Soothing the Savage Beast

When not writing and recording with a specific goal in my mind, I admit that my musical attention span can be rather short. So while I'd love to be able to crank out hit songs on my own, I tend to be more successful at working over someone else's creations, or undertaking short-lived tasks—music that I can use to soothe my son, or singly (and strongly) theme short clips (jingles, if I'm really honest with myself). That's alright—a man has to know his limitations—but it doesn't keep me trying to improve.

Fortunately, the gracious guys of Chicago's Autumn War (friends Jon Reich and John Blum) are willing to overlook those limitations and allow me to play guitar and sing in their band. This is actually the second time I've been in this band—I took a couple years off after logging over four years and more than a hundred shows with them beginning in early 1998.

Additionally, and as time allows, I'm involved in a sort of remote collaboration with my friend Christopher Bunn, a studio-only entity named Riverode. Christopher and I were bandmates during my first stint with Autumn War, and now we're working (slowly, as we live nearly 2000 miles away from each other) together with a goal of making music targeted for television and film outlets.

Other projects with which I have been associated include my old two-man acoustic pop outfit, Phobic (with friend Shep Kendall), as well as doing guitar and/or vocal work (in "hired-gun" mode), for the independent acts Ängst and Tempestuous All. I've also had the pleasure of logging some performances with Chicago's About Face Theatre company, fallout from some of the work I've done with Chicago theatre sound designers Ben Sussman and Andre Pluess.