I'm feeling this.

In the online store

Street to Nowhere shirts are beginning to run out in certain sizes. These wont be restocked so now is the time to get them. Most can be ordered w/ shipping for less than $10.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

Also, keep posted for new woodblock prints later this month. I'll have new ones as well as some from Charmingly Awkward available (for way cheaper than my friends say I should sell them for).

ALL MY LIFE

All my life, I never felt right til I saw you there

(and they were spinning Sweet Caroline)

You kissed my face and forgot my name, but it's alright

You can call me what you like

I know I know I know it's all a game

The pushing, the pulling, I feel so strange, but

I know I know I know your lovely face

Ain't nobody ever gonna push you away, but

What you got to say?

Hey Hey Hey Hey

All My Life I've waited for tonight

Just to feel your fingers slipping between mine

You don't know the hands my heart's been through

And I don't know the hearts that you've held too

But the less I know About you,

The more perfect you seem to me

I know I know I know it's all a game

The pushing, the pulling, I feel so strange, well

I know I know I know it's getting late

Ain't never gonna ever let you slip away

So I gotta think of something to say

Hey Hey Hey Hey

All My Life I've waited for tonight

Just to feel you falling by 1:45AM

I wanna call it love, it's close enough

And I can't tell you why

But All My Life I've waited for tonight

You don't know the hands my heart's been through

And I don't know the hearts that you've held too

but the less I know about you,

The more perfect you seem to me

All My Life I've waited for tonight

So if you want me ya gotta tell me it's alright

I wanna call it love, it's close enough

And I can't tell you why

All My Life I've waited for tonight

Waited for tonight!

LAST MONTH I RELEASED AN EP

OF THE FIRST FIVE SONGS RELEASED

UNDER MY OWN NAME YOU CAN

DOWNLOAD THAT ON iTUNES

Familiar Strangers

At first it seems that every person you see is a person you know.

Though on a second look, the rhinoceros-nosed girl bubbling through a stream of slick Manhattanites isn’t the freshman year roommate of a once best friend, so you stand with lips parted and watch her trickle unobstructed into the rapids on Ludlow Street.

And in the porch light of an East Village apartment, the woman in fat-rimmed glasses with her head on a man’s shoulder has got to be the drunken publicist you were introduced to the night before, but within earshot, her lamenting words coagulate into German and you shuffle off from their curious gaze, still searching for her name.

Or alone in someone else’s crowded backstage, somehow in everyone’s way, whether picking at the catering or leaning upon the folding table full of liquor, you nearly wrap your arms around an old friend, whose context you can’t place, but presence rescues you from that nobody discomfort until you realize he’s just a supporting actor from a TV show you sometimes watch, looking somewhat uncertain himself.

So everyone is a stranger - and you let it hurt, contemplating all the cities in all the countries, and then you walk right by that couple you once talked to on a long flight to California, and hear your own name as if uttered behind the shut door of another room, and you turn and laugh and ask, “What are the odds?”

MORE WRITING HERE

Contemporary Warfare

"Drone aircraft, which are only deployed by US forces in the region, hit Taliban positions on Tuesday then pummelled hundreds of militants who had gathered for a funeral"

-- AFP

Connecting

I've received the kindest notes in the last few months. Among the words of encouragement to keep going to work each day to write and record and play songs with some meaning to them, I've been sort of astonished to read depictions of people connecting to my music in difficult times, and maybe more surprised to hear about people enjoying it in the happiest times. Thank you for covering my songs in your bedroom, for putting my sappiest tracks on repeat when you're driving at night, and for telling me - because that's how music gets me, and otherwise I wouldn't have known.

People always say that you have to create just for yourself. I write because a feeling is itching to be expressed, but I can't help but think of you while I'm at it. The moment I first sing a cool melody, or write a line that finally gets to the point I've been trying to make, I think of you. I get so excited to share it. Songs are there to connect with and I'm happy to hear you're making use of them.

You can't ever please everyone and you probably shouldn't be concerned with making a million bucks, but in my experience, genuine words breed genuine response. I'm going to do all I can to keep it that way.

Writing & Photos

In the last month or so I've added a Photos section and a Writing section to my website. Some of it is stuff that you've seen on this blog, some of it isn't.

I will try my best to update it regularly. Photos are mostly from touring/traveling, Writing is mostly stories/poems.

There are no rules though.

If you chase it to the ends of the earth, you'll eventually discover that the earth is round.

Thanks to everyone who came out to Rickshaw last night and sang along. It's been a while and was so nice to be back, so nice to see so many friends. I hope you had as much fun as I did

First Warm Day Of The Year

Skeletal tails twisting toward marble ceilings

Bear claws strung on straps of deer leather

Human skulls crystallized with eternal grins

Landscape altering meteorites, resting cold

Joy and panic in children’s voices

Wandering aimless into stranger’s legs

Hoards of them, parents explaining

Totem imagery and Natural Selection

The blood scent of subway handrails

Cackling teenagers through thundering hollows

An old woman, standing as doors spread

To squint for the name of each station

And outside, removing my sweatshirt

Vacant trenches of construction fenced in plywood

College kids in shorts with shakes and fries

Bare branches reaching awkward in all directions

Unpurchasable stacks of books on folding tables

Jay-walking corner mobs, homicidal taxi-cabs

Craning necks and idling police cruisers

Ornate golden doorknobs in window cases

Distracted texters and missed signals

Numeral streets, descending by the dozens

Shirtless shoulders, bathroom lines, cameras,

Jazz trios, hats filled with dollar bills

Gatherings on blankets, wiffle ball, baby strollers

Mothers with tattoo sleeves, couples making out

Universes away from yesterday’s winter

And the sting of bare hands on frozen steel

MORE WRITING HERE

so much noise, so little to really care about

What a world we'd live in if everyone took a risk to do what they love.

Passion cuts no corners.

Some thoughts while I take a break from playing piano

It's interesting how your perspective on the future and past is so dependent on the present, how projections of future feelings have to cross through the filter of your current emotional state. And it's funny how often times you're happier in the place you hadn't intended to wind up, after a miserable stint somewhere you'd been fighting to be.

new.photos

My buddy Josh Victor Rothstein, an amazing photographer & filmmaker, took these shots of me off the cuff at last years Outside Lands festival in San Francisco.

still love in this country

We were making out on the street, my back against a stucco liquor store wall, when that homeless man came by saying, “Someone take a picture."

And startled, you turned your head to see that ragged old man passing behind you, hunched over.

"Someone take a picture!" he insisted, smiling.

You looked back at me with those wide what the fuck?! eyes, and in that corner of the sidewalk, where the streetlights couldn't reach, he said it again: "Take a picture! Someone take a picture! There's still LOVE in this country!"

I remember your arms tightening around my back, laughter corralled, just cracking the ice on your face. You couldn't see that old homeless man staring at us with all that weathered grace, all that dusty humility, as he said, "Thank you," and dragged himself along down the sidewalk.

MORE WRITING HERE

USA in the last few days

excerpt from my latest newsletter

[written this morning]

I arrived last night in my overflowing little Honda Accord, which having braved the cracked streets of Brooklyn and the ice and snow of Philadelphia, Boston & New York for the last six months, was a champ through thunderstorm after thunderstorm along Interstate 80 from New York to Oakland.

Shook up after rain and hail forced me to pull to the shoulder as lightening clung to the highway all around, I released a new song. I put it out from a hotel room in Nebraska. It’s called “I Think It’s Getting Better."

I recorded this thing five times, with three different producers and bands, in two different cities, in order to get it just where I wanted.

I learned a lot on the east coast in the last few months. I’m grateful for the experience, for all the people that I was able to play my songs for and connect with – I’ll be back again soon enough. I also feel very fortunate to be back in the place I’m from.

Never been so moved

crossing the California border

I Think It's Getting Better

My newest song (you may have noticed I've been releasing them at the first of every month) is called

I Think It's Getting Better.

It is also available now on iTunes

I have much more to say about this, but it is late and I've been driving all day and need to climb into that hotel bed... So until then, please enjoy the song.

Songs on iTunes etc...

The first five songs I've released under my own name are now available on iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, and pretty much any other digital music store on the web. They are packaged together all nice-like as the Waiting For The Pills EP.

Of course the songs are all still available directly from me with their own unique artwork at http://davesmallen.bandcamp.com

qwertyuiop[asdfghjklzxcvbnm

packing up again

Tomorrow my car will be packed and pointed west until we hit Oakland. I'm not sure what I'll miss most:

Nah, I'm just fucking with you:

flea market on saturday

Have to Cancel the SLC Show

I had planned to play Salt Lake City as I drive from New York to Oakland next month...

Unfortunately I need to return to California sooner than expected so I'll have postpone my Utah visit. Sorry.

I love S.L.C. You're so good to me. I'll make sure to get back to you soon.

At The Turnpike Service Station On A Rainy Sunday Afternoon

Luggage presses against the windows of the cars, lined up at the pumps by the dozens and families of pedestrians play chicken as I turn off from the stop and go. The wipers stick across the windshield and pulling my sweatshirt hood over my head I make fast steps across the puddled pavement.

Holding open the door for a lady with short curls supporting an elderly woman on a cane, hundreds of voices pour from the station, and I hand it back to a man with a trimmed white beard and exhausted little red eyes in thin framed glasses.

The place surges like the inner corridors of a busy hive. I don’t know anybody but they look like everyone - everyone I’ve ever seen. Generations sit at tables, picking at packaged food in plastic trays with plastic forks. They wear the graphic design of professional sports and corporations, the names of events and cities in embroidery on jackets and hats. They swarm me in old polo shirts and shorts from outlet stores, with clean white socks riding up calves from clean white high tops, necks bent over cell phones and arms filled with bags and babies.

Heroic fast food clerks move mechanically beneath molded plastic signs, filling plastic trays and the oblivion of needs widening from perpetual lines, overwhelmed and tense and tired, spilling in from the turnpike, from the weddings and graduations, the ballgames and the funerals, the weekend trips, the hospital visits, tracking rain water and gasoline and concern in from the parking lot.

An expressionless custodian wheels uncontrollable trashcans through the crowd. An old man coughs and coughs from his chest. I nearly trip right over a little boy stepping rigidly in his parent’s tow, bewildered by a jungle of legs and bags, and I maneuver around a teenage daughter in a college sweatshirt, holding an ice cream cone, reflective eyes fixed to her mom, long given up on fashion, composing the structure of a frustrated lunch with a frustrated dad between stranger’s heads as he drifts into the bathroom.

I need to get the fuck out of here.

To the spacious highways of night, where ancient pines rise in the shadows at the hem of the road and packs of semis rumble through sleepy towns, unobstructed by the tide of humanity.

To the quiet rural exits and soft crunch of gravel. The dormant cars, splashed with moonlight in lonely hotel parking lots and that big frightened woman behind the desk, who will look me over cautiously as the automatic doors spread and I walk in, draped like a porter in backpacks and bags and cases.

She’ll ask for ID and smile to herself. “You’re a long way from home,” she’ll say, in a little voice - just like all the others just like her.

And I’ll stare through the TV, saturating the dark lobby with grays and blues until a sitcom joke knocks a laugh out of her and she’ll direct me to a smoke stained room with light from the hotel sign glowing through coarse curtains and the anonymity of a white tile bathroom, paper-wrapped soap and institutional towels, where I can wash the tension from my neck, the grease from my hair, and fall asleep in hard sheets that can’t remember anything.

MORE WRITING HERE

West Coast Shows This Summer

I'll be back on the west coast all this summer & I'll be playing lots of shows...

So if you're anywhere in California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Baja, Boise, British Columbia etc, and putting on shows at a venue or house or coffee shop or school or bar or street corner etc, we can probably work something out to get me there with an acoustic guitar or a full band if you're interested in having me play.

Shoot me an email at: davesmallen@gmail.com and let me know what you got.

Twitter

Can't promise that I'll use it for anything other than updating you about new songs and shows and art and writing, but it should be a decent way to be in touch until the next thing comes along:

www.twitter.com/davesmallen

A Couple Wonderful Sayings From The Marquees Of Fundamentalist Churches On The Outskirts Of Small Towns Through Which I Have Recently Passed

“Give The Devil An Inch And You’ll Make Him A Ruler”

“Don’t Be So Open Minded Your Brain Falls Out”

Rainer Maria Rilke - Letters to a Young Poet

Publish at Scribd or explore others: School Work Poetry Humanities Fiction Literature-Poetry

"America" Chords

Lots of people have asked me in the last six months or so how to play America, so I figured I'd just post the chords here. I tend to play songs differently with time, but this should get you through it:

I've seen this whole country...

A F#m A E F#m

And from the Ghettos...

A F#m A E

You forgot to lock the door America...

F#m D A E

I was walking through a casino...

F#m D F#m E

Oh Goddammit America...

F#m D A E

Please don't fuck this up...

F#m D A E

whoa oh...

D A E F#m

D A E F#m

Woke up in Manhattan...

XXXXXXX D

And in those deep and desperate...

F#m E

Oh we're hungover America...

F#m D A E

F#m D A E

F#m D A E

Whoa....

D A E F#m

D A E F#m

Some Perspective

Standing on the back stoop of a house, caught in the flames of a small party, he told me about his life, how he scraped over here from South Dakota and lived homeless for a few years. I drank from a plastic keg cup and listened.

“You should try it.” He said.

“Being homeless?”

“Yeah man, it would give you some perspective.”

“Well, how would I eat?” I said. And he shook his head.

“Would you let yourself starve?”

“No, I guess I wouldn’t”

“There’s always a way.” He said.

As if a director and camera crew were on the breaking point of an overwhelming hush somewhere in the shadows of the backyard patio, he took a long drag from his cigarette and fixed his eyes on me while I processed his statement.

What Profundity! I thought. There’s always a way, always a way -- a man can get used to anything. I pictured it: noble philosophers in rags, ascetics perched on cornices in the fringes of understanding, and he nodded slow as if he knew just what was pumping through my head. He let it boil for a moment and said to me:

“Yeah dude. You just steal shit.”

“Oh—“ I said, and took sip of watery beer.

MORE WRITING HERE

I Know You Meant No Harm, But...

There was glue still drying between words in my head

Pictures of tonight's possibilities developing patiently

I was enjoying how the room hovered in the margins of silence

The ticking of idle appliances, the rise and fall of my own breath

When you walked in and turned on the TV

Like a chainsaw through the kitchen table

MORE WRITING HERE

If I Can See You Tonight

My newest song is called

If I Can See You Tonight.

Now that there's nothing left, what do you say?

The morning's been coming hard, It's starting to rain

And all across the horizon, the sky is a solid slate white

And I can get through today if I can see you tonight

Some would say, hey that's life, it's one thing then the next

And if you never get so low, you wouldn't know happiness

If you were here I could block it

The pace of life I can't stop it

No matter how good you got it, baby

You know people just get sat sometimes

And I can get through today if I can see you tonight

When darkness comes for you, I will run to you

I'll keep you in my arms, I'll shelter you from harm

I'll be there wherever you go, wherever you go

I'll be there you should know

You work hard all damn day and I'm slacking off

You say you're up for this, but I know that you're not

So when I come to pick you up tonight,

I hope you say, baby, just come inside

And I can get through today if I can see you tonight

Israel

Thank You

Thanks to everyone who came to the shows last weekend in San Francisco and San Jose. I can't tell you how much fun I had playing and I can't wait to be back. Hopefully I'll have some California shows again in June or July.

I saw Leonard Cohen on Tuesday at The Paramount in Oakland. He sang for three and a half hours, and somewhere in the third or fourth encore, he thanked the audience from what seemed to be the deepest and most genuine wells of his heart. It was a performance filled with gratitude, and for a man that is four days shy from having fifty years on me, I can only hope to have his attitude at that age - if I am fortunate enough to see it - and to still have a crowd gather around me when I pick up a guitar.

I remember having meetings with labels when I was figuring out who would release Charmingly Awkward. We'd be in some executive's office with a window looking down at the rooftops in Hollywood or along an avenue in midtown Manhattan, and they would ask me what my goals were with music. My genuine answer, which eventually became my stock answer, was "I want to be doing this when I'm sixty." Though the reasons behind Cohen's world tour are dark, involving stolen millions by his longtime manager and what must have been a horrifyingly anxious and stressful lawsuit, the genuine and clear enjoyment of each moment and connection with the audience was a glorious "Thank You."

This isn't the forum for really expressing all I felt that night. It had been a difficult day for me. I parted ways with my managers of three years.

It was incredible timing, the meeting that afternoon and the show that night. I was able to see a man that had struggled for years within the restraints of the business and despite poor initial commercial success, someone who persevered, consistently making something pure and gracious. Ultimately that allowed him to build an incredible bond with his listeners, the few and far between that felt what he was singing.

I'm fortunate to live in a time where the internet is still a bit of a frontier and I can connect with people without sacrificing and committing myself to the gauntlet of the mainstream music industry, and as managers and labels come and go, I can always be in touch with the people that connect with things I create, and present those things however I'd like - with few limitations.

I left the show excited to move on, and to remind the people that enjoy and relate to what I say and create, how much I appreciate them.

A friend of mine posted a review of "Waiting For The Pills" the previous night. In the brief plug he managed to sum me up in a way I would hope to be perceived most days of the year.

He said, "Dave's a real person that just wants to make music forever. "

That's it. Thanks again.

Waiting For The Pills

Somewhere in Western Texas, I clenched my eyes closed on the front bench of the tour-van as it pulled out from under an oasis of truck stop lights, bounced up the onramp, and back on the highway. We were hundreds of miles from any city and daybreak was coming while the stereo blasted and my mind churned. As I finally felt the flood of sleep washing over me, these words entered my head.

Lyrics

Waiting for the pills to kick in

I'm rolling around in my skin

I can't sleep

If I could sleep this all would end

Waiting for the pills to kick in

I got a whole mess of new friends

I can count them up

But I can't count on them

If you just look at me

Oh you'd like what you see

And if you're listening

Oh you'd like what I said

Waiting for the pills to kick in

I wonder if I'll see her again

She wasn't smart or nice

But she was soft and thin

Waiting for the pills to kick in

You know I got no faith in heaven

I'd be out of here pretty darn quick now

if I did

Somehow life got scored

With screeching horns and diminished chords

If only it was something sweet

A simple melody

Art & Commerce

I designed a four color silkscreen from my "backhoe" print that accompanied Every Time I Leave (I Leave For Good).   The design is screened on baby blue American Apparel shirts (girls and guys sizes) for sale in my online store and at shows for $15.

Also, I'll be releasing a new song on April 1st around midnight.

And playing these shows in NY and CA:

April 11th - Nickel City - San Jose CA (ALL AGES)

April 12th - Cafe Du Nord - San Francisco CA

April 20th - The Delancey - New York NY

April 28th - SUNY Cortland - Cortland NY w/ Matt Nathanson 

April 29th - Rockwood Music Hall - New York NY

cleveland

Every Time I Leave (I Leave For Good)

In July 2007, after more than a year on the road, through clubs and theaters across the United States, I returned home to Oakland. The final tour was a bust. I found myself playing to one person at a bar beside a prison in Bakersfield, and my deal with Capitol Records had gone to shit as the company withered and merged and laid off. I was trying to get my record back and settle up the terms in which I'd be let go. I wasn't paying rent anywhere, I didn't have a girlfriend or any shows booked - The future was all blank space and I felt like a failure. I had left my friends and family with such expectation, only to return home with little to show for all I had been through, and torn up in ways I could hardly explain. My car was broken into my first night home, and I took it as a sign to get the hell out.



My brother was living out in Moab Utah, guiding rafting trips on The Colorado River. I got my car window fixed and replaced the stereo, packed all my stuff and headed out to see him. I was in control again, with the comfort of the of the highway in front of me, always moving toward something, and always pulling me further away.



I stayed in Moab for a couple weeks, taking long hikes and helping my brother out on the river. I tried as best I could to express what I had been doing since I last saw him, and hearing my own words, I was proud of all the work I'd done, all the people I'd met and connected to, all the things I'd seen and experienced, but everything felt strange and distant. I was on the threshold of something new, though it wasn't yet clear, and it was time to focus on what was directly in front of me, not far behind.



Early one evening, my brother went off with a couple friends to climb some cliffs as the sun set. I drove out along The Colorado and found a quiet spot to watch the darkness come, but as soon as I had settled, a storm began to roll in - their first storm in more than a month. The clouds were thick, opening up into a heavy rain as I took it back to my brother's. When I arrived, I found the house filled with his friends and roommates, kids who squatted on his property or slept by the river under the stars - all of them taking refuge. I grabbed my guitar, and sitting alone on the back porch beneath a canopy, with flashes of lightening illuminating the surrounding walls of rain, I began to write this song.


[Once summer comes, I strongly suggest listening to this one loud, while driving on a two lane highway with the windows down]

I had to kick this nightclub scene

I drove out into the desert heat

To find my brother where he strays complete

I brought the rain with me

And if I really want to stay alive

There's a part of me that's gotta die

And my brother he's the kindest kind

Don't need to see the light

If I wanted to stay you know that I would

I don't like to be misunderstood

Every time I leave here I leave for good

I know oh I know you're not keeping track

but I keep on coming back

I keep coming back the way you said I would

Every time I leave here I leave for good

Somewhere

There's a girl I don't know her name

I get so lonely I can picture her face

I guess right now we got our separate ways

But I'm gonna marry her one day

And every age that you get in life

There's a sweet and there's an ugly side

I try to be patient for what comes in time

And thankful for what's mine

I keep on running

And I keep crawling home

But the trouble stays with me

Everywhere I go

I'm Not Releasing an Album.

After much consideration, I've decided to release the songs I spent half of 2008 recording as a series of digital singles, instead of an album. I love writing music, performing music, recording music, and I especially love releasing the new music I've recorded. I would like to have the freedom to be doing any or all of these things at any given time, instead of one thing then the next, and the satisfaction of sharing it with you, not in rare bursts, but on a consistent basis.

The first song is available right now. It's called "Every Time I Leave (I Leave For Good)." I'm very very proud of it and I can't wait for you to take a listen! You can hear and download the song by clicking below:

(It's available in high quality MP3, FLAC, and other audio formats...)

I'll be doing this without the help of a record company or a publicist or a marketing budget, so there are basically two ways that people can discover my music:

1. I tell them about it.
   
2. You tell them about it.
   

If you download a song of mine and feel inspired to share it with 5 or 50 or 500 friends, that is fine with me. In fact I encourage it.

Thanks for being patient with me. This endeavor has taken longer than anticipated in most every way, and I'm sure you'd like to hear everything I have recorded right away, but I have a feeling that this will be a fun experiment for all of us if we just give it a little time.

Yours,
Dave

...But My Car Is In Brooklyn

Back in Oakland now, and it's interesting how wherever you are, your mind shifts to that place. Suddenly New York feels far and unfamiliar, though when I return there next week, I'm sure The Bay Area will be just as hazy, just as distant. 

Opening for Josh Ritter tonight, and seeing all my friends -- should be a good one.

[By the way -- pay close attention this weekend, I'll be starting something new]

Before The Show, And After

Brooklyn doesn't want me to have a stereo so I drive the length of the New Jersey Turnpike with This American Life in one ear.  And It's cold in Philadelphia - not freezing, but the wind comes in detonations, shaking the car and then violently whipping the trees, so I sit for a long time in the driver's seat, just off of South Street, thinking about where to spend the next few hours.

I end up alone in the back room of a little Middle Eastern Place, where two men, the only other people in the place, talk about defense contracting in relation to the auto industry, and I keep picking up flakes of their conversation, but not enough to string it together.  And The waitress is polite, and it's early enough in the shift to have a pleasant conversation and get some advice on killing the following hours, but our exchanges are off, I can't hear right, and my words keep coming out sideways and upside-down. 

I eat slow, and have a text message conversation, read a page and a half of my book, and eavesdrop.  There's an old poster of images from Jerusalem on the brick wall above me and I look to see if I can recognize places from five weeks ago.  Eventually I'm full and leave and wander through the aisles of a three story arts & crafts store, florescent light flooding over the place, and a woman's voice on a loudspeaker, every five minutes, counting down to closing time. The place feels like a knot in the back, and I walk out with a roll of printing paper under my arm.

The show is fine, the bar is filled with people when I arrive, people a little older than me, that probably won't look up from their conversation as I play, but I trust that a few will, and the other bands, and my friends and fans will come and watch, and they do.

And after packing my guitar away, I have a long conversation with guy who approaches me and says he's from The Bay Area.  There is always a long conversation to be had with anyone else from the bay, and we talk about his industry - the newspaper industry - in relation to mine, and how they've been passed down for so long from creative folks who made the rules to left brainers who follow them into the dirt like the hand of God, folks that are rigid and stuck and can't change, and I tell him how I'm getting out, how I got this finished album that I recorded with a producer in Hollywood, and an engineer and top level session guys, in beautiful studios, and I'm gonna put it out myself, on my website, piece by piece, to prove that we can do it however we like, and he tells me how he is redefining his paper, was hired to do so, but with the economy how it is there isn't a place for him, even though he's the one that could trade their sails in for an engine, and we talk about the cold and how neither of us will spend another winter outside of California...

At some point I dismiss myself and walk into the street, past my car, parked on cobblestones, and up to Market. There's an old man on the sidewalk and I walk by him and turn back to see a couple behind him turning around as well.  He is hunched over so far, his nose is by his knees and he is trying to walk like that, saying "spare some change for the homeless."  I am struck and walk back to him and ask if he is okay. "I'm a veteran," he says, and I hand him the change in my pocket, and the couple approaches us and the woman asks in a serious but soothing tone, "Is it your back?" and he gives a slow nod, "Will it be better in the warm, inside?" and another nod. She is asking him all about where he can sleep that night while her husband or boyfriend is pulling out a wad of cash and she puts it in his hand, and we walk separate ways.

And back at the bar, between bands, waiting for it to be last call, so I can get paid my eighteen bucks and drive back to New York, I wander upstairs. Up through a thin light an into a dark room with chipping red and black walls adorned in paint-pen and sharpie, I find another bar lit with candles and a flashing TV and the conversation of a few locals, leaning over their drinks and moving a little to the wind of the music. There's a hip-hop beat, something from the early nineties, and it drags me up another short flight of stairs.  It's a song I've heard from year to year, from one incarnation of myself to the next, so I let it pull me around a corner, through a brick corridor, and before me, beyond the empty folding chairs and empty glasses on empty tables, high above the empty dance floor, there's a DJ, hunched over his turntables, presiding over a dark and empty room.

Famous Blue Raincoat

In December I spent a few hours in a friend's studio recording demos, and while I was at it I did a quick version of

  Leonard Cohen's Famous Blue Raincoat

I can't express to you how oddly therapeutic it feels to play this song - so as you can imagine, it ends up on my set list at shows pretty often.

It is posted on my myspace, hope you dig.

used to be there

We walk up from the Lower East Side to catch the L train because my car is parked two stops into Brooklyn.  I'm not staying there, but when I found it with a broken window, and the buck-fifty from my ashtray missing, I just moved it up to Williamsburg- I didn't know what else to do and somehow that seemed sensible.

And all along it's funny, how we are trading off talking about ourselves, and we aren't talking about the same things on the surface, but underneath - all the "What the fuck?" and "How the hell?" - you couldn't tell it apart if you tried.

And my guitar is getting heavy, and the snow is starting to come, and I ask, "Are you sure you want to walk all this way in heels?," and she is looking for some boy that used to be there, and I'm looking for a feeling, or a crowd, or a thousand bucks or something - I can't quite figure it out - that used to be there, and "What are we doing?," and I'm thinking about the half a sandwich in my backpack that I'm going to eat when I get to the car, with the radio off, and my jacket and hat and scarf still on, and how I'm going to stare out through the windshield as little piles of snow collect and I realize that I've been staring for way too long and haven't really looked.

USA

new website / online store

I recently launched a simple new website and online store, currently selling some of my art and Street to Nowhere stuff.

You can check it out here: www.davesmallen.com

I know I haven't been posting much in the last couple months (not at all really in the last month) -- I've been really focused on beginning this year strong though.  There will be lots of other new developments coming along in the next few weeks and months. Keep posted...

recession

I went down today and traded in some books that I'd grown out of -- or never grown into, for some Christmas presents.

Recession is interesting to me, mostly for the fact that it is a shared emotional reaction of an entire society.  

I can feel it though, the strange passive aggression of the masses, the folks around me fighting for their piece of the highway, for their parking space, lingering just a little longer at the milk and sugar counter at the coffee shop, and returning your apology with sharp silence when your bag hits their arm on the street.

Still, when every dollar counts -- at least in the anxious collective mind.  It feels pretty damn good when, after adding up the stack of books beside the cash register, the bookstore clerk returns on a limp to his side of the counter, and adds an extra dollar and a half to your store credit, because he knows you are, at the very least, trying to dig Yeats.

one thing, then the next

When crafting a to-do list, it is important to list things you can actually cross off.

Constants like, "Write!" or "figure out living situation..." don't really swell the confidence as they linger un-crossed-out at the end of a hard-worked day.

another picture of fog, though

Lots of things brewing and churning and bubbling and whatnot...

Got a lot to say right now, and it is all being said -- in new songs and in my notebook, and to people I get coffee and drinks and dinner with, and to the managers, and the woman that cuts my hair...

It just isn't ready for the vast and infinite internet. Maybe tomorrow, or thursday, or something...

Love,

Dave

---

All the things I regret

All the mistakes I've made

That feeling of failure

I wouldn't change any of it, if I could,

It all led me here

waking

I boarded a flight to New York in early October, knowing that I would return to the bay area in November with closure on some big decisions.  Decisions in my career and my personal life, not to mention that one my country would be making.

You'll know what's up with the career stuff in a few months, or a year, or something. Personal stuff will probably come up in a song or two down the road.  And we all know what my country did. 

I'm just waking up from all that now.  It knocked me out.  I was half-asleep for weeks, except when I was sleeping.  Now there is so much to be done.

reno

election day

There must be four dogs barking and clawing on the other side of the door, which isn't more than a piece of plywood installed in grooves to slide open.  I can hear the footsteps of someone coming to answer my knock, and I look down at the paper on the clipboard in my hand to double check the name.

With a little struggle from inside, the makeshift door opens just enough for a middle aged man to slip through.

"Hey there..." I say, raising my voice a little over the clamor of dog's feet and the rustling and squawking of a few dozen birds.

The man interrupts before I can say anything more, "We're going down to vote at four." 

"Okay great. Well, can we count on you to--"

"--we're voting for your guy."

"Alright! thats great to hear.  You won't see me again. Have a nice day."

"You too..." says the man, and I start down the little steps of the porch.  He slides the door open again, and I turn back.

"Hey, what's the sheep's name?" I ask.

"What??"

"The sheep..." I say, pointing out into the yard.

"Oh her name's Molly. Make sure to lock the gate on your way out."

"Molly. Okay. Have a nice day."

As I walk out of the yard I can see out over the little neighborhood of manufactured houses and shacks and trailers, across the railroad tracks that line the backyards, and the towering casinos and sprawling neighborhoods of Reno in the distance.  There are a hundred birdhouses lining the fence around the property, each painted and constructed with a different theme.  Molly looks me over skeptically as I pass by her, and locking the gate, I hear from behind me a long, "baah-ah-aaaah."

It is cold and snow flurries have been coming down around me from time to time as I walk the neighborhood, knocking on the doors of potential voters as I have the last couple days.  The polls will be closed in a few hours, and I will have spoken to nearly all of them in the area, some several times.  

I'll call it quits around 6:15pm in front of a long dark driveway, where according to my papers, a nineteen year old girl that the campaign has yet to identify as a supporter or not, resides in a little house the size of a bedroom, with old paint cans and furniture and baby toys spilling out. I'll be thinking of the uneasiness I felt hanging a "VOTE TOMORROW" flyer on her wide-open front door the previous morning while her giant black dog howled behind a chain-link fence, and the house lay empty and still.  

As I'm looking up at the yellow light coming through her windows beyond the trees, I'll be thinking of the toothless woman I had just spoken to, whose deceased father was on my list, who said to me when I apologized, "I voted for Obama, though. And thank you for what you're doing."

As I get back in the car, and head towards the precinct headquarters, I'll be thinking of how much the neighborhood changed as the sun set, and I'll be dumbfounded again and again by the manufactured houses and trailers on dirt roads with McCain signs outside of them, by the way that these people, the ones that need this change the most, are voting against themselves. I'll remind myself again and again, though, of the folks way out in the hills, on streets with no street signs, with rusting car parts scattered out in their yards, that told me they had already voted "Democrat across the board."

As I drive with my family to the casino, where the big democratic party election results party will be held, I'll be thinking of the last eight weeks, the first six of which, I took time off from music, and pushed back the release of my record, to help run the East Bay campaign headquarters. I'll think of the ten hour days setting people up to make phone calls to battleground states, the hoards of people, Black and White and Asian and Latino and Young and Old and Wealthy and Poor that flooded the place and asked me questions until my mind hurt. I'll think of the people above me there, that never seemed to leave, that gave their lives to the campaign, none of them seeing a dime.  It all will seem like it may not have happened.  At some point I'll hear on the radio that Ohio has gone blue, and I'll feel the knots in my back, that haven't gone away for months, relax just a bit.

Everyone will be cheering at the party, thousands of them that donated their days and nights to the cause, as screens projecting MSNBC and CNN on the walls of the big casino banquet room, show the results rolling in. I'll be standing on a chair cheering too, and while people are crying all around me as President Elect Barack Obama gives his speech, I'll be smiling wide, nearly in hysterics, and when it's over I will jump on my brother and hug him and text everyone in my phone that hasn't texted me, and when they call, I'll only be able to say "WE DID IT!!! WE DID IT!!!"

And my father will call us as I drive over the pass, back into California, the designated driver since my brother and his friend woke up at 4:30am and drove through eight inches of fresh snow that morning to get people to the polls and I slept until 8:30am, and my father will comment on the peaceful transfer of power, and praise the guys that set it up a couple hundred years back so we could fight with our vote and with our time and with our voices and our paychecks, but not have to shed any blood.  We'll all talk relentlessly in disbelief and sleep hard, knowing that it is over, and still not yet beginning.

And in the morning, I'll talk with my mother.  She'll tell me that some bitter republicans are saying that Obama bought the election, and she'll be laughing.

"No," she'll say, "WE bought this election."

re-open prop 8

Here is a petition that you can sign, asking to re-open Prop 8 in California:

http://www.petitiononline.com/seg5130/petition.html

It always shocks me how much energy people will put into making other people's lives miserable - what a waste of your own life.  

I am very very relieved that Prop 4 did not pass in California.  That one was so close and so frightening.

!!!!!!!

HELLLLLLLLLLyeeeeaaaaahhhhh!!!!!!!!

yes we did

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOyeeeeaaaahhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!! woooooo!!!! FUCKyes!!! FUCKYEAH!!!!! WE DID IT!!!! WE DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!

YEEEAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

YES!!!!!!!!!! FUCK YES!!!!!!

WOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

PLEASE VOTE!!

There​ may be long lines​ and it may be cold and you may be reall​y busy,​ but you'​ll be proud​ you took the time,​ for years to come.​ This is something to be a part of.

See anything interesting today??

No On prop 8 - No On prop 4

That is how I voted. 

Google ads unfortunately, at random, was throwing ads that say otherwise on this page, and on my myspace as well.

yuk!

PLEASE VOTE (OBAMA) TOMORROW

Mohawk Joe,

And The 180th Stage Dive

I’m standing by the bar watching Audrye Sessions load their gear on stage when Mohawk Joe walks up to me.

“Why aren’t you on stage?” he asks.

“Oh I just played actually,” I say.

“Oh that’s right… Well yeah, you were alright. Not my thing really. I’m a punk rocker.”

“That’s fine.”

I follow his arm up from the cigarette in his hand. Past his fleece Jacket, up into his face, a face that reflects a half dozen decades of drinking, of working. He's shorter than me, a thin white man with a thin white mustache, and the skin under his jaw hangs loose. The sides of his head are shaved and a flaccid white mohawk is flopped down the middle. He is off kilter, keeps leaning towards me and tilting back again.

“I didn’t recognize you… I have about a hundred ounces of alcohal in me…” He says. “I’m gonna to do a stage dive. You gonna catch me?”

I laugh and say nothing. Audrye Sessions are line-checking on the little stage beyond the scattering of kids sitting at tables and leaning against the walls, beyond the empty little dance floor below the stage. Tonight's show is in a quintessential dive bar with dirty floors and low lights, but however cold it is outside, the atmosphere is warm, the bartender is pouring our drinks generously, and the guys putting on the show are excited to have us.

“I’ve done one hundred and seventy nine stage dives,” Mohawk Joe says. “This will be my one hundred and eightieth…. During their last song.”

I nod.

"I'm going to get in the Guiness book of world records for the most stage dives then I'm gonna go on the Conan O'Brian show."

"Okay."

Michael, the Michigan State student who played before me, comes over and tells me good job. He says that he had liked Street to Nowhere, and wishes he brought more kids out to the show. I tell him, next time. And as Mohawk Joe walks over to Al’s friends and asks them if they will be catching him, I try to explain to Michael in a few sentences how Street to Nowhere came and went. The memory of those six years all feels like a vivid dream. You can remember how real it felt while you were asleep, but from the outside, the pieces don’t fit together. And then Audrye Sessions are playing their songs, and I walk up and lean against a wall by the little stage and watch, and Alicia gives me a half smile and turns back towards the band, never looking down at her bass as she plays.

The crowd stays in their seats and against the walls, that vacant area in front of the stage between their ears and the music, but their eyes stay on the band and they are quiet and attentive when it gets delicate. You only can hear glasses clinking at the bar, and hushed conversation at the back of the room.

The last song comes, and Mohawk Joe appears, going from person to person, trying to rally each individual to catch him in his great dive, but everyone stays put, shaking their heads, looking towards the music. I just smile and look away when he comes up to me, so that empty space in front of the stage stays empty as he crosses the little dance floor and steps on stage. The song is tense and dark. He starts dancing a little and it all feels ironic. He's moving back and forth on the platform between Ryan and Mike, but they are focused on their guitars. He is shaking his hips, but the band is in a breakdown. James is just on the high-hat and it’s all delay pedals and whole notes.

I laugh to myself, but then the music picks up again - kick, snare, kick, snare - and Mike is wailing, and the bass shakes the room, and Ryan is almost screaming, and Mohawk Joe is swinging his old body fiercely to the music, like he isn't under his own control.

All of a sudden, an image flashes in my mind of that white-haired man launching himself out spread-eagle onto the hard tile below the stage. The same thought hits five other guys at the same moment and we all walk up to the front, all gather below Mohawk Joe. He turns towards us, his body moving with the beat, his arms flailing, and I’m still shaking my head and laughing as he leaps from the stage and into our arms. Even with the other guys holding him up, the little man feels heavy with the weight of all that beer - and feeling that weight, I get it, that this is a real person, with a real life, with a head full of thoughts and plans and memories and experiences and worries.

We let him down on his feet as the band hits their last chord. A record comes up on the sound system, and I walk away without saying anything, but Mohawk Joe follows me to side of the room.

“You didn’t expect that from a fifty-eight year old, did ya?” he says.

I just laugh again.

“How many stage dives have YOU done?” He asks.

“Oh, well, back when I was a kid and went to a lot of rock shows,” I tell him,”I did my fair share, but certainly not as many as you.”

The Phillies and Tampa Bay are flashing on the screen behind the bar behind his head, and a couple girls are ordering drinks. The game is tied 2-2, and I couldn't care less about the Phillies or Tampa Bay.

“I wasn’t going to jump,” He says, "but I turn around and there are people there… so there ya go, what the hell... and that’s more my music. You were alright though, you have some promise.”

“Thanks.”

“It's just, folk singers are a-dime-a-dozen…I like all types of music, though… except rap. And those emo bands that come through here… They all… sound… the same.” He points towards the stage, where Audrye Sessions are packing up their gear “These guys are more my thing.”

“Yeah, they’re a great band.” I say, looking back at him from the game.

“This just isn’t the place for folk singing. Back in the sixties there was a place where downstairs, people could order dinner… and upstairs there were rock bands playing.”

“And there were singer-songwriters downstairs?”

“Yeah… see, I don’t mind listening to a folk singer if I’m eating my lasagna or something. No, but you were alright, don’t get me wrong… you we’re alright."

“Thanks. I do appreciate it. You from around here?”

“Yeah, I’ve cleaned the floors here for fifteen years… Sometimes I do a little bartending.”

“So you were born and bred in Lansing?”

“Yeah...”

“What’d you do before this?”

“Oh I’m just middle class… just middle class jobs. Delivering pizzas. All sorts of things…”

At this point I like Mohawk Joe. I think of my friends that will be just like him thirty years from now, and I think the sorts of things that he must have seen. A man is a man, however drunk, and we’re all ridiculous, so in turn no one is ridiculous. Later I will hear him telling Mike about losing his license delivering pizzas, and after we all sign the t-shirt that Audrye Sessions give him and he proudly changes into it in front of us, he will ride his bike home - just ten minutes through the freezing night. I will think of icy roads and dark little apartments, and I will get that shudder of loneliness.

“What do you think of the country right now?” I ask him.

“We’re fucked. Well, we’re…. we’re fucked.”

“uh-huh”

“…you see. When we get to one of those in-between elections, in two years or something. We gotta get rid of the Electoral College. It doesn’t make sense.”

Ryan walks up and high-fives Mohawk Joe. “One hundred and eighty. Way to go!” He says.

And Mohawk Joe turns to him with a proud smile, “Wasn’t a great one, but what the hell.”

from cars and trains and on foot

From Maine to California

lansing

I hadn't slept in a bed for a week. Couches to couches to hard wood floors was fine. Everything is a little cramped or uncomfortable in New York anyhow. I woke up in Michigan, though. In a hotel bed, and the last few days are out of focus.

pieces of mussel shell

We talked about politics, about family, and a lot about the kids from back home, from high school, from Dave’s life since, from mine, as we charged along the highway through New Hampshire. Every few minutes an exclamation of the beauty of the passing hills and trees and rivers broke the conversation. I wanted to get to Maine and with a partial day off from med school, Dave agreed to take a drive through the country to the shore.

It is strange to find yourself hanging out with a friend from home, from long ago, in a far off place, in a context you’ve never been before. The fact that the conversation sticks to events that occurred, and people that live, thousands of miles away makes it even stranger. These moments don’t seem a part of your life, feel more like a movie, like you’re looking on yourself from the outside. These moments get filed somewhere else.

We ended at a white sand beach near Kennybunk, where the cold wind blew ridges in the sand and people with their jacket hoods pulled above their heads walked their dogs. There was a long row of houses along the sandbank and waves casually rolling in.

I talked a lot. I always feel like I talk more than whoever I am with, and mostly about myself. I figure that old friends just know how to deal with it. The ocean water was cool, and the clouds, moving ever east, seemed odd above me heading out to sea. I asked Dave about scalpels and cadavers, and I rattled on about the music business.

In Portsmouth we wandered around the tourist town’s sidewalks, and I recited the dates on the sides of the passing houses from the late 1700s, early 1800s. We found a graveyard and ended up at restaurant/bar overlooking the water between New Hampshire and Maine, boats passing calmly beneath the bridges, and the old brick and concrete buildings rising up along the banks.

I drank a Guinness and the waitress asked about Dave’s UC Berkeley sweatshirt, and each time she returned to take our order or bring something, she inquired further about the bay area, saying she wants to go to grad school there, anywhere. Where we’re from is where she wants to be. I encouraged him to get her number, and before the meal was over she had sat down at our table and told us about herself. She was well traveled and bright. Those are two things you tend to figure out about someone at the top of a conversation in a strange town.

Yesterday, I casually explored the Dartmouth campus. I found no Dr. Seuss originals – which I’m sure are there somewhere – but stumbled upon a giant fresco mural in the basement of the library with all of the violence and greed and power of those prized Ivy League alumni wrapped right up in it. I found a coffee shop with decent coffee, I found a sculpture with a wooden swing hanging from chains and sat on it and made a list. I made a long list. Things have been so practical as of late, a necessary thing for a while, but I’m getting ready to have some new dreams. You need to make long lists to accommodate all those ambitions – fantasy and reality.

Today I took the train back to New York, to take on CMJ – more old friends out of context. The weather changed drastically over the weekend, and inflated my head, as I slouched down in my seat and once more saw a million turning leaves. I thought about how small the world is, and how many details make it up. I’ve seen forty-eight of the states in this country now, and it still always feels like I’m just beginning.

Once in the city, back in the endless rush, I walked quickly down the sidewalk, trees thrashing with the wind above me, breaking off pieces of a mussel shell in my pocket, from a white sand beach way off in Maine.

today

the train

My Brooklyn sublet ran out this morning, and I had made no arrangements for myself. I got up early and packed up all my things into my guitar case, backpack and suitcase. It was the first morning I had woke alone in a week, and the first day since I got to the east coast that a cold wind greeted me as I opened the front door. Her high heel boots clicking on the sidewalk, a girl wrapped tightly in a scarf walked hurriedly by and a couple in new winter jackets wheeled a baby stroller. Leaves floated down from the shaking trees in rusted hues, and the air came right through the thin sleeves of my button up.

I piled across the turnstiles onto the subway platform and leaned against the closed doors of the L train with my guitar case standing up in my hands, rattling along. I transferred trains and hauled all of my things up the hard steps into Penn Station and bought a ticket and a magazine.

Now I am barreling through rural Vermont, where the turning forests passing outside the window rush into a fiery blur, and fields and little white houses, rivers and corroded steel, crumbling concrete, old smokestacks, vine-covered factories, bland office buildings and the occasional shiny sedan or bright plastic fast food marquee, litter the landscape.

I could have stayed in New York. I have couches there, and floors, but I just wanted to sit down and take something in for a while. My knee is busted and my feet are sore, I’ve been roaring through those underground tunnels, walking quickly down those crowded streets, seeking refuge out at the tip of Manhattan, in the hundreds, or way up in those skyscrapers, and now, all of a sudden, I have no reason to be.

I needed to not be bumped into for a minute, to just be headed somewhere, anywhere, for a long while. I have no goal for the next few days. I can’t recall a stretch of days without a goal in my recent history, but then again, the goals have all been changing – And the world itself is changing faster and faster, in my life, in the lives around me. I’ve been having this feeling in the last few months like waking up from a vivid dream, and the last few years trailing behind are dissolving, the events getting smaller in the distance until it’s hard to connect them or tell them apart, and all the worries, they just don’t scare me so much anymore. The future is just as hazy, but this moment is precise and detailed as a feather or a molecule, as an engine or a desire.

noise pop

NOISE POP featured me on their latest podcast.


click to hear

live 105 in-studio performance and interview

Click below to hear me playing America on Live 105.3FM in San Francisco 0n 9/28/08:

...And the interview that followed it:

i voted today

And I gotta say it felt pretty good.

You can vote early in many states, but times and locations differ per county.  A good site to reference for information in your part of the country is vote411.com

temperament

Two long articles I've been pointed to this weekend that are worth a read:

"McCain was not only a lousy student, he had his father's taste for drink and a darkly misogynistic streak. The summer after his sophomore year, cruising with a friend near Arlington, McCain tried to pick up a pair of young women. When they laughed at him, he cursed them so vilely that he was hauled into court on a profanity charge."

From "Make Believe Maverick" -- Rolling Stone's cover story on John McCain.

"At a moment of economic calamity, international perplexity, political failure, and battered morale, America needs both uplift and realism, both change and steadiness. It needs a leader temperamentally, intellectually, and emotionally attuned to the complexities of our troubled globe. That leader’s name is Barack Obama."

From "The Choice" -- The New Yorker's Endorsement of Obama

keating economics

McCain and $124 Billion in taxpayer's money

dead squirrels

All this week, I saw dead squirrels along the road - piles of brown fur split open in crimson lines that, just to look, felt like a rush of little feet down my spine.

Not that roadkill is an oddity here, but it tends to only be nocturnal creatures, and the occasional house cat, that draw the deep sigh. This week was different though, but we all know this week was fucked.

The first few squirrels didn't phase me, didn't turn any wheels for me, but as the numbers grew, as my stomach became accustomed, I thought it through. When I was driving the last few days - and I felt the world with me -I would put on a record as I started my car, and maybe halfway through the first cut, I would drift away, and arriving at my destination, maybe five or six songs deep, I would turn off the engine with no recollection of hearing anything but that first half of that first track. The thoughts were so loud they drowned out the music. I could picture all the drivers around me, pulling off the freeway and winding towards home, without seeing, on instinct alone. The uncertainty was too deafening to hear the lyrics, too blinding to see the squirrel scurrying across the street.

Everyone was getting sick, everyone felt off. Outside the coffee shop, eavesdropping on conversations, a man said he couldn't explain it, he went for his run but felt no endorphins. I called my friend to get a beer, and he had been in bed all day with the flu. I asked my brother if he wanted to join us for dinner but he just needed to get back to the East Bay and take it easy, he was coming down with something.

And the sky began to thicken, and by Wednesday it was overcast. The pressure built and built, and I watched the debate standing up, pacing around the kitchen, drinking glass after glass of wine, picking at the appetizers that had been moved hours before from the coffee table to beside the sink. The headlines, worldwide, ranged from bleak to frightening, and the television blared, and the conversations, all the same, ended where they began, yet somehow days still passed minute by minute, thought by thought.

We went to the festival in Golden Gate Park last night. It is somehow always November past 18th Avenue, but something else was cold. Walking from the inside of the crowd, away from the stage, I looked into the multitude of passing faces, young and old, and got that sensation, that empathy for everyone merely for being human and imperfect and vulnerable, and I could see the hope in their eyes, however thin, and I stood there in the midst of thousands of familiar strangers, twisting my head around, digging my fingers into the muscle, trying to work out the knot in my neck.

There is something comforting about shit hitting the fan for everyone at once. Life comes with its ups and downs regardless, and it's sort of nice to know that we're all going through this one together.

While I looked for parking near the restaurant later, my friend texted me to say she'd been laid off. Then she called, and when I finally found a space, I called her back, and she talked it out while I waited for a table. She was taking it well, recognizing aloud how these things are often an opportunity - the turning points, the thresholds, the "...only makes you strongers."

The meal was incredible, and every third joke referenced Sarah Palin, and every fourth joke referenced Sarah Palin in some sort of compromising sex act, and outside the pressure continued to build, and as I laughed loud, the knot in my neck still continued to tighten, and when we walked out, aimless, onto Valencia, the sky opened up, and in the glow of the streetlights we could see the static of the first rain of the season beginning to fall.

rite spot

*videos by BRL 

**cello by Lewis

soundcheck

I'll be on Live 105 tonight around 8:30PM pst to talk a little and play some songs.

105.3FM in The Bay Area.

live105.com to stream worldwide

register to vote

YOU NEED TO BE REGISTERED TO VOTE BY THE BELOW DATES (Depending on your state)

I just write songs and sing them, so make sure to double-check this info on the home page of your home state's Secretary Of State.

ALSO If you go to school in a swing state but are registered in clearly blue or red state (or visa-versa), your vote is certainly quite valuable to the swing state. 

Alabama - Fri, Oct. 24
Alaska - Sun, Oct. 5 (postmark by Sat, Oct. 4)
Arizona - Mon, Oct. 6
Arkansas - Mon, Oct. 6
California - Mon, Oct. 20
Colorado - Mon, Oct. 6
Connecticut - Tues, Oct. 21
Delaware - Sat, Oct. 11
District of Columbia - Mon, Oct. 6
Florida - Mon, Oct. 6
Georgia - Mon, Oct. 6
Hawaii - Mon, Oct. 6
Idaho -  You Can Register at Polls
Illinois - Tues, Oct. 7
Indiana - Mon, Oct. 6
Iowa - Fri, Oct. 24 (or on Election Day at polling place)
Kansas - Mon, Oct. 20
Kentucky - Mon, Oct. 6
Louisiana - Mon, Oct. 6
Maine - Tue, Oct. 21 (or on Election Day at polling place)
Maryland - Tue, Oct. 14
Massachusetts - Wed, Oct. 15
Michigan - Mon, Oct. 6
Minnesota - Same Day Registration at polling place
Mississippi - Mon, Oct. 6
Missouri - Wed, Oct. 8
Montana - Mon, Oct. 6 (or same day at elections office)
Nebraska - Fri, Oct. 24 (mail by Fri, Oct. 17)
Nevada - Tue, Oct. 14
New Hampshire - Same Day
New Jersey - Tues, Oct. 14
New Mexico - Tues, Oct. 7
New York - Fri, Oct. 10
North Carolina - Fri, Oct. 10
North Dakota - N/A
Ohio - Mon, Oct. 6
Oklahoma - Fri, Oct. 10
Oregon - Tue, Oct. 14
Pennsylvania - Mon, Oct. 6
Rhode Island - Sat, Oct. 4
South Carolina - Sat, Oct. 4
South Dakota - Mon, Oct. 20
Tennessee - Mon, Oct. 6
Texas - Mon, Oct. 6
Utah - Mon, Oct. 6 or in person Tue, Oct. 28
Vermont - Wed, Oct. 29
Virginia - Mon, Oct. 6
Washington - Sat, Oct. 4 (or until Mon, Oct. 20 in person)
West Virginia - Wed, Oct. 15
Wisconsin - Wed, Oct. 15 (or on Election Day at polling place)
Wyoming - You Can Register At Polls

after the debate

I'll be stopping through Dizzy Balloon's CD release show this Friday at Bottom Of The Hill in SF to play a song or two, and have a drink.  

If you're in the area...

my birthday theory

MILK IT!

Everyone gets one every year, so it is only fair that you demand special treatment on your own day/week/month.  Tell everyone and don't be embarrassed by the attention they give you.  You'll do the same for them on their birthday.

Simple as that.

my birthday

Ashley dropped me off at my car, parked where we had left it the previous night, before the sun dried up the effects of the whiskey through the living room windows of her Los Feliz apartment, where I awoke on the couch.

What I looked upon as she drove off to work, which I had failed to see through the darkness and drunkeness, was row after row of Victorian houses, in various states of preservation.  I slid the burned copy of the new Kings of Leon record from my pocket into my CD player, and with the windows all down in the warmth of the morning, I slowly edged through the neighborhood, looking at the details, the shingles, the moldings, the ironwork, the colors of paint, the shape of the windows, and I let it bring me gradually down to Echo Park Lake.

I parked the car across the street, and walked towards the water, the fountain spraying off behind the boathouse, where joggers and families and men with fishing-rods and shirtless bums passed along the walkway, across the lawns, under the palm trees.  I hadn't had a chance yet, to digest Twenty-Four.  I had yet to take a deep breath and see if it felt or tasted any different, if my perspective had changed, if any meaning had altered beneath the surface overnight.

Walking around the lake, I focused on the geese, moving slowly along the edge of the water or bobbing idly on the soft current.  I found one spotted in black, only it's neck and chest pure with white feathers, and I smiled.  I liked that goose.  I could relate to that goose.  I always relate to the odd-man-out, to the underdog.  If I were a goose, I would be that black goose, not disfigured, not ugly, not standing out in a flash, but individual, and trying to own it, trying to live a happy goose's life despite the inconsistency of it's plumage, proudly displaying its flaws. 

I rounded the lake, looking off, and across, and listening, focusing on my new number, and the first moments of a fresh age.

Sitting down along the bank, a mother and son walked up and sat down beside me.  Pleasantly ignoring each other, I watched as she opened a bag of bread crumbs, and he reached in his little hand, and with all his might, scattered a fist full of stale bread into the water before us.  

Immediately there were geese, and then coots, clicking their beaks, and beside me a little deformed blackbird hopped towards us on one foot, cocking his head to one side and the other, and then the pigeons swarmed, and the little boy threw another handful out into the water, and another and then one out over the pigeons on the grass, until all of the big chunks of bread were gone.  His mother poured out the small flakes left in the bag, and the pigeons closed in while she took her son by the hand and continued down the path.

The birds dissipated, and I pulled out my phone and texted everyone.  I told them where and when, and I sat by the lake as long as it felt right, making some calls I had to make, taking care of some business, and taking a minute and taking it in.  I was in no hurry.

At some point I looked at the clock on my phone and it was 11:11, so I made a wish.

It's funny, I used to wish for grandiose or distant fantasies, things that come only to few, and make everyone itch just a little, and I made a lot of those wishes come true --  I mean, the things I have seen and done that I haven't found an inspiration to write down here, the stories and stories I have to tell, without much of anything to show for it...  -- The difference on the morning of my Twenty-Fourth birthday, was this:  When prompted to make a wish, I wished for something that is simple, is available to anyone who desires to make the effort to recognize it, and to practice it, and appreciate it, because life isn't all about the stories you have to tell, its about living it...

Eventually I got back in my car, and began driving home.  It was a long drive.  On the day I turned 23, I drove down to LA.  On the day I turned 24, I drove back.  It was a rebuilding year, a year for sorting and for inventory, to filter out the habits and conditions of the previous years, to set a good foundation for those to come.  I thought a lot on the ride and was sleepy when I arrived back in Oakland so I fell asleep for a while before heading across the bridge.

When I got over there, I walked into the bar right on time, right when I told everyone I would be there, and stepping out the back door, I looked at the mass of people drinking on long picnic tables, heard the sound of a hundred voices, and the crunch of gravel under feet.  Feeling like I shouldn't be there and not knowing if my friends were somewhere in that crowd, I turned around, hurried past the bouncer, out the front door, and down Valencia.

I stopped in front of a brand new coffee shop, lit up behind steel gates.  It was beautiful, and kept thinking about how much I would like to see it as a feature in a nice glossy interior design publication.  I looked at the shapes of the tables and the counter, at the roasting machinery in the back, tasteful art on the walls of the tall and open room, until a woman stopped beside me while her dog inspected a tree, and I felt a little too conspicuous dissecting a closed coffee shop.

I came to an alley down the way, the buildings on either side framing the near full moon which lit the murals and the graffiti pieces on the walls, and the scattered trash on the pavement, and I stopped and appreciated it.

At 16th street, I watched people pass for a few minutes, and the cars at the stoplights, and I began to get impatient, and turned back around again.

Back at the bar I found my close friends, all tied by a thread of common interest.  All of us are so different, and there must be some underlying sensation that we all share, something that pushes us all to allow music to define our lives, but I am still shocked that I find myself again and again with these same guys, and girls, that we keep showing up, keep supporting one another.  The opening track on my new album is called, "Every Time I Leave (I Leave For Good)," and I am now realizing more than ever that there is no tie that can be severed, however you try to break it, or abandon it.

We got pitchers of beer, so dark that you can't see through it - just like I like it - and we drank and more and more people showed up, and I would jump from my seat, and give them a hug, more excited to see them, seemingly, than they were to see me.  Everyone broke into their own little discussions, and I was happy to have been the reason to bring everyone together on that particular night.

At some point Aaron looked up at the sky and back at me, and said, "Hey, you wanted it to be a clear night tonight, and it looks like you got it."  And he continued by pointing out the orange and blue light on the steel beams holding up the freeway overpass beyond the concrete walls of the courtyard.

I keep reading this poem again, and again

Return To Krakow In 1880

So I returned here from the big capitals,

To a town in a narrow valley under the cathedral hill

With royal tombs. To a square under the tower

And the shrill trumpet sounding noon, breaking

Its note in half because the Tartar arrow

Has once again struck the trumpeter.

And pigeons. And the garish kerchiefs of women selling flowers.

And groups chattering under the Gothic portico of the church.

My trunk of books arrived, this time for good.

What I know of my laborious life: it was lived.

Faces are paler in memory than on daguerreotypes.

I don't need to write memos and letters every morning.

Others will take over, always with the same hope,

The one we know is senseless and devote our lives to.

My country will remain what it is, the backyard of empires,

Nursing its humiliation with provincial daydreams.

I leave for a morning walk tapping with my cane:

the places of old people are taken by new old people 

And where the girls once strolled in their rustling skirts,

New ones are strolling, proud of their beauty.

And children trundle hoops for more than half a century.

In a basement a cobbler looks up from his  bench,

A hunchback passes by with his inner lament,

Then a fashionable lady, a fat image of the deadly sins.

So the Earth endures, in every petty matter

And in the lives of men, irreversible.

And it seems a relief. To win? To lose?

What for, if the world will forget us anyway.

-Czeslaw Milosz

(translated by Milosz and Robert Hass)

Found in A New Path To The Waterfall by Raymond Carver

this week

Kicking off my birthday week with a last minute show tomorrow night at The Rite Spot -- 17th at Folsom in San Francisco.  6:30pm. 

On the 16th, I'm celebrating with all of my LA friends at The Echo in Echo Park -- around 9pm. I'll be 24 at Midnight.

I'll be back in the bay area for my birthday night.  You may find me stumbling on some moonlit city street in the early morning hours of The 18th.

And I'll be around The Treasure Island Festival next weekend to wind it all down. 

Remind me later this week to post my theory on how best to handle your own Birthday...

how it will be

When I first began to tour, and the shows got bigger, and the stakes seemed higher, I began to develop a visceral stage fright. 

"You never know how it will be until you get on stage," I would tell myself.

That mantra crept into my days, and began to apply to other experiences -- nothing occurs the same way twice.  Everyone realizes that in their own way, I think, but I tend to forget.

Last night when we arrived to the smell of cheap beer and 1,000 red plastic cups, crushed cans and empty liquor bottles, I had planned not to drink, planned not to stay long.  I had been bombing recently you could say, and I didn't want that hangover, that shipwrecked feeling of being wasted and wanting to drive somewhere, wanting to read something, wanting to string together full sentences.

Six hours later, when we were standing on the top of the hill, looking out over the lights of the bay area, like circuits in a vast motherboard, and the whiskey had been passed around, and I had been talked into playing half of my songs, and volunteered all of the covers, all the hits from the nineties, and after the shots of bourbon and Jaeger, and after following my ride across a wet suburban lawn to the car, drunk clear to that place where you feel sober again - and everything feels important, my shirt was still wet from breaking up the fight between the two covered in liquor, bleeding from the arms and mouth. And standing there beneath the silhouette of a telephone pole against the sky, dusted with stars, and the long black strands of power lines --I had to say that I felt pretty good.

You really never know how it will be.

myth

I do not believe that suffering is of any necessity to an artist.
(I may have at one time)
I am sufficiently educated in sadness, have a deep enough well of knowledge -- having a fortunate life by any account, that I could never again feel the tug of sorrow, and still get up each morning, and work each day, without handicap.

new photos

All shots by Matthew Ginnard

not just knowing it, but feeling it

I was at my folk's house today painting the walls of my old room.  I was attacking a corner of the wall cast in shadow, and I was frustrated not being able to see if I'd covered it.  From the half open door, a stream of sunlight and the broadcast of The Convention were seeping in.

"Awww Shawn Johnson is saying The Pledge Of Allegiance!" My Mom hollered from the other room.

"What? Who?!"  I hollered back.

"The little gymnast!"

"Oh."

Typical of such a moment, I went back to painting and asked myself why that would matter to me. I didn't pay the Olympics any attention, and I hadn't cared about the pledge of allegiance since way before I knew what "indivisible" meant. 

Right then, an image came in my head of my buddies and I at an A's game in 2005, sitting and continuing our conversation while people rose around us and stood quiet for The National Anthem.  When it was finished, a man, probably in his seventies, turned around and scolded us.

"How dare you!" He said, as we looked up at him blankly.

"Don't you have any respect for this country?!" He asked.

"Oh... Sorry."  We muttered half-heartedly.

We knew the song had meaning, but we didn't feel it.

When I was a kid I'd go to maybe twenty games a year with my Dad, and I remember the power of gospel singers delivering The Anthem in the hot sun before packed Sunday afternoon games back when the A's were contenders year after year, and I was too young, and the words and ritual were merely tradition.  

My Dad and I have only made it to one game this year.  It was a cold Monday night and they were playing Kansas City.  I looked out at the players lined up along the first base line with their hats off, and back up at the scattering of fans in the stands while a tired recording of The Anthem's melody echoed around the ballpark.  I stood respectfully, but felt no connection.  

My friend Adam and I managed to get ourselves arrested in a protest in San Francisco the day after we invaded Iraq. The intellectual reasoning behind our involvement was real, but we confessed to one another later as we were walking down The Embarcadero, having been released from the warehouse-dock come holding-cell, that we were drawn to the protest for the experience of it just as much as we were drawn by our disgust. It felt big and important to be protesting, but the war was so far away. I knew I was losing something that day and I needed to do something about it, but I cannot say I felt it.

As the broadcast went on through the afternoon, speech after speech, and as the walls of the room began to fill with fresh paint, I listened to the television through the door, and as I thought about how exciting the last few days have been, I considered my own generation's lack of identity as Americans and how high the stakes really are. 

I considered that going through this together might finally give us something in common to share and be proud of. 

Sometimes my Mom or Dad will express concern for the country to make it to the polls, to actually vote, and I keep telling them, "Maybe you don't see it in your friends, but you aren't seeing what I'm seeing in my friends. This is the first time we've ever been through anything like this! There are four years worth of new voters, and there are four more years worth of kids that regret not voting last time around, and there is a current, and a pulse, and an anxiety in all of us! This is ours! This is our chance to feel an ownership of this country, to have an identity attached to it! This is important and we know it, and everyone wants to feel responsible for it, everyone wants to be a part of it! WE GOT THIS!"

My dad got home and I put down the brush for the day and my parents walked the dog and I played the piano for a while.  When they returned, while Bill Richardson and Al Gore spoke and as the teacher and trucker and pet store owner talked, my Dad praised the entitlement that everyone carried themselves with.  My Mom praised the reclamation of the American Flag for everyone. I pointed out that despite the pressure of talking in front of the whole world, all of the speakers, however experienced, had such conviction their voices. It was surprising, and maybe the genuine need for their words to be said just smothered their stage fright.  

I guess Obama's speech lasted close to an hour.  I had no concept of time.  I felt something I had never quite felt before. It was the same feeling I felt when I woke up on September 11th to the falling towers, but flipped around -- with a positive charge instead of negative.  It was the feeling of actually being there, in a moment that history will recall again and again.  I was feeling it.

We started clapping and cheering right there in the living room.

My Aunt called after the speech.  I picked up the phone.  She was leaving Mile High Stadium, had just watched everything from the nose-bleeds, and while she drove back to her place she told me about the rush of seeing it all in the stadium, of the vulnerability of being in the crowd with the wind blowing and the uncertainty of such an unprecedented event.  She told me that the stadium floors are constructed of metal and of the overwhelming reverberation of thousands of feet stomping in excitement.  She told me about accidentally finding herself behind a group of protesters last night, and scuffing out sidewalk chalk messages that said, "Abortion is Murder" as she passed, and finding unexpected applause from onlookers as she reached the end of the block.  And finally, knowing that I never like to be just like everyone else, she assured me that, "conformity is okay if its for something good."

I left the house to meet up with my buddy Adam.  On my way I stopped at my apartment to change out of my paint-splattered shirt. Outside my window, the warm night was buzzing unusually.  There was a live jazz band playing in a bar across the street and pleasant chatter on the patio in front.  As I waited for him at another bar downtown, I listened as people talked only about the speech, and when he arrived, I said, "It's such a nice night, I wish we could get a drink outside."

"How about this," he said. "Let's get some beers and brown bags at 7-11 and walk to the lake."

"Perfect!"

We stood out on an old dock, the lights of downtown reflecting in the water before us, and as we talked about the distance from high school, about the countless realizations of growing into adults, I couldn't shut up about how exciting the night had felt. Last year, Adam was all about Obama, and I was wavering.  I thought it was risky.  I wasn't convinced until I was sitting in the back seat of a car in Quito, Ecuador last January when the driver said to me, "It looks like you might have a Black president -- That would show a lot to us."  I was convinced then, clearly seeing what sets him apart as a strength.  It is sort of fortunate, I think, that Bush swung the pendulum so far in the wrong direction that we are able to nominate the right person to swing it back, and that we are at such a significant fork in the road that he can be granted the courage to deliver the speech he gave tonight.

While we walked back along the lake, back towards downtown, I told Adam that before putting out my new song, I had planned to not make a big deal about the election.  I wanted to just let it speak for itself and not say anything more.  I had not written it specifically for this, and I didn't want to get involved in the decision beyond casting my own vote.

"Tonight, though..." I told him, "I don't just know it -- I feel it, and I'm not going to be able to keep my mouth shut."

villains

Kurt Vonnegut would probably be my favorite author if I could ever settle on a favorite anything... I was pulling out this quote from Slaughterhouse-Five today for someone I was thinking of, and I thought I'd post it.  I think I've posted it before, but I'll probably post it every time I pull it out for anybody.  

"I think about my education sometimes. I went to the University of Chicago for a while after the Second World War. I was a student in the Department of Anthropology. At that time, they were teaching that there was absolutely no difference between anybody. They may be teaching that still.

Another thing they taught was that nobody was ridiculous or bad or disgusting. Shortly before my father died, he said to me, "You know -- you never wrote a story with a villain in it."

I told him that was one of the things I learned in college after the war. "

the dnc

Such a rush watching the convention speeches the last two nights. 

Such a rush to be here during such an important moment.  

I can't shake the goose-bumps.

my saturday night

Justin called me at 4pm on Saturday saying that he had found me a pass for Outside Lands, to get over there right away. An hour and a half later, I was at the entrance, meeting him, and walking into the festival. He had to go work for another one of his artists, so I wandered around, got an expensive but tasty vegan-hummas-wrap-thing, a good cup of coffee, and saw The Walkmen.  From there, I caught Matt Nathanson's set from sidestage and during the final song, crept out onto the polo field, and under the canopy of fast moving fog overhead, I set out to find a good spot for Tom Petty.

I had always been a casual fan of Petty's, but in the last few years, his album Wildflowers has become the piece of music that centers me when I'm off balance.  It has been playing in the background of so many different experiences now, has become associated with so many different moments come memories, that the feeling I get when I hear it is just a cross-section of the feeling of who I am, of all the things I'm made of.

I almost got to see him on my birthday in 2006 when we played the Austin City Limits festival, but we got booked on a cool show with Murder By Death in Oklahoma City on night he headlined.  I have been waiting for an opportunity since.

I ran into my friend Peter and walked with him into the VIP section, a nice triangle of space near the front of the big stage where people who had acquired a specific green wristband could watch the show from darn close.  The set began, and I started singing: You wreck me baby! Yes you do!  I didn't feel like I was near enough though, so I said goodbye and began pushing my way up through the crowd, towards the barrier, where the entire festival pressed with all its force.

I wriggled up to the front, with only a hundred or so people in front of me, with my head back, yelling along: Even the losers get lucky sometimes!

He started into Free Fallin' and I stood on my toes, twisting my head around looking back at the sea of singing faces behind me, then back up at the stage.  I could see everything.  It was a good spot, but I had this feeling, like an itch, that I could do better.  I turned around, and eased my way back toward the exit of the VIP section. Thousands and thousands of mouths moving: And I'm a bad boy, for breaking her heart...

My pass wasn't good to get me into the back of the main stage, but I figured I could reason with the security gaurd, tell her what a big moment this was for me, and maybe she'd listen. Approaching her, though, I found that she was already having that discussion with someone else.  I stopped a few feet away, not sure what to do.  All of a sudden, three people with passes around their necks that I had never even seen, rushed past us.  She waved them by, and as she turned back to the Petty fan that was hassling her, I slipped by with them.

When I was nineteen, I spent a summer out of college as a roadie for a friend's band on a festival tour, and I've played enough of them to know where to stand, to know how to keep my cool.  Security guards are people too.  If you look like you belong, then you do belong.

I was back and I felt like I was in the clear.  I looked up at the giant stage ahead of me. Generally there is a side of the stage for guitar techs and stage managers, for sound and lighting people, and a side of the stage for people to just watch.  I was on the technical side, but there was no security beside the stairs, so I walked with all the purpose I could, right on up.

Everyone was in the shadows on the side of the stage, but where it opened up to the festival, to the masses crowded on the grass of the polo field, it was lit as bright as it could get, and there was Mike Campbell, and behind him, at the mic, was Petty.

I slid into corner, and pulled out my phone, texting Justin that I was on stage, figuring that would make me look like I had better things to do than watch the show, so I must belong up there, but immediately, a stage manager approached me.

"You CANNOT be here!" he said, as I looked up at him blankly, "Let me show you where you can watch from..."

And he led me around the back curtain, to stage-right, where a few paces from Benmont Tench, I could lean on a barrier beside some folks that I recognized from... well... from them being classic songwriters and musicians and whatnot, and looked out at fifty, maybe sixty, maybe seventy thousand people, trying to seem as composed as I could,  while I drummed my hands on my chest, while I listened to the cheers rising from football fields away and stared out at all of the faces, red or green or blue in the concert lights, and felt the rush of it all while I sang along: Take it easy baby, make it last all night! And I didn't move until the band left the stage and piled into the waiting limos behind, which took off and disappeared as quickly as the band had taken the stage.

I walked off feeling as comfortable in my own skin as I ever have.  I was grounded, and reminded myself of something that I always tell people, but don't always tell myself - that if you want something bad enough, you'll find a way to make it happen.  And as I said to Justin later, "I'm as big of a music fan as they come, so if you give me an inch, well..."

america

I'm releasing a new single.  It's called America.  It's free.  It's yours. You can listen to it right now at davesmallen.com/america. There you can also download it, forward it, and get linked to a couple good causes you can donate to if you'd like to get me back for it.

I wrote America in October 2006 after getting home from my first national tour. I consider it a personal song, not a political song, but I want to release it now while people are very concerned about our country, which I think is actually a beautiful thing.

dave smallen

After finishing my new album about six or seven weeks ago, I drove back from Hollywood to Oakland, listening again and again to what I'd recorded. I had been working towards that moment for a full year, and hearing it back, it didn't sound like Street to Nowhere. There was so much distance from all of the incarnations of my music that I had placed under that name. What was coming through my car stereo felt like a fresh start. It felt like... well... me.

I will of course continue to play stuff from Charmingly Awkward. I love those songs and am so proud of all of the work that went into that record, but I am really excited about shaking the band name. It is sort of scary, sort of vulnerable, I'm finding already, to put yourself out there as you are, as you have always been, but It's time.

on the bridge last night, coming home

Leaving the bar last night, I asked my friend if he needed a ride home.  He first offered to take the bus, but realizing what a long hassle that would be for him at that hour, I gave him a ride up to Divisidero from Downtown.

Around 2:30 I was on the freeway, heading towards The Bay Bridge, feeling satisfied with the events of the evening, not a pull from either San Francisco or Oakland, just moving along towards my bed as I do most nights.  

The ride was smooth until just beyond Treasure Island where the bridge became lit up red with brake lights and traffic skidded to a complete standstill.  Quickly, I slowed into the gridlock.  I could tell something was abnormally wrong and pulled into the far right lane, as close as I could bring my car to the heavy bolts protruding from the steel railings of the bridge, while to the left of me everything was flashing blue and red, cars were inching sideways to clear the way for a fire truck, slowly pushing it's way through, an ambulance following behind.  

The horns and sirens echoed off of the ceiling of the lower deck, and up above, cars heading towards San Francisco rattled as they passed by, and the bridge would settle now and again, as if it were complaining, letting out a creaking moan and then a sigh.  Dozens of stereos were mixing together, as the bar crowd, spilling out from North Beach and Downtown, The Mission and The Marina, became stuck all at once together.

A pickup passed by me, and the driver yelled, "Don't I know you," and kept going, then there was a sedan, with a tired looking black man, driving alone with the windows up, and then a coup full of blonde girls, laughing, pulsing with dance music, and speeding in behind the clearing left by the ambulance was a chromed out green SUV, vibrating with bass, a kid in a white t-shirt, sitting on the roof, his legs dangling in the sunroof, his friends with their doors opening, stepping out beside the car as it stopped.  The concerned scoffed and clenched their teeth, the like-minded shouted at them over the idling engines.  I knew we were all about to see something very fucked up, but looking at the scene, I had to laugh.

Sometimes it would be moving, and sometimes it would be a dead standstill.  I would pull my emergency brake and sit up on my open window, squinting forward to see if I could see the end, turning around to watch more fire trucks and ambulances pressing towards me between the myriad of vehicles.  I would duck back in and inch forward when traffic would move again, or when lane-splitting motorcycles were coming, engines roaring to warn of their approach.  At breakfast today, Sarah told me she saw East Bay Rats carrying paramedics on the backs of their bikes to get to the scene faster.  She had been there too, in another car somewhere.

As one song led into another and another on my stereo, I began to appreciate the details of the bridge beside me, the strength of it, the weight of it, the complexity of the construction, the tangling of wires weaving along the long beams.  From my perch on the window I could make out the lights of a large cargo ship moving slowly out into the bay, away from the hulking silhouettes of cranes at the Port Of Oakland.  When I was fully stopped for a few minutes, I opened my door and stepped out onto the pavement, around the front of my humming engine, and onto the step beside the railing of the bridge.

I leaned over and looked down into the darkness, splashes of light highlighting the ripples in the water far below me.  I breathed deep and looked out at Oakland flickering for a moment, and back down into the water.  It felt lonely.

Back in my car, I came to terms with whatever awful occurrence was waiting ahead.  I felt sympathy thinking of loss, I felt empathy thinking of pain, but my thoughts wandered still around the harmless tribulations of my own day, my own worries, however shadowed, still showing up between the heavy speculations.

After nearly an hour, everyone began to merge to the left.  I put my blinker on and fell in line, finding a soft and pleasant song to take me along.  Broken glass crunched beneath my tires as I followed the car in front of me around the pink flames of road flares.  

First it was the fire trucks and ambulances and cop cars lined up, lights silently spinning, and then, in the second lane, a Mercedes, its entire back half lifted and folded over towards the front, as if an impact had pressed the rear bumper up against the back of the driver's seat, exposing the underside of the car, the rear two tires lifted high up above the ground, and finally, along the railing of the first lane, an unidentifiable four door car, burnt clear down to the metal, inside and out, leaning up on the steel siding of the bridge.  

There were no people around the wrecked cars. There was no commotion.  It was all very quiet.  My windows were still down.  It was just a little cold, and though the wind was coming through, I could still smell the smoke.

At some point I was past it, the freeway stretched wide into five lanes and I accelerated, keeping my windows down.  A somber song came through my speakers to take me home, just vocals and piano and violin.

I got the nerve to look up the crash tonight.  There had been a man in the back of that Mercedes, where it had been compressed like a squeezed accordion.  The article called him a "Man" though he was only twenty-one. 

excavating my own life

I've been going up to my folk's house most days, spending an hour or two at their piano and a few more in the depths of what was once, and I guess will always be, "my room."

I'm cleaning it out, something I promised to do years ago, never have got around to, and while on tour or jumping from one city to another I let it go wild, piles and stacks of all the things I needed to store or unload accumulating outward from each corner as I stopped through after each trip. There are broken and functional amps and guitars, road cases, cables and wires, clothes and papers and notebooks and canvases and pens and brushes and CDs and various remnants of the places I've been and people I've known, things I can't bring myself to part with.

I'm in Oakland now for a while and have the time to box all of these items up, throw out what is actually garbage, pull the furniture out from the walls, and give them a new coat of paint.  

I figured that it would be tedious work, but it is really quite interesting.  My folk's never moved when I was young and there are artifacts buried in there from all phases of my life.  It is a bit heavy emotionally at times to excavate your own life, but it is also a good yardstick for the distance I've covered from each age, a good reminder of how hard I have worked for years and years to make a job out of music, and of all the quirks and flaws and highs and lows and strengths and fears that make me what I am.  

You can learn a lot about yourself by studying the things you couldn't throw away: Scraps of paper with the phone numbers of the first few girls I ever kissed or teenage musicians looking to start a band, directions to my first girlfriend's house, stickers from bands that broke up years ago, to-do lists from past moments of worry, notebooks and notebooks and notebooks with lyrics to songs to which I can't remember the melodies, incense that smells like tenth grade, a myriad of concert tickets, a collection of passes, boxes of A's memorabilia, autographs and baseball cards, dull pocket knives, receipts from forgettable purchases in other countries, articles written on me from the local newspapers, flyers from shows I can't remember playing, free Live 105 swag from a lifetime of BFDs, dried paint pens that I stole in middle school, angsty rants in the middle of drawing pads, lacrosse sticks leaning lifeless with a bass guitar in the corner of the closet behind coat that I lived in in New York and the jacket form the thrift store tuxedo I bought for prom, shelves of paperbacks tattered from being clenched in my hands, unfinished paintings, paperclips, tacks, dice, erasers, xacto knives, essays, worksheets, snowboard wax, broken drum sticks, cigar boxes full of pennies or foreign coins, piles of Spin and Rolling Stone, skateboard catalogues from 1998, cassette tapes full of 4-track recordings...

The brain cells that get sparked up, the synapses, the dusty memories, it is infinitely humbling. I've been traveling back through the sights and sounds of my life as a child and teenager, and as distant as that feels, those experiences and sensations are what I am made of. I have no urge to go back, and I don't regret anything.  I am what I am, what I have done, and all of that has led me here.  Why would I want it to be any different...?

normal

My new sublet is all I could ask for.  It is a friend's room in Oakland, and the windows are thick enough to subdue the sound of the street cleaning trucks to a hushed roar, but not enough to block out the sound of passing conversation as I wake up in the late morning. Today it was a class of what I would guess to be first or second graders, young mom's shooting the shit as they peruse the commercial strip, and a loud but kind, self-proclaimed "rent-a-cop," giving directions to a passerby.

There is a towering nursing home, and passing elderly on walkers with nurses, or alone, and it is not too far from the ghetto, not too far from the nice part of town, right at the crux, there are all kinds of people, doing and saying all sorts of things.

I feel more like a normal person than I have in years.  Things may get crazy as the next few months fall away but I aim to keep this feeling through any insanity that may come.  It allows for all the basic, all the obvious and few pleasures that life just hands out, and I've been avoiding it for so long.  

Good.

on paper

This coffee isn't doing as much as I'd like.  I have a list of things to accomplish today. I have a lot written down, some already crossed off, some not cross-off-able.  On paper everything looks really solid right now, but there is this current of anticipation that I can't extinguish.  It started out like such a high, but now it is burning up too much fuel, taking up too much space.  On paper everything looks really solid though.

the lake

I hung out with Ash tonight. We got coffee and walked down to the lake, where we sat on the edge and watched the water ripple under the streetlights, downtown Oakland lit up across the way and caught up on where things are at for each of us. Its always interesting to me which friendships manage to thread their way through the years, from one city to another, and one phase of life to the next. When I first began playing solo shows when I was a freshman at UC Santa Cruz, he used to book shows in a classroom at Porter College, and seeing something in what I was doing, and realizing that I was good for maybe ten or fifteen kids at short notice, he would throw me on the bill with acts passing through town. My first show playing by myself was with Rocky Votolato, and when we he took us on tour last March, I was astounded that he actually remembered that night when I asked.

Anyway, somehow through my summer as a roadie, the transfer to UCLA, my dropout and move home, the year as a waiter at The Fillmore in San Francisco while I commuted to LA to record, the six months of travel as I was getting courted by labels, the year on tour, and my constant in and out, here and there, as I tried to find the best place to crash when it all began to explode, we've remained friends, and nothing proves a friend like someone being there when it has all gone to shit. In fact, I find that real friendships tend to flourish in difficult times.

Not to say that things are going bad right now at all, there is a lot happening that is exciting and new, but in times like that, it is easy to become overwhelmed, and that was the topic of conversation tonight, that nothing is perfect and something good always comes with something not so good. It is just a matter of how the scales are tipped.

I don't know what it is about water, but hearing it softly slosh against the concrete along Lake Merritt had such a calming effect. I feel that way beside rivers and streams and the ocean and in the rain. The summer is good and all, but man, I can't wait for it to rain again. I have a song about the rain that I am working on right now. It doesn't make me happy or anything but it empathizes, and as I am banging the piano keys and wailing about it pouring down while the fog is burning off into a July afternoon, I sometimes wonder if some neighbor is walking by and wondering if I've lost it.

I haven't lost it, though. I just am overwhelmed. Overwhelmed with good things, but overwhelmed nonetheless. I'm sitting on this new album that feels like a lake of gasoline waiting for a match, and all of that is just welling up inside of me, but I'm gonna have so much to give when it is time to give it. I can't wait! Until then, you can see me out by the lake or down at the coffee shop, talking it out and taking it in, being patient.

charmingly

Charmingly Awkward is available once again for Download on iTunes!