Juba and his hammer dulcimer

There's a winding passageway that separates the platforms for the 6 and E trains at the 53rd and Lexington subway station. The Thursday I met Juba the crowd was hustling with typical impatience down the long corridor and I was in the middle of it getting my shoulders bumped and my heels kicked. With a few hours to kill between work up in Harlem and a gig at Matchless in Brooklyn I was neither in a rush nor bothered by the clumsy mass of people surrounding me.

His music was barely audible from the far end of the passageway, but as we came closer it grew louder than the White Stripes song rattling on my ipod. I turned off the rock and roll and let the mysterious reverberating sound guide me along the last yards of my transfer. When Juba finally came into sight it looked like he had created an eddy in a river of commuters. The passageway ended, the walls drew apart and off to the left there were people wandering casually in the area where he had set up his hammer dulcimer. Some were gazing at the tile mosaic on the wall and listening to his music, others stood in front of him watching the mallets bounce off the strings on his unfamiliar instrument. I got the feeling that somehow the complexity of his music and the intrigue of his unique instrument allowed them to discover for the first time the detail in these walls which they had hurried past so many times.

He had a recorded percussion track piped through a speaker at his feet. The percussion, I learned when I spoke with him between songs, was actually a recording of the percussionist from his band, Mecca Bodega. So I attached the microphone to my ipod and asked if he wouldn't mind my recording his next song.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO JUBA AND HIS HAMMER DULCIMER AT 53RD AND LEXINGTON

Learn to See

This is a recording I made sitting in Peters' backyard in San Diego a couple months back. We're playing a tune we came up with a couple moments before hitting record on the ipod microphone, he's playing bottle neck guitar and I'm on my Santa Cruz. The sound gets blown out by the wind from time to time and there's a little dissonance in our tuning and in my freestyle lyrics, but you get a good sense of how we work together when we have an idea for a new song.

Click here to listen to hear Peters and me write this song

song of the wha?

Today my song Around My Thoughts is Garageband.com's acoustic Song of the Day and what that means for my career I haven't yet figured out. It does make me want to write about what my career is though. Maybe this Garageband thing is a small milestone that gives me a chance to look back down the path I've been blazing over the last year. A singer songwriter in a city of singer songwriters with a couple jobs to piece together a living.

Since putting out the "Bay to Maples" I spend more time on the computer trying to get the music in the ears of bloggers than I expected to. I read music blogs to learn about new artists, why not see if the writers feel mine? Since the music industry has ripped apart its own foundation, bloggers give music fans better access to new independent music than anyone else. So far a handful of writers have reviewed my record, you can read the reviews here. It's an admirable hobby, writing about music you dig.

CD sales are climbing slowly, not as quickly as the downloads, rips and burns I'm sure. I sell them out of my apartment in Brooklyn (though there is a stack at CD Baby as well) and on iTunes. Otherwise I play for kids a few hours a week in Tribeca at a slick little joint called Minimasters. We write catchy tunes and butcher classics like Hound Dog to suit our childish purposes (you sound just like a hound dog/howling all the time). They say it's healthy to smile, this job keeps me healthy.

For the last few years I've worked for Bard College up in the Hudson Valley. I've done a number of things there, from coaching the volleyball teams to working in admissions and teaching a rap songwriting class. Not so much teaching as facilitating freestyle sessions. Now I'm working for the admissions office from my apartment in Brooklyn. I talk to kids in public high schools around NYC about opportunities to study at Bard and what they might expect when they're there. To think, write, create, innovate...what better way to spend some formative years?

I'm a singer songwriter in a city of singer songwriters paving my path and paying my bills. Small or large as today's milestone may be it gives me the chance to reorient myself on this indie road I've chosen.