Nov. 3, 2022 – My friend Rob Millis just shared this wonderful documentary called Gitara, about guitar music in Azerbaijan, and I am smitten. I don’t know enough about it to say anything terribly interesting, but I sure do love what happens when electric guitars fall into the hands of folks who didn’t traditionally use them.

Sep. 23, 2022 – In my last post I made a passing reference to the important field recordist, media theorist, and advertising guru Tony Schwartz. Then I remembered that I had this interview I did with him in 1985, sitting idle in draft form on my old blog, and thought I should make it available again.

Sep. 17, 2022 – This is the story of how I put together a backing band for weirdo musician Gary Wilson and brought him to Olympia for a pair of concerts in 1981.

Aug. 28, 2022 – For several years now, French horn player Tom Varner has been doing a series of “vespers” concerts at the Good Shepherd Center Chapel with a large improvising ensemble of brass, percussion, and field recordings, drawing on members of the Seattle Phonographers Union (including me) for the latter.

Aug. 18, 2022 – There’s a new release of old recordings by Cheri Knight, my dear friend/collaborator/housemate back in college days in Olympia, released on the Freedom to Spend label. Cheri’s had a long and varied career in music, but this material had been largely forgotten and has finally resurfaced forty years later.

April 29, 2022 – With My Back to the World, my score for Mary Lance's documentary about the abstract painter Agnes Martin (1912-2004), is now available as a digital-only release to stream or download on BandCamp. Read the backstory here.

Dec. 24, 2021 – As I said last year, I am not good at making Top 10 lists, or even Top 50 lists. But here, in no particular order, are fourteen releases that made an impression on me in 2021 and that I expect to spend more time with in 2022.

Dec. 15, 2021 – It’s a good time for digging in the bargain bins as people ditch their CDs in favor of digital-only or succumb to the Great Vinyl Boondoggle. So here’s a list of this year’s gleanings – mostly from thrift stores, a few from used record shops or Discogs, and the occasional gift from an artist friend.

Aug, 24, 2021 – I’m late in mentioning this, but back in June my music was used in a very beautiful new video piece by Seattle artist Robert Campbell. It was screened as part of the Currents New Media Festival in Santa Fe, NM that ran June 18 - 27.

July 31, 2021 – Among the many interesting musical characters who landed in New Mexico when I lived there, Dino was one of the most remarkable. He wasn’t a household name to most listeners, but he had been a vital member of several intersecting music scenes in both the Bay Area and NYC before coming to northern NM, and he quickly impressed all who encountered him.

May 28, 2021 – Proximity Effects, the second album by Three Point Circle, a trio project by myself, Marc Barreca, and K. Leimer, is released on the Palace of Lights label.

Mar. 11, 2021 – Back in 2011, a piece of mine was included on a 2-CD tribute to the composer Erik Satie on the Arbouse label in France. I only recently found out that this album was reissued in 2015 with a third CD added, and just got a copy in the mail.

Feb. 13, 2021 – A friend of mine recently posted about quitting her long-term meditation practice. After twenty-plus years she was feeling frustrated by her apparent lack of noticeable progress and finally decided to give up on it. I get it. I've practiced meditation for over twenty years now. And like my friend, I sometimes feel like a failure. So why do I keep doing it?

Jan. 14, 2021 – Songs are one of the most persistent forms of human virus, implanting themselves deep within our gray matter and constantly mutating in search of new hosts, spinning off endless versions and variants as they travel across space and time and surviving through their ability to adapt to all kinds of unlikely hosts through the centuries.

Dec. 31, 2020 – I am not one of those people who makes Top Ten lists, annually or otherwise. But last year my friend Kat told me about a series on our neighborhood micro-FM station called My Ten Songs, and she innocently asked what I might play if I were invited. Now here I am over a year later, still thinking about it.

Dec. 18, 2020 – Patti Smith’s Horses was released forty-five years ago this week. It was one of those albums that came along exactly when I needed to hear it, and probably changed my life. It remains as important to me now as it did then.

Dec. 9, 2020 – Another day, another musical icon gone. I swear I never intended for this One Song game to just be a series of memorials to the departed. But it seems 2020 isn’t done brutalizing us, and I’m just dealing with what it’s throwing at me.

Dec. 8, 2020 – On this night 40 years ago, I was huddled in the kitchen of a freezing house in Olympia with the local college radio station on. I don’t remember who was on the air or what they were playing. I just remember that suddenly it all stopped and the DJ announced that John Lennon had been murdered. And there was now an unexpectedly large, gaping hole in the world.

Dec. 3, 2020 – My dear friend Noah Creshevsky left this world last night. He was a remarkable composer of electronic music, in a style that he called "Hyperrealism." Noah was an important mentor to me, even though I never actually studied with him.

Nov. 30, 2020 – When a great singer sings, the skin of space and of time go taut, the voices of the newborn fill the world, there is no corner left of silence or of innocence...