back to the yard

 Time Away

The Rooster (Home Recording)

Dishwasher Love - Live

25th anniversary song

Dishwasher love (unreleased original)

gone

six train

for my son Simon's twelfth birthday in 2014

Twenty Years

My Anniversary Present to Sarah

Performed Live in Pocono Pines, PA

August 2, 2014

This song is not on the album, but it seems to be a favorite among my friends. The version shown here is the only recording. I wrote it for Sarah and sang it to her on our twentieth wedding anniversary, August 2, 2014.  The album  title, What I Couldn't Say, came from a conversation I had with my stepdad, Mort. After watching this video, he remarked that I managed to communicate things in the song that I couldn't have just said with words. When I thought about it, I realized that this was true of all of my songs. 

The Making of "Alice"

The idea for the song "Alice" came to me when I was in Tulum, Mexico with Sarah in March, 2014. We were driving to the airport in Cancun, and I was thinking about going home to see my kids after a week of being away. I really missed them. I was thinking about how my daughter Alice has so many enviable qualities that I don't have. She is a natural ray of sunshine, a cheerful optimist. At that time, I was a cloudy day, at best, and I just felt so grateful to have her in my life. I wanted to give her a song that she could understand and appreciate on her tenth birthday, but that she might appreciate even more one day when she is grown up. 

Her birthday was a couple of months away--a tight deadline to write and record a song for me, with all my other commitments.  When we stopped for lunch in Playa Del Carmen, I jotted my lyric ideas into my iPhone notepad, and then started working on the chords a couple of days later. 

When I was laying down the guitar tracks and vocals with Seth in Williamsburg a month or so later, he picked up on the childlike and playful tone of the song, and suggested I bring Alice down to the studio to improvise some piano during the instrumental break. I kept the whole thing a secret from Alice, but asked her to play along with my guitar at home, just to see how it sounded. When she came down to Williamsburg, she did a few takes, listening to the guitar with the lyrics muted, thinking she was just helping me with one of my songs. She crushed it. 

Seth had the idea to use the practice session recording as a tag at the end of the song, which was a brilliant touch. I especially love how you can her her say "I like doing that" right at the end.

Here's a video with some photos and videos of Alice, including one of her recording the piano solo.

Do it all again

I wrote this song in July, 2017 while visiting my old summer camp, Cottonwood Gulch, in Thoreau, New Mexico. I was having such an amazing time there, reconnecting with my younger self, that I started thinking about how hard it would be go back home to New York. I had the idea that it would be easier to shut out the memories and just plan my next visit. Life doesn't work that way, but that's how I felt when I wrote the song. I have been back to the Gulch five or six times since 2017, and have had a number of opportunities to play the song for campers and staff. Everyone seems to like it, and a few people have even told me they want to learn how to play it. So I recorded this instruction video. I hope the song will make it into the next official Cottonwood Gulch songbook.