Oct. 4 2024 — A round-up of recordings I enjoyed that were released in July through September of this year. As always, names of artists who live or have lived in the Pacific Northwest appear in bold.

July 1, 2024 – A round-up of my favorite recordings released in April through June of this year. As always, names of artists who live or have lived in the Pacific Northwest appear in bold.

May 30, 2024 – I usually do a big year-end round-up of my favorite recordings, but it seems more manageable to do it on a quarterly basis. This is music I like enough that I hope to listen to it more than once, so it’s here as a reference and reminder to me as much as anyone else.

May 26, 2024 – My pal Steve Fisk is known to spin a good yarn, and in this interview he reveals many fascinating details about the making of his album 448 Deathless Days. But he refers to the song “This Vacuum” as "a Screaming Trees outtake," which is not exactly accurate. Here's the story.

Jan. 20, 2024 – I was buying some potatoes the other day, when I thought I heard something familiar emanating quietly from the depths of the produce department. It was almost subliminal, barely audible over the store’s usual muzak system. It took me a minute to realize exactly what song it was.

Dec. 26, 2023 – Most folks who know me well are aware that I spent about six years working on a musical project about my family history in the Azores islands. One of my happiest places in the islands was CASA, a tea house and cafe/bar in the town of Horta, on the island of Faial.

Dec. 16, 2023 — I spend a lot of time checking out new music. To be honest, there is so much being released that it becomes a bit of a blur. Consequently, I find myself skimming through a lot of it and rarely coming back to listen to anything more than once. These are albums I hope to spend more time with.

Nov. 21, 2023 – Last week I had the pleasure of working in the studio with my old friend Nacha Mendez, producing a new album she's recording as part of a residency at Jack Straw Cultural Center here in Seattle. I don't often get to wear my Record Producer hat, but I enjoy it when I do.

Oct. 19, 2023 – Today would have been my friend Jackie Pilliciotti's 69th birthday. I still have all of the cassettes she made for me, and this two-hour mix is built around some of my favorite songs from them.

Sep. 20, 2023 – My dear friend and collaborator Steve Roden left this world on September 6. I haven’t written about it because, honestly, I am mostly without words.

Aug. 16, 2023 – The Chamber Music pieces were a series of ten sound installations created using recordings of room tone made in the empty spaces in which they were later presented. I am thrilled to announce that the complete Chamber Music series has finally been released by the ANTS label in Italy on CD and as a limited edition box.

Aug. 5, 2023 – I’ve had work appear on two digital compilations recently, both available to stream or download from BandCamp.

June 23, 2023 – I still have a vivid memory of my first guitar lesson. I was perhaps seven or eight years old. I had just gone to bed but wasn’t asleep yet. My mother was in the bathtub, and my father wasn’t home. The doorbell rang and my mom asked me to see who it was. There was a woman who said she had come to give me guitar lessons. We all sat down in the living room. Instead of a guitar, the woman had brought a large accordion.

May 16, 2023 – Today is the birthday of guitarist Robert Fripp, and yesterday was the birthday of his frequent collaborator Brian Eno. It’s hard to measure how influential these two artists have been, not only to me but to generations of musicians and listeners. It would not be an exaggeration to say that their work changed my life, as much as anyone else in my personal pantheon of musical heroes.

April 28, 2023 – It's been a while since I've done one of these One Song posts, and in this case that title is somewhat misleading because I'll actually be talking about several songs by Fela Kuti, the late, great Nigerian musician/singer/bandleader, nightclub operator, rabble-rouser, and founder of a style he called Afrobeat that combines elements of Nigerian highlife music, 1970s-era James Brown-style funk grooves, jazz, and political ranting.

Dec. 30, 2022 – My musical education began at home. My parents were not too involved in music themselves, but they liked it a lot. When I was a little kid they used to play records and dance the Twist in the living room. I always liked that. So there was a record collection in the house, though it was a bit of a hodge-podge…

Dec. 20, 2022 – Town and Country were an all-acoustic quartet from Chicago that played a kind of quiet, folky take on minimalism and drone-based music using a core instrumentation of two contrabasses, steel-string acoustic guitar, and small harmonium.

Dec. 15, 2022 – Yep, I still collect physical media — CDs only, mostly from thrift stores, used record shops and Discogs, and I occasionally purchase something new or get things from fellow artists as gifts or trades. My collecting habits are based mainly on whatever I happen to run across randomly rather than looking for anything in particular. It’s much more fun to dig for unexpected treasures than to shop on Amazon.

Dec. 3, 2022 – Death has really been lurking in my world lately. I mean, it always is, but as I slide further into my 60s it becomes more of a tangible presence. I recently lost three people who mattered to me in varying degrees, and it’s taken me this long to muster any words about them.

Nov. 20, 2022 – Today is Meredith Monk’s 80th birthday. I’m celebrating by digging into the new box set of twelve albums she’s released on ECM, and digging up this interview I did with her forty years ago.