Today I found out that there was a Post-Gazette article (in the South edition) about my residency April 14-18 at Bethel Park High School. I worked with 3 different groups of students, and they wrote songs and poems, which they performed on Friday during an all-day coffee house-type event at which each student performed their original work 4 or 5 times for different groups of their peers.
As last year (when I set the e.e. cummings poem to music which I still perform), I wrote a new song during the week, the lyrics to which came out of a writing exercise that I did with the students, who really did some great work and came up with very creative things.
Thanks to:   Julia, Andy, Andrew, Laruen, Robert, Zach, Zach, Joe, Sarah, Ashley, Jordan, Max, Brennan, Jess, Emma, Ashley, Blair, Vickie, Valerie, Jayna, Florence, Laurel, Andrea, Alyssa, Kerry, Cameron (apologies for misspelling any names), and also to Mr. Youngs for making it happen!

I’ve been going down to the Monday night open mic at Club Cafe (and then heading over the equally fine, later open mic at the Rex Theatre.) Lots of folks are taking pictures of performers at Club Cafe, and KS was kind enough to e-mail me some good ones, including this one of me playing “Something Good,” (the song of that title, not just any good song), and wearing a nifty Eat More Kale t-shirt I got at last year’s Falcon Ridge Folk Festival.
Mostly, this last paragraph is great practice linking things to other pages! :]

Dave Potts is a terrific songwriter-performer from Alabama, and someone I’ve heard play, and had the honor to play in-the-round with, at NERFA—for “best 2007 discovery” and one of his two “best CDs of 2007.” You can read that blog entry here.
Thanks, Dave!

I recently played at the Inspiration Café in Washington, PA, and Harry Funk from the Observer-Reporter came out and shot some videotape. Video of “One Excuse,” as well as audio of “Local Band” are posted online on the Observer-Reporter’s “Sound & Vision” blog. Thanks, Harry!
I played the Gristmill at St. Vincent College on Sun. evening, Jan. 27th. Eamon shot some video (as a work study project-good work, if you can get it!), and put together a pretty cool little video, which you can check out on the St. Vincent College site.
Thanks, Eamon!

My first song in 2008 was started in December of 2007. I was down in Harrisonburg VA, at my parents’ house for the holidays, and happened to see a brochure about Harper Lee, the author of “To Kill a Mockingbird.” It turns out Harrisonburg was doing the “1 City, 1 Book” program, and that book was “TKaM.” I read in the pamphlet that this amazing book was, in fact, the only one Harper ever finished, and that, in the intervening 40+ years, she has only published a couple of essays.
So, I wrote a song called “Harper Lee.” I’m still not sure if the line “but the next one never took” quite works? But e-mails are running 2-1 in favor of it. :]

The true story of my random encounter with Kevin Smith and Alanis Morrisette, and my attempt to get a song ("Bad Day") into one of his movie's ("Dogma"). You can't make this stuff up...

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