Travels with Hurricane Charlie – 2004
Hurricane Charley and I arrive in South Florida on exactly the same day. Cancellations, mayhem, and a gig powered by a gas generator ensue.

Shipwrecked on the Isle of Love (A South Pacific Honeymoon Journal) – 2003
A dream excursion to Tahiti, Bora Bora, and Rangiroa. Some myths exploded and some legends confirmed. Once you’ve seen the Bora Bora town dump, your illusions of paradise can never quite be the same…

Flying Under Radar
(On Being an Independent Artist) – 2002
This essay was written for a book called Working Musicians, published by Harper/Collins. Thanks to Bruce Pollock for asking me to write this, and giving it a chance to see the light of day! In the book the piece is called "Another Kind Of Musician," and is a bit shorter than what you see here. This is the full, uncut version of the essay. All disparaging remarks about A&R guys are completely intentional.

Road Signs & Broken White Lines – 2002
The tale of my longest tour ever – California to New York to Florida to Oregon. Also the last tour in which I would drive across the country and back, alone in a van. For years, this type of insanity was just another day at the office for me…

A New Jersey Yankee (Book I) – 1997
An all too true tale of on-the-job debauchery at Mardi Gras '97 in New Orleans. Le Bon Temps Roulez!!

A New Jersey Yankee (Book II) – 1999
Mardi Gras '99 - I return to the scene of the crime. It's been two years, and this time the gig is at the House Of Blues instead of The Gazebo - and instead of playing an out of tune piano on the sidewalk, I'm opening for the Neville Brothers, but the more things change...

I Went To Rome, But I Didn’t See the Coliseum – 1998
The story of my first European tour. Read about my unfortunate encounters with Italian phone technology and how I expanded my Italian vocabulary beyond "Vinnie" and "Marinara." Also includes a side trip to Venice - and I don't mean the one in California!

The Muse Is A Bitch (But I Love Her) – 1998
An essay on the agony and defeat (and occasional pleasures) of songwriting... for those who write songs and those smart enough not to. 

Tokyo to Omaha (The Hard Way) – 1998
A tour of Japan followed without a break by a gig in Connecticut with Average White Band, and a Midwest tour as the Neville Brothers’ opening act. Talk about culture shock! Talk about jet-lag! All possible variations of planes, trains, and automobiles are encountered. Also included is a detailed account of what is still, even after eight years, the worst flight I have ever been on.

Crawl Across Texas (Come Back in a Box) – 1996
This was me…ten years ago. The careless, trusting, perpetually drunken, happy-go-lucky, and let’s-not-forget cataclysmically stupid guy that lived to tell this tale is all but a hazy memory now. This harrowing saga of what eventually came to be informally known as the "Plagued By Locusts Tour" originally appeared in The Angel City Voice. Many thanks to Lis Lewis for asking me to write the story - this is the first piece of extended prose writing I ever did, and it and everything that followed would have never happened if Lis had not pointed out to me that I was able to do it.

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