Hundreds of songs…thousands or tens of thousands of thoughts, over the years.  Some have come and gone, lingering in the depths of my hard drive or relegated to the scrap heap.  Some have persisted and some released into the world.  Probably 3-4% of the songs I've written over the years are political in nature or related to some issue of justice…or injustice as it were.  But over the last 7-10 years, that percentage has risen steadily and at this point, I'd say it's the focus of at least half of my work.

This is not an accident…not a nature progression or an evolution in writing.  It's in response to the world around me and I have no more control over it than I would have control over holding my breath under water.  

In between other releases, I've written and released love songs, messages in song to my daughter, my family, to people I knew years ago.  But only the politically-fueled releases are for the wider world.  If I have one fervent wish - one vision I can look back on at the end of my years and say that I realized, it's not money, not fame, not even notoriety.  It would simply be to be able to say that something I did mattered to someone.  When I was a teenager, people listened to pop music, grunge, glam metal and a host of other musical styles that reflected their identity in some way or another.  I was never into it - I didn't care about loud guitars or ripped-up jeans or the pop charts.  I loved music that spoke in a voice that made me understand something.  

I first heard Gimme Shelter by the Rolling Stones probably 25 years or more after it was released.  Prior to that, I didn't understand why I should care about the Stones or Led Zeppelin or the Beatles or anyone else that my parents consumed like locusts in the 60s and 70s.  Their popularity made me averse to them immediately.  So when I first heard Gimme Shelter at a friend's house during a party, I switched off at first, as per usual. But for some reason (drugs) it re-acquired my focus during the first Merry Clayton stanza.  I listened…heard the words.  More importantly, felt the passion and sentiment in them and it instantly transported me back in time to the period when the song was fresh - Vietnam War, social unrest, Kent State, Nixon, civil rights…I felt as if I'd been hit by a truck full of baseball bats.  My gut lurched, my mind seethed and I began to feel angry and agitated…agitated.

It's the ultimate expression of the power of music, of a lyrical message…but most of all, of creating a sense of urgency with that message.  ‘This is something you need to hear…again and again.'

From that moment, the music that gripped and inspired me the most shared this in common - Pink Floyd's The Wall, The Clash, U2…it all mattered.  

Low is coming out in a few weeks.  As I sit in the studio slogging my way through tracking the vocals, I realized once again that bringing it to fruition isn't about how well I sing or how loud the drums are…it's about relaying the message with the urgency, the passion and the meaning that it deserves.  We'll see how it goes, but I'll say this: if I need to tear my vocal chords apart to properly convey the sense of urgency of the moment…if I have to exhaust every ounce of energy in my body and my voice to get it there, I will happily do so just to create a work that is a shadow of the work that inspired it.  

“You can be safe or you can be free."

Most singer-songwriters and artists will say, ‘I don’t like to mix music and politics' in some form or another when pressed on their political views. This is usually not an ideological function, but a business decision.  I've known many artists who make the calculation that espousing a liberal, progressive or conservative viewpoint from within your music is not worth the risk of alienating a large swath of potential listeners.  Far be it from me to begrudge other musicians, writers or artists their particular methodology, but from my point of view, this is cowardice.  

It is BECAUSE we have a voice and a reach that many people don't have that we have the opportunity to express ourselves on matters of injustice and the politics that engender and foster it.  I can't conscience choosing to maximize my level of profit over the chance to bring people to a broader viewpoint through music and lyrics.  I also view it as a kind of cowardice to stifle the voice many artists innately have in order not to offend a contingent of political views.  I write songs that are clearly and overtly political - I've been accused of being everything from a ‘smart ass’ to a ‘traitor’ and characterized by the MAGA-friendly listening audience as a ‘pussy’.  I hold no illusions whatsoever that certain people will be swayed or even interested in the message of songs like ‘Lord of the Pigs’. Most artists and bands succeed by attracting a certain audience and growing it over time.  MAGA is NOT my audience - I don't make music for them…or really for anyone in particular.  I simply write and sing the message that is most central to my own soul and express it honestly without fear or favor.  

If you prefer songs about being in a club or how much the singer really, really, really wants to fuck a hot chick he saw in a bar, I am not for you.  If you prefer tired cliches about how much being young and stupid is just really, really so unfair, I am not for you.  Music should at least spur the impulse to thought and feeling…if not directly evoke feelings of its own.  If you like music that, in its words and structure, at least prompt the possibility of thought beyond the mundane and banal…if you feel a certain way about politics, injustice, our future destiny as humans and like music that taps into those feelings and gives them shape, sound and volume, then you might like what I do…or not.  It's all good.

What I CAN say is that it will always be honest, it will always remain true to my beliefs and experiences and it will always be distinct from the ocean of homogenized noise and un-inspired drivel that so much of modern music is. I can't do any more or any less…

 

It's been quite a while since I posted to this page - a reflection of the fact that I've been single-handedly writing, recording and mixing day in and day out for over a year.  It's consuming and forces you to see the world through a window.  ‘Bullet From the Blue’ is the most recently-completed track (expected release, Sep 21 2025) and completing that song, after first recording it years ago as a demo, was a cathartic experience due to its personal nature. It's a song about the potential for distorted self-image that comes with vulnerability and love, but with a message of self-fulfillment and redemption - a story about a relationship told first from one side, then from the other.  Ultimately we are all alone and yet never truly alone.  We choose our reality as an island, or as a single tree in a forest and either way, our value and capacity for self-fulfillment can not be diminished.  

More directly, alienation and loneliness are always voluntary and sometimes, just what we need.  Spending my days alone, working through songs and wrestling with mixes with an isolation that used to drive me crazy, I find myself remembering the period in my life that inspired the song and the huge chasm between what I feel now when alone and what I felt as loneliness back then.  Being alone can be desperate and dark, or enriching and nurturing.  It's really just a state of mind that we have the power to bend to our will.  

As time goes on and I dig deeper into my own experience and observations to write new material, I find the process more and more gruelingly instrospective.  Writing music is almost a masochistic act of exposing oneself and your own vulnerabilities, weaknesses, fears and flaws.  The only counteragent to this is to find a way to connect the experiences and perspectives dredged up in the writing process with those around us - to find our own humanity, empathy and compassion as we connect our own pain and fear to that of those around us.  Narcissism is almost endemic to artistry and especially in songwriters, I believe.  But it is curative and enlightening to force oneself through the perspective of others and find our own humanity in that process.  

‘Falling Down’ is a new single I've completed - available on all major streaming platforms on Black Friday, Nov 29, 2024.  It is a song that took me down the long road of self-discovery to find that the only thing that really MEANT anything to me at the end was how it helped me see the same pain, isolation and sadness through OTHERS' eyes.  It is like this with all music - we write what we know…what we experience is what comes most easily in the moment.  But self-reflection and self-absorbed perspective is the cheapest, least meaningful expression one can make - the real value in music is allowing others to tap into their OWN experiences through the writer's expression.  I continue to endeavor to empty my guts to the world in the hopes that someone finds a path through their own experiences because of it.  

I am currently awaiting surgery for a ventral hernia that will likely occur in late September.  I've had it for over 10 years and put off having the procedure done for one reason - the high-cost of medical care in America.  So this would seem a good time to mention that America is the only major, western democracy that does NOT provide health care to its citizens as a fundemental right, which is simply wrong.  

Make your voice heard in the upcoming election and effect the change that we all know NEEDS to happen - vote ONLY for candidates who vow to take on the health insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies and ensure that every American has equal access to life-saving and preventative care.  Every year, we lose 40,000 American lives because we instead choose the status quo - it's long past time that changed. 

The IRC - the Internation Rescue Committee - www.rescue.org is facing a nearly $14 million budget shortfall in 2024 due to the expansion of aid efforts and increasing numbers of refugees in war-torn regions around the world.  The IRC is an organization that goes into action in response to humanitarian crises around the world including the conflict in Ukraine, the crises in Gaza and Afghanistan.  IRC also fights childhood hunger and poverty around the world, but has been forced to restructure due to budgetary constraints and expanding need for aid.  Please consider donating to the IRC - any amount helps, to bolster the efforts of this worthwhile and worthy humanitarian organization.  

https://www.rescue.org/how-to-help

I'm tracking vocals for a new song called ‘I Alone’ - a pseudo-R&B ballad type track that harkens back to the soul sounds of the 50s and 60s, but with a modern bent.  I realize in recording songs like this, the dichotomy of my own writing.  I endeavor to a more esoteric, modern style in keeping with the messaging I wish to espouse.  But the ghosts of my recording-industry past inevitably haunt my writing even years later and I cannot resist the lure of a great Otis Redding or Sam Phillips era ballad.  C'est la vie…

Is it just me, or do we all struggle with this schism between who we are and who we want to be? Seems like there may be a good song or two in there…

Every so often, someone will ask me for advice or perspective on songwriting - mostly young musicians or writers who feel lost in a wildnerness of fleeting inspiration and fractured, fragmented ideas.  It almost always causes me to think back to the path I've taken myself, refining and feeding my creativity and how my own songwriting has evolved as a result of it.  As someone who's never written a hit single or made a fortune off of my own music…at least not yet, I try to remain humble and defer to the accomplishments and characteristics of others who are far more successful than myself.  Having worked closely with some great, accomplished songwriters and having spent 2 ½ years working side-by-side with Robert Hazard, who wrote ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’, which ultimately landed in Cyndi Lauper's lap and made her an international star, I do have SOME useful insight into the songwriting process and the ideas that fuel great pop songs.  

But none of that is, I feel, the best piece of advice I have to offer.  Instead, I generally advise young songwriters to LIVE…to live and experience as much learning and broadening of the mind as possible because THAT is what will ultimately fuel and feed your best music and songs.  I myself, as a teenager just starting out in the music business, wrote songs that, at the time, I felt were strong, cohesive and poignant.  Looking back on them and listening to the kind of writing I used to do…compared with what I've done more recently, I'm almost embarrassed at the level of narcissism, naivety and self-absorbed narratives I used to believe were worthy of a broader audience.  I was consumed with clumsy metaphors, thinly-veiled characters that were obvious stand-ins for my own narrow perspective and ham-handed imagery I had to conjure out of thin air because I hadn't really experienced anything yet.

It was living my life, experiencing the world and most importantly - taking an interest in the lives and experiences of OTHERS that unlocked real songwriting in me.  It was being able to find beauty in the simplicity.  It was finding strength and courage, as well as weakness and flaws, in the abundance of humanity around me.  It was turning the camera outward that let me actually SEE the world and its people and it was only THAT which allowed me to properly express what I saw and felt about it.  

Just brutal - an absolute disgrace.  Donald Trump sat in front of the NABJ and opened his own racist veins to the nation.  Using race as a cudgel, as an insult, as a wedge and as a deragatory label in every context, he reveals the hatred and bias at the root of his movement and his soul.  ‘DEI’ is the new N-word and between now and November, every time you hear it, don't forget it.  

As a white male, I am disgusted, embarassed and offended by this man's mere presence in American politics.  We are a lesser, weaker nation in every way because of him and the people who have elevated him.  

I heard a story of a young girl, raped by a family member, who was forced to bring to term a pregnancy at age 13.  In her state - Texas, there was neither the protection of abortion rights, nor allowance for her to seek out-of-state care since she was essentially surrounded by states with similar restrictions.  This is not America, it's not humanity - it's an indecent and tragic outrage that must be made right and corrected through political action.  Democrats have FAILED - failed to protect this country and its citizens from the emergent fascist theocracy that has descended upon us.  

There's no fixing the damage done - there is only prevention and we must start now.