One glorious, irresponsible, untroubled day.

Perhaps it was the mention of Duane Pitre’s past as a skateboarder in the NY Times article, that was really about his composition, which sent me tumbling back to years past. I read the piece out of interest for his work, which I highly recommend, but now I just can’t stop thinking about those long languid days, stretching out and blurring together into a hazy obsession with finding the next great skate spot or the next great band, when the ruthless march of years had a much looser grip on my days. I used to ride the Samtrans bus all over the Bay Area looking for new spots. The underpass, covered in graffiti in Sunnyvale. The dish, up in the Stanford hills. This of course came before the commodification and commercialization of skateboarding, and there were no skateparks. Just abandoned buildings and parking garages and office complexes and dried up aqueducts. I couldn’t begin to count the dizzying number of shows that I drove all over to see, so hungry for music, sometimes waiting in lines all day to see a band that had sparked something. Operation Ivy, Fugazi, Jawbreaker. and countless others, all of whom I must have seen at least twenty times.

And so, I have spent numerous evenings in the last few weeks watching videos online, as I fight my way through the freezing rain and low light of winter, foolishly wishing that I could be seventeen again, just for one glorious, irresponsible and untroubled day. Young people, when the stars align to suffocate their myopic nature and their foolishness, can be the real zen masters. It is all about the present.

It is difficult to make sense of our past from our vantage point here in the now. In college at UC Davis, I befriended two guys who went on to form a band called Knapsack, and then one of them (Blair Sheehan) formed The Jealous Sound, and most recently Racquet Club. It would be hyperbolic to say that I was in Knapsack, but I did play music with them for a while. I don’t really recall the details, but if memory serves, it lasted a few months. I don’t know if they kicked me out or if I just left, but I found myself wondering why this week. I know that I was a fairly poor guitar player at that time and that we three remained friends afterwards, so likely it was mutual. I had also discovered Flamenco and was veering off in that direction. Plus, Radiohead’s The Bends came out the same year as Knapsack’s first record, which began redefining my thoughts about rock and roll. While The Bends didn’t push like OK Computer, one can feel that something had begun to shift.

And right now, this week, all I want to do is ride my skateboard and play in a punk band. I do still skate, albeit in a considerably less daring fashion than in decades past, and I would argue that much of the music that I make these days, shares the same spirit, the same seeking for emotional truth, the same ethos, as those bands that I so loved in my younger youth. Yes, I am still young. But why was I never in a band like that? Timing, I guess. Or I should say…I was in a band like that during my last two years of high school. We rehearsed a lot in Gary’s garage, played a bunch of shows in rundown, shithole clubs, and that was it. Maybe that was enough. I suppose the closest I ever really came to making music of that ilk once I had become more serious about things was my song about Grover Cleveland, though it’s only really hovering. Chris Wisnia did the artwork for that song in the booklet, an excellent guitar player himself.

It has been interesting to revisit that record, now fifteen years old, one that I remain proud of. One of my compositions on that project, Helicopters Above Oakland, arguably before its time as the song is about the systemic oppression of African Americans, received a fair amount of radio airplay, but never really took wings. Who knows? My dear friend Andrea Scher did that art for that one. She has a wonderful new book out, that captures her spirit perfectly. Lou Reed played a few of my songs on his radio show, New York Shuffle, a moment, to be sure. Listening back, it’s hard to pick my favourite from that project, but I’d have to narrow it to Rough and Ready, my song about Zachary Taylor, played and sung by Christian Kiefer, or Suits and Fine Trousers vs. Hiroshima, mine about Harry Truman, sung by Denison Witmer. The cover art for the record and for Truman, was done by Kurt Lightner, an extraordinary woodworker himself.

I miss Christian terribly. What an honour it is, to cite one of your closest friends among the very top of your musical heroes. How we must value those whom we’ve loved and who have loved us for decades. The record has a long list of contributors, among them Califone, Rosie Thomas, Bill Callahan, Mark Kozelek, Alan Sparhawk, Marla Hansen, Tom Carter, Tetuzi Akiyama, Xiu Xiu, The Radar Bros., and many others. A vast undertaking to be sure. You should check out Marla’s video for her song Dust; it’s a beautiful composition. And Denison’s new record is just lovely. I can’t link everything here or I’ll be on this damn computer all morning.

We also watched a Hollywood film (something I don’t do very often) called The Arrival, as we’ve been rather obsessed with astrophysics in this house lately. My kids both finished reading Neil deGrasse Tyson’s book, Astrophysics for Young People in a Hurry and wanted to see something about “aliens.” While I cannot say with any artistic integrity that The Arrival was a good film, I did enjoy how it sparked a conversation about the linearity of time. Is time linear, or have we simply defined it as such? What is intuition? Was my past my past? Is playing in a punk band, really in my future?

“Perhaps some particles move backwards in time; Perhaps the future affects the past in some way we don’t understand: or perhaps the universe is simply more aware than we are. There are many things we haven’t yet learned how to read.” ~ Philip Pullman.

So in mystery, we carry forth. As ever, I’ve been busy in the shop; a few images below. I have some things in the works musically, but I’m mum for now. Hope that you’re all warm and that you’re less hungry for spring than I am.

Four things in heavy rotation at present, all of which I strongly recommend: The Nels Cline Singers, Share the Wealth (tell me that first track doesn’t have echoes of A Love Supreme), Rabih About-Khalil’s Songs for Sad Women (I love everything about it), the inaugural record from Coricky, featuring Ian MacKaye, his wife Amy, and the glorious bass of Joe Lally, and a newfound obsession with the guitar playing of Mike Baggetta; of course it doesn’t hurt when you’ve got Mike Watt on your team. This should keep you all busy for months…

And since I believe myself to be partially Canadian at this point, I must point you all to a brief opinion essay, which succinctly captures my sentiments about the embarrassing convoy of fools.