Audio Vérité

Orson Welles once said "The absence of limitations is the enemy of art." I get it. Struggle is the creative pressure that results in the artistic diamond. To that end, I assemble songs and albums much like a low budget filmmaker crafts their films. I use whatever resources I can scrounge up in order to translate my ideas into works of art. I consider myself a visual songwriter more concerned with the overall message of a song than with the sound. Each one of my songs is like a little movie. I'm not looking for perfection. I'm looking for truth. 


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Sandbox

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I never much liked playing live shows. The heavy lifting, the heavy egos, the heavy drama. Whatever sense of connection or artistic satisfaction I may squeeze out of a gig, the general feelings of futility and animosity would accumulate tenfold, drowning out whatever fleeting fun I may have achieved by standing on a stage, lawn, or concrete floor and belting out my songs to an audience of the sometimes appreciative, occasionally confused, and usually indifferent. On certain special occasions there would be bands on the bill who are openly hostile to my bewildered presence and I have to either throw a punch, or eat their lunch, depending on my mood. That's not who I want to be or what I want to do as a musician, or as an artist. I am proud to be in my Brian Wilson playing piano in a sandbox period, and I will likely remain this way until my dying day. Let my recordings be that groovy performance of mine that you attend, and maybe hangout with me afterwards, laughing and drinking, bu...
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"You may not care about politics, but politics cares about you!" they bark.  This banal retort generally follows the exasperated phrase "I don't care about politics."  We live in an era of generalizations and blanket statements. This is where nuance goes to die. Of course we care about politics. We understand on a basic level the relationship between our personal prosperity and our political choices, but we as citizens don't always wish to explain or defend ourselves against an increasingly nosey and radicalized society. The same goes for musicians who choose not to insert political messages into their songs. I've always seen political discourse as a creative dead end. I'm simply not interested in showing the world every card in my ideological deck, and you can't make me.  This refusal to engage doesn't mean I'm not engaged, it merely means that my beliefs are none of your business, unless I wish them to be. That's the power of the in...
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