Been sitting too long writing in this coffee shop...

I’m living in San Francisco for August. Despite growing up in Oakland, I have never paid rent over on this side of the bay, and well, I guess I’m not really now, just throwing one of my best friends a few bucks to make his living room my bedroom for a while.

I’m sitting at a coffee shop in the mission now to take advantage of their wireless Internet. I’ve been writing for an hour or so, some stuff for my own amusement, and all around me are very San Francisco-ish folk, all reading and typing away on their laptops, all playing off pretty well their unavoidable interest in the people around them. There is a girl sitting directly behind me whose presence is like a hot ray of sun against the back of my neck, but I’ve found no reason to talk to her. I’m realizing that it’s not a good idea to let strangers get a hold of your heart anyway, though I let it happen way too often. I envy those people that are naturally skeptical, but I can relate to those that give themselves away too easily.

I’ve finally broken into a real fanaticism about writing, which I haven’t had for a while. I go to sleep setting down my guitar and wake picking it up. I walk around the city with fresh songs in my head, bending and twisting words and melodies, feeling pretty good about where I’m at. I thought I had the whole next album written, but now I’m realizing that I had just scratched the surface. I spent the last few days listening to The Last Waltz and I have way too much inspiration to burn before we hit the studio.

All my friends are asking about my plans and I have nothing but vague answers to offer them. I know for certain that we will be playing at Bottom of the Hill on August 25th before doing some initial demo recordings in september. We’ll be headlining so the night is ours. Expect us to play pretty much everything from Charmingly Awkward and a handful of new songs. This will be probably be our last show, besides the Treasure Island Festival, for a while. I hope it will be a good chance to see all of the people we love here but never get to see.

Anyway, things are really good but pretty uneventful. I’m getting really excited for everyone to hear our new songs though. So if you’re around the bay area make sure to get a ticket for the 25th and I’m sure I’ll have many more coffee shop musings to vent on this thing in the next few weeks.

Sacred Places

I got back to the bay area just the other day and I’ve been getting up before noon – way before noon! – and going to bed at a decent hour. I usually find myself going out pretty much every night here. I have enough friends that bartend or are playing a show or have some sort of event going on that usually I find myself with the looming sensation of missing out if I dare stay in.

This time it’s different though. I’m just plain exhausted. I’m not going out. I’m keeping myself as far away from intoxication as I can, and I’m not even feeling like I’m missing out. Maybe Its because I’m so focused on writing, and we’re rehearsing new songs for a couple hours every day. That’s probably it, though it could be that I’ve found that the meaningful things in life don’t tend to be found in bars and nightclubs and hazy city streets and dark hours of morning… not to say I don’t appreciate and enjoy those to the fullest.

Visiting my brother was incredible. I really cleared my head during our hikes through the desert and trips down the Colorado River. In a flowing stream of conversation, he and I will discuss politics and religion, geology and humanity, our lives and fears and upbringing, our friends, our insecurities, how everything came about, how everything will be destroyed... We generally come to the conclusion that we are very lucky to be afforded the time and leisure for such thoughts.

One of our conversations kept coming back to me throughout the trip. He was talking about career goals and said to me that as the foundations of the planet began to give under the weight of humanity, as the climate changes and we deplete our resources, as we start taking on refugees from these things, he wants to make sure that all the breathtaking moments of the earth’s landscape are protected because they are key in holding us together as civilizations, they are secularly sacred, and if we cant agree on much, we can certainly agree on their beauty. This concept was so vivid to me as we watched elderly American folks climbing the hill along side a busload of young French tourists to see the Delicate Arch – the incredible rock on the Utah license plate. It was obvious when we drove a few hours to see American Indian cliff dwellings from the 1200s in western Colorado.

Of course, I felt it more than ever when I caught the Grand Canyon on the way back home. It seemed like everyone in the world came together there.

…and it was really really fucking big. That’s all I can say, words do nothing to describe it. And I couldn’t take a decent picture of the thing.

It was also very strange to visit it alone. I walked a couple trails into the canyon amongst families and young couples, tour groups and packs of tourist-adorned mules, and I moved quickly past without the weight of conversation or companionship slowing me down.

It wasn’t lonely though. It was really enjoyable, and while I watched the sun set and waited for some sort of epiphany – as such a time and place calls for epiphanies – I realized that the fact that I was able to see the place alone, on a whim, because I felt like it, was a compliment to the life I lead. Yet another…

I slept that night beside a dirt road in the National Forest Service land just outside of the National Park (You can usually legally camp for free in National Forest Service land). I had no need for my tent and the stars were as sharp and poignant as they can be, the Milky Way more of a cloudy expanse than ever. Eventually my eyes fell closed and I slept until the sun started to rise. Upon returning to the Canyon to charge my phone in a spare outlet in the lodge, I found the lookout points that were bursting with RVs and tourists the previous afternoon completely void of activity. I realized my chance to witness the place in a state of near-serenity and hiked for a few miles, until the crowds of sunscreen soaked families and stampedes with shiny new hiking boots began to clog up the trails again.

I charged my phone, began towards LA, realized I was falling asleep behind the wheel, pulled off and slept in the backseat of my car in the woods for 45 minutes and drove for eight strait hours to my buddy Matt’s apartment in Hollywood, where I played him a few songs as he’ll most likely be producing our next record, saw some good friends and spent the night, waking up to drive back to the Bay Area with Will the next morning. And now I speculate the source of my exhaustion, though I am quite certain that I need a haircut.

getting away for a while

I was driving down the hill from my parent's house the other night and passed a fresh cluster of police cars outside an old middle class house. Cops were in the street talking things over with someone, neighbors were still fixed at the edge of their driveways, gawking, filling eachother in.

I chose not to concern myself with those matters, to keep driving, accepting as we all do that things can't always go right. But as I drove along further, I found myself behind an ambulance, cautiously maneuvering itself down the windy road.

It was fully dark outside and the two rear windows illuminated the scene inside, a paramedic meticulously caring over a seemingly lucid but tired looking man of middle age. For a moment I felt the weight of that burden of death press upon me but again I shook it off.

I think sometimes about how much we tuck death and sickness away into the corners of our cities and lives, into hospital beds beneath institutional light, under manicured lawns and brass plaques. Despite the obvious issue of health, we keep the inevitable out of our consciousness. Therefore I was pretty surprised to witness the intimate interaction occurring inside the ambulance as I slowly descended the hill behind it.

I'm out in Moab, Utah now visiting my brother who guides rafting trips out here. I spent most of Monday on interstate 80 slicing through northern Nevada. That weight of death again burdened me along the drive as more than enough people gave me stern "drive safely's" and "be careful's," and on four separate occasions did I pass white crosses adorned with bright flowers and stamped with a name that rang like that of a childhood friend, hammered into the dirt between the guardrail and rumble strip.

Close to the Utah border I again found myself behind an ambulance. Its lights were flashing, but it moved slow. "Mobile Life Support" was painted on the side. I could imagine only the worst of what could be occurring in there. A close friend of mine recently became a paramedic and the human-ness of it is all to vivid now.

Suffice it to say, with all of the mortal reminders, I pulled over at the first sign of true drowsiness, slept lightly under that weight, tossing and turning on a lumpy motel bed.

It’s all desert out on that drive, all long stretches of thought, one chaining to the next. I made some decisions, questioned some others, and as I pressed forward along a now familiar highway, I did very little of the looking back as I have been guilty of as of late. My thoughts were plans and hopes more than what-if's or regrets. Who knows, I may have even spent some time in the moment.

Plans for this summer.

Well, I’m finally back to my own blog after a while. It was pretty cool having this thing on Spin.com for a bit. I cant tell you how awesome it was to be able to give the play by play for a pretty small tour on the website for a major music magazine.

I’ve been back in the bay area for a week now and I realized tonight that I haven’t updated this thing in a while, so no one knows what we’re up to (and to be honest, I usually hit up my own blog to remember what I’ve been doing with my life, so I have no idea!).

What I’ve been consumed with is the one thing that can ever keep my attention for weeks and months at a time, the one thing that can keep me from wanting to go out, that will stretch my bedtime to 5 or 6 AM... I’ve been writing our second record.

Now, I’ve been working on this thing for about a year now already but it’s difficult to find time and space where you can be alone and productive on the road. I’ll pull my acoustic out in the van and move to the back bench, press my ear against it and attempt to ignore whatever is blasting on the stereo in the front, or I’ll try to get back to the hotel room alone and sober while the other guys are out, or maybe there is a quiet corner at the club... but inspiration and the necessary environment to write do not always match up. I have about a dozen songs in various states of completion that I’m excited about and I’d like to go into the studio with another five or six.

I don’t like the concept of writing for a record. I feel like songs should be honest and come from a time and place. I’m glad that most of the next record has been written already, that it will be inspired by everything I’ve seen and heard and felt between the ages of 21 and 23, just as Charmingly Awkward was a reflection of my life from 18 to 20. I don’t want to force songs, to write because I have a deadline, so I’ve been taking my time and now I find myself with enough material to fill another album.

I can’t predict how the album will come out. Writing is only part of the process. I’m very excited about it, though I cant say that this has been the happiest time in my life. The songs are not incredibly positive so far, but I haven’t lost my sense of humor.

We’ll be mostly off the road for the next few months. I’ll be crashing with a friend in San Francisco after visiting my brother out in the desert in Utah. Then we’ll be headed to LA to track some stuff. You can expect a couple shows around California and we’ll be playing the Treasure Island Festival in September with Modest Mouse and Spoon and some other cool bands. I’m not sure when we’ll be putting the next record out, but know that we’re busy with it.

More to come very soon…

Working Titles (for songs I’m writing)

Good Kids - OR - This Is Not How I Believed It Would Be

You Cant Have Me (Only When You Want Me) - OR - Eva Braun

Underneath The Flood

I Don’t Like Being Touched - OR - Babyteeth

America (Of Thee I Sing)

Why’d You Let Me In Your Bed

Oh Carolann

If I Get Back To New York - OR - Song For The Bottle Service Girl I Met When Columbia Records Got Us Wasted

Song For A Girl I Just Met

If I Could Talk To You

Waiting For The Pills To Kick In

Everything Changes And Nothing Changes