Hi there! I love thinking about you all seeing this email in your inbox and imagining all your various reactions (I hope there are at least one or two “this fuckin’ guy again?”s). Squarespace gives me analytics that show who has opened it, at what time, and even what links you all have clicked on. Maybe that sounds a little creepy, but to me it feels like a little web of connection between all you tendrils, with this email as the hub of all those offshoots (oh my god the self-aggrandizement).

Many of you know each other, and many of you don’t, and that is very interesting to me—I want to explore the potential for connecting some of those tendril ends a bit more.

There are about 80 of you now, which feels like a nice size and I love that you are here, but if you ever need to leave, please feel no hesitation or need to protect my feelings. On the flip side—if there is anyone in your life who you feel might appreciate these dispatches, feel free to send them my way!

On the Road

I’m writing this from a double-decker tour bus rocketing toward Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The past eight weeks with the David Byrne crew have been a blur of rehearsals, press events, wedding performances, and last night we wrapped up a week of tech rehearsals at a state-of-the-art facility in Lititz, PA, piecing together audio, lighting, video, costumes, instruments, music, dance, and something called BlackTrax (which you have to see to believe). There will be more about my specific backline/drum tech job in a later dispatch, but for now I’ll just say that I have been loving working long, hard hours, getting to know and trust new people, and as always being a humble cog in a big wheel that will bring this show to hundreds of thousands of people all over the world over the course of the next year or so.

I’ve got my bike with me, which feels like a real gift, and I’m missing my family a lot already, and trying hard to stay in a connective routine with them. I’ll be home now and again, and have some longer breaks throughout the year, which I’m really looking forward to.

Would you like a postcard?

I’d like to send postcards to people from places I go, and if you’d like one (or some) please do CLICK HERE and provide me with your address.

Speaking of Art Heroes

I heard about Brad Gooch’s biography of Keith Haring (Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring) from Freddy Hall (from whom I hear about an inordinate number of things I end up loving). And so I checked it out from my local library (which Freddy also encouraged me to reconnect with), read it, and adored every page.

Ok, I also want to say that I’ve always considered myself a poor visual artist and so never really attempted to engage in painting, drawing, etc in any real meaningful way. BUT, reading about Keith’s obsession with constantly drawing and creating iconography has gotten me really inspired and I’ve been having fun iterating a little t-shirt icon all over the place. I’ve been filling notebook pages in downtime backstage, sneakily adding a little street art here and there, and during some hotel time this week I painted a pair of Feiyue’s that I bought.

Find an icon and draw it everywhere! I believe in you!

In fact, if you do and you send it to me I’ll make a little email list art gallery and we can all see what each other are up to!

One More Thing and it’s a Little Sad

Have we talked about Jill Sobule? 

Jill is dead.

She kissed a girl and sang about it before it was a cool thing to sing about.

Jill died in a fire—a horror beyond comprehension.

One day in May of this year I opened my Tidal app and when I saw a playlist entitled “The Essential Jill Sobule” I knew she was dead. I didn’t even want to google her but I did and it turned out she was barely even cold before the playlist entitled “The Essential Jill Sobule” had appeared. I was filled with white-hot fury at what felt like such a predatory generation by a music streaming app. 

The true essential Jill Sobule was:

A right, proper New York weirdo.

A wide-eyed, ever-young optimist. 

A sensitive, open-faced feeler. 

And a little nervous. 

I didn’t know Jill very well—we shared the stage a few times—but I felt drawn to her each time we interacted. She brought people in (including me) without even meaning to. 

A champion of justice and equity.

A tenderheart seeker of the truth.

An always-smiling buoy of faith.

And a little awkward. 

Jill always seemed to have tears welling up in her eyes in a way that I aspire to. I interpret it as a constant knowledge that life is as beautiful as it is tragic. A refusal to admit that all is lost, even when things seem bad and seem worse.

I miss Jill’s glasses and her little traveler guitar and her collaged show posters.