THE BASEMENT STUDIO
The Music
Five volumes of original songs, written alongside Taking the Helm — plus 200+ covers from fifty years of popular music.
My musical journey started with AM radio and a stack of 45s. I've written songs my whole life, and I'm still making music in a digital age.
All of these songs were born in an analog world. Some of them now live in a digital one as well, reimagined using AI tools.
Storytellers have always picked up new tools, to the cheers and jeers of fans and critics — the electric guitar, the synthesizer, auto-tuned vocals.
Each gets its moment before the next comes along. At the heart of it is always the story, no matter how it's told.
You've Got This
Part pep talk, part prayer. The song I'd want playing for anyone standing at the beginning of something hard — it is never too late to start over, tell the truth, ask for help, or become who you were meant to be.
Life Is A Journey (Don't You Know)
One man from leaving home at seventeen to growing old beside the person who changed everything. The helm is the central image of the book, and this is the song where the boats come in — a lifetime on the water, New England harbors to West Coast light.
You're My Safe Harbor
The closing song of the journey. A long-haired kid sailed away at twenty-one, ran for decades, and finally sailed home to the love that was waiting. The lighthouse the whole book steers toward.
I Just Don't Care
"I was young, but now I'm old… but I just don't care." The freedom song — the one you only earn after enough years that other people's opinions stop weighing anything. A walk down the open road, hand in hand with the love that wasn't supposed to work.
Folk Singer
Who I've been since the beginning — a kid with a guitar who wanted to write about the sea, about love, about being free. I wrote the words the morning after talking with my son about how a thought becomes a real thing, and handed them to him as he left for home. "Folk singer, that's what I wanna be — I've wanted to be one since I was three."
Thirty-eight years between that train and this song. I've never been able to decide whether that's a long time or exactly how long it needed to be.