Right Back To It

A 4/6 show at the Lilypad - and some *life updates*.

It has been, I know, a long time since I wrote you here. Blame the weather, blame the noise, blame the waning golden age of streaming television. I think, after releasing Hail Bohemia last spring, I felt a need to put the brakes on certain things—playing shows, namely, the cycle of self-promotion that surrounds that process, and other self-imposed artistic missions that are embarrassing to complain about in public. I don’t know exactly why I felt the need to pause. I was kind of sleepy in 2023. But now it’s 2024!

The thing about playing music is that ultimately, it is something I cannot and do not wish to stop doing. So, on April 6th, I’m coming back to The Lilypad in Cambridge, MA to play with two very talented songwriters, Arden Lloyd and Dustin Lowman. Here’s a photograph of a bear that conveniently includes information about the show:

she is watching u

Thank you to the bear for this important message. She lives in Greenwood Cemetery, in the borough of Brooklyn, where I went on a walking tour that was guided by a lifelong New Yorker named Marge who sang background vocals on the ELO song “Evil Woman,” and briefly formed a supergroup that included every member of Aerosmith except Steven Tyler.

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I live, now, in Brooklyn, not so far from this bear. For a year and a half, I was living here some of the time with my partner Eleanor, while also commuting up to a job in Boston. Now, I’m living here full time, and I’ve started a new job at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music. This has been exciting for me because, as I have mentioned in other emails, I think music is fun and good.

The Brooklyn Conservatory is a non-profit community school that provides accessible music education and music therapy to thousands of people across NYC. They have been doing this for 126 years—even longer than I have been procrastinating on writing this Substack post! I really do hope you’ll follow the Conservatory to see what we’re up to, and not only because it’s now my job to encourage this kind of behavior.

In November, I released a record with my old band Good Harbor. The songs were all written by my friend Aparna Lakshmi, who’s one of my favorite songwriters. Her songs always feel to me like hard-won and honest antidotes to personal/collective/political despair — not to get dramatic. I love this record a lot, and I really meant to email you about it before, but then I didn’t.

Creatively, I’m in a period that feels a bit like the early spring we’re having here in the northeast—a few sprouts in the dry ground, a few new projects taking shape. I’m playing the bass in a six-piece band, which feels good. I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but I’m feeling cautiously optimistic, like maybe the self-imposed pause is coming to an end.

I’ve been listening a lot to this song by Waxahatchee called “Right Back To It". It’s about a long relationship — about spiraling away for a bit from the person or thing you love, and then coming back, again and again. Like a song with no end.

What I’m trying to say is, you’ll be hearing from me again sooner next time.

Thanks for reading —

John