Remembering New Mexico

My last band in the US was a five-piece group called Canteen. We formed almost instantly. A friend called one day asking if I had music for a local public radio fundraiser. The band didn’t exist yet, but I said ‘sure’ anyway. I threw the group together that day with people I had played with before.

The idea was simple: we all write our own lyrics about ghosts or aliens in the southwest. Each of us wrote a song. We had them all practiced for the radio show three weeks later. This is the song I wrote, ‘Visitors of 97’, about alien abduction on a Texas farm, performed solo. No videos of our old band exist to my knowledge, but we had great fun playing at local bars.

Remembering The Second Time I Lost Music

I was living in Paris, and I contracted some mysterious skin condition that left my hands cracked and bleeding any time I tried to play an instrument. During this, I spent time with our friends Betsy and Nico in Switzerland, and I remember crying as I bled trying to play the piano. But Nico picked up the slack with his guitar, and I made up a silly song about pumpkin pies and we ran with it one night. This video is the result of that night, hands bandaged but still singing, out in the cow-riddled fields of Fribourg.

Remembering Pennsylvania

My dear friend Eli in Lancaster, PA, introduced me to Hazel Dickens and her song Coal Town Road almost 20 years ago. I adored this song, and we often sang it together back in the day - she was the one who taught me banjo before I left for New Mexico with only 120 dollars in my pocket. She gave me real confidence to play in public and sing old songs from the Carter Family or other mountain traditions. Songs I had known my whole life, but never dared to sing in front of people. Years later, in Les Ardennes in France, my wife Julie filmed this music video, all a cappella. I put my suit through more indignities than it deserved. I hope you enjoy!