Music
Biography
I was born in 1987 and grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. My father was born in 1956 and grew up in Mobile, Alabama. His pain music is the blues, and his joy music is rock and roll. That's how I was raised, musically speaking.
I started banging on pots and pans as soon as I could sit up, and I started playing guitar around age 12. I played lots of cover songs in high school, and I played bass in a couple bands in college. I made up a major called Music & Mind, and I recorded a 7-part song cycle called BODYMiND as my senior thesis of sorts.
Then I thought I had to Grow Up™ and Get A Job™, so things went quiet for a couple years until I realized my mistake.
I moved to Oakland in June 2012 and bought a red Telecaster. I started playing with a great bunch of musicians in Nat Rosenzweig’s band. In May of 2013, we played a show at a festival that really shook me up. When I came to, I realized I had a whole record in my head, ready to go.
In November, I went into Tiny Telephone studios in San Francisco to record my debut album, Portal. I released Portal on February 25, 2014 and debuted with a live band in Oakland on May 3. Then we got to play it on the main stage at the aforementioned festival’s anniversary, and everything came full-circle.
Two key collaborators made this possible. The first was Kirk Benttinen, a good friend of mine who also played drums in Nat’s band. He came along to help me produce Portal, a brotherly act I’ll never forget.
After making that record, we decided to get the necessary gear and learn to record ourselves. That music turned into a band called ŞຖคiliคŞ. Our first record, You I We, came out on December 8, 2016.
The other collaborator was Root. I met her in Nat’s band as well, and I ended up falling for her enough to write a bunch of songs. She sang on the record, then she joined the live band, and it’s a pretty good metaphor for our whole lives together at this point.
In what was by far the biggest leap of faith (musically speaking), she let me record and produce her second album, My Teachers, which she released on March 29, 2015.
From July 2019 to June 2020, she and I (and our baby daughter) moved to Philadelphia for her year-long Rising Song Residency founded by beloved ritual musician Joey Weisenberg. She collaborated with him on her third album, Ruach Neshama, released on August 8, 2021. (I recorded her tracks and played a little bit.)
Now we live in Decatur, Georgia (and have another daughter). I’m mostly playing the drums these days, and we’re playing her music and leading ritual for her congregation, Ma’alot (oh yeah, she’s a rabbi now). We’re always working on the next record.
