Last week I read a post by Mark Cuban called “The Album is dead….”  Personally I think it is in suspended animation. You know, ala Dr. Evil. A slowed down pulse and the heart kept beating until we know what to do with it. A time will come when the form will return to form.

It may look and feel a little different, but the idea of works by a single artist bundled together will not disappear. It has existed in some shape as long as there has been music. A collection of themes encompassed into a single body.


Now Mark is obviously not the first to say this, but what was really interesting to me is what he suggested as an alternative.  About halfway through the post he mentions using RSS to keep up with an artist you like. They could deliver a song say every week or two. To me this opens up a new way of thinking about the music industry.

When I first found out what RSS really was I was struck with the same idea.  Then I started reading about others who had similar thoughts. A post that I thought described it well was by Bruce Warila called “Being Episodic.” 

However you want to break it down, "It's like a TV season, It's like a magazine, " It's a weekly radio show", it is quite simply a good idea. It seems like artists would be able to experiment more and get immediate feedback. Then after a period of time it could be bundled into a set, like a season of the Sopranos. (and yes feel free to take a year off too to build up the hype). Add some value with extras and packaging to make it worth caring about, make it worth buying. (For the first time or again if you sold the singles).

Sufjan Stevens could finish his record for every state and you would have the songs along the way. Then buy your state. Jonathan Coulton did this with his "Thing a week". It seems perfect for Ryan Adams, and on and on. I know its been done but RSS would make it easy for everyone to find and keep up with it all.

The genius to me is that is up to the individual artist how much or how little or what kind of content they put up..... video, making of, single, b-side, acoustic, re-mix, etc. And with RSS the listener can chose who they want to follow, making their own little iTunes like homepage or personal music rag with media included.

Stay tuned because I will be trying something like this soon. I have been putting a lot of thought into in. It will involve a few "Seasons" and possibly a few formats. (Audio, Video, Text, Pictures) The cool part about the formats would be releasing it a few ways. An audio or video podcast on iTunes and a flickr page, and of course RSS and email. Each one tying back to the other.

Then at the end I will get it all together and put out an album. Bring it out of Suspended Animation. Or I won't and will love the brave new world and just continue on with my broad/narrow cast and Mark Cuban will have been right. "The album is dead...." 

"Tired of the violence, the blind defiance, the social silence of anything that could bring change."

These are lyrics to a song I recorded in 2002 called "Revolution Speed". In 2001 on the morning of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Birthday I wrote about the idea of the man and what he stood for.

Today I re-read the I have a Dream speech and it still hit me as hard as ever. You may have seen clips all week but if not. Here it is. What a powerful message to bring into the world.



I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I spent time tonight dwelling on that. The content of their character.

Revolution speed.

Give the song a listen "Revolution Speed"

How Cameras in California found me.

"Miles of wires, four wheels and a motor that runs”

There is nothing out here. This is what the moon must feel like, a vast expanse of emptiness covered in dirt. The only difference is the smell of gasoline and the one long yellow line broken into easily digested chunks. Welcome to West Texas.

“Highways and road signs, melting in the sun”

Interstate highway 10 runs from one end of this country to the other, and I have driven every inch of it in small doses. This time I am in a Budget rental truck moving back to Los Angeles from Austin. Here is where ideas are born, minds are free to wander and all I can think about is her.

“I’ve been riding on a tidal wave, trying to get to you”

It was there in the raw bigness of the wide open sky that the first lines came to me. Up the small inclines of hills that are the humble beginnings of the Rocky Mountains I started singing. Later that night in a hotel just outside of Lordsburg, New Mexico I put the core of the song on paper.

“All the Cameras in California, could wash out to the sea
I’d still have your picture, in my brain like a melody
Snow’s falling over Milwaukee and the Devil’s in New Orleans
but the Cameras in California keep you right here next to me”

Tropical storm Arlene hit the panhandle of Florida on June 11, 2005. On June 10 I had spent my birthday with my best friend Michael deep sea fishing 25 miles out of Destin, FL. The ride back to shore was bone chilling in the truest sense. We escaped the storm.

To get to Destin we had taken the coastal roads through Mississippi. The blue highways as William Least Heat-Moon would say. There was one section so close to the water that it felt the Gulf of Mexico might swallow us whole. Two months later Hurricane Katrina did just that. New Orleans and the coast did not escape the storm.

"Hotels and airports, cell phone tower wars"

The hotel bed was empty without her. I kept thinking that all across America that night there were people feeling the same way. Separated by miles but connected by radio frequencies. Except when they were not. It is easy to feel the presence of a voice, familiar and close but when the connection cuts out. You might as well be on the moon. Lost in that vast expanse of emptiness.

"Laptop batteries that don't work anymore"

Ansel Adams once said "There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept." Well my concept was clear, love. Whenever I am working on a song my wife will inevitably ask me what it’s about. I used to give long answers, go into details about the story or what kind of arrangement I was hearing. Now I just tell her, "It's a love song for you." And the truth is they are.

Last night I was watching television and came across a program on the science channel. Boring? Sometimes, but what caught my eye was Craig Venter. The of mapping the human genome was something I followed as it happened (Boring? Absolutely.) and he was one of the more visible figures.

Now here he was on a boat in the Galapagos Islands mapping the ocean and its many microbes.  The idea of the expedition was to find a micro-biotic solution for  the worlds energy dilemma. A better way to power the planet. One image really stuck with me though. Fifty feet underwater there were a number of springs rising up from the ocean floor. Venter was capturing the bubbles from one of them into a tube. Up from depths of the earth came hope, in the form of a bubble, captured in a bottle and brought to the surface. Hope surely springs eternal.

John Prine is one of my favorite songwriters and Spanish Pipedream is one of the reasons. There is a call to action in the chorus. Blow up your TV, throw away your papers, move to the county, build you a home. He also says to eat a lot of peaches but I already do.

The media is full of reasons to despair, global warming, recession, war and the list goes on.  Happiness doesn't sell, struggle does. I have almost taken Johns advice many times. Then I see something that reminds me of the people out there trying to make the world better. (Yes I know Venter stands to make a lot of money as well.) So if you can't  bring your self to blow up your TV, maybe try to watch something that inspires you.  My sister sent me this youtube clip a few weeks ago. I normally find news stories about hope trite, a strange predicament I know. However this one got me, watch it until the end and I bet it makes you smile. If not well then, blow up your TV.

This is how my new record Bonfires began. It was an idea in my head, a spark. Over time it went through its own micro-evolution. From nothing to paper to microphones to you. My plan is for this website to do the same. I want to try a wide variety of things and then boil them down to their essence. I have been reading and learning from so many sources that I thought many of you might find as fascinating as I do. If not please skip this post and go outside and enjoy the sun/clouds/rain/snow.

Anything worth making part of your life is more often than not worth passing on. That will be the idea behind the Pass it on section of this website. It will be a mashup of things I have learned or enjoyed that I want to share with you.

Right now it is just a page of an Amazon "aStore" that I have been experimenting with but it will be expanding soon. It will include records/songs I love, books, films, recording gear and techniques and maybe much more. Or none of that and just a photo of a light bulb. That is the future and I will not predict what will be. Lets talk about what is.

One of the books I just finished and plan on reading over and over is Made to Stick. It applies in so many ways to the basics of what I am trying to do but there was one story that really fits here.

In the book they talk about a group of UCLA students asked to work on a problem in their lives. There were three groups. One was a control group that did nothing. One was a group asked to focus on what they would feel like when the problem was resolved. The last group was asked to think about how the problem had come to be.

The surprising result of this was that the group that was asked to ponder how the problem came to be felt much better about it that those who simply imagined feeling better. They were also more likely to have taken steps to do something about it.

"The past does not influence me; I influence it. - Willem de Kooning

One of the people I have been learning from is Andrew Dubber. His E-book is great read about music online. One of his first and I think key ideas is that the music industry has not changed, it is changing. This was a simple statement that put me on the right track. I felt like Ian Rogers of Yahoo! Media had been reading my notebook when I read his post Talking to the Music Industry Again. I do of course realize I have really been reading his as he was one of Blenders Top 25 Powergeeks.

Anyway this is the kind of thing that has been on my mind. I am going to gather as many solid ideas as I can and put them in context (this website).So If you or someone you know can benefit from learning more about these ideas, pass it on.

This is a picture of a turntable my grandfather owned. He ran a radio station in Fredrick, Oklahoma. It really has nothing to do with eating an airplane except that it is metal.

However, there is an amazing story of a French man, Michel Lotito who ate an airplane. A Cessna 150 to be exact. I don't want to sell the man short, he has also eaten 18 bicycles and a TV. But he spent about 2 years (from 1978-1980) eating an airplane. How did he do it? One bite at a time.

This is how to get things done, in small bite size pieces. So over the next few years in this new world of music this what I am going to do. Eat an airplane. Hell, I may even eat a bicycle while I'm at it.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
-- Henry David Thoreau

This is a quote that I have kept in my mind for some time. At different times in my journey it has meant different things to me. I have had various notions of what success is, what my dreams were, and so on. Maybe you are the same way.

One thing has not changed though. I am a songwriter. I love songs. As Joseph Campbell would say songs are my bliss. I think it took me getting an ipod to remember this. Sometimes you know something about yourself but it takes an outside influence to remind you that you know it. My reminder was the ipod.

Suddenly I was listening to more music that I ever had, and I listen to a lot of music. I started buying Beach Boys records with my allowance when I was 5 and the seed for the tree of my life was planted. Most of my life lessons are in song. Like you I have specific memories tied to music. I think that is why Elton Johns "Tiny Dancer" works so well in "Almost Famous". I am sure your life has a soundtrack that is vivid to you.

I read a book a few weeks ago, one of those I bought but just got around to reading. It was called "Love is a Mix Tape". It really drives home this point. Just how much music can mean in a persons life. It made me want to be a better songwriter.

So that is who I am, a songwriter. If you love songs please hang out here, I am working on making this site a place you can find a part of the soundtrack to your life. If it's a song I write or one you discover in the Pass it On section ( A work in progress) I hope music will continue to bring as much to your life as it does to mine.

The title of this post comes from 10 MPH, a documentary I recently stumbled across. Two guys quit their cubicle jobs to ride across the USA on a Segway and film the whole thing.

Along the way they rely heavily on the kindness of strangers. One of those strangers is a man from a small town who is proud to call it home. During the interview he says what I found to be uniquely profound, "I was born here everyday of my life".

At first glance it sounds misspoken and I am sure it was, but I like to read deep into things that appear simple on the surface. So that is how I am going to approach this website, I will be born here everyday of my life (or every-other day or two).

The music industry is evolving and everyday I am learning ways to adapt. I don't have all of the answers but I think I have found a starting place. This website will be a work in progress, new things being added and taken away as they rise or fall.

The idea of a daily rebirth sounds a bit bigger than I mean it but I think you get the idea. I hope the new year is treating you well. Here I go walking into 2008 with wide open eyes.

" Change is in all things sweet." Aristotle