My friend Mol­ly Maher is host­ing a new duets series in down­town St. Paul, Two X Deux—déli­cieuse­ment français!—and was gra­cious enough to invite me and a friend into a slot. I’ll be team­ing up with my bass play­ing pal Cody McK­in­ney for a fun night of heavy and elec­tron­i­cal­ly-inspired rhythm sec­tion impro­vi­sa­tion. This will be the first time I’ve used my hybrid drums-into-Able­ton set­up in an improv set­ting ver­sus a care­ful­ly arranged setlist, so I’m imag­in­ing the odds of the set com­plete­ly implod­ing on itself are pret­ty high, guar­an­tee­ing an inter­est­ing show (for you), and a chance to run through some pre-writ­ten apolo­gies (for me).

If you’re around the St. Paul area this Tues­day evening, it’d be great to see you there.

Remem­ber MySpace? I do, if only vague­ly. I was a hold­out, although I couldn’t real­ly say why. After months (years?) of friends say­ing how it was indis­pens­able for pro­mo­tion and net­work­ing, and with me hav­ing none of those skills, I final­ly signed up right around the time every­one start­ed mov­ing to Face­book. I was a Face­book hold­out until all my friends said how indis­pens­able it was for net­work­ing and pro­mo­tion, and with me hav­ing none of those skills I final­ly signed up. The same with Twit­ter, and Insta­gram, until even­tu­al­ly I set­tled into a hap­py men­tal sta­sis with them all and used them to pro­mote, and net­work, and share good things, and stay in touch with fam­i­ly, and recon­nect with old friends, and all was well until I real­ized what a mis­er­able per­son I was becoming.

I real­ize not being on any social media these days is akin to being That Guy who’s ​“nev­er even OWNED a TV,” but veg­ging out on the Great British Bake Off for an hour might bum me out about my sog­gy pie crusts, at worst. Here’s a small list of things about social media that crush my heart: 

• The feel­ing when I see oth­ers doing projects I wish I was doing 
• The way I engage with oth­ers I don’t agree with 
• The amount of time that flies by while I’m trick­ing myself into think­ing I’m mak­ing mean­ing­ful inter­ac­tions with oth­er people 
• Watch­ing human­i­ty slow­ly evolve into a hive mind of instant opinion 
• The feel­ing I get with try­ing to pro­mote any­thing I’m doing artistically 
• Hand­ing over my con­tent and per­son­al infor­ma­tion to advertisers 
• The com­pul­sion I feel when it’s available 
• I just hate it 

But I get it! Social media is the world today. It’s how you are prob­a­bly check­ing in with every­one you know, how you get your news, how you tell peo­ple what you’re doing. My options for doing so with­out it are a) keep­ing this web­site updat­ed, and b) keep­ing peo­ple updat­ed per­son­al­ly, both of which I am com­plete­ly ter­ri­ble at. All that said! I’ve been run­ning into peo­ple I haven’t seen for a few months and they’ve all been ask­ing, ​“where have you been?” So here’s where I’ve been. 

I played music — I shared a lot of stage time, plus a healthy amount of stu­dio time, with the Twi­light Hours, Chris Koza, Erik Kosk­i­nen, Dylan Hicks, and more. A few inter­est­ing out­liers like pre­tend­ing to be Tom­my Lee with Jere­my Ylvisaker’s Möt­ley Crüe trib­ute band (!) and a night back­ing up San­dra Bern­hard (!!!).

I’ve had some projects fiz­zle (more than I care to admit) and joined a few oth­ers, one of the more fun being John Munson’s brain­child of 60s/​70s organ funk, the Fra­grants. I’ve been steadi­ly pluck­ing away at new music, although if any of it hits the air­waves before the end of the year it’ll be a small miracle. 

I’ve acquired some new, inspir­ing gear — I’ve had more fun play­ing my 70s clear Vistal­ites equipped with trig­gers and effects than I’ve had in a while, and I’m the proud new own­er of an Able­ton Push which lets me play my favorite soft­ware like a musi­cal instru­ment that can do almost any­thing I want it to. 

More impor­tant­ly, though, I’ve acquired new fam­i­ly. My wife, five-year-old son, and I jour­neyed off to Kolkata, India to meet and bring home with us our new daugh­ter, two-year-old Arad­hya. We’ve been deep in the adop­tion path for almost two years, and the joys of this beau­ti­ful, spir­it­ed, and shin­ing girl in our life far out­weigh any of the chal­lenges we’ve faced in our process.

Turns out not steadi­ly pub­lish­ing my life is a slight­ly health­i­er way to live it. Let’s stay in touch, us, okay?

They say time is the heal­er, but, you know, it tends to take a while. For me, the bet­ter option has always been music, which I guess is why late in the sum­mer of last year when I was feel­ing, say, less than my best, I decid­ed I’d make a record.

I picked up my lap­top and wrote an email to a few of my favorite peo­ple, musi­cians I loved play­ing with but did­n’t get to very often: Cody McK­in­ney, a bass play­er whose melod­ic sense is sec­ond-to-none; Jere­my Ylvisak­er, the epit­o­me of a fear­less musi­cian; DeVon Gray, the truest stew­ard of art I know. I did­n’t have an idea of what music to play, so I pro­posed some­thing I rarely get to do — gath­er­ing for a ​“writ­ing” ses­sion of impro­vi­sa­tion and con­struct­ing an album based on the themes we invent. I hit ​“send” and waited.

Well, those suck­ers all agreed it was a grand idea, so a few months lat­er we hauled our favorite instru­ments to The Pearl Record­ing Stu­dio here in Min­neapo­lis and two days after that I was sift­ing through hours of music. The biggest sur­prise for me was­n’t how much fun the ses­sion was, or how much mate­r­i­al we record­ed — lots and lots, respec­tive­ly — but how com­plete most of it sound­ed. I don’t know what mol­e­cules fall into place to have a time­line of music con­sid­ered a song, ver­sus a stream of sil­ly ideas, but turns out there’s a sur­pris­ing amount of both hid­ing in here.

So! Sched­ules and mon­ey being what they are, it’s tak­ing a lit­tle time to record the ini­tial con­cept of com­posed music born from the ther­a­py of impro­vi­sa­tion. In the mean­time, though, we’re releas­ing the lit­tle gems from our ini­tial record­ing ses­sions as we find them. Here’s our first, accom­pa­nied by a sweet and deter­mined anthro­po­mor­phic snow­man. It’s apro­pos for the sea­son! It also makes me feel bet­ter about the future somehow.

My 2017 has been a lit­tle slow on the rock front, so when my friend John Mun­son called to pitch the idea of play­ing in a musi­cal it didn’t take much con­vinc­ing. ​“Sure!” I say, not real­ly a) being a fan of musi­cal the­ater; b) not know­ing what to expect play­ing musi­cal the­ater; c) not being entire­ly con­fi­dent about the two-month commitment.

So here it is, two months lat­er, and the run of Fly By Night, pro­duced by the Jun­gle The­ater here in Min­neapo­lis, is almost over. And? Well, it’s been noth­ing short of a great time, and I’ll hon­est­ly be a lit­tle bummed when it’s over.

I’m still not sure if I’m the right drum­mer for musi­cals, in gen­er­al, but being the drum­mer in this musi­cal has been pret­ty fun. The band was picked because we weren’t a ​“typ­i­cal” the­ater band, and the ​“book” (indus­try slang for the musi­cal score) was pret­ty open to inter­pre­ta­tion, so I got to make a lot of musi­cal con­tri­bu­tions instead of sim­ply read­ing my way through the mate­r­i­al. The cast is incred­i­ble and I’ve learned so much from observ­ing how they absorb and com­mit them­selves to their roles and pace them­selves through a run. The crew at the Jun­gle has been great, and over­all the vibe has been one of a big fam­i­ly from day one.

The men­tal head­space required to play a musi­cal (vs. a rock show) was inter­est­ing for me. There’s not much in the way of, say, get­ting car­ried away emo­tion­al­ly in a part and steer­ing the band to a new dynam­ic lev­el. Or extend­ing a solo if everyone’s feel­ing good. The chal­lenge is in being engaged emo­tion­al­ly and men­tal­ly enough to cre­ate a world where the actions of the actors onstage are com­plete­ly believ­able. It requires a com­plete sort of men­tal ded­i­ca­tion, not unlike a record­ing ses­sion, but for a few hours at a time ver­sus a few min­utes. I put more time than I was expect­ing into learn­ing chore­og­ra­phy, of sorts — com­mit­ting stick changes and sam­pler patch changes and per­cus­sion moves to mus­cle mem­o­ry to nav­i­gate through the music quick­ly and smoothly.

I’m count­ing myself lucky to have learned more than I was expect­ing to, in a pos­i­tive and sup­port­ive envi­ron­ment, mak­ing new friends with tal­ent­ed and good peo­ple. In this crazy world of mak­ing music, that sort of com­bo is a gold nee­dle in an over­sized haystack.

There are four shows left in the run as I type this, so if you’re near Min­neapo­lis it’s worth a shot to see if there are still tick­ets avail­able.

And final­ly, here’s a fun thing from the mind of Roy­er Bockus—the cast and crew’s con­tri­bu­tion to the #Ham4All chal­lenge, a cam­paign rais­ing aware­ness and funds for the Immi­grants: We Get the Job Done Coali­tion. I played drums, mixed, and made my act­ing debut as ​“Puz­zle Pon­der­er #2”:

A few years ago I stuffed a drum set and a few box­es of record­ing gear into a van for a run of shows in the Mid­west with my friend in piz­za and freestyle rap, Mike Sem­bos, and his band The Back­yard Com­mit­tee. (A bit more about that here.)

That trip feels like for­ev­er ago, long enough where I’m not sure it real­ly hap­pened, but look! Proof of good times in the form of two live records were released just a few weeks ago. I played on and engi­neered ​“Plains.” Check out the record (and its insane album art!) over here.

Wel­come back, I say to you but most­ly to myself, to a series of posts on how I use Able­ton Live. I start­ed these posts back in 2015, a year where I was a lot more opti­mistic about what I could accom­plish in my free time. A lot has changed since then—Wits, the show I was using as my exam­ple sce­nario, is no more; I’ve exper­i­ment­ed with and evolved my Live work­flow a bit; Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy is col­laps­ing with the elec­tion of a nar­cis­sis­tic tyrant by a gullibl…actually, can we for­get that last one, just for today?

Any­way, where were we? Ah, yes, Live. It turns out that Live is pret­ty apt­ly named; it’s arguably more well-known as a pro­gram­ming tool but it’s also a pow­er­ful and ver­sa­tile source of instru­ment sounds that you can play in real-time.

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I am what peo­ple call a ​“pro­fes­sion­al musi­cian,” which is to say I make my liv­ing by play­ing music, drums most­ly, for oth­er peo­ple who pay me mon­ey in exchange. For years I’ve joked that my job isn’t real (it’s not, real­ly) or is a self­ish way to make a liv­ing (it is, most­ly). This isn’t to say it doesn’t require ridicu­lous amounts of ded­i­ca­tion and sac­ri­fice — it does — it’s just that in the greater schemes of the uni­verse it’s easy for me to see how I’m not exact­ly first in line for the group they’re gonna line up to pop­u­late the new Earth.

It is insane times at the moment. Out of many of the issues we’re fac­ing, this new wave of insu­lar­i­ty and nation­al­ism is crush­ing me, and I wish there were more I could do. I can’t lie and say I don’t strug­gle with the fact that this job I pour so much time into does lit­tle-to-noth­ing for the greater good.

In relat­ed news, the Twi­light Hours, the pas­sion project of Matt Wil­son, John Mun­son, and oth­er fine men of much musi­cal cal­iber, are play­ing a show at the Cedar Cul­tur­al Cen­ter in Min­neapo­lis on March 25. We’ve been rehears­ing, many times even, focus­ing on minu­ti­ae and try­ing our best to arrange a show we’ll be proud to per­form and you will enjoy lis­ten­ing to. It is a lot of hard work and my cal­en­dar has a remark­able amount of things that start with ​“TTH” scrib­bled in it, but if the show is a suc­cess it’ll all be worth it.

All of this being said, I’m real­ly hap­py to say we’re donat­ing a por­tion of the show’s pro­ceeds to the Min­neso­ta chap­ter of CAIR, the Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions. It is a tiny way to sup­port just one orga­ni­za­tion work­ing to pro­mote social jus­tice and mutu­al under­stand­ing. It is a small way to say ​“thank you” to a com­mu­ni­ty we wel­come and feel wel­comed by.

And doing some­thing, any­thing, helps me sleep just a tiny lit­tle bit bet­ter at night. If you’re around the Min­neapo­lis area, I hope to see you there.

It’s crazy times in the world. One of the ways I’m stay­ing sane is to spend a lit­tle more time in the drum room. Here’s a quick video from a few weeks ago, revis­it­ing some old con­cepts — name­ly, run­ning the drums through my friend Able­ton Live for on-the-fly drum effects and loop­ing. I’ve been exper­i­ment­ing with this over the years, but the biggest breakthroughs/​challenges have been cen­tered around hid­ing the lap­top and exe­cut­ing ideas organ­i­cal­ly. I am still ter­ri­ble at this but it is fun.

One of my favorite music-relat­ed mem­o­ries is when Ted­dy Mor­gan and I asked our new friend Carl Broemel if he want­ed to ​“winthorp” with us. (For those of you not hip to this, it’s our side project of get­ting togeth­er to record hours of impro­vised space jams for almost no one’s enjoy­ment but our own.) The con­ver­sa­tion after we explained it:

“Sounds cool! I’ll bring my ped­al steel!”

“Oh, you know how to play ped­al steel?”

“No!”

“Per­fect!”

Carl is one of a rare group of fear­less musi­cians. He approach­es an unfa­mil­iar musi­cal ter­ri­to­ry with respect and patience, and it’s not long before these lands seem like noth­ing more than an exten­sion of him­self. 4^th of July, his new record, is a beau­ti­ful show­case of this.

Lis­ten­ing to these songs makes me smile so, so much — they are so well-craft­ed, the pro­duc­tion is near-per­fect, the expe­ri­ence of record­ing them was so fun, the play­ers — holy moses, can I talk about the play­ers for a bit? Jor­dan Caress of Pony­chase, Tom Blanken­ship and Bo Koster, his band­mates in My Morn­ing Jack­et…seri­ous­ly, there were times I fin­ished a take and thought, ​“I am the luck­i­est guy in the world,” and, ​“why am I here, this must be a mis­take,” at the same time. Neko Case sang on the title track and even though that was an over­dub with­out me I’m still going to tell every­one I’m on a record with her.

Any­way! The point I am try­ing to make is I think this is a great record, and I’d love it if every­one in the world would take a moment to lis­ten.

Spring in Min­neapo­lis is your free-spir­it­ed ex-girl­friend who just moved back into town. ​“You’re back!” you say, breath­less. ​“I missed you,” she whis­pers, slid­ing into your arms as if noth­ing had ever changed. Lat­er that night, as you drift off to sleep in a post-coital bliss, you dream of how this time will be dif­fer­ent, some­how your hap­pi­ness will con­vince her to stay. But you wake up to find she’s gone, again, chas­ing dreams in a warmer cli­mate while you lie stub­born­ly to any­one who will lis­ten. Her absence doesn’t both­er you. She’ll be back in a few weeks. You hope.

In hon­or of anoth­er (admit­ted­ly very mild, thanks El Niño and cli­mate change) Min­neapo­lis win­ter on her way out the door, here are a few things I’ve been work­ing on, pre­sent­ed in mean­ing­less order:

My friend Carl Broemel’s new record has just been mas­tered and will soon be released to the wild. Like his last record, it was record­ed off-and-on over a few years, and like his last record it’s a heart-break­ing­ly beau­ti­ful piece of work. I had the huge plea­sure of play­ing with some incred­i­ble musi­cians on this, and can’t wait for you to hear it.

Speak­ing of incred­i­ble musi­cians, last month I joined Brandy Zdan for a duo show on her way through Min­neapo­lis. I met Brandy last year while in Nashville; we record­ed a few songs togeth­er in what turned out to be one of the most emo­tion­al­ly exhaust­ing and cre­ative­ly reward­ing moments in my musi­cal time­line. I haven’t writ­ten much about it — one of those cas­es where words are a let­down in com­par­i­son — but suf­fice to say play­ing those songs again was a joy. One of the most fun aspects of the show was tak­ing on a chal­lenge of per­form­ing mul­ti­ple instru­ments — play­ing a key­board to my left while play­ing drums; fir­ing loops and sam­ples while play­ing Moog and Omni­chord parts; walk­ing over to my bari sax for a solo through a mul­ti­tude of delays. Spe­cial thanks goes out to my Mac­book Pro for not melt­ing into a pud­dle of silicon.

I’ve also stum­bled into a few new projects; one that I’ve tru­ly been enjoy­ing is join­ing John Mun­son, Matt Wil­son, and friends in the The Twi­light Hours. The band is sort of a lin­ear exten­sion of their time togeth­er as Trip Shake­speare; the songs share a sim­i­lar fear­less, quirky, pop sen­si­bil­i­ty. They have a new record com­ing out very soon and some ambi­tious ideas plant­ed — I’m excit­ed to see what blos­soms this summer.