I'm a musician, writer and photographer, born and raised in New York City. I make my living doing technology for online news and media.

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The Three-Boro Bike Tour

I rode in the Five Boro Bike Tour for the second (and last) time today. The 5BBT is the bicycling equivalent of St. Patrick’s Day, but it does have one unique feature: you can ride over the Verrazano Bridge. The … Continue reading

There were barricades on Prince Street I thought it was a movie at first (Unexepected Elegy for Etan)

Thursday night I went into Soho for my weekly rehearsal with the Antelope Dance Project and Prince Street was full of news vans and police trucks and barricades. And for once, it was something real — not a movie, not … Continue reading

Brutalizing Brutalism

The New York Times today has an article on an endangered building, a landmark example of a classic school of architecture that some people want to tear down. But the style of building represented by the Orange County Government Center … Continue reading

To Dust Thou Shalt Return

For Lent, I may be giving up hope.

The Sargasso Cathedral

An all-harmonica instrumental. Some combination of stagnation and majesty ... a monarchy overdue for a revolution?

Did you hear the news?

It is only February, and I want to announce my withdrawal from the election. Of course I'm going to vote, but I don't want to hear another word about it until November. This piece is long, ugly, and perhaps impossible to listen to. Which is exactly how the election, the coverage, and the conversation feels to me right now. The base of this song is a series of small loops from a guitar improvisation Mike Skliar did here yesterday, overlapped and intersected and run through a filter. Over that is increasingly ugly harmonica, both live and looped.

Lonesome Moonlight Waltz

Quick run-through of this lovely fiddle tune, which my friend Rick Shields likes to play at jams, but for the fact that I get the chords wrong too often. So I finally sat down and learned it right. Well, mostly....

She Left Me In the Red

Performing my song "She Left Me In the Red" at the 2009 Augusta Heritage Festival, with Joe Newberry, Mike Compton, Ann Downey and Clay Buckner. It was an amazing honor to sing with a backing band like that!

Annabelle

Accompanying Amanda Lynn Stubley on her version of Gillian Welch's "Annabelle," at the Augusta Heritage Festival, summer 2009.

Bio shots

Apollo Live

Five Boro Bike Tour