my shadow falls for you

can't get enough of that song "shadow falls" by Hello, Blue Roses.


been listening alot to Destroyer's Rubies again also.


It's a harsh day in new york, but anything seems possible.


the snow rain sleet is coming down.


going to see the diggs at southpaw tonight, opening for the most serene republic.


it seems like everyone is fighting for their lives.


i posted John Darcy's original liner notes for When it Comes on Like a Dream at our myspace blog yesterday. i still think they're pretty great.


i went to see the jack kerouac exhibit at the new york public library the other day. really awesome. all sorts of good vibrations resonating around those halls.

sunday matinee

here's a demo for a new song i've been working on this week. i hope you like it. i feel like the sound and themes for what the next beat radio record is going to be is starting to come in to focus for me, between teenage anthem for the drunken boat, stranger flowers, and this song:

beat radio - sunday matinee (demo)

hope you like it. here are lyrics:

i met all your friends today
i couldn't think of anything to say
everybody seemed so lonely
but we could play our bad day down
hide behind a wall of sound
communicate with our our eyes only

and we're alone we're alone when we're together we're alone and we don't wanna stay here but we can't go home
and there's so much we've lost along the way
but your the sweetheart of the rodeo
the queen of the all ages show
i saw you at the sunday matinee

you're everything that i'm not
drinking in the parking lot
and then we hear the band start up and then we rush inside
and when the bass drops out and the singer screams and shouts you say "this is that song that i was talking about."
you push your hair behind your ears and you close your eyes

and when you lean in close
when tell me it's the part you love the most
and you pull me out into the light
i don't care about the song
but i could watch you listen all night long
and i feel fine i feel alright i feel alright

cheers.

i've got you in my mind's eye

i'm not one of those year end list making types. i have been reading lots of lists and thinking about what music really resonated with me this year, and what art in general i guess. there were alot of records that i loved and listened to for a few weeks and then sort of forgot about them. am i the only one who did that? is this a function of the ipod and the new way we connect with media? i went back to a few of these records over the last week or so. the national is definitely awesome. the arcade fire is too. i liked the ryan adams record but his work hasn't really resonated with me as deeply over the last few years the way that his first record did. one record that i was sort of blown away by when i revisited was josh ritter's the historical conquests of josh ritter. I like all his records, but this one to me feels like a huge leap. when i first heard it i was taken by the more rocked out songs like "real long distance" and "mind's eye." also, there's this amazing song called "the temptation of adam." i must of missed it initially, due to too much hyper caffeinenated ipod shuffling, but it's really just a staggering song. it totally knocked me out on the train yesterday morning.

anyway, i do think it was a great year for music, despite the fact that the record industry seems to be in shambles. it's sort of a revolutionary time. an axial period. a watershed moment??

whatever happens, i'm super excited about what comes next.

Josh Ritter - Mind's Eye (mp3 via lines through lines)

Your Midway Host

We recently had some great shows in Pennsylvania with along with Your Midway Host. I've been meaning to tell you about Your Midway Host for a while. For me, most of the time, life feels like a movie. Sometimes people float into your life like they just stepped off a cloud. This past summer, this guy Nich Bazik started hanging out at Phil's alot, working on his first full length record. We' see him when we got to rehearsal, he'd hang out, sometimes poring over old history books, sometimes running out to grab beers. Nich is sort of timeless. He did Civil war re-enactment as a kid. He's both young and ancient at same time. His wardrobe is like a cross between Dylan's rolling thunder review regale and the costume of some hipster robin-hood.

His record, Our Cities Could Grow, is a really wonderful debut. I love it. I'm particularly enamoured with a song called "Josephine." You'll have to wait till the album drops to hear that. There's also another still unreleased song called "Red Shirt" that i had the pleasure to sing on, and i haven't been able to get it out of my head since. Nich has made several tracks available through his website. You should go download "Oak Tree" now. It's the kind of song that stops time when you listen to it, when you really listen. It reveals more each time. I don't know too many people who can do that.

Your Midway Host - Oak Tree

Your Midway Host - Sevilla

Your Midway Host - John's Song

There's lots of wonderful performances on the record from people you'll surely know if you read this blog often, including Phil Jimenez, Vanesa Alvero Jimenez, and Brian Ver Straten, and some more of the Easy Anthems crew. It's an exciting time to be around Phil's place. Phil and Brian are also playing in the Your Midway Host live band. Nich also sings on the Easy Anthems Holiday record. We're hoping to bring Nich up to NY and do some more shows together soon. There's a pretty wonderful review of our Philadelphia gig over at Lost in Your Inbox and also a cool review of Our Cities Could Grow over at Herohill.

Your Midway Host Official
Your Midway Host Myspace

Easy Anthems: Hark!

Do you guys know Easy Anthems? Phil Jimenez has been my musical partner in crime for the better part of the last 7 years. When he's not playing guitar and keyboards and producing records for Beat Radio, he makes his living as a record producer, and leads a wonderful group called Easy Anthems with his amazing wife Vanesa. In lieu of sleeping over the last couple weeks, Phil decided to make a new Easy Anthems record of Spirituals and traditional holiday hymns. It's called Hark! It features lots of cool guest performers, and finds Phil at the top of his game as a producer and arranger. It's available as a free download at easyanthems.org, where you can also download songs from their more secular debut LP.

I got to sing on this tune, which reminds me of a cross between the Squirrel Nut Zippers' holiday record and The Pogues' "If I should fall from Grace with God":

Easy Anthems - Angels We have Heard on High

My favorite is Phil belting away on the title track:

Easy Anthems - Hark/Ode to Joy

Here's Vanesa, making me swoon, as usual, on O Holy Night:

Easy Anthems - O Holy Night

Head over to easyanthems.org and download the entire LP as a zip file.

tuesday

its raining here in new york, and i'm dreaming about a seaside bar.

cool post today over at brooklyn vegan about how john samson of the weakerthans is awesome at writing lyrics. that guy know how to drop some science. every so often a band like the weakerthans comes along that hits a nerve with me and i feel like i know the songs already. i feel a certain kinship, like creatively, we're coming from the same sort of place. i'm amazed that i haven't been listening to them for years. i got the same feeling a few years ago when i heard the first sun kil moon record and starting getting into red house painters. there's something really comforting in finding music like that. it feels like its built into your dna.

we got to play a show with the weakerthans this past june at the school of rock festival down in asbury park, nj. their set was really beautiful, one of my favorite shows i've seen in a long time.

here are a couple mp3's from the new weakerthans record via can you see the sunset from the southside, an awesome blog that is actually the place that i first discovered the band:

MP3 The Weakerthans - Night Windows Reunion Tour
MP3 The Weakerthans - Sun In An Empty Room Reunion Tour

liz and i are going to mexico on thursday. my best friend is getting married. we can't wait. i'm gonna miss the kids though. still it's just what we need i think.

i just finished reading joan didion's play it as it lays. crazy book, so arresting. it's like the mythic american west, but it's not a dream it's a nightmare. kind of felt a bit like PT Anderson's film magnolia, to me. just people in lots of pain, west coast landscapes, portrayed in this really sharp and visual way. super concise, which i suppose is not something you could say about magnolia.

when i get back from mexico, we're going to rock the mercury lounge.

mercury lounge 11/14

brian ver straten not only plays drums and is handsome but he also makes rad flyers. we've got a very special show coming up at the mercury lounge so he made 3. which one is your favorite?

when it comes on like a dream

when it comes on like a dream is a record phil and i made in the fall of 2003. it was a crazy time, my first son jackson had just been born and the original lineup of beat radio had broken up and tim and rob were starting the diggs. it was just phil and i with jim on drums. vanesa sang on a couple of songs also. we sort of made it in a vacuum over the course of a couple months. at the time it felt like the kind of record i had wanted to make for a long time, sort of emotional, lyrically driven acoustic music. we've always loved the record but no one's ever really heard it.

we've decided to put it out as a free digital download at beatradio.org. it's pretty different from beat radio but i'm hoping it will find some sort of audience and life of it's own. i'd love to hear what you think of it. if you like it please pass it along.

brian sendrowitz
when it comes on like a dream (2004)

1.above the halflight
2.beautiful one
3.looking for you
4.television
5.planes fly by
6.the way it shines
7.never feels like home
8.the damage done
9.red lights
10.rosaline

click here to download the entire record as a zip file (160 kps, 38.7 MB)

ancient as the stars

we did some interviews recently that got posted this week on uncensored interview.com and they asked us to play the first song we ever wrote. I couldn't really recall what the first song i ever wrote was, and if i did it would have been totally lame, so i played "ancient as the stars," because that was the first thing i wrote that i realized was different than what i had been doing before, and i realized i had to start a rock and roll band. actually, i realized i had to start beat radio when i recorded the 4 track demo (see below.) so in a way, it was the first beat radio song i wrote. i admit i was taking some creative license there. here is some video of me playing the song, while the rest of the guys do their best not to be super awkward:



here are a few more versions of this song, in chronological order:

Beat Radio - Ancient as the Stars (4 track demo)
Beat Radio - Ancient as the Stars from the Ecstatic ep
Beat Radio - Ancient as the Stars no. 2 from The Great Big Sea

halloweenhead

i've said this blog is supposed to chronicle my adventures as a punk rock dad, and i realize that it rarely has been since i've started it. this is partly due to the fact that liz was sort of freaked out when she saw i had posted a few pictures of our kids. kind of just paranoia about the possibility that my band has some deranged obsessive fan somewhere, and kind of just a desire for privacy. i get that, i hadn't thought of it. i'm probably a bit naive about that sort of thing. that got me thinking about what it must feel like for all those big old rock stars doing reality tv shows about their families, and i started wondering if jack and kelly osborne would have been better off if their parents never invited mtv cameras into their house. probably, right? so here's to hoping that one day we'll come off some big monsters of indie rock tour and have to worry about grandiose matters such as these. actually, i hope reality tv has ceased to exist by then.

i did want to tell you another story about my 4 year old son jackson though. i'll tell you some about elijah soon. jackson is my little rock and roller in training. one of my favorite quotes about having kids is in the movie lost in translation when bill murray is telling scarlett johanssen about how when you become a parent, your life as you know if it gone, never to return. "but then," he says, "eventually they learn how to crawl, and walk, and the grow into the most fascinating people you'd ever want to know." i'm paraphrasing, but that's totally how it's been for me. I prefer the company of my kids to that of anyone else.

Jackson, my older son, is 4 and he's alot like me, which is to say he's a sweetheart, kind of aloof, handsome, and pretty strange and random. He's invented 4 or 5 imaginary bands already. the first one he came up with when he was three was called "action motors" which i still think is an amazing name. he was really into the white stripes at the time and my niece grace was going to play drums and he was going to sing and play guitar. another band was called "Darkness in the Shoes" which i thought was pretty poetic, and amazing how it showed the way the kid's brain and imagination works, like he was thinking about that dark place in a pair of shoes lying on the floor, and fascinated enough by it to name his band after it. I totally want to hear what that band sounds like. the other day he started telling me about his new band, a halloween band called "The Creepy Creepy Crawlers." Then he asked me if he could borrow one of my sharpie markers, or "permanent markers" as he calls them (we instilled the difference between his play markers and my permanent markers into his head after an unfortunate incident with a pillow case.) Anyway, he takes the sharpie and a few cd-r's from the spindle on my desk and starts designing "album covers" with drawings of skeletons and guitars and drums for each of the creepy creepy crawlers' albums. he did 4 in all, and i helped him hang them up on my wall with thumb tacks. the best part is that they all have totally real and awesome sounding album titles: The Creepy Creepy Crawlers Come Alive, Beware of the Creepy Creepy Crawlers, The Creepy Creepy Crawlers at Night, and of course the self-titled The Creepy Creepy Crawlers. Needless to say, i couldn't have been prouder. Actually, earlier today he told me the name of his new halloween band. This one is called "Deadness of the Gosling." So weird. So amazing. I can't get over it.

here is a song that is only marginally related to what i've been talking about, that i sort of love:
ryan adams - halloweenhead
(via keptshut.com)

octoberer

the new radiohead record is exhilerating.

cmj is about to blow through this towm like a hurricane.

i'm amazed all the time by the power of fear, and how it transforms your perception of the world around you.

i just finished reading nick hornby's Long Way Down. I liked it alot. I started Joan Didion's Play it as it lays this morning on the train, which is powerful in an entirely different way. i'm excited to pick up the new Denis Johnson and Junot Diaz novels as soon as i can afford to spend money on anything besides food and bills.

i'm making a mix tape for liz for october. these are some songs on it, so far:

Late at Night - Buffalo Tom
Left and Leaving - The Weakerthans
Falling Slowly - Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova
Little Fat Baby - Sparklehorse
Here Tomorrow-the mugs (who we're playing with at CMJ!)
Chancellor-Gordon Downie
Sad Songs - The Frames
The Weather - Built to Spill

still working on it. any suggestions?

friday

i'm sorry if this blogs seems impersonal. when i started this blog i wanted it to be more like a journal than it has been. i didn't want it to be just another place for me to promote my band. it's a new season, i'm excited about it. i'm going to try and be more spontaneous and honest. i'm going to try and write more too, some people emailed me about an infrequency of posts, it's just been a long, hard summer. i can't really pinpoint why. we've just had lots of chaos in our lives it seems. i just had a wonderful little moment though..i just went downstairs from my office and it felt warm outside and i grabbed a coffee and there were all these people sort of half smiling because it's friday and it's almost time to go home. i saw a young dad holding his 2 year old boy, and i thought of jackson and elijah at home. the title track from astral weeks came into my head and that line "taking care of your boy."

here's another song i've been rocking on my ipod. it's by my good friends the diggs. i'm getting ready to go on a trip to mexico soon for my best friend's wedding and those guys will be there too. i can't hardly wait. this song rules:

the diggs - careen

the diggs forthcoming sophomore lp ctl alt del is coming out early next year and is going to be a monster.

stranger flowers

here's a home demo for another new song called stranger flowers:

beat radio - stranger flowers (demo)

as usual, the band version rocks out a bit more. here are the lyrics:

i love your radio show

the kind of songs you play

the way you talk real slow

i love the way you say

"we just heard the title track

from the new juliet and abel.

it's called a symphony of wildfire

out on the tramp star label."

and every word rings true

every streetlight shines for you

on the day we met

i couldn't help but stare

the way you wore your clothes

and how you'd cut your hair

at the seaside bar

you were dancing with your punk rock boy

i was playing guitar

well i was making noise

springtimes coming on

it feels just like my favorite song

we're all stranger flowers now

there's a place where we belong

we've got all this worn out joy

and we get no sleep at night

but it's morning and we're

bending towards the light

springtimes coming on

it feels just like my favorite song

we're all stranger flowers now

there's a place where we belong

a million miles

we're putting out a million miles no. 2 as our new single to work on pushing our upcoming cmj shows, which incidentally, we're super excited about. the original version of the song on the great big sea was just a 4-track home recording i had done, i always loved the sound of it and it's still one of my favorite moments on the record. When it came time to put the album out on cd with the new tracks we decided to record an alternate version of it, with the rest of the band playing on it. For a while i had imagined the song would work well as a duet and i had sort of dreamed about having phil's wife vanesa sing on it. she's one of my favorite singers ever. I also recently stumbled upon an mp3 for an acoustic demo i did of the song. I recorded that around the time when we were in the middle of recording the great big sea and our old bass player Mike had left the band to tour with this teen idol guy, and i thought i was going to have to rework the songs so i could play more solo acoustic shows. i'm glad we decided to start rocking again and finish the record. Also, this image is a photograph by robert frank who is probably my favorite photographer. I could be wrong but i believe it's taken from his book the americans, which kerouac wrote the introduction for. here are mp3's.

beat radio - a million miles original version off the great big sea

beat radio - a million miles no. 2 new recording off the great big sea + miracle flag

beat radio - a million miles (acoustic demo) home recording

coney island

i haven't been blogging much recently. it was a crazy summer. there is so much to tell you about. i have been really busy working on new songs though. here is one that seems like it's not going to work for the band, at least not in our live set for now. we worked on a few different arrangements of it but it never felt exactly right. i still like it though. i think it has a great sort of falling action montage for an 80's movie sort of quality to it, which i love it for. it's funny, posting songs on your blog is like the new releasing b-sides, at least for me it is. hope you like the song:

beat radio-coney island (demo)

some kids are just born to rock

a few weeks ago, i heard Jackson proudly telling his friend Pete, "Me and my dad were born to rock." Pete didn't really respond and after a few seconds Jackson asked him, "What were you born to do?"

if i venture into slipstream

I put on Van Morrison's Astral Weeks today for this first time in a while. It's truly my favorite record ever. Its so perfect in the summertime, for a drive down to the beach with yr girl.I wrote this short piece on the record last year for a rad canadian blog called herohill:

I have such a sense of wonder about Van Morrison's Astral Weeks. I'll always remember when I was first getting into the record sitting in a pizza shop near Lake George, NY with the girl I'd eventually marry and finding "Sweet Thing" on an old diner-style jukebox and I just sat there and looked into her eyes as this perfect music filled the room and time stood still. I used to seek the record out in bars and when I found it I'd lean against the jukebox, with a pint of Guinness maybe, and try to get people to listen or maybe just close my eyes. Usually they just had The Best of Van Morrison so it was just that song "Sweet Thing," or maybe a good Irish pub would have The Waterboys’ record Fisherman's Blues with a great cover of that same song.

The performances on Astral Weeks seem superhuman to me. Van's singing on the record mystifies me. His phrasing seems like it is infinitely nuanced–the way he twists words in and out of themselves and gets into these bizarre repetitions, or his sense of dynamics in the way he can be so gentle and sweet and then so powerful and attack these incredible high notes so fiercely. When I first heard the record it seemed like all the other musicians were at times so terribly out of time and chaotic. I heard all these mistakes at first but now it all seems so perfect and virtuosic. The crazy upright bass playing and the heady, wild string parts.

The way I listen to music has changed in the last couple years and I love how you can get into all kinds of music through mp3 blogs and itunes and it all feels really liberating and exciting to me as an artist and as a fan of music, but I think there's something about the process that lends itself to an appreciation of music that needs to be more instantly accessible and immediate. Along with that comes a certain degree of disposability and I think I've hit a sort of saturation point in the last couple of months where I've been gravitating towards music that maybe is more challenging but also has greater degree of substance to it. Astral Weeks is a record that you can really immerse yourself in. There's something so emotionally powerful and cathartic about it. For me, the record is an insanely beautiful world in and of itself.

here is a cover song i recorded to go along with the herohill piece:

the way young lovers do (van morrison cover) - beat radio

Greg Fine

Greg Fine is another friend of mine who happens to be an amazingly talented musician. I'm not sure if I'd be playing music today if not for Greg's support of my work when i was starting out writing songs. His art has always inspired me deeply. Greg is a really incredible and unique voice. There's so much power behind every word he sings, and so much love that goes into every note. It's not something i can easily put into words. Greg's been quite busy as of late, recently becoming a father and hard at work on a new record that is sure to be something really special.

Here's a recent recording:

Traynor's First Day - Greg Fine (mp3)

Greg recently gave a wonderful performance at a great podcast called Acoustic Long Island, and i was really honored to hear him perform his version of my song "Planes Fly By":

Planes Fly By (live) - Greg Fine (mp3)

check out the entire rest of that show here.

here is my version of the song from my record When it Comes on Like a Dream:

Planes Fly By - Brian Sendrowitz (mp3)

Greg Fine at Myspace

Greg Fine Official

acousticlongisland.com

with you i'm better

check out this rad animated short featuring our song treetops:
Love Over Easy

Add to My Profile | More Videos
thanks daniel.

come on, olivia

summer is coming on fast. had a show saturday at union hall and it felt like a proper way to start it off. this is a new version of an older song of mine. it feels like a summer song to me. it's about trying to get the girl.

beat radio - come on, olivia (demo)

teenage anthem for the drunken boat

i'm working on lots of demos and new songs here at home. we're also working on the ep at phil's studio and should have our next single out in the next couple weeks. this is a demo for a song i wrote this week called "teenage anthem for the drunken boat." hope you like it.

beat radio - teenage anthem for the drunken boat (demo)

these are the lyrics:

i made you a mix tape
okay it's not a tape at all
but it's full of sad songs
that make summer feel like fall
the reason i'm calling
the thing that i'm trying to say
maybe i should come over
the truth is i'm on my way
the truth is i'm on my way

when i was another
i knew you a little while
now all of your lovers
are waitng for you to smile
your sons and your daughters
are torturing you with words
reliving the past
believing in reverb
the priest of the future
and the pastor of present tense
are out in the alley
destroying the evidence
we harbored a fugitive
the essence of wasted youth
all caught up in fishnets
you smoke on the roof
we navigate freely
the arc of the starbright evening
the classic rock station
says "don't stop believing."
"it's more than a feeling."

the priest dressed in crimson
the pastor in white
they are never wrong
they are never right
when i was another
i knew you a little while
now all of your lovers
are waiting for you to smile
i made you a mix tape
okay it's not a tape at all
but it's full of sad songs
that make summer feel like fall
i remember the moment
the bullet returned
back into the gun
i was looking for something
that can't be encoded
in zeroes and ones.

poem for jackson pollock

Jackson Pollock
Medicine man
Dancing cowboy
Around his canvas
Drops of oil
Like mercury
Of thee I sing this elegy
Drunken angel
Killer of girls
Killer of critics, o
Killer of convention
and bicycle baskets
Killer of girls

I had a dream
Of you and frida kahlo
Fighting in the alley
She cut you up
Diego Rivera is there laughing like a grotesque Saint Nicholas in linen pants
It was a knife fight
And she took you down
"You're your own baby," says Lee
medicine man
can't hold his medicine
a taste of your own.
But everything is fleeting
Everything is temporary
Nothing is definite
So I dream of mexico
And frida kahlo
Or salma hayek dressed up like frida kahlo
Pre-columbian beads of jade around her neck
On a dusty street I see her exquisite lines against the setting sun.

the diggs

the diggs began recording their second lp last week. it's going to be called Ctrl-Alt-Del. i've been listening alot to their debut lp Commute alot lately. it's stunning. this is a song from it:

the diggs - stagg (mp3)

i've heard some demos of the new tracks and my expectation is a brilliant record.

their singer/guitarist tim lannen and bassist rob haussmann were in the original beat radio a few years back.

this is a song we wrote together from our self titled ep:

beat radio - television (mp3)

this is a cover i did of another diggs song off Commute:

beat radio - everyone's starting over (diggs cover)

here is tim and me drunk together.

mexico

i've always been kind of a revisionist. i guess it goes back to taking creative writing workshops at purchase.

i stumbled across this mp3 in my itunes the other day:

mexico (demo #1)

i remember when i first wrote the song, it was one of those moments that you live for as an artist, where the song just kind of comes to you out of the ether, like a gift or something. i was so excited to play this demo for my wife liz, who i was basically talking to directly with the lyrics. i thought i'd written this amazing song, like it was this big artistic breakthrough or something, but her reaction was more like, "Yeah it's okay....it's a little boring." I was, of course, a bit let down. I went back to the drawing board and made this demo the next day:

mexico (demo no. 2)

then we got the band into the studio and we did the version that ended up on the album:

mexico (from the great big sea LP)

listening back, i'm glad i took liz's advice. the original demo is a little boring, but i do like it because it reminds me of that feeling of writing the song. it's like a souvenir. speaking of souvenirs, liz took this picture down in mexico, when we were there on our honeymoon.

friday

really excited about this show friday with battering room. i've known the mugs for a long time and have been getting really into mussels and sure juror as well.

plasticities

not that he hasn't been blogged about everywhere, but i'm really intrigued by this andrew bird character:

his songs grow on me more with each listen.

wail away

vanesa alvero is a friend of mine and one of my favorite singers ever. she's also married to phil who is my partner in crime in beat radio. there are four amazing songs over at her myspace page. also, check out her current project with phil called easy anthems, who i will tell you more about soon. here is a cover of a song she wrote with phil a couple years ago called "wail away." it's from the beat radio covers ep that i'm working on.

beat radio - wail away (vanesa alvero cover)

Kerouac's Thirty Essentials of Spontaneous Prose

this is jack kerouac's list. it's good advice i think.

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You're a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

what i love the most

i'm hoping this blog will be a sort of creative journal as well. i've been working hard on writing songs for the next beat radio ep. here's a demo for a new song called "what i love the most."

what i love the most (demo)

here are the lyrics:

i was looking for a light
through all my misery and shame
and i am glad we've got our friends
but all those parties are the same

and now my head is full of stars
and all the answers aren't clear
and i've been drifting into dreams
and i've been far away from here

and now this is what i love the most
to find a place where we can be alone
and i know the rest is all a dream this world is not our home
it's not our home

and then the morning light hits hard
when i was silent in my sleep
and i'm a thousand miles away
and there are promises to keep

i know i'm better than i was
i know the changes are for real
but i was trying to be free
and now i don't know how to feel

and when the wind comes blowing through the hall
you'll smile at me and we can laugh about it all
and we'll have no regrets and we'll forget what lies beyond these walls

and this is what i love the most
to find a place where we can be alone
and i know the rest is all a dream this world is not our home
it's not our home

and this is what i love the most
and this is what i love the most
and this is what i love the most
and this is what i love the most
and this is what i love the most
and this is what i love the most

a cinema of sunshine

i did an interview recently where i said i've been meaning about starting a blog about being a punk rock dad. something about it being a bizarre and beautiful existence. actually, you can find it here. i tried to start this blog a few other times a month or so ago but i always felt like i was just writing the same stuff i do on myspace and promoting my band, so i deleted the posts because i was already promoting my band in all these other places. it seemed sort of redundant and spectacularly narcissistic. i don't think this blog will be entirely about the kids, but here's some pics. i don't get to show them off enough. the big guy is jackson. the little one is elijah. i'll tell you more about them soon. these pictures are a few months old, we took them one afternoon in the fall down at newbridge park.