Good morning -

How is it possible that I have not written to you since came out? It feels like many, many weeks have gone by, but it has in fact been only six days since last I emailed this list - the math doesn’t add up. And I’m a bit late in getting you this this morning, apologies ~

Hello -

I'm writing this to you at NIGHT in the DARK in my LIVING ROOM, instead of in the morning at my breakfast table. Its because I just saw one of the best shows I have ever seen in my many years of seeing shows like at least once a week, doesn't even matter who (it was Daniel Romano, appearing as Daniel Romano's Outfit). It was LOUD rock and roll stuff, like footage of the early Who or what I always imagine the band Quasi might sound like live circa 2010, but then they also had these utterly devastating country harmonies and they NEVER STOPPED they just kept playing, played the songs right back to back (very like the Who, but somehow way cooler, also?). Ended with a Ramones cover. I wrote one of those rental electric scooters as it started raining harder and harder and the rain was freezing, slapping against my face, stinging it, as I bore down faster and faster downhill, pushing the little wimpy engine as fast as it would go. I got home in eight minutes, I'm shivering, I feel like ripping apart all the furniture in my house with one arm tied behind my back. I'm very, very amped. I took a melatonin chewable and I poured a big sleepy time tea and hopefully this takes the spirit of the rhythm right outta me.

Good morning ~

Lately I have found myself so deeply enriched by the community of people I play music with and for, the shows at my house, the shows I play, the shows my friends play, and all the talking and hanging out and being in a room that all that entails. It’s been a big part of my life for a long time, but more and more I find real joy and ease and security within it. This weekly thing is a part of it, which means you are, too, and I feel a very strong desire to acknowledge this right now and also thank you. Thank you.

Good morning ~ ~ ~

I wanted to make something this week that sounded like it was just barely being held together, like a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter in the rain. I twisted the delay knob on my new little keyboard and let the notes warp. Almost a week later I wrote about hearing the sounds of people’s voices in the distance, bent by the speed of the roller coaster they were riding. I didn’t realize these things were similar until just now, when I brought them together for you. The image is from a long day of assembling LP inserts - - they’re almost ready for you.

Good morning ~

I’ve got a new single out today. It’s called “Am I Doing Right by You?” and you can hear it in all the various places:

good morning -

I dreamed last night that I was playing guitar in a dark, cabaret-type bar. There were two women singing, beautiful harmonies, and I was backing them up. Unexpectedly, they launched into a cover of a song I knew how to play but didn’t quite recognize at first. I strummed the chords, straining to remember. But when the big chorus came, I knew it was “. And I started crying, crying and strumming, crying harder than I can ever recall crying. At the end of the song the two women I was backing up turned around to ask me if I was okay and they were crying, too. Then I woke up.

Hello what's up with all of you ~

The music this week is the result of my shiny new synth-o-sizer which I have been enjoying immensely. Then I put this artificial tape cassette wobble on nearly everything and now it sounds poignant. Funny how that works, with a few certain chords and a few certain signifiers you can make something that sounds like the fourth act of a movie. I named it Key Food 2 because that's what my memo recorder has started calling all my voice memos, and it's nice - it's like, the music is key, the sounds are clutch, it is nutritional, twice.

Good morning ~ ~ ~

The music this week features very subtle background noise of the post-show kinda-party hang after the last Tortoise Town. Most parties sound the same, if you zoom out far enough, if you listen to every conversation at once. I had trouble with the music, it wasn’t doing what I wanted it to do, and I couldn’t articulate what that want was. Offhandedly I said to my roommate maybe I need to turn the delay up. He said try it, dude, and I did. And then it was done, simple as that.

Good morning ~

The music this week is particularly sleepy - - at the end of a long day I fired up the synthesizer and sort of don’t remember how this piece came about. Uncharacteristically I slept through my alarm the following morning, waking up 45 minutes later than usual, and as I sprinted out the front door unshowered I wondered how that thing I was working on turned out…

Good morning ~ ~

Once again I am waiting until the absolute last minute to write this and, as I type this sentence, I have no idea what I’ll end up writing about.

Happy New Year ~ ~

Most often when I write these emails there is nothing else I’d rather be doing. I enjoy the process of putting these together, in fact I look forward to sending them, and when I write I feel a deep peace that is hard to come by otherwise. But the fact is that right now I am fulfilling an obligation (imposed only by me on myself). I gotta do this thing. This is what I do! But even though I’m not feeling it at the moment I am very grateful to have you here, and hope you enjoy the ritual.

Hello - - -

Writing to you this week partially from my work computer and partially from the air. I’m sending it extra early because I am now on the west coast. As I write this sentence I’m on a de-iced and running late flight to LAX where I will get picked up by a buddy. In a few days my sister and I will drive to Las Vegas - I look forward to seeing some absolutely brutal roadside sand expanse and I look forward to drinking 7-11 coffee and hot chocolates with my family while we look at various Christmas lights strewn over various desert flora. How many years in a row does it take for something to become tradition? This will be my third year playing Pai Gow on Christmas Day, the money I lose is starting to feel like home.

The music this week is a bit of open-hearted piano, tracked plainly in my living room. I tried to leave enough space in-between the chords to let the sound of the dishwasher in the distance burble in as I recorded the sound of the room. Amazingly, the electric organ that lives in my house worked for the ten minutes necessary to fade in here with a beautifully undulating drone - usually it sputters or starts up a drum loop when it isn’t wanted but gladly it just kind of floats, iridescent like an oil slick, up to the surface.

“Don’t be fooled by the Internet. It’s cool to get on the Computer, but don’t let the Computer get on you. You’ve all seen the Matrix. There’s a war going on. The battlefield’s in the mind, the prize is the soul” -Prince Rogers Nelson

Good morning ~

Somehow back in my old habit of writing this at the absolute last minute. But how are you?

Good morning -

Writing to you once again on my phone after a very long night / late night / morning of traveling. But I made it to where I was going and I’m typing from the comfort of a large clean bed. Gimme a break on the typing errors etc

The music this week is a manipulated recording of me playing a piano with the windows open, letting all the sounds of people passing in the street and subways clanging by overhead wash over the spare chords.

Hello -

Writing to you this week from my cell phone while I’m playing shows in the northeast. Part of this was written in a minivan, part of this was written during a show, most of it was written sitting on our friend’s couch in Boston. Now I’m sending it to you (late) from a recording studio in Pawtucket. Please excuse any typos or unexpectedly brief writing, thank you.

The track this week is actually an excerpt from a larger project I was working on last month that has been unexpectedly shelved. I hope you’ll hear the full thing and it’s intended use at some point, and if it does come out I will let you know. But anyway - there are crickets from a summer night in Ohio and slide guitar and a synth with keys held down by tarot cards. The photo is from that rave in the woods I went to a while back (by the way, please keep sending me field recordings !).

There is a delicious little caesura every morning before the hard, rocky facts of life come in, before you consider things like the date, or whatever emails you have to send, or wherever you have to be in a couple of hours. A few moments of clean, blank, white room bliss when you've just woken up. No fear, no anxiety, no anticipation. Remember that this moment is possible and that it will be available to you the next time you wake up. Maybe you could stay in that clean, blank room a bit longer - it's a little flickering flame of calm that you can pass your hand over without getting burned.

Hi - -

Back to writing and music every Thursday!