The official release date for my new album, DEN OF MANIACS, has been confirmed as March 23, 2010. In the meanwhile, here are two free mp3s and the album cover (left-click to listen, right-click to save):
Look at Me
(in which I improvise a lot of electric guitar solos as a means of coping with
increasingly colorful existential quandaries)
Go Away
(a [...]
The documentary American Artifact: Rise of American Rock Poster Art, which features two of my songs on its soundtrack, will be making its Chicago premiere this month at the Gene Siskel Film Center, running January 29th through February 4th. The Saturday, January 30th, 8:00 p.m. showing will be followed by a Q&A Panel with director Merle Becker and poster artists Jay Ryan, Mat Daly, [...]
One of my favorite discoveries in recent years is composer Gloria Coates. I first heard of her via an interview she gave on the Naxos American Classics podcast in promotion of a recently released recording of her 15th Symphony (along with two other works) by Naxos. I was taken not only with what she said [...]
From time to time I find myself in a conversation with a musician who says something to the effect of, “I’m not interested in learning music theory because it would ruin my music; I believe that music should just come from the soul.” This idea is not an invalid one per se (provided we take [...]
I’m not really interested in the question, “What is jazz?”, but I do find it funny that there are things called ”jazz purists,” such as the one featured in this guardian.co.uk blog post.
I don’t understand the idea of being a purist about anything (which is part of why I don’t care for the need to commit to [...]
A topic that’s been coming up a lot lately among the musically concerned is filtering (the process by which music makes its way from a musician’s living room to the awareness of the wider public). For most of our contemporary history filtering has involved record labels, managers, venues, broadcasting directors, publicists etc… Audiences chose from those [...]
I have recently begun listening to Marc Maron’s smart and funny WTF podcast. Yesterday I heard an episode in which comedian Janeane Garofalo was his guest (also smart and funny). Near the end of the conversation, Garofalo brought up the question, “What is an artist?” Maron responded by saying, “To me, an artist is somebody [...]
