good morning ~

(click the link / power lines at dusk to listen)

My Big Breakheaven is a void between load screens

good morning ~

(click the link / the elegant japanese maple in the rain to listen)

https://mybigbreak.bandcamp.com/track/against-a-miraculous-backdrop

good morning ~

click the link / cemetery at dusk to listen - - -

My Big Breaktandem bicycle, civil twilight

good morning ~

click the link / magnificent west philly tree to listen - - -

My Big Breakfeels like my house suddenly has walls

good morning ~

(click the marvelous parking lot sky to listen)

My Big BreakI want to hold it all up to the light

good morning ~

(click the picture/link to listen)

My Big Breakcoaxed from the walls by wild coincidence

My Big Breakbig and brave enough

good morning ~

(click the beautiful afternoon light to listen)

My Big Breakmirror in the shape of my face

good morning ~

(click the ginkgo leaves to listen)

today's track is partially me remembering how to play acoustic guitar

My Big Breaka glimmering chain of yes

good morning ~

(click the link above to listen)

today's track is a jammer in two halves ~

My Big Breakthe rollicking scrub

good morning ~

(click the link above to listen)

today's track is made up entirely of samples of my own voice, played back on a synth and then dubbed onto tape and re-recorded

good morning ~

every few weeks this newsletter will be for premium subscribers only and today’s installment is one of those!

premium mbb readers got a surprisingly crunchy weekly track, thoughts on how to shape your kitchen with your laughter, and a very special live recording from when I played a baby grand piano in a stately manor in Amsterdam last month ~

these subscriptions help me a lot and keep this project going - i would greatly appreciate your support if you like our thursdays together ~

My Big Breakpaint thinner punch from a styrofoam cup

good morning ~

(click the link/image above and listen)

today's track features the now-gorgeously out-of-tune piano that lives in my girlfriend's sculpture studio - I didn't like playing it for a time but now it has, how do you say, character

My Big Breakcutting the last hour of the velvet

good morning ~

(click the image above and listen)

today's track features the grand piano next to a coffee bar I've been playing every day since I arrived in Denmark (which I've unceremoniously lost access to on my last day in town, but that's another story).

My Big Breakit held high the martyrs

good morning ~

today's track features an improvisation recorded in Denmark and audio captured on the lightly-sinking boat I wrote about last week (you can hear the phrase "some water got in" uttered aloud near the beginning, haha).

since I last wrote I've been to Germany and Amsterdam and back, where I saw a flaming branch dropped into fog and danced in an empty pool until late into the night and played a secret grand piano for a select audience late in the evening - living at the pace I nearly used to, internalizing that its still possible.

My Big Breaka ghost with its shoelaces tied together

good morning ~

writing to you, incredibly, from Aarhus, a tidy, briny, beautiful place.

today's track is even gentler than usual. i remebered all of a sudden that space and emptiness are possible.

My Big Breakthe less of it

good morning ~

Right off the bat I have to tell you: I was recently very directly exposed to COVID and I have to drop off the shows I was set to play in NYC this weekend. I was extremely looking forward to performing again, but it's way too much of a risk for me to come down there.

The Whatever's Clever showcase at the Broadway is still happening, though, and I urge you to go (vax'd and mask'd). Saturday's show is postponed until....further notice?

good morning ~

today's newsletter is for paying subscribers - it includes big washes of synth swells, a rundown of just how great it felt to sing and sweat for a gathered crowd last weekend, and a picture of my big, beautiful birthday cake

When the drums came in it sounded so tremendous, bigger than I've ever heard it. I was beaming and singing, and then right on cue, at a painfully perfect moment in the song's crescendo, Liam turned on the fog and the lasers, which joined the already spinning disco ball. Like heaven opening, truly.

If you'd like to pay for a subscription, receive every email/goodie, and also support this project, you can scroll to the bottom of the email or check this link.

My Big Breakever flawed, never ceasing

good morning ~

today's track features some samples I made of the white upright piano I grew up playing which now lives comfotably next to a freeway in my sister's living room in California, you can hear the cars if you listen closely ~ the album art is a picture of a beached whale near the Marin headlands

I'm very happy to be putting on two shows this weekend:

My Big Breakfogged-out pacific vistas

good morning ~

today's track is a tape fuzz warp zone that keeps threatening to go too far out of warbled tune

wanted to mention that I'm playing two GIGS this weekend and next in upstate NY

My Big Breakin the ear of the hearer

good morning ~

today's track is a sweet little electric piano riff that sounds like it's been out water skiing too long.

coming to you from a trip out to see members of my family for the first time since 2019, a surreal place to be writing from.

My Big Breakthe harmonies hovered, a visible cloud

good morning ~

today's track is a little wobbly piece of sun bleached video game music that never quite resolves

fun thing: just dropped some new merch! I made these very silly "I'd rather be listening to Cicada Waves" bumper stickers:

My Big BreakThe Song Bends in the Air

Good morning -

Good to be back! It was nice to have a little caesura, but I missed having this point of contact. I missed you, in fact. How have the last few weeks been for you?

This week's track is like 70% phaser pedal, and then it's briefly a party, but then the party's over and the pool in the backyard is a still, aqua mirror once again.

Good morning ~

To be honest my friends I am feeling quite wrung out. Not bad, necessarily - just a bit less to say than usual and just a little depleted after launching the ship that is my latest record. I don’t have a full newsletter in me this week. In fact, I think I’d like to take a couple weeks off! I’m going to do that. But I’ll be back soon, possibly on a different platform with a possibly altered format.

I did make a new track this week, though, and I hope you will accept this 19-minute zoner as a consolation. A few weeks ago I sat in a rocking chair listening to lazily bonking wind chimes clanging against each other and I couldn’t recall ever hearing something so great - - tried to capture if not the sound than the vibe of that porch in this recording:

Hi - I have a record that just came out called CICADA WAVES.

Hi - I have a record coming out TOMORROW called CICADA WAVES.

Hi - I have a record coming out at the end of this month called CICADA WAVES. It’ll be out on April 30th. Until then I’m using this space to share the video for each song and different written takes on aspects of the album ~ hope you enjoy.

Hi - I have a record coming out at the end of this month called CICADA WAVES. It’ll be out on April 30th. Until then I’m using this space to share the video for each song and different written takes on aspects of the album ~ hope you enjoy.

Hi - I have a record coming out at the end of this month called CICADA WAVES. It’ll be out on April 30th. Until then I’m using this space to share the video for each song and different written takes on aspects of the album ~ hope you enjoy:

This audio was recorded on land formerly occupied by Cherokee people, in one studio that's part of a campus of buildings on a plot of land located in an unincorporated community known today as Rabun Gap. Rabun Gap is a part of Rabun County, Georgia, and just a few miles northwest down the road from the town of Dillard, a town named for a white man. The county itself is also named for a white man - William Rabun, a slaveholder and notoriously staunch defender of Georgia militia actions that, during the First Seminole War, mistakenly killed ten uninvolved Creek people. The nearest creek and the road on which the campus is located, though, are seemingly named for a "Cherokee Indian widow," according to a guidebook from 1975 I read a .PDF copy of - nobody I asked knew anything other than that.

Hundreds of years ago, long before 1760 - which is the date that currently begins the "History" section of the Wikipedia article on Rabun County, Georgia - the Cherokee thrived in flourishing and well-organized communities in the northeast-most corner of what we now call Georgia. There were multiple settlements in the area now, each their own social organization.

In one sense this is a quarantine record. It was made during that long and still unfolding time when it was best we didn’t see each other. I was sleeping in a small bedroom off of a dance studio in the woods, without a partner or a single roommate cohabitating in the building. It was, in fact, the most totally alone I had been save for a hurried and, in hindsight, frankly kind of terrifying drive to rural Ohio when things were at their worst in the city. Social distancing is funny that way - it actually caused me to spend way more time with specific people and way less time with everyone else.

Hi all ~

This coming Sunday is the one year anniversary of Youth Pastoral’s release, which is kinda hard to believe no matter how you look at it.

I played exactly two (2) live shows in support of this record coming out last year - the first a very densely packed gig at a bar in Brooklyn the day of the release and a subdued house show encore the following night. And then we started hearing things about the virus.