spilling over the side

live 105 in-studio performance and interview

2008-10-09T21:12:00.001-07:00

Click below to hear me playing America on Live 105.3FM in San Francisco 0n 9/28/08:

...And the interview that followed it:

i voted today

2008-10-06T20:33:00.000-07:00

And I gotta say it felt pretty good.

You can vote early in many states, but times and locations differ per county. A good site to reference for information in your part of the country is vote411.com

temperament

2008-10-06T00:14:00.000-07:00

Two long articles I've been pointed to this weekend that are worth a read:

"McCain was not only a lousy student, he had his father's taste for drink and a darkly misogynistic streak. The summer after his sophomore year, cruising with a friend near Arlington, McCain tried to pick up a pair of young women. When they laughed at him, he cursed them so vilely that he was hauled into court on a profanity charge."

From "Make Believe Maverick" -- Rolling Stone's cover story on John McCain.

"At a moment of economic calamity, international perplexity, political failure, and battered morale, America needs both uplift and realism, both change and steadiness. It needs a leader temperamentally, intellectually, and emotionally attuned to the complexities of our troubled globe. That leader’s name is Barack Obama."

From "The Choice" -- The New Yorker's Endorsement of Obama

keating economics

2008-10-05T11:45:00.000-07:00

McCain and $124 Billion in taxpayer's money

dead squirrels

2008-10-05T01:14:00.000-07:00

All this week, I saw dead squirrels along the road - piles of brown fur split open in crimson lines that, just to look, felt like a rush of little feet down my spine.

Not that roadkill is an oddity here, but it tends to only be nocturnal creatures, and the occasional house cat, that draw the deep sigh. This week was different though, but we all know this week was fucked.

The first few squirrels didn't phase me, didn't turn any wheels for me, but as the numbers grew, as my stomach became accustomed, I thought it through. When I was driving the last few days - and I felt the world with me -I would put on a record as I started my car, and maybe halfway through the first cut, I would drift away, and arriving at my destination, maybe five or six songs deep, I would turn off the engine with no recollection of hearing anything but that first half of that first track. The thoughts were so loud they drowned out the music. I could picture all the drivers around me, pulling off the freeway and winding towards home, without seeing, on instinct alone. The uncertainty was too deafening to hear the lyrics, too blinding to see the squirrel scurrying across the street.

Everyone was getting sick, everyone felt off. Outside the coffee shop, eavesdropping on conversations, a man said he couldn't explain it, he went for his run but felt no endorphins. I called my friend to get a beer, and he had been in bed all day with the flu. I asked my brother if he wanted to join us for dinner but he just needed to get back to the East Bay and take it easy, he was coming down with something.

And the sky began to thicken, and by Wednesday it was overcast. The pressure built and built, and I watched the debate standing up, pacing around the kitchen, drinking glass after glass of wine, picking at the appetizers that had been moved hours before from the coffee table to beside the sink. The headlines, worldwide, ranged from bleak to frightening, and the television blared, and the conversations, all the same, ended where they began, yet somehow days still passed minute by minute, thought by thought.

We went to the festival in Golden Gate Park last night. It is somehow always November past 18th Avenue, but something else was cold. Walking from the inside of the crowd, away from the stage, I looked into the multitude of passing faces, young and old, and got that sensation, that empathy for everyone merely for being human and imperfect and vulnerable, and I could see the hope in their eyes, however thin, and I stood there in the midst of thousands of familiar strangers, twisting my head around, digging my fingers into the muscle, trying to work out the knot in my neck.

There is something comforting about shit hitting the fan for everyone at once. Life comes with its ups and downs regardless, and it's sort of nice to know that we're all going through this one together.

While I looked for parking near the restaurant later, my friend texted me to say she'd been laid off. Then she called, and when I finally found a space, I called her back, and she talked it out while I waited for a table. She was taking it well, recognizing aloud how these things are often an opportunity - the turning points, the thresholds, the "...only makes you strongers."

The meal was incredible, and every third joke referenced Sarah Palin, and every fourth joke referenced Sarah Palin in some sort of compromising sex act, and outside the pressure continued to build, and as I laughed loud, the knot in my neck still continued to tighten, and when we walked out, aimless, onto Valencia, the sky opened up, and in the glow of the streetlights we could see the static of the first rain of the season beginning to fall.

rite spot

2008-09-30T00:34:00.000-07:00

*videos by BRL

**cello by Lewis

soundcheck

2008-09-28T14:21:00.000-07:00

I'll be on Live 105 tonight around 8:30PM pst to talk a little and play some songs.

105.3FM in The Bay Area.

live105.com to stream worldwide

register to vote

2008-09-27T13:29:00.001-07:00

YOU NEED TO BE REGISTERED TO VOTE BY THE BELOW DATES (Depending on your state)

I just write songs and sing them, so make sure to double-check this info on the home page of your home state's Secretary Of State.

ALSO If you go to school in a swing state but are registered in clearly blue or red state (or visa-versa), your vote is certainly quite valuable to the swing state.

Alabama - Fri, Oct. 24
Alaska - Sun, Oct. 5 (postmark by Sat, Oct. 4)
Arizona - Mon, Oct. 6
Arkansas - Mon, Oct. 6
California - Mon, Oct. 20
Colorado - Mon, Oct. 6
Connecticut - Tues, Oct. 21
Delaware - Sat, Oct. 11
District of Columbia - Mon, Oct. 6
Florida - Mon, Oct. 6
Georgia - Mon, Oct. 6
Hawaii - Mon, Oct. 6
Idaho - You Can Register at Polls
Illinois - Tues, Oct. 7
Indiana - Mon, Oct. 6
Iowa - Fri, Oct. 24 (or on Election Day at polling place)
Kansas - Mon, Oct. 20
Kentucky - Mon, Oct. 6
Louisiana - Mon, Oct. 6
Maine - Tue, Oct. 21 (or on Election Day at polling place)
Maryland - Tue, Oct. 14
Massachusetts - Wed, Oct. 15
Michigan - Mon, Oct. 6
Minnesota - Same Day Registration at polling place
Mississippi - Mon, Oct. 6
Missouri - Wed, Oct. 8
Montana - Mon, Oct. 6 (or same day at elections office)
Nebraska - Fri, Oct. 24 (mail by Fri, Oct. 17)
Nevada - Tue, Oct. 14
New Hampshire - Same Day
New Jersey - Tues, Oct. 14
New Mexico - Tues, Oct. 7
New York - Fri, Oct. 10
North Carolina - Fri, Oct. 10
North Dakota - N/A
Ohio - Mon, Oct. 6
Oklahoma - Fri, Oct. 10
Oregon - Tue, Oct. 14
Pennsylvania - Mon, Oct. 6
Rhode Island - Sat, Oct. 4
South Carolina - Sat, Oct. 4
South Dakota - Mon, Oct. 20
Tennessee - Mon, Oct. 6
Texas - Mon, Oct. 6
Utah - Mon, Oct. 6 or in person Tue, Oct. 28
Vermont - Wed, Oct. 29
Virginia - Mon, Oct. 6
Washington - Sat, Oct. 4 (or until Mon, Oct. 20 in person)
West Virginia - Wed, Oct. 15
Wisconsin - Wed, Oct. 15 (or on Election Day at polling place)
Wyoming - You Can Register At Polls

after the debate

2008-09-25T01:47:00.000-07:00

I'll be stopping through Dizzy Balloon's CD release show this Friday at Bottom Of The Hill in SF to play a song or two, and have a drink.

If you're in the area...

my birthday theory

2008-09-24T00:28:00.000-07:00

MILK IT!

Everyone gets one every year, so it is only fair that you demand special treatment on your own day/week/month. Tell everyone and don't be embarrassed by the attention they give you. You'll do the same for them on their birthday.

Simple as that.

my birthday

2008-09-19T01:20:00.000-07:00

Ashley dropped me off at my car, parked where we had left it the previous night, before the sun dried up the effects of the whiskey through the living room windows of her Los Feliz apartment, where I awoke on the couch.

What I looked upon as she drove off to work, which I had failed to see through the darkness and drunkeness, was row after row of Victorian houses, in various states of preservation. I slid the burned copy of the new Kings of Leon record from my pocket into my CD player, and with the windows all down in the warmth of the morning, I slowly edged through the neighborhood, looking at the details, the shingles, the moldings, the ironwork, the colors of paint, the shape of the windows, and I let it bring me gradually down to Echo Park Lake.

I parked the car across the street, and walked towards the water, the fountain spraying off behind the boathouse, where joggers and families and men with fishing-rods and shirtless bums passed along the walkway, across the lawns, under the palm trees. I hadn't had a chance yet, to digest Twenty-Four. I had yet to take a deep breath and see if it felt or tasted any different, if my perspective had changed, if any meaning had altered beneath the surface overnight.

Walking around the lake, I focused on the geese, moving slowly along the edge of the water or bobbing idly on the soft current. I found one spotted in black, only it's neck and chest pure with white feathers, and I smiled. I liked that goose. I could relate to that goose. I always relate to the odd-man-out, to the underdog. If I were a goose, I would be that black goose, not disfigured, not ugly, not standing out in a flash, but individual, and trying to own it, trying to live a happy goose's life despite the inconsistency of it's plumage, proudly displaying its flaws.

I rounded the lake, looking off, and across, and listening, focusing on my new number, and the first moments of a fresh age.

Sitting down along the bank, a mother and son walked up and sat down beside me. Pleasantly ignoring each other, I watched as she opened a bag of bread crumbs, and he reached in his little hand, and with all his might, scattered a fist full of stale bread into the water before us.

Immediately there were geese, and then coots, clicking their beaks, and beside me a little deformed blackbird hopped towards us on one foot, cocking his head to one side and the other, and then the pigeons swarmed, and the little boy threw another handful out into the water, and another and then one out over the pigeons on the grass, until all of the big chunks of bread were gone. His mother poured out the small flakes left in the bag, and the pigeons closed in while she took her son by the hand and continued down the path.

The birds dissipated, and I pulled out my phone and texted everyone. I told them where and when, and I sat by the lake as long as it felt right, making some calls I had to make, taking care of some business, and taking a minute and taking it in. I was in no hurry.

At some point I looked at the clock on my phone and it was 11:11, so I made a wish.

It's funny, I used to wish for grandiose or distant fantasies, things that come only to few, and make everyone itch just a little, and I made a lot of those wishes come true -- I mean, the things I have seen and done that I haven't found an inspiration to write down here, the stories and stories I have to tell, without much of anything to show for it... -- The difference on the morning of my Twenty-Fourth birthday, was this: When prompted to make a wish, I wished for something that is simple, is available to anyone who desires to make the effort to recognize it, and to practice it, and appreciate it, because life isn't all about the stories you have to tell, its about living it...

Eventually I got back in my car, and began driving home. It was a long drive. On the day I turned 23, I drove down to LA. On the day I turned 24, I drove back. It was a rebuilding year, a year for sorting and for inventory, to filter out the habits and conditions of the previous years, to set a good foundation for those to come. I thought a lot on the ride and was sleepy when I arrived back in Oakland so I fell asleep for a while before heading across the bridge.

When I got over there, I walked into the bar right on time, right when I told everyone I would be there, and stepping out the back door, I looked at the mass of people drinking on long picnic tables, heard the sound of a hundred voices, and the crunch of gravel under feet. Feeling like I shouldn't be there and not knowing if my friends were somewhere in that crowd, I turned around, hurried past the bouncer, out the front door, and down Valencia.

I stopped in front of a brand new coffee shop, lit up behind steel gates. It was beautiful, and kept thinking about how much I would like to see it as a feature in a nice glossy interior design publication. I looked at the shapes of the tables and the counter, at the roasting machinery in the back, tasteful art on the walls of the tall and open room, until a woman stopped beside me while her dog inspected a tree, and I felt a little too conspicuous dissecting a closed coffee shop.

I came to an alley down the way, the buildings on either side framing the near full moon which lit the murals and the graffiti pieces on the walls, and the scattered trash on the pavement, and I stopped and appreciated it.

At 16th street, I watched people pass for a few minutes, and the cars at the stoplights, and I began to get impatient, and turned back around again.

Back at the bar I found my close friends, all tied by a thread of common interest. All of us are so different, and there must be some underlying sensation that we all share, something that pushes us all to allow music to define our lives, but I am still shocked that I find myself again and again with these same guys, and girls, that we keep showing up, keep supporting one another. The opening track on my new album is called, "Every Time I Leave (I Leave For Good)," and I am now realizing more than ever that there is no tie that can be severed, however you try to break it, or abandon it.

We got pitchers of beer, so dark that you can't see through it - just like I like it - and we drank and more and more people showed up, and I would jump from my seat, and give them a hug, more excited to see them, seemingly, than they were to see me. Everyone broke into their own little discussions, and I was happy to have been the reason to bring everyone together on that particular night.

At some point Aaron looked up at the sky and back at me, and said, "Hey, you wanted it to be a clear night tonight, and it looks like you got it." And he continued by pointing out the orange and blue light on the steel beams holding up the freeway overpass beyond the concrete walls of the courtyard.

I keep reading this poem again, and again

2008-09-15T11:39:00.000-07:00

Return To Krakow In 1880

So I returned here from the big capitals,

To a town in a narrow valley under the cathedral hill

With royal tombs. To a square under the tower

And the shrill trumpet sounding noon, breaking

Its note in half because the Tartar arrow

Has once again struck the trumpeter.

And pigeons. And the garish kerchiefs of women selling flowers.

And groups chattering under the Gothic portico of the church.

My trunk of books arrived, this time for good.

What I know of my laborious life: it was lived.

Faces are paler in memory than on daguerreotypes.

I don't need to write memos and letters every morning.

Others will take over, always with the same hope,

The one we know is senseless and devote our lives to.

My country will remain what it is, the backyard of empires,

Nursing its humiliation with provincial daydreams.

I leave for a morning walk tapping with my cane:

the places of old people are taken by new old people

And where the girls once strolled in their rustling skirts,

New ones are strolling, proud of their beauty.

And children trundle hoops for more than half a century.

In a basement a cobbler looks up from his bench,

A hunchback passes by with his inner lament,

Then a fashionable lady, a fat image of the deadly sins.

So the Earth endures, in every petty matter

And in the lives of men, irreversible.

And it seems a relief. To win? To lose?

What for, if the world will forget us anyway.

-Czeslaw Milosz

(translated by Milosz and Robert Hass)

Found in A New Path To The Waterfall by Raymond Carver

this week

2008-09-12T22:58:00.000-07:00

Kicking off my birthday week with a last minute show tomorrow night at The Rite Spot -- 17th at Folsom in San Francisco. 6:30pm.

On the 16th, I'm celebrating with all of my LA friends at The Echo in Echo Park -- around 9pm. I'll be 24 at Midnight.

I'll be back in the bay area for my birthday night. You may find me stumbling on some moonlit city street in the early morning hours of The 18th.

And I'll be around The Treasure Island Festival next weekend to wind it all down.

Remind me later this week to post my theory on how best to handle your own Birthday...

how it will be

2008-09-07T23:27:00.000-07:00

When I first began to tour, and the shows got bigger, and the stakes seemed higher, I began to develop a visceral stage fright.

"You never know how it will be until you get on stage," I would tell myself.

That mantra crept into my days, and began to apply to other experiences -- nothing occurs the same way twice. Everyone realizes that in their own way, I think, but I tend to forget.

Last night when we arrived to the smell of cheap beer and 1,000 red plastic cups, crushed cans and empty liquor bottles, I had planned not to drink, planned not to stay long. I had been bombing recently you could say, and I didn't want that hangover, that shipwrecked feeling of being wasted and wanting to drive somewhere, wanting to read something, wanting to string together full sentences.

Six hours later, when we were standing on the top of the hill, looking out over the lights of the bay area, like circuits in a vast motherboard, and the whiskey had been passed around, and I had been talked into playing half of my songs, and volunteered all of the covers, all the hits from the nineties, and after the shots of bourbon and Jaeger, and after following my ride across a wet suburban lawn to the car, drunk clear to that place where you feel sober again - and everything feels important, my shirt was still wet from breaking up the fight between the two covered in liquor, bleeding from the arms and mouth. And standing there beneath the silhouette of a telephone pole against the sky, dusted with stars, and the long black strands of power lines --I had to say that I felt pretty good.

You really never know how it will be.

myth

2008-09-01T22:22:00.000-07:00

I do not believe that suffering is of any necessity to an artist.
(I may have at one time)
I am sufficiently educated in sadness, have a deep enough well of knowledge -- having a fortunate life by any account, that I could never again feel the tug of sorrow, and still get up each morning, and work each day, without handicap.

new photos

2008-09-01T01:32:00.000-07:00

All shots by Matthew Ginnard

not just knowing it, but feeling it

2008-08-28T23:40:00.001-07:00

I was at my folk's house today painting the walls of my old room. I was attacking a corner of the wall cast in shadow, and I was frustrated not being able to see if I'd covered it. From the half open door, a stream of sunlight and the broadcast of The Convention were seeping in.

"Awww Shawn Johnson is saying The Pledge Of Allegiance!" My Mom hollered from the other room.

"What? Who?!" I hollered back.

"The little gymnast!"

"Oh."

Typical of such a moment, I went back to painting and asked myself why that would matter to me. I didn't pay the Olympics any attention, and I hadn't cared about the pledge of allegiance since way before I knew what "indivisible" meant.

Right then, an image came in my head of my buddies and I at an A's game in 2005, sitting and continuing our conversation while people rose around us and stood quiet for The National Anthem. When it was finished, a man, probably in his seventies, turned around and scolded us.

"How dare you!" He said, as we looked up at him blankly.

"Don't you have any respect for this country?!" He asked.

"Oh... Sorry." We muttered half-heartedly.

We knew the song had meaning, but we didn't feel it.

When I was a kid I'd go to maybe twenty games a year with my Dad, and I remember the power of gospel singers delivering The Anthem in the hot sun before packed Sunday afternoon games back when the A's were contenders year after year, and I was too young, and the words and ritual were merely tradition.

My Dad and I have only made it to one game this year. It was a cold Monday night and they were playing Kansas City. I looked out at the players lined up along the first base line with their hats off, and back up at the scattering of fans in the stands while a tired recording of The Anthem's melody echoed around the ballpark. I stood respectfully, but felt no connection.

My friend Adam and I managed to get ourselves arrested in a protest in San Francisco the day after we invaded Iraq. The intellectual reasoning behind our involvement was real, but we confessed to one another later as we were walking down The Embarcadero, having been released from the warehouse-dock come holding-cell, that we were drawn to the protest for the experience of it just as much as we were drawn by our disgust. It felt big and important to be protesting, but the war was so far away. I knew I was losing something that day and I needed to do something about it, but I cannot say I felt it.

As the broadcast went on through the afternoon, speech after speech, and as the walls of the room began to fill with fresh paint, I listened to the television through the door, and as I thought about how exciting the last few days have been, I considered my own generation's lack of identity as Americans and how high the stakes really are.

I considered that going through this together might finally give us something in common to share and be proud of.

Sometimes my Mom or Dad will express concern for the country to make it to the polls, to actually vote, and I keep telling them, "Maybe you don't see it in your friends, but you aren't seeing what I'm seeing in my friends. This is the first time we've ever been through anything like this! There are four years worth of new voters, and there are four more years worth of kids that regret not voting last time around, and there is a current, and a pulse, and an anxiety in all of us! This is ours! This is our chance to feel an ownership of this country, to have an identity attached to it! This is important and we know it, and everyone wants to feel responsible for it, everyone wants to be a part of it! WE GOT THIS!"

My dad got home and I put down the brush for the day and my parents walked the dog and I played the piano for a while. When they returned, while Bill Richardson and Al Gore spoke and as the teacher and trucker and pet store owner talked, my Dad praised the entitlement that everyone carried themselves with. My Mom praised the reclamation of the American Flag for everyone. I pointed out that despite the pressure of talking in front of the whole world, all of the speakers, however experienced, had such conviction their voices. It was surprising, and maybe the genuine need for their words to be said just smothered their stage fright.

I guess Obama's speech lasted close to an hour. I had no concept of time. I felt something I had never quite felt before. It was the same feeling I felt when I woke up on September 11th to the falling towers, but flipped around -- with a positive charge instead of negative. It was the feeling of actually being there, in a moment that history will recall again and again. I was feeling it.

We started clapping and cheering right there in the living room.

My Aunt called after the speech. I picked up the phone. She was leaving Mile High Stadium, had just watched everything from the nose-bleeds, and while she drove back to her place she told me about the rush of seeing it all in the stadium, of the vulnerability of being in the crowd with the wind blowing and the uncertainty of such an unprecedented event. She told me that the stadium floors are constructed of metal and of the overwhelming reverberation of thousands of feet stomping in excitement. She told me about accidentally finding herself behind a group of protesters last night, and scuffing out sidewalk chalk messages that said, "Abortion is Murder" as she passed, and finding unexpected applause from onlookers as she reached the end of the block. And finally, knowing that I never like to be just like everyone else, she assured me that, "conformity is okay if its for something good."

I left the house to meet up with my buddy Adam. On my way I stopped at my apartment to change out of my paint-splattered shirt. Outside my window, the warm night was buzzing unusually. There was a live jazz band playing in a bar across the street and pleasant chatter on the patio in front. As I waited for him at another bar downtown, I listened as people talked only about the speech, and when he arrived, I said, "It's such a nice night, I wish we could get a drink outside."

"How about this," he said. "Let's get some beers and brown bags at 7-11 and walk to the lake."

"Perfect!"

We stood out on an old dock, the lights of downtown reflecting in the water before us, and as we talked about the distance from high school, about the countless realizations of growing into adults, I couldn't shut up about how exciting the night had felt. Last year, Adam was all about Obama, and I was wavering. I thought it was risky. I wasn't convinced until I was sitting in the back seat of a car in Quito, Ecuador last January when the driver said to me, "It looks like you might have a Black president -- That would show a lot to us." I was convinced then, clearly seeing what sets him apart as a strength. It is sort of fortunate, I think, that Bush swung the pendulum so far in the wrong direction that we are able to nominate the right person to swing it back, and that we are at such a significant fork in the road that he can be granted the courage to deliver the speech he gave tonight.

While we walked back along the lake, back towards downtown, I told Adam that before putting out my new song, I had planned to not make a big deal about the election. I wanted to just let it speak for itself and not say anything more. I had not written it specifically for this, and I didn't want to get involved in the decision beyond casting my own vote.

"Tonight, though..." I told him, "I don't just know it -- I feel it, and I'm not going to be able to keep my mouth shut."

villains

2008-08-28T01:30:00.000-07:00

Kurt Vonnegut would probably be my favorite author if I could ever settle on a favorite anything... I was pulling out this quote from Slaughterhouse-Five today for someone I was thinking of, and I thought I'd post it. I think I've posted it before, but I'll probably post it every time I pull it out for anybody.

"I think about my education sometimes. I went to the University of Chicago for a while after the Second World War. I was a student in the Department of Anthropology. At that time, they were teaching that there was absolutely no difference between anybody. They may be teaching that still.

Another thing they taught was that nobody was ridiculous or bad or disgusting. Shortly before my father died, he said to me, "You know -- you never wrote a story with a villain in it."

I told him that was one of the things I learned in college after the war. "

the dnc

2008-08-27T02:38:00.000-07:00

Such a rush watching the convention speeches the last two nights.

Such a rush to be here during such an important moment.

I can't shake the goose-bumps.

my saturday night

2008-08-26T01:07:00.000-07:00

Justin called me at 4pm on Saturday saying that he had found me a pass for Outside Lands, to get over there right away. An hour and a half later, I was at the entrance, meeting him, and walking into the festival. He had to go work for another one of his artists, so I wandered around, got an expensive but tasty vegan-hummas-wrap-thing, a good cup of coffee, and saw The Walkmen. From there, I caught Matt Nathanson's set from sidestage and during the final song, crept out onto the polo field, and under the canopy of fast moving fog overhead, I set out to find a good spot for Tom Petty.

I had always been a casual fan of Petty's, but in the last few years, his album Wildflowers has become the piece of music that centers me when I'm off balance. It has been playing in the background of so many different experiences now, has become associated with so many different moments come memories, that the feeling I get when I hear it is just a cross-section of the feeling of who I am, of all the things I'm made of.

I almost got to see him on my birthday in 2006 when we played the Austin City Limits festival, but we got booked on a cool show with Murder By Death in Oklahoma City on night he headlined. I have been waiting for an opportunity since.

I ran into my friend Peter and walked with him into the VIP section, a nice triangle of space near the front of the big stage where people who had acquired a specific green wristband could watch the show from darn close. The set began, and I started singing: You wreck me baby! Yes you do! I didn't feel like I was near enough though, so I said goodbye and began pushing my way up through the crowd, towards the barrier, where the entire festival pressed with all its force.

I wriggled up to the front, with only a hundred or so people in front of me, with my head back, yelling along: Even the losers get lucky sometimes!

He started into Free Fallin' and I stood on my toes, twisting my head around looking back at the sea of singing faces behind me, then back up at the stage. I could see everything. It was a good spot, but I had this feeling, like an itch, that I could do better. I turned around, and eased my way back toward the exit of the VIP section. Thousands and thousands of mouths moving: And I'm a bad boy, for breaking her heart...

My pass wasn't good to get me into the back of the main stage, but I figured I could reason with the security gaurd, tell her what a big moment this was for me, and maybe she'd listen. Approaching her, though, I found that she was already having that discussion with someone else. I stopped a few feet away, not sure what to do. All of a sudden, three people with passes around their necks that I had never even seen, rushed past us. She waved them by, and as she turned back to the Petty fan that was hassling her, I slipped by with them.

When I was nineteen, I spent a summer out of college as a roadie for a friend's band on a festival tour, and I've played enough of them to know where to stand, to know how to keep my cool. Security guards are people too. If you look like you belong, then you do belong.

I was back and I felt like I was in the clear. I looked up at the giant stage ahead of me. Generally there is a side of the stage for guitar techs and stage managers, for sound and lighting people, and a side of the stage for people to just watch. I was on the technical side, but there was no security beside the stairs, so I walked with all the purpose I could, right on up.

Everyone was in the shadows on the side of the stage, but where it opened up to the festival, to the masses crowded on the grass of the polo field, it was lit as bright as it could get, and there was Mike Campbell, and behind him, at the mic, was Petty.

I slid into corner, and pulled out my phone, texting Justin that I was on stage, figuring that would make me look like I had better things to do than watch the show, so I must belong up there, but immediately, a stage manager approached me.

"You CANNOT be here!" he said, as I looked up at him blankly, "Let me show you where you can watch from..."

And he led me around the back curtain, to stage-right, where a few paces from Benmont Tench, I could lean on a barrier beside some folks that I recognized from... well... from them being classic songwriters and musicians and whatnot, and looked out at fifty, maybe sixty, maybe seventy thousand people, trying to seem as composed as I could, while I drummed my hands on my chest, while I listened to the cheers rising from football fields away and stared out at all of the faces, red or green or blue in the concert lights, and felt the rush of it all while I sang along: Take it easy baby, make it last all night! And I didn't move until the band left the stage and piled into the waiting limos behind, which took off and disappeared as quickly as the band had taken the stage.

I walked off feeling as comfortable in my own skin as I ever have. I was grounded, and reminded myself of something that I always tell people, but don't always tell myself - that if you want something bad enough, you'll find a way to make it happen. And as I said to Justin later, "I'm as big of a music fan as they come, so if you give me an inch, well..."

america

2008-08-24T11:16:00.000-07:00

I'm releasing a new single. It's called America. It's free. It's yours. You can listen to it right now at davesmallen.com/america. There you can also download it, forward it, and get linked to a couple good causes you can donate to if you'd like to get me back for it.

I wrote America in October 2006 after getting home from my first national tour. I consider it a personal song, not a political song, but I want to release it now while people are very concerned about our country, which I think is actually a beautiful thing.

dave smallen

2008-08-23T15:31:00.000-07:00

After finishing my new album about six or seven weeks ago, I drove back from Hollywood to Oakland, listening again and again to what I'd recorded. I had been working towards that moment for a full year, and hearing it back, it didn't sound like Street to Nowhere. There was so much distance from all of the incarnations of my music that I had placed under that name. What was coming through my car stereo felt like a fresh start. It felt like... well... me.

I will of course continue to play stuff from Charmingly Awkward. I love those songs and am so proud of all of the work that went into that record, but I am really excited about shaking the band name. It is sort of scary, sort of vulnerable, I'm finding already, to put yourself out there as you are, as you have always been, but It's time.

on the bridge last night, coming home

2008-08-17T23:45:00.000-07:00

Leaving the bar last night, I asked my friend if he needed a ride home. He first offered to take the bus, but realizing what a long hassle that would be for him at that hour, I gave him a ride up to Divisidero from Downtown.

Around 2:30 I was on the freeway, heading towards The Bay Bridge, feeling satisfied with the events of the evening, not a pull from either San Francisco or Oakland, just moving along towards my bed as I do most nights.

The ride was smooth until just beyond Treasure Island where the bridge became lit up red with brake lights and traffic skidded to a complete standstill. Quickly, I slowed into the gridlock. I could tell something was abnormally wrong and pulled into the far right lane, as close as I could bring my car to the heavy bolts protruding from the steel railings of the bridge, while to the left of me everything was flashing blue and red, cars were inching sideways to clear the way for a fire truck, slowly pushing it's way through, an ambulance following behind.

The horns and sirens echoed off of the ceiling of the lower deck, and up above, cars heading towards San Francisco rattled as they passed by, and the bridge would settle now and again, as if it were complaining, letting out a creaking moan and then a sigh. Dozens of stereos were mixing together, as the bar crowd, spilling out from North Beach and Downtown, The Mission and The Marina, became stuck all at once together.

A pickup passed by me, and the driver yelled, "Don't I know you," and kept going, then there was a sedan, with a tired looking black man, driving alone with the windows up, and then a coup full of blonde girls, laughing, pulsing with dance music, and speeding in behind the clearing left by the ambulance was a chromed out green SUV, vibrating with bass, a kid in a white t-shirt, sitting on the roof, his legs dangling in the sunroof, his friends with their doors opening, stepping out beside the car as it stopped. The concerned scoffed and clenched their teeth, the like-minded shouted at them over the idling engines. I knew we were all about to see something very fucked up, but looking at the scene, I had to laugh.

Sometimes it would be moving, and sometimes it would be a dead standstill. I would pull my emergency brake and sit up on my open window, squinting forward to see if I could see the end, turning around to watch more fire trucks and ambulances pressing towards me between the myriad of vehicles. I would duck back in and inch forward when traffic would move again, or when lane-splitting motorcycles were coming, engines roaring to warn of their approach. At breakfast today, Sarah told me she saw East Bay Rats carrying paramedics on the backs of their bikes to get to the scene faster. She had been there too, in another car somewhere.

As one song led into another and another on my stereo, I began to appreciate the details of the bridge beside me, the strength of it, the weight of it, the complexity of the construction, the tangling of wires weaving along the long beams. From my perch on the window I could make out the lights of a large cargo ship moving slowly out into the bay, away from the hulking silhouettes of cranes at the Port Of Oakland. When I was fully stopped for a few minutes, I opened my door and stepped out onto the pavement, around the front of my humming engine, and onto the step beside the railing of the bridge.

I leaned over and looked down into the darkness, splashes of light highlighting the ripples in the water far below me. I breathed deep and looked out at Oakland flickering for a moment, and back down into the water. It felt lonely.

Back in my car, I came to terms with whatever awful occurrence was waiting ahead. I felt sympathy thinking of loss, I felt empathy thinking of pain, but my thoughts wandered still around the harmless tribulations of my own day, my own worries, however shadowed, still showing up between the heavy speculations.

After nearly an hour, everyone began to merge to the left. I put my blinker on and fell in line, finding a soft and pleasant song to take me along. Broken glass crunched beneath my tires as I followed the car in front of me around the pink flames of road flares.

First it was the fire trucks and ambulances and cop cars lined up, lights silently spinning, and then, in the second lane, a Mercedes, its entire back half lifted and folded over towards the front, as if an impact had pressed the rear bumper up against the back of the driver's seat, exposing the underside of the car, the rear two tires lifted high up above the ground, and finally, along the railing of the first lane, an unidentifiable four door car, burnt clear down to the metal, inside and out, leaning up on the steel siding of the bridge.

There were no people around the wrecked cars. There was no commotion. It was all very quiet. My windows were still down. It was just a little cold, and though the wind was coming through, I could still smell the smoke.

At some point I was past it, the freeway stretched wide into five lanes and I accelerated, keeping my windows down. A somber song came through my speakers to take me home, just vocals and piano and violin.

I got the nerve to look up the crash tonight. There had been a man in the back of that Mercedes, where it had been compressed like a squeezed accordion. The article called him a "Man" though he was only twenty-one.

excavating my own life

2008-08-12T23:11:00.000-07:00

I've been going up to my folk's house most days, spending an hour or two at their piano and a few more in the depths of what was once, and I guess will always be, "my room."

I'm cleaning it out, something I promised to do years ago, never have got around to, and while on tour or jumping from one city to another I let it go wild, piles and stacks of all the things I needed to store or unload accumulating outward from each corner as I stopped through after each trip. There are broken and functional amps and guitars, road cases, cables and wires, clothes and papers and notebooks and canvases and pens and brushes and CDs and various remnants of the places I've been and people I've known, things I can't bring myself to part with.

I'm in Oakland now for a while and have the time to box all of these items up, throw out what is actually garbage, pull the furniture out from the walls, and give them a new coat of paint.

I figured that it would be tedious work, but it is really quite interesting. My folk's never moved when I was young and there are artifacts buried in there from all phases of my life. It is a bit heavy emotionally at times to excavate your own life, but it is also a good yardstick for the distance I've covered from each age, a good reminder of how hard I have worked for years and years to make a job out of music, and of all the quirks and flaws and highs and lows and strengths and fears that make me what I am.

You can learn a lot about yourself by studying the things you couldn't throw away: Scraps of paper with the phone numbers of the first few girls I ever kissed or teenage musicians looking to start a band, directions to my first girlfriend's house, stickers from bands that broke up years ago, to-do lists from past moments of worry, notebooks and notebooks and notebooks with lyrics to songs to which I can't remember the melodies, incense that smells like tenth grade, a myriad of concert tickets, a collection of passes, boxes of A's memorabilia, autographs and baseball cards, dull pocket knives, receipts from forgettable purchases in other countries, articles written on me from the local newspapers, flyers from shows I can't remember playing, free Live 105 swag from a lifetime of BFDs, dried paint pens that I stole in middle school, angsty rants in the middle of drawing pads, lacrosse sticks leaning lifeless with a bass guitar in the corner of the closet behind coat that I lived in in New York and the jacket form the thrift store tuxedo I bought for prom, shelves of paperbacks tattered from being clenched in my hands, unfinished paintings, paperclips, tacks, dice, erasers, xacto knives, essays, worksheets, snowboard wax, broken drum sticks, cigar boxes full of pennies or foreign coins, piles of Spin and Rolling Stone, skateboard catalogues from 1998, cassette tapes full of 4-track recordings...

The brain cells that get sparked up, the synapses, the dusty memories, it is infinitely humbling. I've been traveling back through the sights and sounds of my life as a child and teenager, and as distant as that feels, those experiences and sensations are what I am made of. I have no urge to go back, and I don't regret anything. I am what I am, what I have done, and all of that has led me here. Why would I want it to be any different...?

normal

2008-08-07T02:15:00.000-07:00

My new sublet is all I could ask for. It is a friend's room in Oakland, and the windows are thick enough to subdue the sound of the street cleaning trucks to a hushed roar, but not enough to block out the sound of passing conversation as I wake up in the late morning. Today it was a class of what I would guess to be first or second graders, young mom's shooting the shit as they peruse the commercial strip, and a loud but kind, self-proclaimed "rent-a-cop," giving directions to a passerby.

There is a towering nursing home, and passing elderly on walkers with nurses, or alone, and it is not too far from the ghetto, not too far from the nice part of town, right at the crux, there are all kinds of people, doing and saying all sorts of things.

I feel more like a normal person than I have in years. Things may get crazy as the next few months fall away but I aim to keep this feeling through any insanity that may come. It allows for all the basic, all the obvious and few pleasures that life just hands out, and I've been avoiding it for so long.

Good.