I grew up in a family in which trips to the McDonald’s drive-thru were a central point of family celebration. My mother did not splurge on Happy Meals for all of us kids, but we were well fed by a cheeseburger each and one Large Fry to share. My brother would brag from the front seat that he had gotten the large fry, holding up a six-inch long potato strand. I guess, “You are what you eat,” because now he is large and fried. 

          By many standards, we were a wealthy family. There was never a time that I went without food, at least not that I can remember. I attended private, Christian school from kindergarten to 12^th grade, which cost significantly more than the tax subsidized public alternative. Yet we lived in a low-income neighborhood for many of my younger years. I remember falling asleep to the sounds of Police and ambulance sirens on a nightly basis. The sound still brings me great comfort and rest.

            So they say, “Money can’t buy you happiness.” I used to accept this on a moral level as inarguable fact. Now I’m not so sure. The only way I know how to understand how happiness is paid for is by weighing how much all feelings cost, from sadness to desperation to freedom. There is a price for all of them. In my recent trip with my band to DC, Philadelphia, and NYC, I learned the price for a very strange emotion. My guitar player described it as “needing knee pads and a jar of Vaseline.” I’ll call it something between oppression and helplessness.

            The trip was a three-day string of my full band concerts with BAILEY COOKE in DC and NYC, and with LION VERSUS in Philadelphia. My experience told me it is better to drive through the night after the show than to hang around and waste time the next morning in daytime traffic. We avoided traffic in Philadelphia and New York City this way.

          Parking in NYC is no daisy, regardless of when you enter the city, but we circled the neighborhood a few times and found a good spot. While we were walking up to the house we found an even better spot and I stood there as a placeholder while Bailey ran back to get the car. It is an odd feeling to stand in a parking space, imagining a car driving up to argue about their right to the spot. I imagined myself laying down in the middle of the space and waiting for them to run me over.            

          I phoned the other guys in the other car with most of our gear in it to see if I needed to help them find a spot as well. They had already found one on the same block where we were staying. We all celebrated our arrival in the greatest city in the world by enjoying some drinks and jokes on the back patio. I awoke the next morning to several papers shuffling in my face.

                                    * * * * * * * *

          My ability to read NYPD parking tickets on pink slips of paper gradually improves as I rustle my body from a short six-hour blink. Andy Elliott is trying to figure out just what he’d done to have a boot locked onto his front wheel accompanied by seemingly cryptic instructions from the NYPD. The first feeling we paid for:

Irresponsibility = $95 (parking ticket) + $185 (boot removal) = $280

          The message on the parking sign says Commercial Vehicles Only. I stand outside once again, responsible for vehicles imposing on my human defenses. This time a tow truck is coming for the car and I can do nothing. The thought of lying in the road doesn’t come to my freshly waking mind. Andy has gone with Grant to try and pay the boot fee at the auto pound so we can move the car and find a legal space. Unfortunately, even though the NYPD officer said they would wait for him to pay the ticket, they tell me they have to tow him because they have already called the truck. We live in a situation where the little ball of snow is rolling down the hill and no one knows how to stop it, much less admit that they could if they wanted to.  This is where we paid for another feeling:

Being lied to= $185 (tow expense)

To be continued...

Thanks to the kindness of developing friends in Charleston, SC, I have been invited to open for Jay Clifford on several tour dates in the southeast this month. Jay is a wonderful singer, having put in his time performing for years in the band, Jump, Little Children. I saw them play several times back when they were still extremely active. I'm honored to be going out for these shows with Jay and I'm hoping to learn all his secrets of the trade while I'm at it. Also supporting on several of the dates is Haley Dreis, a young South Carolina musician, who will be playing songs from her recently released EP. For advance tickets, click the link.

http://www.etix.com/ticket/servlet/onlineSear...

I quit my job in January. This was the longest running restaurant job I held since high school. Eighteen months. The decision felt right, spurred on by a conversation with drummer Tim Morrison about how I felt about wearing a ponytail. "I'm sick of it", I said. "I'm putting in my two weeks notice tonight." And I did. The time I spent at work on the weekends will now be spent traveling to cities in the nearby states to play shows and sell my album.

The past few shows have all been out of town. It is wonderful to play in front of a crowd full of new faces. Wonderful and terrifying. I'm far more comfortable with my ability to be myself on stage now than I was a couple years ago, but there is still no assurance that the people will like who I am.

Thoughts on my next album are constantly firing around in my head. I went into Still Waters Audio last week as a quartet(Al Sergel, Chad Lawson, and Sarah Stephens) and we tracked six songs live. Everything was happening in the room, all at once. It was exhilerating. It felt like the monster developing from each starting point was contained and breathed within the constraints of each musicians relationship to one another. We watched what we could of each other's movements and tried not to mess it all up. I'm hoping to take a similar approach when I'm ready to track for my full length album. Lately I've just been trying to think of the best place for me to do that. Chicago with Steve Albini, New York with Tom Schick or London with Ethan Johns. Texas with T Bone Burnett? Maybe it isn't up to me. The next few months will be very telling.

Oh, by the way, I'm submitting House On Fire to the Recording Academy. Best New Artist nomination next year? Who knows...

Well, a record deal seems to me like putting a high school grad in the operating room with a fresh pair of scissors. It's gonna get messy. But this is what I ache for. The chance to let it all out. To produce. I want to step up daily and make decisions. And experience the results. I can make it sound professional and scientific but really I'm exploding inside.

Sitting in a dark room thinking about stuff like this at 1:14 in the morning is a bit overwhelming. Not really having anything but night and time on my hands. No real resolution but to dig in and think hard. But where does thinking land me but some apartment in New York City, five years from right now. Thinking about my next album and who I want to play on it. Who I want to ask to produce it and what studio we should use. The trick is to imagine my life, what I want it to be, and it naturally ends up that way. It is just so easy to waste time worrying about how. I'm going to do these great grand things that my grandma would smile so big to know about. And the only thing to do now is to dig in deep and write. But where does writing get me but into a few homes of friends and family and songwriters and who knows where else. Hopefully, a conversation.

I want to start by saying thanks. Really. Thank you from the bottom of my white, high top chuck taylor's to the tippy top of my shaggy mop head of hair. Thanks for listening to my music, reading my thoughts, telling me yours, sharing me with friends. Thanks for everything.

I assume that most people reading this are friends, and that allows me to be real gritty and special, just so I can give ya'll something interesting to read for a few minutes. Remind you that I'm trying to figure out how to make the world a better place to live and asking for encouragement that we can actually change it. I remember being really pissed off when Ira died. I spoke a few words, fighting back tears, at her graveside. I remember thinking about my role as a friend of hers and wondering how her family percieved me. I remember feeling incredibly let down by society and knowing that we have deep wounds as a human family. Our history is marked up and scarred, trying to heal, but fighting through constant injuries still. My words were shaky and frustrated, but I remember myself saying at the end, "This world is better than we let it be."

Let It Be. A friend of hers played it at her memorial service. There is a hint of acceptance. Acceptance of what? The brokenness of society? I was jarred by this song, not wanting to say goodbye and not wanting to submit to how incredibly demented the situation was. "...when the broken hearted people living in the world agree. There will be an answer. Let it be." I've come to see this command of "let it be" as nothing more than a head nod. A knowing glance in our community. The ones scanning with their eyes will meet the others also scanning and once we find each other, "there will be an answer."