A short movie about Slam Poetry, Street Poetry, and Protest Poetry. There’s footage of poets on the streets of Chicago, at war protests in Washington D.C., and at the Green Mill where Slam Poetry started. Poets are some of the most passionate, corny, funny, serious, smart, philosophical, sad, and above all dedicated people you will ever meet. — Wes Heine (director)

I make a quick cameo at 1:15 right after Nina Corwin and Tim Cook. Enjoy!

Recently while on tour I had the opportunity to visit my little brother in Austin, TX. Someone very close to us recommended we go to The Texas Chili Parlor for Mad Dog Margaritas. They make their margaritas with fresh limejuice and don’t bog them down with commercially packaged sweet & sour mix. Mad Dog Margaritas are made using an extraordinarily harsh mezcal tequila…the kind with the worm in the bottle. It’s a tough cup-o-drank.

The recommendation came from a person that learned of the drink from a song they listened to while dealing with divorce. We’ve talked about how much of a tool music can be in processing here before. I think it comes up a lot actually. Sometimes someone has said it all before. You need to live through their voice. It helps us find solace. We’re not alone.

Sitting there in The Texas Chili Parlor in a city that is not my own, turning tequila into hair on my chest, my girlfriend and little brother at the table, I felt very connected. I was connected to the people around me, the floorboards, the jukebox, the person who recommended the bar, the humid rainy air, and the laughter that can wash so much of the past away.

I search for words to describe the feeling here…though someone has said it first and, of course, said it best…

Here are the lyrics…
(more…)

If this doesn’t make you feel better I don’t know what will.

My good friend Lindsey Mineff and I gave each other an artistic prompt recently. Here’s the dirt: We each made a playlist of songs we like on youtube for each other. We then needed to create a piece of art inspired by or while listening to each other’s respective playlists.

The playlist she made can be found here.
The poem I wrote as a result of listening is here.

The line that most directly relates to her playlist is “a song in the shape of a rabbit” and if you notice, the third video on her list is “Who Can Win a Rabbit” by Animal Collective. Mostly, I attempted to capture the mood and movement of her selections while borrowing a few lines from bits and pieces of some of my unfinished poems. I find it interesting that Lindsey and I both decided to revisit unfinished projects for this prompt rather than start from scratch.

The playlist I created for Lindsey is here.
Lindsey is a photographer by trade (Check out her amazing photos) but while listening to my compilation she decided to paint. She painted a piece that pays homage to Dr. Suess’ famous piece “Fooling Nobody.” She entitled her Suess-inspired painting “Fooling Everybody.”

Lindsey had this to say:
I originally started in early July and when I did I was trying to replicate Suess’ original exactly. I got very frustrated because he painted his ink on paint and I was painting well, paint on paint…I stopped working on it for over a month. When I decided I was going to finish it no matter what…I worked on it while I played your playlist. I don’t know if I can say at exactly which song it all started to come together but I realized I was better off making it more my own. That’s when I started to make it more of a ‘pop art’ version of the original.

Lindsey and I would like to challenge you to find someone to do this exercise with and share your playlists and artistic results here. Or, create a playlist, leave it as a comment, and maybe someone will use it as a prompt. I might just post the results! Good luck!

Ain’t no way to explain or say
How painful the hangover was today
In front of the toilet, hands and knees
Trying to breathe in between the dry heaves
My baby made me some coffee
Afraid that if I drink some it’s probably coming right back out me
Couple of advil, relax and chill
At a standstill with how bad I feel
I think I need to smell fresh hair
So I stepped out the back door and fell down the stairs
The sunlight hit me dead in the eye
Like it’s mad I gave half the day to last night…

A few posts back we discussed the important role music plays during and after break-ups. I received some really amazing suggestions and stories through e-mail and the comments here for songs that help us mourn, cope, turn red, grit teeth, feel, deal, and stand back up again.

I’ve put together a 19 track compilation comprised of songs you suggested. Even if you haven’t recently gone through some hurt maybe it’ll be a reminder of how happy you are living single or being with the person whose hand you hold. It’s a free download and a good listen. Click the picture below to download it. (Photo Courtesy of Clayton Hauck).

Download.

There was such an overwhelming response of suggestions from everyone that I’ll be putting together a “Part 2″ pretty soon. If you have suggestions feel free to comment and maybe they’ll make it on the next one!

the full track listing… (more…)

In my obsessive interweb search for ways to deal with a break-up I found this amazing video of two chickens breaking up a fight between two feisty rabbits. We should hire these chickens at the club as bouncers.