CITY JAMS turns 10!

Part of it was a genuine desire to keep moving forward, and part of it was that I had promised my mailing list a free song every month. I think those were the primary motivations for doing the City Jams project.

If you’ve never listened to it, if you weren’t a Pantaloon back then, here’s what City Jams is: In the summer of 2009, I went on tour as a side man for my wife, K.C. It was our 3rd fairly lengthy tour in less than a year; we had decided to go on the road full time in mid-2008, and we were trying to keep moving. I was excited to be her partner and cohort in this adventure, but I also wanted to find ways to keep doing Dr. Pants stuff even when I was in full-time touring mode with K.C. I also have always liked “theme albums”...albums where the subject matter of all the songs is similar or fits together. Thus, the City Jams project was born. I would write a song inspired by each city we would visit on the tour; either the city itself would be the inspiration, or the things we did there would be, or the people we spent time with, etc.

It’s interesting in hindsight that this tour in particular got immortalized in this way...it was NOT an easy trek. About halfway through the tour I realized I had forgotten to pay our credit card bill and we had to spend all the cash we had to pay it and not get penalized further. K.C. alleges to this day that she almost killed me and buried me in the mud on a hill in Hillsdale, NY (at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival; “Epic Mud” is the corresponding song to that place on the album). Apparently I was not my best self that day. We also played at least 2 or 3 shows to empty rooms which made the financial situation even more dire.

Despite the difficulties, there were a lot of good moments, too. We spent time with a lot of friends, had some other quite good musical moments, and the tour culminated in a week long stay in Farmville, VA, where we basically hung out and played music with a group of amazing people for days and nights on end. It’s no coincidence that “Farmville Dream/The Girls Will Rock” is the most ambitious and celebratory piece on the album; the amount of inspiration I took from that time was substantial. It was all I could do to try and contain the piece to 7 minutes or so.

So, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of this album, everyone on my mailing list is getting a free download! If you still have the mp3s from back in the day, that’s fine. There will be more fun free stuff that you can get later. If you’re not on the mailing list, all you have to do is go to the DOWNLOAD A FREE ALBUM link at the top of this page and YOU’LL get a free download, too!! City Jams is not on any of the streaming services, so joining the mailing list is the best way to get it!

Oh, and also...WELCOME TO THE NEW WEBSITE! So much more fun stuff coming. So stay tuned.