Five Recording Studio Documentaries
I was going through some of the footage of the band in the studio recording the new album, and it gave me the itch to watch the documentary The Wrecking Crew, about the unbelievably prolific LA session musicians who recorded most of rock ‘n roll in the 1960s. It was really good, so naturally it made me want […]
Why I Won’t be Reading “Go Set a Watchman”
I love Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and have for some decades now, ever since I first read it. What I also love is that Harper Lee knew when to call it a day. Ralph Ellison also wrote one brilliant, landmark novel, Invisible Man, but spent sixty years and the rest of his life generating thousands of […]
The Pain of Being Finite
A few months ago, as I was finishing up writing a bunch of new songs for the next Sci-Fi Romance record, we got some big news. We had another baby on the way. Then it turned out we had two babies on the way (Just goes to show, kids, the only 100% effective form of […]
Fear and Loathing Unto Creativity
It’s been awhile. How have you been? I’ve been writing songs. And I recently had the jarring experience of being really excited about them, recording a few quick demos, and then suddenly hating all the songs when I listened to the demos. It’s been a few weeks now, and I don’t hate my new songs […]
Time-Lapse John Henry Painting
In a previous post, I waxed all poetic about the silk-screened posters for The Ghost of John Henry that LA-based artist Mike Estano created. I love when art inspires other art, and having been on the receiving end of so much of that inspiration, I consider it a tremendous compliment when the band is able […]
Rolling into the Retro-Future
Expert combination of actual Art Decostyle, and what we think of today whenwe imagine Art Deco. My dad is a big car junkie, and I remember as a kid he took me to some museum in Middle of Nowhere, Texas, that was basically some guy’s private classic car collection. As a result, I still love classic […]
A New Bag for Old Tricks: I Attempt an Audiobook
The other night I set up mic, mixer, and preamp to record a couple of demos of new songs, and I figured, “Hey, why not try to make an audiobook?” It seemed easy enough. It’s been awhile, but I’ve been paid actual money in the past for voice over work and I know how to […]
Different Writing Muscles
Different kinds of writing require different brain muscles. I’ve been reminded of this recently as I’ve started exercising my prose muscles for the first time in a while. My first ambition, as I remember, was to be a professional novelist, back when I was small and green and the world could grow such things. I […]
Anybody Else Tired of Personal Branding?
One of my favorite lines of poetry is from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself, where he writes: Do I contradict myself?Very well then I contradict myself,(I am large, I contain multitudes.) This guy: sweaty-toothed madman,hates branding. As artists and human beings, we should probably be trying to embrace diversity, and what better place to start than […]
A Letter to the Greatest Movie of All Time
Yesterday saw the release of the once-a-decade BFI Sight & Sound poll of nearly 1,000 film critics, distributors, academics, and others. For the first time in five decades, Citizen Kane did not top the list. Instead, my favorite movie, the movie that made me want to make movies, Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, claimed the top spot. I’ve […]