The new album Over You is out now! Check Twin Cities record stores or the links on the music page if you want a copy. It's available on Itunes and at other download sites.NEWS
5/25 I've got some great shows coming up, A Steeplejack Reunion, an outdoor show downtown Minneapolis, and a live performance with a screening of the film I scored a couple years ago, My Movie Girl. Details on the show page.
2/10 My Movie Girl wins best soundtrack at the Lakedance Film Festival.
1/10 Wrapped production of Matt Larson's new album "Ghost Cave of the Black Mountain" due out spring '10
8/11 Returning to Bryant Lake Bowl Sept. 26, last show there sold out, get your tickets! www.bryantlakebowl.com
5/23 My Movie Girl, a feature-length romantic comedy which features an original score and several songs by me premiers June 6 in LA at the dances with films festival.
5/20 New Album "The Great I Don't Know Why" getting airplay on over one hundred fifty stations across the US
Tour Dairy
5/14 Portland, OR full club, good vibes, heading home.
5/11 SF, CA Club show attended by a porn star, a stunned internet sensation, and various great old friends.
5/9 San Francisco, CA Impromptu college reunion at the house concert tonight. great to see ya'll!
5/8 Los Angeles, CA Finally got to meet the man who directed and starred in the movie I scored last summer, My Movie Girl. A small but loving crowd at the show.
4/19 Columbia, MO Lovely rolling hills and a big, friendly crowd. life is good, heading home for a few weeks tomorrow.
4/18 Chicago, IL Two days off on an abandoned beach on Lake Michigan and now crowds and crowds of cubs fans. I get to see so many great old friends.
4/14 Cleveland, OH, I drove past hundreds of mansions on the way to the club, a nice comfortable dive.
4/12 Leonia, NJ drunk people last night, children tonight, crazies tomorrow.
4/11 Washington, DC A house concert at the 990 club just around the corner from the 930. Sometimes when I'm in DC I feel like I've come to a foreign country. Seems like everyone here hangs out with Senators all the time. At least I vote.
4/10 New York, NY As usual great time playing the East Village at Sidewalk.
4/8 Pennsylvania, 24 hours, one human interaction: a mountain man yelling at me very vigorously to drive away after I pulled off the road to use the phone. Woke up to snowfall on my tent, spent the morning meditating and collecting snow by a campfire on top of a mountain.
4/6 Detroit. last time I played Michigan, the Red Wings were winning the Stanley Cup while I played. Tonight Michigan plays for the NCAA basketball championship. I guess I'm a good omen...
4/5 Grinnell, Iowa, pop. 8000 the town I grew up in, about 100 times smaller than most of the cities on this tour, and guess what? I find amazing hospitality, inquistive people and yesterday this became the 3rd state in the U.S. to allow legal gay marriage. Hell yeah!
4/4 Madison, Wisconsin. I love Mother Fool's, you can tell when great people run a venue it permeates the place.
3/9 Thanks for making the CD release show a sell out and a great night!
2/25 I knocked out 4 TV and radio appearances in the last couple days and there's a cool article about the new record in City Pages this week. Hope to see you at some shows soon.
1/19 My newest album "The Great I Don't Know Why" is done and on the way. ready for release on February 24. It's got a plenty of joy and heartbreak, i'm very excited about it.
I'm planning on touring the Northern Midwest and East coast in April, maybe West Coast in May. I hope to see you in my travels.
I scored and placed several of my songs in a movie out of LA called "My Movie Girl" that should hit festivals later this year. The movie is very witty and has a big heart.
8/19 Just signed publishing deals with Original Source Music and Songs With Vision, so pretty soon I'll be rich and I can buy you all ice cream after my shows. Also, the documentary Carny for which I wrote and recorded the soundtrack just won "Best Documentary Short" at the Landlocked International Film Festival.
Hello, ya'll I haven't been updating much or playing many shows the last couple months 'cause I've got to write some songs so I can make another record so I can get out on the road again! Check the shows page though, I'll probably do Minneapolis and regional shows every couple months for a while.
The new album Over You is out now! Check Twin Cities record stores or the links on the music page if you want a copy. It's available on Itunes and at other download sites.
Tour diary
11/21 Seattle, WA: Beautiful town. cool little club. My mom came down from her mountain hideaway to see me. thanks, mom! touring's over for the fall. I feel great gratitude to all those who came out and shared the shows with me.
11/20 Portland, OR: second show in Portland was so great! a great reminder that it's not about me putting on a show, but about people coming together to have an experience. The people at Alberta Street Pub came to have a beautiful experience and it was way cool sharing it with them.
11/19 Portland, OR: I love driving through the mountains, when I got to my friend Will's house I was greeted by his two insanely cute (they're on the cover of Doc Watson's latest release) and very very talkative twins. A welcome but mind-warping change from ten hours in the car alone.Mississip studio show was great.
11/18 Sacramento and San Francisco: I'll admit to being a little fried. Many old friends emerged in San Fran and that really carried me through the show.
11/17 Santa Cruz, CA: I'm recalling that last time I did Santa Cruz to Seattle I was hitchiking. I'm a sellout in a rental now. the radio interviewer here blew my mind when I mentioned my old band Steeplejack, "oh, yeah you were on the Dejadisc label". Hell, I barely remember that far back.
11/16 Los Angeles, CA, I love the beach! it's cold on Minnesota's beaches right now, and there are definitely no surfers. the show in LA was great, there were too many insanely talented people to mention at the show. the drive up the pacific coast today was mind blowing; the pacific looks really big from atop a black, beetling five hundred foot cliff breasting the waves. I got get back to the sand. bye.
11/10 Duluth, MN, Well, after the world's longest radio interview at KUMD (not longest in terms of inane questions of which there were none and which honor I refrain from bestowing, but longest in terms of the clock) with a great DJ, I knocked out a club set to a very friendly crowd who gave me perhaps the most appropriate response ever to one of my rambling unplanned song introductions, a shouted "What?!!"
10/15 Iowa City and Grinnell, IA, and back home: what a killer trip. Best tour I've ever done, 4,000 miles, 14 shows, 16 days. I saw so many great old friends and met a ton of cool people. Extra props to those who kept the faith at the shows where the crowd was thin. Patrick Bloom is a great songwriter from Iowa City who I shared a bill with. My hometown show in Grinnell was very different, described by one attendee as "a rock concert for senior citizens". good people in Grinnell.
10/13 Saint Louis, MO beautiful old victorian buildings, very hospitable youngsters at the club show. very nice. driving into Iowa this morning I made the kind of discovery I only make while listening to lots of music driving cross-country alone: the connection between irregular rhythmic phrasing as used by the Carter Family, Beethoven, and Neil Young.
10/12 Indianapolis, IN A new experience! I've played hundreds of club shows and never had this one. I showed up and the owner hadn't gotten a P.A. no sound was a precusor to no show. I didn't leave without getting paid at least. The feelings were not so good; sometimes the nightclub world's a little dirty.
10/11 Dayton, OH Canal Street Tavern has great vibes, I've only played there three times, but it always feels like going home.
10/9 Boston, NYC, DC: oops, sorry I've been having so much fun I couldn't stop to type. D.C., NYC, Boston good stuff. The very enthusiastic if not very in tune sing along of Surrender by Cheap trick at Velvet Lounge D.C. was pretty great. My old Steeplejack accomplice Andy Sullivan's new band sounded great playing his material and backing me up, too.
10/6 Jersey shore: a guy next to me says "don't start thinking central Jersey's cool." Why not? I'd just climbed of the stage after sitting in for half a set with a local beatnik free-jazz band I met while I was doing me set an hour before. Oh, and the moon over the Atlantic in a briny breeze ain't bad either.
10/4 Pennsylvania,spent a beautiful night camping in a totally abandonded state park in the Pennsylvania mountains and then headed to Jersey for a house concert. Very interesting people arrived including a former president of BMI and a fellow who burned me some bootlegs of my heroes Elizabeth Cotton and Mississippi John Hurt and dropped them off this morning. off to Asbury Park tonight.
10/2: Cleveland, OH Ok, so I�m always poring over the local rags to see if I got any press when I�m on tour. It was really easy to find the write-up in the Cleveland Scene tonight. I was zipping over from a radio interview and got into the Barking Spider with just enough time to step into the bathroom before my show. I noted that the enterprising if not Martha Stewart approved management had lined the floor around the urinal with newspaper (kinda like a hamster cage) I also noticed I was standing on a big picture of my face next to a nice little article. Heartwarming�
10/1: my first Chicago show, a house concert, was great. I live for the moments when I and everyone in the room are exactly together with the song. It�s as if the air becomes thick with attention. Beautiful.
9/30:Madison, WI I was musing that there wasn�t too much to say about my tour. A fun show in Madison, good people�, but as I pulled off the freeway to enter Chicago I found myself faced with an eight story replica of the leaning tower of Pisa. Transcendence! America! I suppose I could mention that in Beloit, Wisconsin at 11:30 AM I was watching a Tibetan monk silently construct a sand mandala and at noon I was listening to a kick-ass gospel show as I ate up the miles to Chicago.
Here's the first radio stations that have Over You on their play list, feel free to call and request:
The Current 89.3 Minnesota
KFAI, Fresh Air, 91.1 Minneapolis
KAXE, up North, MN
KUMD, Duluth, MN
WCSB, Cleveland, OH
KDHX, St. Louis, MO
KANZ, Garden City, Kansas
KUSP, Santa Cruz, California
KUMN, coastal Oregon
KXCI, Tucson, AZ
WYEP, Pittsburgh, PA
WWSU, Dayton,OH
KXCI, Tucson, AZ
WRUW, Cleveland, OH
KVSC, Saint Cloud, MN
So many great people contributed to this project: John Schjolberg did this cool website. Mark Mallman, Joanna James, Brian O'Neil, and Peter Anderson all played/sang on the record. Jason Keillor handled the recording technology beautifully. Meleck Davis did design and Dan Corrigan shot the pictures, and many, many other people gave time and money to make this thing possible so, many thanks, and remember to support the arts!
Don't forget to Vote this November.