 post
5 tags
A CHRISTMAS SONG STORY
Just turned this narrative...
November 2011
2 posts
3 tags
Heard this Townes Van Zandt song for the first...
"Rake" - Townes Van Zandt
I used to wake and run with the moon I lived like a rake and a young man I covered my lovers with flowers and wounds my laughter the devil would frighten The sun she would come and beat me back down but every cruel day had its nightfall I’d welcome the stars with wine and guitars full of fire and forgetful My body was sharp the dark air clean and outrage my joyful companion ...
October 2011
3 posts
I’m the candle at both ends Evaporating wax in a room of friends Blazing on through endless night Burning out, a flash of light
“Like a bird on the wire Like a drunk in a midnight choir I have tried in my way to be free … Like a baby, stillborn Like a beast with his horn I have torn everyone who reached out for me But I swear by this song And by all that I have done wrong I will make it all up to thee” - Leonard Cohen, “Bird on the Wire”
I met her as the sun was coming up behind a shotgun shack in Taco Town The party was winding down She’d been up all night playing strip poker She smelled like soft sex and hard liquor Eyes bloodshot, she was hot smokin’ like a cigarette I wasn’t ready yet But it was now or never…
September 2011
5 posts
So many in love the lot of us a supercluster of misfiring neurons a never ending daisy chain of misdirected emotion He loves her who loves him who loves her who loves him who loves him who loves her as if circumference divided by diameter We, whipped forward by the unfolding infinitesimal chasing oblivion wanton with arms grasping legs spread cocks thrusting our souls awash in a...
2 tags
Steve LaBate - “The Losing End” (lo-fi...
Rainwanderer of lost nights Stumbling through distressed doorways up spiral staircases to fast-fading crescent-moonlit rooftop epiphanies Meandering hushed through cobblestone alleys and ancient graveyards her brown hair cascading down my shoulder I lift a kiss in the mist before pausing to read the epitaphs Cat’s eyes pierce the dark bodyless, suspended We move on under the transient...
Picking azaleas at midnight for Cherie French exchange student who will soon wander silent across the ghostly lawn, her delicate shadow caressing pink-hued centuries-old pillars She whispers expressionless in the dark I hand her a blossom She is innocence pale skin shimmering porcelain in the Charleston moonlight Harbor breeze rustles live oaks, her hair blonde wisps cascading from...
August 2011
6 posts
2 tags
Here it is, folks, hot off the press… the...
Talkin' baseball with Stephen Malkmus...
I interviewed Pavement/Jicks frontman Stephen Malkmus on Wednesday. We happen to be in the same fantasy baseball league, so naturally the conversation drifted to a little diamond chatter. Here’s an excerpt…
Stephen: …I picked up Asdrubal Cabrera, and then I dropped him, ’cause I was like, “I got Hanley Ramirez, I don’t need Asdrubal Cabrera.”
Steve: I ended up picking him...
The latest power-pop gem from the hit factory...
Wrote this two nights ago…
Emerald Rain
...
2 tags
I loved R.E.M.’s acoustic cover of The...
July 2011
2 posts
Here’s a preview of me & my new band,...
Paint upon the canvas thick old woman in the barroom’s sick with alcohol disease Leftover bits of sandwich hang from her dirty mouth as she stutters about college football Her old man tries to sort things out but her speech is too far gone words & skin fading Sixty years treading in life’s murky seas Can’t tell if she’s his wife or an just an aging trick he picked up in his travels perhaps...
June 2011
2 posts
4 tags
New (still untitled) lo-fi instrumental I recorded...
May 2011
2 posts
Just wrote and recorded this tonight. It’s...
“(Wake Up) Little Dreamer”
Wake up...
April 2011
1 post
Perspective...
Before you fret over whatever insignificant issue you encounter today, or think to yourself that some babbling homeless drunk you pass on the street is “crazy,” remember that we’re on a rock rotating at 1,000 miles an hour in the middle of a vast, unknown, seemingly infinite space, and that the very body you’re inhabiting would vanish in an instant if the billions of little particles it was...
March 2011
10 posts
My solo album now available at iTunes...
My debut solo record, The Dead Art of Letter Writing, is now available for digital download! You can pick up a copy at the iTunes store.
Here’s a little description of the album pulled from the CDBaby website…
Alternately introspective and extroverted rock & roll and power-pop. Pretty chords. Pretty Words. Pretty loud when it wants to be. An immersive exploration of the seedy,...
Cover of Ryan Adams’ “Hard Way to...
“To Love You”
Through the twisted...
My cover of The Rolling Stones’ “No...
Attractive Eighties Women’s “Mama, Get...
Follow my new tumblr! →
I’ve just launched a new blog called Now That’s Rad… a love letter to the Golden Decade of Cinema, the 1980s! Follow for your daily dose of awesome.
Peace of mind's three biggest enemies...
A while ago, I had this idea about the three biggest evils in the struggle for peace of mind. The three E’s, if you will…
1. Ego
2. Entitlement
3. Expectations
One leads to the next on the path to misery and anguish. Having an overinflated sense of self-importance leads to a feeling that you’re owed something in life, which leads you to start fantasizing about what those...
“Sometimes you just gotta give up your right to be right. Sometimes it just...”
– Levi Lowrey
February 2011
8 posts
Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies. And be it gash or gold, it will not come Again in this identical guise.
— Gwendolyn Brooks, from “exhaust the little moment” (1949)
Shotgun Lover's debut LP! →
If you like big, anthemic rock & roll, you’ve got to check these guys out. I’ve been managing them for a year now, and now—with the help of producer/engineer Eric McConnell (Loretta Lynn & Jack White, Todd Snider)—they’ve finally been able to capture the energy of their live shows with this explosive new album, I Hope You Die Alone. Stream or purchase it now at the link...
Wrote this about a year ago, but just got around...
Fruit of the Flower...
Thanks to the friend who just reminded me of this wonderful Counte Cullen poem…
My father is a quiet man With sober, steady ways; For simile, a folded fan; His nights are like his days. My mother’s life is puritan, No hint of cavalier, A pool so calm you’re sure it can Have little depth to fear. And yet my father’s eyes can boast How full his life has been; There haunts...
