Anywhere I lay my head...

Coming home is a strange thing. In my life I have a bit more comings and goings than most. I used to consider myself a visitor everywhere, just passing through, but deciding in advance that you dont belong is an invitation for pain. Now, I try to dig my toes into the ground wherever I go, to try to make that place feel like a home for the moment, though my roots may be shallow and the wind need not be strong to pull me along to the next thing. I have been this way for years, since long before I was touring with a band. The thing I’ve always discovered about coming from one home to the next is that your mind and your heart always get there a week or so before your body. The routine maintenance to tune up for tour is awaiting me in Oakland but I’ve already begun turning wrenches in my head. I’ve been away from the microphone too long now.

Today I wandered out into the cold for coffee and breakfast. Somehow I found myself on the train going up through Queens, speeding on elevated tracks above the neighborhoods, peering through lonely apartment windows, at chimneys covered in graffiti, at the dirty rows of storefronts squeezed together beneath the countless homes of strangers. I stood facing the world moving outside the window until, all filled up with Shea Stadium, it stopped and the doors slid open. I walked away from it, across a bridge over the railroad yard, over frozen train cars glittering with sun.

On the other side of the bridge was Flushing Meadows. Snow laid in untrampled clumps on the lawn and hundreds of Canadian geese grazed on the uncovered grass. It was so still, so calm. The soothing absence of sound, coupled with the freezing temperature and the lack of people brought that holy feeling to me. I walked towards the Unisphere until it was on top of me. I looked upward in momentary awe as kids on skateboards rolled through the empty fountain below.

Last night I walked though the fresh snow at midnight. Made first tracks through the blanketed sidewalks. The flakes fell delicately, covering the blemishes, the cuts and scrapes, of a ragged city. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a city so beautiful, so polished and dazzling under its own streetlights. Dressed and made up for only me.

making use of every part of the animal

I moved to a new sublet not too far from my last one. Its different. One of those not better or worse situations. Just different. I'm listening to Tom Waits softly as I type in the little kitchen between the two bedrooms. The furnace is hissing while Tom sings through a throat of gravel and mud about Brooklyn girls on downtown trains. That was in 1985 I think. Brooklyn girls probably didn't sport choppy bangs and pho-vintage clothes on the L train back then. Well, most of them still don't I guess, just the ones I interact with. I live in the thick of gentrification, all artists, musicians, yuppies, hipsters here. You hear old Decemberists songs in restaurants, and everyone knows someone in a famous band, the fucking bodegas have vegan sandwiches. Its all these decrepit looking buildings with stylish gourmet restaurants inside, mom and pop coffee shops, dirty bars with drink deals on PBR, record stores that only sell vinyl... You get off the train and its all like that, but it didn't take me long to realize that its just the meat on the skeleton of the subway line. The projects were maybe five blocks from my last sublet. You forget about that sort of stuff when the rent is high and all the establishments are tailored to your taste. I remember reading something in one of the conceptual art classes I took in college, that most artists are at least upper middle class before they call themselves an artist. That is so clear here.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not talking shit. I'm stating the obvious and I fucking love it here. It fits me, and I can afford it by doing what I love - thats still not real to me. I love that every inch of this city is cluttered with manmade structures - its the perfect opposite of natural - I love how unique little areas like this spring up within the crumbling infrastructure of past-prime neighborhoods. You know how they teach us in school that Indians would use every part of the animal after they killed it. Thats how it is here. Every bone, every tooth of this city has been carved up again and again. Its constantly letting one area decay while fixing up another. You end up dropping hundreds on dinner in the Meat Packing District or renting a nice new apartment where a mental institution once stood...

The last sublet I had felt like a house I lived in a couple years ago in Santa Cruz. Whole bunch of people in and out, marble countertops, dishwasher, every room but the kitchen converted into a bedroom full of dorm room funiture. The woman who lives in my new apartment is an artist, not an actor or student. This is a place you can create in, it has atmosphere, it has clutter. Take a detail slide of any section of the apartment and its an art piece. The drapes have holes in them, but they are tactful holes. Its decorated according to careful emotional decisions - nothing is Ikea here. Every chair, every light fixture, every pot and pan is completely unique and loved for it. Its feels like a home, all organic and sentimental. I can just sit and play scales on my guitar. In the last place I had to get out, get some coffee or a drink or something. I want to paint here. This is how my house will be someday.

Friday night I saw Coney Island again, sunk my shoes into frozen sand, slid along the icy boardwalk. We looked up at the closed amusement park, the looming ferris wheel - undoubtedly haunted. Waves crashed beyond the darkness and lonely pieces of metal clanked against lonely flagpoles. I saw the dark eyes of sudden death in the hypothermic waters churning below the pier and we caught the subway back to Manhattan. Warm and safe inside at 3am I could see the wind taking violent hold of a snowfall. In the morning I walked to brunch with ice and snow crunching below the soles of my shoes. Winter has arrived at last.

I hear Leonard Cohen all over this city.

hope you're having a nice holiday

jazz

Since there is little discrepancy between weekends and weekdays for me, I found myself ready for bed around 12:30 am last night without having gone out. I tend to get pretty bored if I'm not in a productive mood and go find some trouble to get into, but last night managed to slide by without consequence. I walked downstairs to brush my teeth and a housemate of mine was putting on his coat. He told me he was going to the West Village to check out a late night jazz jam at The Fat Cat. I told him to wait 2 minutes, ran back upstairs, put my contacts back on, grabbed my coat and headed out with him. With the subway ride to 6th avenue and a pretty mild walk, we found ourselves outside the basement club in about 20 minutes. We pulled on the door. It was locked. A sign on it said "Fat Cat is Closed." I was about ready to bail and go get a drink at a bar around there, but my friend mentioned that there was a place nearby, another dim jazz basement that had a show going on that night. We walked downstairs, payed ten bucks and walked into the tight little room. It was sardine packed. People clutching their jackets in every corner of the room, squeezed onto bar stools and chairs that lined the wall. I was feeling a little scratch in my throat so I ordered a Jameson on the rocks and a Stella for my friend. Everyone in the room was hushed, and from what I could gather over the heads in front of me, someone was was playing upright bass, and another on piano. Now whenever anyone goes to a non-pop-rock-commercial-etc show, their description of the music tends to be a lost cause with me. You cant do justice to that sort of shit by trying to put it into words, so all I'll tell you is that it was the first time I had really FELT jazz. I've heard all sorts of it all my life, I mean its really a true american art, but its never really touched me like an amazing singer-songwriter or composer... It was maybe 2:15. I was standing there in the aisle, crushed between a few people and the bar when this guy looking back over my shoulder pushes me forcefully aside. I wanted to call him out on it, but figured a respectful environment like that is not the appropriate place to argue. I understood it though when three tall black guys force there way through the thick crowd, one of them holding a kick drum pedal. I lose them behind the heads in the front, but when the bass and piano stop, the three of them go at it. I'd never seen a drummer use his instrument like this. He sat so calm, but used every inch of his drums. The rims, the hardware. I dont have the knowledge of theory to explain it. I looked these guys up when I got home. They'd all played with the greats, had been all over TV, composed movie soundtracks, were signed to Blue Note, sold thousands of records. This was all out of love... The feeling in the room picked up. the crowd hung on every note. Time passed by unnoticed. I could just picture Dean Moriarty in a chair by the wall with his eyes closed saying "yes! yes! yes!"... Finally I looked at my clock and it was past three, I had already been ready to sleep a few hours back, so we headed out, waited for the train in the delirious 6th street station while a completely fucked-up girl in checkered high top vans asked everyone where they were from, what they studied in school, and cackled at us like we were in on her joke.

Thursday Night Mega-Spectacular Post

I spoke to Will last night from a couch in the front bar of a small acoustic venue in the Lower East Side. Leonard Cohen was being played on the house system while we talked and when I left the show, "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" could be heard beneath the bar room chatter. He spent xmas and new years with his family and is now in Reno without a plane ticket home. Unlike me, Will is very good at relaxing and I envy how much he must be taking advantage of this time off for such. I assured him that we'd be back in the van together before we know it. Sort of saying it for my own ears as well. Gotta enjoy this time as much as possible. Its not so bad that the touring business shuts down in December and January.

So as I wait for our tour schedule for the year to get finalized, while everyone I know is at work, I have been taking the subway to its farthest reaches. I find that I cant go anywhere without stumbling past something iconic, something constantly depicted in movies and literature, in print or television. Its a strange feeling to know your way around a place you've never been before, to move about along the backdrop of popular culture, to try to derive meaning from the eerie open air above ground zero or the lit-up calamity of times square...

Yesterday, I took the train up to Harlem and wandered down Malcolm X Blvd, sticking out like more of an ethnic sore thumb than I may ever have experienced. More so than I've ever stuck out in Oakland. Harlem is beautiful: the huddled decaying buildings, the density of a seemingly genuine neighborhood culture, the relics of all these things I read about in history class. Whether you're very conscious of it or not, you get an image in your head of how something looks and feels all your life. Its an incredible feeling to obliterate that notion in one swift and vivid plunge into reality.

My main goal was to locate The Apollo Theater (of course I totally spaced on looking up the cross streets before I left). Finally, I passed by it on 125th street and caught the A express all the way up to 207th street, Inwood. I walked around the calm and empty Inwood Hill Park until the sun began to descend beyond the hillside of winter-trees and duck-filled lagoon. It was getting cold. Later in the evening when I returned to Brooklyn from the show I was at last night, puddles were frozen on the sidewalks.

Two days ago, I watched the sun set beyond the Statue of Liberty from Battery Park. I shivered insignificant beneath the gothic skyscrapers of the financial district, on the steps of the stock exchange.

Today I took the longest subway ride of my life to the southernmost part of Brooklyn, Coney Island. Everything was closed. I loved it AND I actually remembered my camera... So Instead of boring you with a description, I'll just show it to you:

Camels in Brooklyn...

I awoke Sunday afternoon to an unusual clammer coming through the window. It was just slightly more noisy than usual, slightly more crowded in the air. It was pushing one o'clock and I writhed in bed, sleep still tightly wrapped around me. I had brunch plans with our manager, Ami, and nothing, not even the possibility of sleeping through a hangover, can keep me from brunch and chit-chat. I texted her that I was up, slithered out of bed, into last night's clothes, contacts lenses, shoes, keys phone... and out the door.

The sidewalks felt unusually busy as I walked to her apartment, and in my stupor I began to notice that the streets were blocked off with police barricades. NYPD stood guard at each intersection, and though I casually assumed that I had slept through a terrorist attack (something I was not prepared to digest emotionally pre-coffee), few on the street seemed phased. A father with gold chains around his thick neck threw a football to his pudgy son, elderly Italian women were asking an officer something, and people were very calmly waiting at the entrance to Ami's building. She came down and we continued toward the restaurant. Before I could inquire about what the hell was happening, it all became clear before us: Crowds, Flags, Banners, Floats, Marching Bands, Goats, Sheep, Llamas, Motorcycles, the borough president, Miss New York, white haired women in lawn chairs, kids in church clothes, impatient fathers with the game on their headphones... It was the starting point for the Three Kings Day (Día de los Reye) Parade... and the best part, the best fucking thing... is that right behind the staunch bearded men dressed as the three wise men, right there on the concrete in Brooklyn beside the freeway overpass, stood three Camels! Three big ass camels casually chewing their cud...

Confused hipsters wandered through with laundry bags, trying to make sense of everything, taking pictures with the camels (hipsters dont smile when photographed with camels! - how can you not smile at a camel???)... Ami and I happily stood there for a long while and watched the procession. I debated running home and grabbing my camera and I'm sorry to say I didn't, but it was one of those things that seems lost from American culture, where a community actively participates in something together... and it felt natural and genuine, like the parade was covering some very well worn ground. It was a relief to see such a thing, I'm so glad it still exists somewhere.

Strawberry Fields and Certain Death

A few days ago, I found my way to the Dakota, to the spot at the entrance of the building where John Lennon was killed. I stood for a while and just took it in. The building cast a cold shadow and the wind stirred the hair of curious tourists on 72nd street. The place has a holy intensity, a staunch security guard keeping somber outsiders beyond the iron gates, flames dancing in oil lamps. There was one of those inexpressible, unintelligible feelings that passed through me there. I tried to muster some sort of meaning from it but was just weighed down by the absolute and undeniable certainty of death.

I'm enjoying my stay here more than I had expected. Even if the moment is dull, the setting always has some sort of character. There is so much I have to see in the next few weeks. I'll leave before the end of January to practice for the full year of constant touring that awaits us. I now have a pretty good idea of our schedule, but we wont post it up on the site for a few more days. This year has the possibility of being pretty incredible though.

oh! and I should mention that today its about 15 degrees warmer here than in the bay area. I was walking around in a t-shirt last night. There should be snow on the ground but everyone seems to be enjoying the weather with little hesitation (despite the topic of global warming coming up in every conversation).

Happy New Year!

So 2006 is gone. Thinking back to last new years, we had just put Charmingly Awkward out ourselves, I was living back with my parents so I didnt have many bills to pay, and I was longing with every ounce of myself to be where I am today. I feel really lucky to somehow have stumbled on the path that brought me here, I am still so proud of the album we've made, and I'm so proud of what we've been able to accomplish this year. Of course, I have heard it said that the most dangerous thing an artist can do is become satisfied, and so I feel good coming into 2007 content but not completely fulfilled. I feel that in life, you need to put your own happiness before anything else. You only get so long to live, and you owe it to yourself to enjoy it. My biggest goal for the next year is to stay on the path I'm on, and please myself because we all know there's no pleasing everyone. On the other hand, what brings me much happiness is playing shows almost every night, meeting people, and writing... I'm aware of how fortunate I am to have my happiness coupled with my Job. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, I feel like its important to post something up here today of all days....

...I was singing "Chelsea Hotel No. 2" when the years shifted last night. I was in the apartment of a friend of a friend, just the three of us. Outside, the Village erupted in the bar-room clammor of midnight. It rose up a few stories and slipped through the open window. It was just a matter of chance that we happened to be between a party and a bar at that moment, and as we walked up the steps to his apartment it hit me that the new year would arrive without drunken crowd pushing against me, without the champagne soaked lips of a stranger. But thats how 2007 came, and I watched the clock move, I heard the voices rise, and I pushed the words out from the deepest part of my gut, felt the air rush into my blood with every breath, let each syllable crack and strain through my throat. Upon leaving, I realized that the moment which we romantacise as so utterly important (and it it really is fun to do), had been a euphoric one for me, had been in the only state that I feel truely comfortable, where every tension is rushed from my system. Its strange how things fall into place sometimes.

...Happy New year! Lets see how it unfolds...