Happy April, everybody. And a “hello” from Nashville, Tennessee. Spring is here, love having the windows open feeling the breeze. Not insufferably hot yet, I'll take it while I can get it.
The Blue Plate Special on WDVX in Knoxville. I am on it tomorrow at 12pm Central. 30 minutes of my finest work.
I've been rediscovering Tori Amos' Boys For Pele lately - it's one of my favorite albums of all-time. I love so many things about it. I love how “Beauty Queen” is song 0 and 1 at the same time into “Blood Roses.” I forgot how rocking and groovy “Caught A Light Sneeze” is.
My next record in a perfect world is gonna sound like Boys For Pele meets Elliott Smith's Either/Or and XO. Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago, Isakov's This Empty Northern Hemisphere, the production quality and creative innovation of Jimmy Eat World's Clarity and Phoenix's Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. A bit of Springsteen's Nebraska in there. I already totally hear Nathaniel Rateliff's influence on some of my folk/space songs from his amazing In Memory Of Loss.
I am a musician in Nashville but don't let that fool you. I am not jaded and I still am a total fanboy. I've been guilty of being extremely overly obsessively uber fanboy. I've been guilty of this with Gregory Alan Isakov, Elliott Smith, Joe Pug, Hey Mercedes/Braid/City On Film.
I know I’m evolving and will continue to evolve, but I don't think I'll completely change. I mean I've sensed when I've been fanboy in the past and have made efforts to embarrass myself less. But I like the part of me that is overjoyed when I feel like I'm touching a part of the music fabric that has been foundational to my life. I'll take this opportunity to publicly apologize to the artists and their teams for being overboard or strange.