The Morning Breaks: My Life in Music

I just released a new video from our album The Ghost of John Henry, for the song “The Morning Breaks.” It goes like this:[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOx2HokCCwg]This an intensely personal video for me, and I have to be honest it feels a little weird putting it out into the world. The earliest footage in here dates back […]

The Universe Does Not Owe You Free Music

Here’s how the last three days have gone down in the world of musical discourse: Emily White writes on the NPR All Songs Considered Blog that she has over 11,000 tracks in her music library, of which possibly 200 were acquired by paying any money whatsoever to anybody. Summary: I love, love, love music and […]

Response to (the Awesome) Roman Mars: Frozen Music

He did invite discussion and conversation, but I’ll be honest: the purpose of this post is not so much to respond to Roman — host of the 99% Invisible podcast, which I highly recommend — as to share his most recent episode, “Frozen Music.” You can listen here: For those of you who don’t know, […]

Art: What’s the Point?

Somehow, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve actually become less cynical about art. To pursue a career, or even just a paying sideline in the arts requires a tremendous amount of self-confidence because if you don’t believe in yourself, how can you, in good faith, ask someone else to believe in you and hand over cash […]

How Important is Fidelity?

When Hi8 seemed like an impossible dream I’m not talking about matrimony, here, but how well an audio or visual recording resembles the real-world phenomena it seeks to capture. High fidelity sounds and images used to be both a mark of professionalism and a barrier-to-entry for hobbyists in the temporal arts (film, video, music, etc.). […]