Many of the songs on Emerge are written on piano. Dale from our 80’s band Flying Color lent me one of the few pianos he would find at the Salvation Army. It lived in my home office long enough to write some songs, entertain friends, and ruin my relationship with the neighbors who would stomp on my ceiling. A piano is as loud as a drum set when I play it.

I found B-flat, E-flat, and C minor to be good-sounding key signatures for that piano matched with my fingers. So for the most part, that’s where I spent time endlessly learning how to write and play something I could get through to the end without messing up. The neighbor's stomping continued, notes in all caps were taped to my door.

​I realized this past weekend was the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, and was reminded that this is more of a moon song than I’m ever going to have, so here we are-

If I think about walking on the moon, the first thing that comes to mind is the spacesuit. The layers of insulation, the helmet, and those boots!  Clumsy, tentative steps of mankind, something I could relate to when I was putting together the ideas for Emerge.

This was written on a two-day solo camping trip in Santa Cruz, where I sat in a chair on the edge of a cliff playing guitar with a recording device taking down any old idea. I wrote hundreds of ideas and zero songs during this time, it seemed. I listened to a lot of music, however, and hiked a lot, and daydreamed for another good five years. This was one song that made it past the sketch stage, and tracked no fewer than three versions.

Far away and lost, writing onto a blank gray page. Feeling disconnected from myself and the world around me is nothing new. A friend and I were called into the high school principal’s office, then having answered a couple of questions about why I did some particular thing, the Principal stopped and yelled in my face, “you’re living in a FOG!” My punishment was several days of sitting in a detention room staring at dots on the acoustic ceiling tiles.

Like most things that I couldn’t understand or see, I just resigned myself to accepting it and continuing on into the fog. I may wander and get lost, but I end up in the right place eventually.

This song was meant to be on Emerge, but then I thought that maybe it didn’t fit. The “Grow up and start having fun” theme is incorporated into the intro.  

Before I had Converse sneakers, I wore the knock-off copies from W.T. Grant. Same with pants and underwear; Levi’s and Fruit of the Loom were something I’d only heard of. I had an off-brand bicycle that became my prosthetic legs for a few years. It had sparkly gold paint and a banana seat, with high handlebars and reflectors that immediately fell off. The ride to anywhere required climbing a hill that would give most of my friends a heart attack nowadays. I wanted to put a ski on the front wheel so I could ride in the wintertime. I cobbled a platform to attach a transistor radio on the handlebar stem. I could get AM stations WHEN and WFBL, and I couldn’t really pull in WOLF. Whoever was playing “Get Down” by Gilbert O’Sullivan or anything by Chicago had my ear. Nine-volt batteries were expensive even then, and they didn’t last long, especially if you accidentally left the radio on all night.

By the age of nine, I had destroyed a handful of record players. I wound up the spring on a Victrola until it snapped. I removed the tonearm on a player in order to place it on larger items like pie tins and serving platters, in case there was music in them to play. I remember standing upon the turntable of one, trying to spin around, just as my mom walked in the room. That was after I had spent my pre-phonograph years dancing to imaginary music coming out of dresser drawers and paper plates nailed to trees.

Many years ago, someone asked me, “What do you do?” and it was the first time I’d heard that. It’s a cliche that is apparently considered a bit rude to ask. I was dating into a (not quite) wealthy family, and someone’s wife started in with these questions. 

“What do you do?” she asked, loud enough for anyone to hear. I thought about it, as I’d never heard such a question in my twenty years before having this poolside chat. Someone came to my aid, and said, “His father owns Mobile Oil.” I thought to myself, well, my Dad has a gas station franchise, that’s close enough. I don’t know what I said, if anything, but I did sing a song of my own for everyone out by the pool right after that.

There was a point within a year of that incident where I wondered if I should say “I’m a musician,” or, “I work at Bud’s Shell,” or, “I crash parties in Pacific Heights, steal Ray-Bans...and do not suffer fools gladly.” It seemed false to claim being a musician when I paid my bills working as a cashier, wearing a shirt printed with my name. Over time, I found if I could stay alive at the level of poverty on my musician income, only then had I earned the title of Musician, for what that was worth.

Preparing to record a cover song is like climbing the ladder up to the diving board. I ascend to the platform, I see the pool. At the point of execution, I command my moment of performance with total commitment to what follows, without distraction. Uncertainty be damned; to hell with the rules. Dance, fly, turn, whatever you can pull off, but just make a good landing.

In the spring of 1996, Gary Frenay asked me to build a track behind a guide of him singing and playing guitar. He planned a cover version of “Blue Moon” from the Big Star Third album, and it had a place reserved on his next CD. Gary is from Syracuse, and his band The Flashcubes are legendary power pop kings of the late 1970s and beyond. I remember at 14 years old having an ice cream with my Dad. Outside the Baskin-Robbins, I looked up to to see a Flashcubes flyer stapled to a pole, and though I’d never been to a club, I knew then that I wanted to see or play in bands. There was no way I was going to that particular show, but within a year or two I was using a fake ID and getting into clubs. This was when a NY driver’s license was just a piece of paper that didn’t have a picture on it. We could have printed counterfeit money back in those days.

My first two albums came out on Heyday Records, founded by Pat Thomas, who released his records with the promotional slogan, “The folk revival starts here.” The label’s name was inspired by a Fairport Convention album. The idea of a recording artist with his own label impressed me. A few years later, Ron Gompertz, a local SF entrepreneur, invested in Heyday and ended up owning it. The roster then changed a bit from Barbara Manning, ex-Green On Red members and musical friends of Pat to an eclectic mix of local artists, including Connie Champagne and Jerry Shelfer. I like to believe it was me that drove Ron to leave the music business.

Ron once told me that with Heyday, he wanted to bring to full circle the original line up of artists that performed at the Acoustic Music Project show at the Full Moon Saloon in 1989, featuring several Heyday artists plus Mark Eitzel, Chuck Prophet, and a reformed Translator. A CD of the show was released with some more tracks recorded by Oliver DiCicco at Mobius Music (now the home of Decibelle Recording). It was an AIDS benefit, an idea cooked up by Ron and Denise Sullivan. They both had shops in the Haight–Ashbury and were music fans with some connections to the local scene. I was not invited to perform, but then neither was Aldo Blissboy Perez. Barry Simons got involved, brought in Alex Chilton.

Everyone loves a re-do, a make over, another chance. They say lightning never strikes the same place twice, you can’t go home, nothing deader than a dead love, no ins and outs. I put this in the same boat as having reached the point of no return.

If only I could have gone back ten or twenty years and changed a few choices, made better use of time, avoided some people, learned a couple languages, maybe I’d be better off. I could go back a month in time and change something I’d done and I imagine that would set me up so much better for this week.

If we had time machines, or an “undo” function. All I can imagine is all the bad luck that could creep in. Playing back last week alone, redone– I’d fall in front of a BART train, I’d poke my eye with a guitar string, an old lady would back her car over my foot, or I’d eat the salmon mousse after it had gone bad. I’ll keep last week, along with the cold I caught.

In my dreams, I can never throw a punch. My arms move slowly and stop before connecting. Maybe everything in dreams is slowed down. Last night I dreamt I was shaving and cut open my chest, and inside the wound, I saw my heart beating. Either I need a new razor, or I’m trying to get something out.

My school bus ride as a kid was short in the morning, since they picked us up after doing a loop along the river, but nearly an hour going home. I could walk the three miles in less time, and certainly less hassle. My brother was already a marked target for mild abuse, and so they had it in for me on my first day of middle school. One day I was hit on the back of my head with a hammer. A steel hammer, to the head. If everyone on the bus was hit once with the hammer, I might not have taken it personally. I later took my revenge on the bus seats, slashing them open with a knife.

The cat upstairs is friendly — aggressively so — and comes meowing around loudly from time to time. She’s got a long loud meow, more like a crow, her eyes are slightly crossed, her name is Irma. The cat first came around a couple of years ago, wandered down from the flat upstairs that has a constant flow of tenants coming and going. She wasn’t always meowing, however. If I opened a door on a warm day, I’d not be surprised to look up from my desk and see the cat sneaking around my apartment, sniffing extension cords, rubbing up against guitars and stacks of papers. 

I would shoo her out. I don’t want a cat, nor the fur or anything else she might leave behind. She crept in many times, making it a game we’d play- cat sneaks in, I gently throw her out. One day as I was leaving, I found her perched on the back of a couch, looking out the window. I put her out and two minutes later she was right back in the same spot, napping. Game over. The door stayed closed. 

This was my first 45 rpm release in Japan. John Wesley Harding and I were invited there to tour in 1999; three different labels released two CDs and this single that week. We were given the royal treatment, hosted dinners every night, fans lined up politely for autographs, and I had my own CD listening station in the Tower records. I loved the attention, but on the other hand, I didn’t know what to do with it. That is to say, going into it, I didn’t understand Japanese culture and the delicate matter of minding your manners. I knew to bring gifts there, but then I gave gifts of my own albums to our hosts.

The recording of “Unkind” was more involved than usual, as I was being ambitious after having recorded Wood + Wire with a full band and hired studios rather than recording at home mostly by myself. Dennis Diken happened to be in town with The Smithereens, so I got to thinking...why not recreate the Wood + Wire recording ensemble scenario that worked before? It’s not so easily done, actually. I begged Dennis to make time on his day off to record, and eventually he went for it, nice guy.