songwriting
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I work at a donut shop in lower Manhattan. between shifts I earn extra income as a server. a few times a month I’m also a nighttime dishwasher. I pick up some part-time work at Macy’s Herald Square at Christmastime, and I have stood on 6th and Broadway with an ad board over my neck,…
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a walk in the park/my heart goes bang bang, thinking of you/I shout at the East River hoping it will shout back/where do you go at night, is it to the one who calls you, the one you love/when I thought that me and you will end, I/didn’t think it would be like this,/a thousand…
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my abuela is extremely nostalgic about the music she listened to when she was a teenager in the mid-1960s. The Beach Boys, The Beatles, The Supremes. sources say she even danced The Twist but those claims won’t be confirmed or denied. (psst I bet she did.) if you were a teen in the 1970s, then…
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when I am talking to myself, I often wonder: who is talking and who is listening? because someone always is, talking and listening, and it’s still me. the fearful, compliant voice I hear comes from the part of my head that isn’t particularly good at making music. but it’s really good at drawing horrible pictures.…
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some nights, when I’m perched on a stool with just my guitar, keeping a little crowd fixed (or at least I hope), it hits me: the only time I don’t feel like such a fuck up is when I’m making music. or playing it for people who care. choosing to be an artist is really…
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I’ve been thinking about this recently. it’s something we talk about a lot in group. we wrestle with, at the same time, trying to maintain this sense we’re OK as we are, and where we are, being works in progress, while striving each day to climb out of someplace dark over to somewhere brighter. it…
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my mom loves, really loves, this song. so much so that she named me after something sweet and surprising she heard in the lyrics. (it’s at the 1:07 mark.) it was released in 1970. she couldn’t have known then (she wasn’t even born) how much the words, hold on, it’s gonna be alright, you’re gonna…
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just off the entrance to the Brooklyn-Battery tunnel into lower Manhattan, in the Red Hook neighborhood, there’s a budget motel, the Brooklyn Motor Inn. a couple of people that I know who have stayed there (no, nothing like that) said the whole place smelled like smoke. beer bottle caps in the drawer. smallest fridge, ever.…
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when I made this song I was thinking about West 4th Street Courts aka The Cage in Greenwich Village. but it could be about anyplace in the city where sirens wail while streetball is played and two ropes swing on beat. you gave that person your heart and soul. you might have lost them, but…
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[WARNING: dumb joke] two nuts walked down a dark alley in Brooklyn. one was a salted. (I warned you.) and now for some candy.
cookie nieves 