Happy New Year!
My 11 new songs for 2008 were (in order): Harper Lee (our greatest 1-book author?), pity to waste it (Paul Tabachnek loves this song), secret (GLBT ally song #2), morning sickness (written at Bethel Park High School), bitter kid (Paris? Brittany?), j’ai vidé mon cœur (oui, that’s French… I had some help), Lite Brite (which won me $100-yay!), few and far between (written for a Rhode Island songwriters-in-the-round thing), headlights (love vs.3, still not sure about line #2), Eveline (I got the name from a sign for “Evaline St.”), & married a lawyer (a little Google is a dangerous thing—MP3 is now posted!).
For me, a song a month is pretty typical; my favorite new song of ‘08 is probably Lite Brite, though the French one is quite lovely; I like them all, really. (I actually do.)

Hey, I just learned that my song Lite Brite won 2nd place (and $100) in this year’s Paul Loyd Just this Guy Songwriting Contest, which takes place each August.
You can listen to all 8 entries here.
The winner was Victoria Vox, with her song “My Window” (Anything can be a toy, really, when you’re a kid.)
This year’s theme was “write about a favorite toy”; you also had to compare it to another toy (and explain why it was better), and use the words “toy,” “child,” “play,” and “fun,” with bonus points for “monkey.” (yes, I got monkey in there twice.)
So, check out (& download) Lite Brite!
(FYI, the theme last year was “write about a venue you like to play,” and I wrote Java 13, which I also thought turned out nicely.)

Last Wednesday night (11/5/08), Jason and I “competed” in the finals of our 5th Three Rivers Productions “Acoustic Challenge.” This is a deal where there are 5 nights of 5 acts each, doing all-original material, and the winners of each night then compete in the finals for a grand prize of $1000. We had won once before (12/5/2006), so we are now “retired” from any future competitions.
We played the following set: Someone To Be Lonely With, Bitter Kid, Can’t Sleep (Jason on mandolin), Head Together, Hair Loss Blues (the latter two with sax). Other fine performers that night included the fabulous Joy Ike, (2nd place), Second Favorite’s Ben Alper and Eric Granata, Todd Jones, and Todd Edwards. It was great to hear so much excellent local music, and we were honored to play, & “win.” You can see some more pictures here. Big thanks to Nancy Lackner for organizing these fun musical happenings.

BIG THANKS to everyone who came out last Friday (11/7/08) to hear me and my kicking band at Your Inner Vagaond.
The Lost Sea opened, and were great (thanks, Sean!), and Your Inner Vagaond is such a great room (thanks, Andrew!): non-smoking, all-ages, BYOB, lots of couches, good sound, and easy to play not-too-loud. I hope we can play there again sometime soon .

I sort of disappeared there for a bit—I was up in Burlington Vermont for 5 weeks, working at a French language immersion program with 90-some American teenagers, and a very cool staff (all of whom pretty much spoke better French than me, but I learned a lot in 5 weeks).
The program was housed at St. Michael’s College, a small Catholic liberal arts college with a really lovely campus.
Since “Brad” isn’t a very French name, I was “Thibault.” I led singing (kids learned about 20 songs or so while there), and helped to organize activities and other program-related things. It was very fun, and CRAZY STRESSFUL. So, readjusting has taken a little longer than expected. But, I’m glad to be back, and I do have a new French song, j’ai vidé mon cœur (I emptied my heart) to show for it. The kids sang it, and also an older one, Une Fois, which I wrote while working in a similar program about 10 years back.
Will I do it again next summer? Not sure, but it was pretty cool.

I just re-found some video online from a couple of shows Jason and I played in December of 2006, in Ithaca NY (at the Smart Monkey Cafe, and Schenectady Night Sky Cafe. They were recorded & edited by Jason’s father, John. You can watch live versions of 7 songs.