Recently I was with a group of friends celebrating a birthday and we all found ourselves slightly tipsy in the middle of the afternoon. So we wandered back to Greenpoint and proceeded to get on the roof with a camera and guitar. This week’s video post is a compilation of what occurred. No one was harmed but only once did we piss off the neighbors. They came up and said “Hey it sounds like a herd of horses is trampling our building”. So we stopped acting like horses and shot this video. Hope you enjoy!
J

When I first moved to New York I bought a new phone and got a number with a 917 area code. I was pretty excited. I told myself that since I went through the trouble of switching area codes it would make me stay and work hard despite the obstacles. (The little things I told myself to self-motivate) Anyway, I came to find that what wound up becoming my new number was once the number of a man named Gordon Jones. I discovered this because his sister called me almost everyday and left a message for him to come visit her. Along with a grocery list, she would leave all kinds of instructions for Gordon despite the fact that I had told her this was no longer his number. This lasted a solid 8 months, if not longer, and eventually became the inspiration for a song. As I started to play this song live I would try and tell people the back story but I always felt I never did it justice. This week’s video post is my attempt of telling this story with a little more clarity. Hope you enjoy!

When I was a kid one memory that will never leave me is the one of my mother picking me and my sister up from school in a little red Ford Escort. I remember her pulling into the parking lot of Thousand Oaks Elementary after she got off work, we would be released from the after-school daycare program, and bolt to that little red car anxious to get home. After the usual fight with my sister for the front seat we would eventually get moving and mom would turn on the stereo and make use of what was then the ever-so-popular cassette deck. The significant part of this memory, however, came from a very particular cassette tape that she wore out. It was my introduction to this amazing artist, who would change and shape my musical upbringing for years to come. It was no other than Stevie Wonder. The beat. The melodies. The keyboards. The voice… my mom always snapping her fingers while she drove. I will never forget it as his sound cemented its way into my life driving from elementary school back home in a little red Ford Escort. This week’s video post is a cover of what I remember as my mother’s favorite Stevie Wonder tune. Hope you enjoy!