Q: Hey, can you tell us a bit about where you come from, and what made you want to start a career in music?
A: I grew up in a working class neighborhood north of Boston. My mom and dad listened to crooners, like Ray Price, Sinatra, Englebert Humperdink, Tony Bennett. Then they got into John Denver like half of the rest of the world in the 70s, and there was just something about his beautiful tenor voice and his carefully curated fingerstyle guitar that hooked me on music.
Q: Did you have any formal training, or are you self-taught?
A: I’m a pretty self-taught guitar player. I started learning guitar with John Denver songbooks in the 70s. But in terms of the more important skill I feel I believe I bring to my songwriting—which is my existential curiosity—I had a lot of help and teachers in therapy, 12-step work, est and other trainings.
Q: Who were your first and strongest musical influences?
A: John Denver was a huge influence when I was a teenager, but then it became Springsteen, after the Nebraska album, and the Steve Earle, John Prine, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan. Steve Ealre and John Prine made it OK for me to have a bass vocal range and a bit of a sloppy Travis-picking/fingerstyle guitar ability that, as John Prine used to say, “didn’t venture much beyond the third fret.” They helped me solidify my artistic identity as a story-teller and a truth-digger, more than a guitar afficianado or a stella vocalist.
Q: You have just released your new single, ‘Kickin a Stone’. Is there a story behind it?
A: I walk about three and a half miles every morning through a very bucolic part of my little town, with lots of beautiful farms and meadows past ancient fieldstone walls. I write most of my lyrics on those walks. I was literally kicking a stone dwon that road one day and it gave rise to the song. It started out just thinking about kicking a rock like that when I was a kid, without a single other care in the world, and that got me thinking about the passing of time, infinity, where we come from and where we’re going to. So it’s a contract between this very simple earthly pastime and the awesome, terrible and beautiful mystery that is life, from which, ironically, we often shield ourselves with little earthly pastimes.
Q: You have a new album on the way, what can we expect?
A: Winnebago Dreams is a travel diary of a trip through a life fully lived—with all of its happiness, sorrows, ice cream cones and flat tires. It was written to speak to that little lantern inside your heart. It was inspired by the open road, the love that withstands big changes and hard times, memories of growing up, loss, the ghosts of loved ones gone who shaped who you are, the little things in life that lighten the load, the wisdom that comes with age, and the gratitude you develop for all the ups, the downs, the happy times and the sad on this journey on which we all find ourselves, together—not knowing where we’re going or where we came from—called life.
Q: What do you feel are the key elements in your music that should resonate with listeners, and how would you personally describe your sound?
A: I’m 62. I’ve lived a lot. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve been in therapy a long time. I write from the perspective of this perch, which sits up way higher than it did when I was twenty. I couldn’t have written any of this stuff in my twenties because none of what I write about had happened yet. I dig in the dirt of my past, “to find the places I got hurt,” as Peter Gabriel once wrote. I try to make sense of the mysteries and the synchronicities in life. My music is an existential inquiry in a folk setting. It’s a nice contrast, I think. And sometimes I write about just silly stuff, like a great lobster roll.
Q: Do you feel that your music is giving you back just as much fulfillment as the amount of work you are putting into it, or are you expecting something more?
A: I get enormous fulfillment out of nailing a sentiment I am feeling. It’s like a fine craftsman who gets great joy out of building a wonderful chair, taking their time, sweating the details, getting it just right, feeling that they couldn’t have done it any better when it’s done. Knowing that there isn’t any part of the piece that reveals a laziness. I’ve been working on a song the last few weeks about my Dad and my grandfather and the relationship between the three of us. And unless I love every line, every work, I know it isn’t done yet. And that’s really fulfilling to me. There are few things I love more than going on a one-hour walk just to find one missing word I need for a verse.
Q: Could you describe your creative processes? How do usually start, and go about shaping ideas into a completed song?
A: I start with an idea. That’s a lesson I learned from an interview Springsteen did once with Charlie Rose. Rose asked him when he writes, and Springsteen said, “When I have an idea.” Boom! Ah ha moment for me. I used to try and write when I didn’t have an idea and you end up with songs on really weak conceptual ground. Some people think you should just write every day and you can generate the inspiration that way. Maybe so, but it’s not how I work. Too frustrating. I wait for the universe to send me the songs.
Q: What has been the most difficult thing you’ve had to endure in your life or music career so far?
A: The loss of my business in 2002 and the suicide of my parter in 1999. That was a horrible period. Now is a tough time too because my husband and I have 16 year-old triplets and this is just a very hard world to be a teenager in, so being there for them. every single day, encouraging and guiding and sometimes being a punching bag for them is hard, hard work. In terms of music, I think the hardest thing was when Clive Davis told me in maybe 1992 that he didn’t see me having a career in music – that I was a bright guy with a great future ahead of me but it wasn’t going to be in music. That was hard to hear and I stopped speaking to him for six months after that. But we are the closest of friends now. I went on to do huge things in the world of philanthropy, culminating in a big movie based on a book I wrote for Tufts University Press entitled, “Uncharitable.” Giving up music for all that time was hard, but it was the right thing. I just didn’t know what I wanted to say back then. I do now.
Q: On the contrary, what would you consider a successful, proud or significant point in your life or music career so far?
A: The body of work I’ve created in the last three years, including this new album, “Winnebago Dreams,” and my, “American Pictures” album, and all the new songs I have lined up or have ideas for now. The group of incredible musicians I’m collaborating with right now is also a great source of happiness and pride.
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