Mule Train was an aggressive indie rock-cum-cowpunk outfit I formed in 2004 upon returning to Santa Cruz with Kevin Rainsberry on drums and Esteban “Cody” Perez on bass. Later, Cooper McBean joined us on lead guitar. The band released one full-length–Be On Your Way–which is still available for purchase via CDBaby and iTunes. (more…)

The second in the deviant twang compilation series, released sometime around 2005 (if my failing memory serves me correctly.) On the whole, this one is much more cohesive–if less ostensibly “twang-y”–and likely the last compilation I’ll ever put together, grace willing. It’s striking how anachronistic a CD-R comp seems a mere four years later, but for as much as putting these together was a pain in the ass (burning hundreds of copies off with every computer conceivably available, silkscreening covers one by one, affixing CD labels,) there’s a lot more charm to the process than dumping a zip folder up on Megaupload. So, here’s a zip file of tracks. Progress! (more…)

The second compilation I organized, Someday Coming Down: A Deviant Twang Sampler, was released in 2004 and focused largely on underground country, folk, and cowpunk from the West Coast.  It featured the Devil Makes Three, the Diamond Star Halos (featuring Emily Jane White), Two Gallants, and tons more bands. Even though it was largely put together while I brefly lived in Southern California, the kind folks at the Metro Santa Cruz (where I later became a contributor) called it “one of the most important compilation albums for the young local scene in years.” (more…)

The closest thing I’ve done to a proper solo full-length—at least to date—No Shoes, No Shirt, No Skinny Ties is a largely acoustic album I recorded in 2003 while living in Crestline, CA. A number of these songs later turned up on the Mule Train CD, though many of them work better acoustically, at least in retrospect. I had quite the chip on my shoulder while writing these songs, so there’s plenty of fun rants about hipsters, mid-‘20s ennui, and my formulation of Ryan Adams and Conor Oberst as faux-twang carpetbaggers. This coming from someone whose primary country influence was Pavement. ANYWAYS, I still stand by all these positions, except when I don’t.

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Boaz Vilozny is the best songwriter to ever give up music in favor of organic chemistry. His songs are terribly, painfully, brilliant. For years, he and I played together intermittently as the Lonesome Brothers. There’s a demo tape in my possession that we made way back in 1998, and if I can find a tape deck in the next decade, I’ll post it here. In the interim, a handful of tracks that we played live at the Poet and Patriot in Santa Cruz, in an incarnation of the band that included Pete Bernhard and Cooper McBean of the Devil Makes Three on bass and drums, respectively. Since we practiced approximately three times before this show, I’m only posting the songs we played sans major mistakes to avoid any DMCA takedown notices from friends. Boaz has a few new songs up on Indaba music, check ‘em out.

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Ah, the heady days of 2002. At the time, my nutrition primarily came from Budweiser and vodka and day-old bagels. Out of personal torpor and an antsiness that defines both of our personalities, my good friend Pete Bernhard and I organized Tastes Like Burning, our first CD-R comp of indie, punk and folk bands from the Santa Cruz local scene along with a number of like-minded folks from other West Coast areas.
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Perhaps the greatest musical project in the history of post-Sinatra pop-rock music, Jam Her Like Jelly was an artistic collaboration between Aaron “Stout” Thompson and myself, with occasional input from Rain Kernytsky. Taking its name from an E-40 song (“Carlos Rossi”, to be precise), Jam Her Like Jelly was the product of Stout and I ingesting whatever intoxicants were at hand (other than marijuana, which we hated,) and ad-libbing with Acid Pro, a prehistoric drum machine, assorted musical instruments, and our own vocal stylings. We touched upon some notable musical genres, including reggae, gay bar techno, noise-rock and Civil War-era marches. The veritable music of the spheres resulted when we turned our focus on a number of recurring lyrical obsessions, including: making fun of stoners, complaining about coffee shop customers, Stout’s patriotism, and gay club music.

For the uninitiated this may be less amusing than annoying, so tread warily, or cut through the chaff and download the greatest product of this collaboration, “Patriot”. [mp3 download]

For the less faint of heart, full download after the jump:

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So it’s 2001, I still haven’t gotten over the X-Files ending, so I named a musical project after an episode title. With that geeky admission out of the way, this is a full-length that I recorded of electronic indie rock, or at least that was the intention: with some separation, I can see there’s plenty of long-dormant goth influences creeping out here. A very small handful of people contend that this is the best thing I ever recorded, at least among the very small handful of people who actually heard this. I still like it a lot, with a few caveats, one of those being the vocal effects, which were over the top and mostly a result of my lack of confidence in my singing voice at the time. Also notable in that it includes the only song I’ve ever written about sex—awful, terrible sex at that. Downloads after the jump!

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Sort of a proto-mashup project, before the mashup was born (or at least before I was aware of it.) This one’s held up rather well: a mixture of samples, loops and live instruments, and tons of shit that amused me at the time (and continues to amuse me.) Features Whitley Strieber talking about abductions over some goth shit, Green Day riffs mixed with samples of drunk rednecks hollering about buttsecks, a mashup of Weezer and Eazy-E, R.E.M. guitar lines over jungle beats, a Battlestar Galactica ‘79 sample, and other fun stuff. Ahead of its time, I tell ya! I believe this was originally burned on a 2x CD burner on a 333 mhz HP Pavilion. I didn’t eat decently for weeks—perhaps  months–after buying that.

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