Eighteen and in my first band, a Richmond, VA. cover band that played the same frat house circuit that made Dave Matthews and Hootie famous. Our name? M.F. Rattlesnake. Our drummer stole the name from a band in Ohio. BTW--the band did not revolve around me. I was just the lead guitarist.
My first original band was called The Rage, formed with my two best friends from high school. This was taken in a photo booth on a visit to NY. I’m smiling with my mouth closed because I have braces.
Following this Rage gig at Richmond’s “Hard Times” bar, a man handed us a business card that said Sunshine Records. After he left, we snickered and tore it into tiny pieces. Turned out the man was a millionaire real estate developer whose support led to major record deals for two other bands.
Yes, that’s Aimee Mann shakin’ it up at an early Rage gig. We’re both proud alums of Richmond’s Open High School. Years later, after my first CD was released, I got backstage at her show in SF and gave her a copy. “I can’t wait to hear this!” she beamed. “Your number’s on here, right?” I waited and waited and never heard a peep. Oh, well. A few years later, armed with this very photo to get past security, I snuck into her soundcheck at another SF show and gave her a copy of my CD. Save the Day. “Wow! I can’t wait to hear this!” she gushed, “Your number’s on here, right?” A chill ran down my spine.
Why am I showing you this???
Or this???
The biggest thing in Richmond, our young heads swollen to pumpkin-size, we were playing a warehouse gig when we met a dapper Englishman who told us we’d be fools not to move to LA, where he knew everybody. Note to young bands: 1) When a total stranger tells you to move 3,000 miles while blowing smoke into the deepest recesses of your colon, exercise caution. 2) When your bass player puts down his Fender Precision for the last song and picks up a cheap piece-of-shit (see above left), everyone in the whole joint will know he’s about to smash it.
So we did it! We listened to the charming stranger, said our goodbyes, packed up our lives and headed west. Somewhere in New Mexico, we stayed with a distant relative of Peter’s and found a whole box of hoedown gear. We did some rompin’ and a-stompin’ as Jimi tried desperately to pass. Our trip to LA was infinitely better than actually being there. Years later I wrote a song called, “Going West”, about how sweet it was to be young and dumb and bound for glory.
Once in LA, we had a hard time getting booked, partly because there were at least two other bands in town who thought they were The Rage! Then our equipment was stolen and our cars all died. Posing behind Peter and me is the ’64 Chevy van we bought to carry us back to Richmond only ten months after our arrival. It died two hours into the Arizona desert.
Back in Richmond, our bassist Peter Bell had an idea to make our big return gig a smash: Become transformed into a New Romantic band! Genius! Drummer Jimi Gore, to his eternal credit, refused to wear the ridiculous costume Peter had sewn for him. I was not so strong. Nor was my costume; the pants split half-way through our opening number. The Rage split up three months later.
After the breakup of The Rage I moved to New York, where I took on the music publishing industry, eventually discovering that in order to successfully write songs for Joan Jett and Pat Benetar, you have to like Joan Jett and Pat Benatar. Or at least be able to listen to them. My spirit beaten down by my job as a busboy in a Chinese restaurant, I returned to Richmond to form a new band.
The band was The Late Show, which gained some industry interest and opened for Modern English, Suzanne Vega and, uh, Til Tuesday. But then I started playing solo-acoustic shows, which had previously seemed terrifying. I loved the fact that people could finally understand my lyrics. Shortly thereafter, I set out for San Francisco.
Landing in SF in the fall of 1988, I started playing cafe shows while supporting myself singing covers in terrifying suburban lounges. My song “Fern-Bar Blues” (a live favorite available on the “My Secret Life” CD) was born of this pain.
I learned too late that, though this makes an interesting promo shot, it does not serve well when accompanying online dating ads.
A singer/songwriter can never go wrong by cultivating the hobo look. Writing songs in dank, urine-soaked highway underpasses is particularly recommended.
Most people realize that the entertainment industry is controlled by a secret cabal of Jews with offices in Miami, Los Angeles, and Northeast Philadelphia. My career floundering (see above) and being only half-Jewish, I made a vain attempt to curry favor by entering rabbinical school.
As one door closes, another opens; starting a new life after my expulsion from The San Mateo College of Professional Judaism. The box contains three embroidered yarmulkes and a one-way bus ticket to Provo, Utah.
Having now sputtered in two careers, I set out to bomb at a third, designing a board game which captures all of the horror and none of the glamour of the music industry. The game was to be manufactured and distributed by a charming Italian octogenarian I found in the Yellow Pages, a man I eventually determined was not in any way associated with organized crime. Nonetheless, he took my money and the game was never produced. Talented songwriter Andras Jones has a prototype of the game and has evangelized it far and wide among touring musicians. My prototype was destroyed in a fire, though it still exists in my computer. Buy me a beer sometime and I’ll tell you the whole, weird story. Or just buy me a beer.
My song "The WIsh" was honored as a winner of the Songs Inspired By Literature project, a non-profit supporting adult literacy programs. Inspired by Goethe's Faust, "The Wish" appears alongside songs by David Bowie, Tom Waits, Roseanne Cash, Steve Earle, and others.
In 2004, at the urging of former Green Day manager Elliot Cahn, I assembled my comic misadventures in the music business into a theatrical piece --"How to Write a Song" It combined songs, monologues, and interactive video in a show that ran for six-weeks at San Francisco's Off-Market Theater.
Around this same time, while playing a solo acoustic show at San Francisco’s Bazaar Cafe, I was approached by a man who asked if I’d ever considered writing songs for kids. He turned out to be the Creative Director of The Learning Company, the world’s leading producer of children’s educational software. Within a few months I’d written over a dozen songs for them, including most of the songs on the release pictured here, and the Reader Rabbit Theme which now appears with each new product. After years in the “serious” music biz, my natural creativity slowly picked away by the internalized voices of various A&R bozos, I started having fun again. I also made, for the first time in my musical career, some real money.
Shortly after finishing my assignment for The Learning Company, I founded my own kid’s music company, Brainy Tunes. My goal was to write smart, funny songs that refused to condescend to kids. I knew in the process I’d also be creating songs that parents would be able to endure -- and actually enjoy -- listening to again and again and again. (If you have young kids, you know exactly what I mean...) Since then, Brainy Tunes has released six acclaimed CDs, won awards from The Parents' Choice Foundation, Mr. Dad, School Library Journal and more. On the two most recent releases I've found my true calling in kids' music: an imaginary band playing S P O O K Y songs.
With Brainy Tunes up and running anc CDs selling well (particularly to schools and libraries) I was ready to return to a greater focus on my music for adults. I released the CD "Lucky" (which I had tinkered with on and off for several years) ans ssarted booking shows again. The reaction was immediate and highly favorable--rave reviews from press and fans and growing audience with every passing week.
