Photo credit: Alex Berger
Tell us about your tour vehicle. Any notable breakdown stories?
I currently live on a tiny island in Mexico and drive an electric golf cart (which isn’t super useful for tour), but when I started out I was touring in a 1990 Mazda MPV minivan named Maureen with 270,000 miles on the odometer. She was declared dead in 2005 and again in 2014, and mechanics brought her back from the brink each time. She still runs!
How do you eat cheaply and/or healthy while on tour?
On my last national tour we would stay in each city for a few days at a time preparing for the Permission Parties (my multi-sensory show where I pair each track from my album with a Chinese food dish), so we would go to Trader Joe’s and get a bunch of frozen Indian meals and chile mac and cheese, plus fruits and granola bars for breakfast. That saved us a good amount of money!
How many strings do you break in a typical year? How much does it cost to replace them?
I swear I’m not getting paid to say this haha but since I switched to Martin SP Mediums about 20 years ago I have never broken a single string on stage (knock on wood). And I used to beat the shit out of my acoustic guitar with bad technique!
Where do you rehearse?
When I moved to Nashville I was lucky to be able to rehearse in my house. But I have definitely had some crazy weird spaces in the past, including a uninsulated/unheated room inside of a tallow factory. (I never could get over the smell.)
What was the title and a sample lyric from the first song that you wrote?
Oooooof cringe city. It was called “The Drive.” “I live alone in a beautiful home and there’s only so much to see, but you still look amazing on TV”
Describe your first gig.
I think it was at an open mic inside a martial arts studio in Culver City CA. I played my only song. I think I loved it!
What was your last day job? What was your favorite day job?
I’ve been pretty lucky to work in music for the last 20 years in some capacity, but the last non-music job that stands out was teaching martial arts to 7th graders in Brooklyn, and fake playing guitar in a McDonalds commercial.
How has your music-related income changed over the past 5-10 years? What do you expect it to look like 5-10 years from now?
What do you expect it to look like 5-10 years from now?
I think the biggest change was joining patreon about 8 years ago. That was a game changer to have the ability to create a stable monthly income that didn’t affect other income streams. For the last decade or so I think my income pie graph has been divided between producing records for other artists, touring as a drummer, and my own artist income, which was primarily from Patreon.
Over the last few years I’ve been trying to transition away from producing/touring with other artists as much to focus more on my artist project, but I still mix records for other artists quite a bit which I really love doing.
What one thing do you know now that you had wished you knew when you started your career in music?
Don’t buy snacks every time you stop at a gas station on tour.
Don’t ever settle/compromise in your songwriting just to get it done, even if it takes forever to finish a song, because if you’re not 100% happy with it, you’ll never play it. Songs that you took the time to get exactly right will serve you for years.