Holiday Sale!!

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For a limited time, my debut album will be available for the very low price of $5.00 plus shipping and handling. Cheaper than iTunes, cheaper than eMusic, cheaper than....everywhere!

Click here to get yours today!!

Thank you for your support and I wish you all a wonderful Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and so on and so forth!

Fall Tour, vol. 2

So, I've been extremely terrible about updating my blog here. It's far too late to post entries about the rest of my fall tour with Julie Neumark, but if you click HERE you can watch a video blog of the rest of our shows on the tour. I'm gonna make an early New Year's resolution to be better at this whole blogging thing from here on out. Hope you enjoy the videos....see you soon.

Fall Tour, vol. 1

Julie Neumark and my Fall Tour is well underway and so far we're having a great time. We flew in to Cincinnati from Los Angeles Thursday night and had a solid night's sleep to recuperate from the flight before we played a place called Barleycorn's in Cold Springs, KY last night. I knew it was gonna be a great night when I ordered a tall (24 fl. oz.) Smithwick's and it only cost me $4.75!!! Now, that stuff costs a good $6 a pint (16 fl. oz.) in L.A., so I took it as a great omen and a clear indication that the rest of the night, (dare I say it?) the tour was going to be fantastic. True to that omen, we had a lot of fun kicking off at Barleycorn's. Afterward we were able to make it to the Midpoint Music Festival in downtown Cincinnati where we watched my friends Scratch Track rock the house. Those guys are truly amazing and definitely worth checking out. If they're ever playing a show near you, please do yourself a favor and go see them. I promise they will not disappoint.

Tonight we played a place called Common Grounds in Lexington, KY. It was our first time in Lexington and we were extremely pleased with the turnout and response...especially considering that we don't really know anyone down there! Thanks so much to those of you who've come out thus far. Tomorrow we're off to Urbana, IL where we're playing the Iron Post with an old friend of Julie's called Eleni Moraites. Another new city for us, so we're excited to get in there and show 'em what we can do.

Until next time..........

I'm currently working with Julie Neumark to set up a Midwest tour for late September/early October. We'll be coming to Chicago, Cincinnati, Toledo and Grand Rapids. We're working on others (including Milwaukee and Champaign) and hope to have the tour schedule nailed down soon.

I'll post the dates and details when they come in. Check back soon, or visit my website.

Adventures in Busking, vol. 2

So, lately I’ve been trying to get more into the busking gig and I’ve been going down to Santa Monica a little more often. I was down there the other day (Rachel was kind enough to go with me) and set up shop at what has become “my spot” – in the middle of the third block in between the Apple store and Victoria’s Secret.

So, I’m sitting there minding my own business playing some songs and this guy with a guitar down the street a ways starts jamming with a saxophone player. Now you haven’t heard saxophone until you’ve heard really-crap-busker-jazz-saxophone. I mean, this guy was loud as hell and was so bad that according to Rachel, and I quote, “this one old man with a can and a crazy eye stopped and said, ‘Sounds like shit!’.” So, it’s not just me.

Anyhow, they finished their song and the guy with the guitar started walking my way. I was in the middle of “Miles Away” and he walks right up to me whilst I’m playing. At first I thought there was gonna be a busker’s dual, but then I noticed the small camera crew that accompanied him and figured something more “Hollywood” was up. He asked if he could play a song with me and I replied with a hesitant, “Sure?” He then proceeded to introduce himself the way that only people with a certain sense of self-importance can.

"Have you heard of Loudon Wainwright?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you just met him.”
“Right on.”

For those of you who don’t know, Loudon Wainwright III is a 70s singer/songwriter of some fame and perhaps better known amongst my generation as the gynecologist from “Knocked Up” and the father of singer/songwriters Rufus and Martha Wainwright.

Anyhow, he wanted to play one of my songs, so I taught him “Miles Away” and we played a shortened version of that song and then I played one of his songs with him. Turns out the cameras were for a presentation that Loudon was filming for a reality TV show that he’s hosting about one-thing-or-another. He was walking up and down the promenade with his guitar, talking to random people and playing a song or two with a few buskers. It was a lot of fun and actually brought a little business my way – sold a few CDs thanks to the Loudon association and one guy actually thought that he was my mentor.

Apparently you never know who you’re gonna run into down there and hopefully they’ll email me the video of us playing together, but I’m sure they won’t. Either way it was pretty cool.

Midwest Tour, vol. 4

I haven't really the energy to write a lengthy blog about the rest of the tour. I got food poisoning on Sunday from the venue of our second Cincy show and was sick all day Monday and part of Tuesday. I wasn't able to do the radio show with Julie at WNKU on account of being sick throughout the entire broadcast and had to cancel Monday night's show in Columbus, OH (sorry Carl).

We had a few days off to recoupe in Cincinnati and then headed down to Nashville where things didn't pan out exactly how we'd hoped but it was still nice to play down there. I also got to see my good friend Rob Robinson and hang out with him a bit so that was awesome since we hadn't seen each other in a year and a half. Had some good southern barbeque too....so that was cool.

Next came Louisville which is better left ignored.

Saturday saw me turning a cool 28-years-old and traveling from the aforementioned city to Chicago. We played an end-of-the-tour party in Chicago and then I ran over to Uncommon Ground and played a set there. All in all it was a good night.

Thanks to those of you who came out to the shows!
Twas fun to see you all and overall it was a great experience.
Can't wait to go out again.

Fin.

Midwest Tour, vol. 3

Volume 3 brings us near my hometown of Monroe, MI to Toledo, OH on Friday April 18. No offense to Toledoans, but every time I come to this area of the city it looks more and more depressed. Upon crossing the Maumee River we were greeted by a man getting arrested and tased on the side of the road. Gone are the youthful days of bliss, seeing Sloan a million times at the Main Event which is now a shut down sports bar covered in graffiti. Ah, Toledo. What a great city.

Load in was at 8pm and doors were supposed to be at 9pm. This works in theory, so long as they actually let us in at 8pm. We got into the venue about 8:20 and did a damn fine and efficient job of setting up in time to get the show started by 9:30. Great turn out of friends from Monroe and BG and the show went really well in my opinion. All three bands played well and I think everyone had a great time. It's always fun for me to play to this crowd and I thank all of you for showing up and supporting me and us. It was a blast. Hectic....but a blast.

On Saturday morning we set out for Julie's hometown of Cincinnati where we actually played in Kentucky at a place called Molly Malone's. Molly Malone's is an Irish pub housed in a really cool old building right across the river from Cincy. The room that we played in was on the 3rd and highest floor and used to be a house of ill repute. Turns out the room is also haunted by a patron of the brothel who was found out by his wife. As the story goes, this gentleman used to frequent the establishment and one day his wife walked in with a gun and shot him dead whilst he was with a female companion. Now, I'm not usually one for stories like this, but an incident happened to Ted and I that made me actually consider the validity of this story. I'll leave out the details, but we certainly felt the presence of another being and some strange shit happened behind the bar when no one was in the room except for the band and everyone except Ted and I was on the other side of the room. So, we made nice with "Joe" and invited him to enjoy the festivities of the night without incident.

As for the show itself, it was great. Julie pre-sold about 150 tickets and around 200 people showed up. The place was rockin and it was a lot of fun. Good room, good stage, good sound, good atmosphere....in a lot of ways Saturday was great.

.........and then came Sunday.

Midwest Tour, vol. 2

I believe we last left off driving back to Chicago from Grand Rapids. In theory, Chicago's show on Thursday night should have been awesome. It was at Joe's which is a pretty good sized place (largest I've ever played in....) and we were opening for a national touring act called the Randy Rogers Band.

From the moment we arrived at the venue the scene was rife with confusion. We went from loading in from 5-6, to having sound check at 5 (RRB didn't end their check till 5:30), to performing at 6, to performing at 6:30, to not doing a check at all, to performing at 7:45 and then, finally, performing at 8:00 which is what we had thought and advertised all along.

That all being said, everyone at the venue was really nice and most had no idea of the confusing and constantly changing "schedule". They were just as frustrated as we were. It turns out, however, that the confusion was all caused by a silent auction that was going on in an ajoining room from 6-7:30, which is why we couldn't do a sound check. Anyhow, a large room looks incredibly empty with 75-100 people in it and that was certainly the case when we played with Julie. I think we played a pretty good show and the stage and sound were awesome, but it would have been nice to go on a little later when the people showed up......about 800 of them by 10:00. Oh well. It was a great experience and I'm sure it'll be that much better next time.

Midwest Tour, vol. 1

Alright, where to begin?

Well, the tour got under way for me one week ago today when I flew into Chicago to meet the rest of the folks involved. The lovely Ms. Neumark flew in on Tuesday afternoon and we had our first and only rehearsal that evening. Julie and I are touring with the Ted Wulfers Band and those guys are backing up Julie with me during her set. So, I took the el to a location sort of near the rehearsal studio and Ted picked me up on the corner of North and Clybourn and we went to a bar to meet the Julie and the rest of the guys.

Side-bar: Great way to meet somebody for the first time...jumping into their huge rapist style van on a corner in one of America's largest cities.

Note-to-self: If Ted and I ever start a band, call in North and Clybourn.

Anyhow, so we met at the bar, went to the rehearsal studio and rocked out for about 5 hours. Now that really is a cool way to meet musicians. Why not play some music for a few hours to break the ice? Jeff (drums), Aaron (guitar) and Aron (bass) are all really great guys and amazing musicians and it was a lot of fun to get this long jam in right at the beginning.

This brings us to Wednesday and the first show of the tour in Grand Rapids, MI. This was actually a great show to start off with. Cool small bar called Juke's that had a really great vibe with old record covers all over the walls, a decent sized stage for such a small place and a video camera broadcasting the show on two TVs in the bar. The owner, Dave, is a really nice guy and seemed pleased and appreciative to have some good out-of-town music in his bar instead of the regular open mic for the night. Hillbilly, our sound guy, was a cool and interesting cat from Alabama who was really into all three sets. So, drive back to Chicago at 3am aside, it was a good night and a promising start to the tour.

America's Next Top Idol

Earlier today I recorded vocals for a demo being pitched to the folks at American Idol for the winner to sing on the finale. That kind of thing just doesn't seem to happen in Michigan.

Adventures in Busking, Vol. 1

I got a busking permit last week.

For those of you who don't know (and I'm constantly finding out that most people don't) busking is a fancy word for "street performing", thus making a "busker" one who performs on the street for donations.

The City of Santa Monica requires street performer's (musicians, magicians, drawers, painters, fortune tellers, etc.) to purchase a $37 permit that is good for the calendar year. If you perform without one you will get a ticket that is likely not cheap nor worth the trouble. So last Tuesday I went down to Santa Monica and waltzed into City Hall prepared to sign my check for $37 and walk out with my permit. Quick and easy. When I got there, however, I was informed that I needed to give them two passport sized photos of my beautiful face for them to put on the permit. The kind gentleman in the City Clerk's office (that's not sarcasm) told me that there is a photo booth on Santa Monica Pier that they will accept photos from if I wanted to try that route, so off I went on a mission. Parking in Santa Monica is not the easiest thing in the world but I was lucky enough to find a meter right in front of City Hall. Problem is that it was only a 40 minute meter, so I was gonna have to rush. For the record, I hate rushing...but I always end up putting myself in positions where I have to.

Anyhow, I start walking down to the pier which is only about 3 blocks away, but there is construction on a the main road there so I have to bypass that to make it around and down to the pier as time continues to tick away. When I got there I realized that (surprise, surprise) my broke ass had no money. So, first thing's first, I needed to find an ATM. Sounds easy enough, right? I mean, it's Santa Monica Pier. It's world famous. It's gotta have plenty of ATM's. Well apparently not. Despite this being a major tourist attraction (arguably the biggest tourist location in Los Angeles) I only found 2 ATM's, and of those one was "Out of Service." So, after paying a $3 service charge I finally had my $20 and it was off to find the photo booth. *tick tock*

The photo booth costs $5 and, of course, only takes exact amounts (in all fairness though, that was to be expected). Anyhoo, the "restaurant" next to the photo booth wouldn't make change unless I bought something, and I didn't have time to mess about trying to get a $5 bill somewhere else so I bought a bottle of Pepsi bottled tap water for $2.75 and was finally in business. Once I got over the lameness of going into a photo booth alone I got my pictures and was ready to go.

So, I rushed back to City Hall, filled out the paper work, gave the dude my photo strip so he could cut out one of the pictures and gave him a $37 check for the privilege of being ignored by hundreds of people in one fell swoop while attempting to procure donations. I then rushed to my car and made it there sans ticket with 2 minutes to spare on my meter! *Phew!*

I picked up my permit on Friday and am now a proudly licensed street performer in the City of Santa Monica. And it only cost me about $50. Hopefully I can make that amount back quickly and start making a little loot so I can continue to avoid a normal job.