From Butch:
Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Calling all Heathens fans,
New Heathens guitar player Butch Phelps and his band, The Buck Ups, are proud to be preforming Sunday, October 4th at the Lakeside Lounge. Show starts at 9.
This gig promises to be a good time with good people at a great bar. So shake off those Sunday evening blues and come out to support this new band.
Special guest performances are expected.

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Reasons I Love The Truckee River in Reno, NV
Sunday, September 20, 2009

In REVERSE order...
Brown Trout
Rainbow Trout
Kristen
Sept. 13, 2009
(Note: Kristen caught the first two tricky, Truckee trout of the trip but unlike her, I was slow with my camera.)

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Jeff Ament
Thursday, September 17, 2009

For you Pearl Jam fans out there, here's an article I wrote about bassist Jeff Ament.

I got the assignment from my friend Brianne, editor of Montanan Magazine, the alumni mag for the University of Montana, (where Jeff and I were both students).

It's the second article I did for the magazine (the first being about Decemberists' songwriter/frontguy Colin Meloy). I can't tell you what a pleasure it was to write about two things I love the most, music & Montana (rather than what I usually write about, murder & mayhem -- As I type this I'm in New Haven, CT reporting on the slaying of a Yale student.)

Jeff was very gracious.

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What Happens in Vegas...
Wednesday, September 16, 2009

I hadn't shaved in two weeks when I went to Las Vegas to work at my sweetheart's fashion trade show. Got a little creative with the razor and for a day I rocked the dirty upper lip and pretended I was straight outta' Starsky and Hutch. This dude had the t-shirt I needed. Free mustache rides, ladies. Vegas is a classy place.

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People Who Died
Monday, September 14, 2009

Been away in Nevada and California for a couple weeks and am just now getting caught up on news and correspondence that I missed. Was sad to come back to NYC and learn that Jim Carroll died.

Jim Carroll is best known for writing The Basketball Diaries. I got turned onto him in high school when I bought his second book of diaries, Forced Entries, at a used bookstore. It made me want nothing more than to be talented and cool, well versed in chemical and sexual deviancy, and obsessively chronicle my company with rockers and poets like Allen Ginsburg, Keith Richards, William Burroughs, Patti Smith and Bob Dylan. It took me years, and plenty of embarrassing scenes, to figure out I'd never be that cool.

Jim was one of the first "famous" people I interviewed for my college newspaper. You can still read the kinda' gushy interview I did with him 10 years ago (!!!) on his website.

He also, appropriately, wrote the awesome tune, "People Who Died."


"I salute you, brother!"

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Nowhere Zen New Jersey Pt. 2
Saturday, September 5, 2009

Somewhere else in Newark...

File this pic under "composing or decomposing." In an effort to get myself out of a creative rut, and out of the distractions of my own apartment, I checked into a spare room in the bachelor pad of my friend Mark Bonamo in Newark, NJ. The goal? Write some songs. He snapped this pic early one morning after I was up late working on a tune (about gangster Dutch Schultz!) Note pen and paper on bed, guitar against the far wall and Grolch bottles on the floor. Thanks Mark.

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