Making Money Making Music
Last night we played the Bloomsburg Fair in Pennsylvania, between Lauren Alaina and Kellie Pickler… Sweethearts, both. It was a standard late summer show, outdoors and chilly, a few thousand folks seated in chairs on the…
Insensible Cities
Road warrior, session bassist, and scholar Hesiod James, despite his seductive resume, has problems like everyone else.
How Country Feels
The Randy Houser tour recently parked the bus at Little Whitefish Lake in Michigan to take a couple days off away from home. Our pedal steel player’s in-laws have a vacation home there, and they were…
An Engineer Who Knows History
Raleigh, NC’s City Limits Saloon is typical for the kinds of places I’ve been playing for the last five years: a honky-tonk that looks like a steakhouse inside, smells like disinfected vomit, and is full of…
Three Places in New England, and One in New York
It was a long run: four consecutive days of ninety-minute sets bookended by two twenty-four-hour drives, the most miles I’ve yet logged in a single outing with my new boss, country singer Randy Houser. This sounds…
Occupational Wellness
Hesiod James is lying on a couch of burgundy leather in the office of psychiatrist Dr. Phthaustus [fthou’sto?s], the two engaged in a lofty discourse on aesthetics with specific regards to the responsibilities of the reader…
Cries and Whispers
It’s a new day, another one. I have another gig, another three-month relationship has ended, and I’m growing another bushy beard. But it’s a new beard, which means it’s gonna be sexier and more spontaneous than…
Currency
I went out on a date last night. She’s a singer from Spokane, and she’s in town to meet a mutual friend of ours to co-write. We’re in Vegas—ugh. I’m there to fake-play on the ACAs,…