aromatic music

Back in the 1990s, I met a bass player named Kevin. He played a gig with my friend Cody at a bar on Avenue A called Brownies. Then I invited him to a jam session to work on some of my material. He got really excited about my fingerstyle playing and asked me to come … Continue reading aromatic music →

False Autumn

https://videopress.com/v/3Wlmy9Kn?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=true We had a false autumn over the weekend. I spent both Saturday and Sunday morning at the Blue Bottle cafe on the corner, sitting at a table under a tree (oak? sweetgum?) in the back of the graveled patio. These false autumns are almost more melancholy than the actual one that comes a month … Continue reading False Autumn →

Popeyes

The big struggle of my day is now stopping myself from buying a chicken sandwich at Popeyes. Work is catastrophically boring now ... and I mean the pure existential reality of being a 56-year old man at a job. My actual job is pretty good. But it's still a job. And I've been going to … Continue reading Popeyes →

Delta Village in Tallulah

I was working on a song with a line about the world being upside down and kept picturing an actual room turned on its side. It hit me that I was picturing a fun house at an amusement park I went to when I was a kid. Delta Village. In Tallulah, Louisiana. There was an … Continue reading Delta Village in Tallulah →

Can I Upload My Soul?

Everyone seems to think we’re close to being able to upload our brains. Or, at least, I feel like every time I watch any show or movie set in the future, it’s taken for granted that consciousness will eventually be transferrable. Moveable. Now in the age of computers … with “digitization” … the idea is … Continue reading Can I Upload My Soul? →

The Real

Notes from the early days of quarantine. Along with the virus, New York has been invaded by “the real” — an elusive concept. I was telling an old school New Yorker about an encounter I had at Coney Island once. Super hot day. Blazing midday sun straight above. My children were little. I was taking … Continue reading The Real →

Manhattan Academy

It's one of those days at work where I'm absolutely paralyzed. Hogtied. Brainfreeze. I can't do anything. So what do I do? I go to Google Street View. I take a drive in my childhood neighborhood in Jackson, Mississippi. Take a look at the old house. There it is. There's the lawn I mowed a … Continue reading Manhattan Academy →

Cedarstone

We had a big field behind my house. Somebody twenty years before then grew soy beans out there. But now it was just a big field covered in tall grass. It was a great place to fly kites. The remnants of the old rows made the ground a little uneven as we ran to get … Continue reading Cedarstone →

Dickie Honey

For about twenty years, until his death in 2006, I was good friends with a writer named Richard Atcheson. He had an impressive career with some big magazines as an editor. I came to know him when he was older and adrift. He sat around his apartment in the nude chain-smoking and talking, talking, talking. … Continue reading Dickie Honey →

Pool Halls and Mayor’s Courts

This is a story my father told me about his youth in Kosciusko, Mississippi during the 1940s ... I’m gonna tell you about something that happened just about one block off the square to the west. There was a pool hall down there behind the building that was on the corner of the square. At … Continue reading Pool Halls and Mayor’s Courts →