Award-winning songwriter, singer, producer, and musician based in New York who just released a new single last month after having put out a four-song EP in January. He has worked with GRAMMY, Tony, and Emmy-Award winning artists and winners of “The Voice.” He has performed in venues as varied as Carnegie Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, MTV Unplugged, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, the United Nations, and The Bitter End. Plus, he has performed with artists spanning Florence + The Machine to Boyz II Men. He is also the founder of Vocal Artist House, which he talks about here, and was previously a guest on this show four years ago, back on Episode 181.
"When I'm with the kids for a long time, sometimes I feel like my soul, even though it's being nourished by the kids, my artistic soul is not being nourished as much."
"Having the satisfaction of putting out a piece of art does keep me refreshed."
"It's a EP that I call anticipatory nostalgic. So, what that means is I'm kind of envisioning what my children will think about these songs when they're older. And I'm also kind of envisioning how I'll feel when, say, my parents pass. I'm kind of projecting into the future."
"Covid gave me the perfect opportunity to check these off, to free up that brain space for new artistic projects."
"I'm usually doing songs with a hundred tracks. These were literally one microphone on the singer and a stereo pair of microphones on the piano. That was it."
"He showed up and we just caught lightning in a bottle. We didn't rehearse it a lot or do editing or anything. It was just kind of one of these magical moments where everything aligned."
"I definitely want to work with artists that inspire me and do things that I can't do."
"I think when everyone was hunkering down over their phones during the pandemic, spending all that time on social media, it's just terrible for the brain, and especially for artists -- comparing themselves, looking at stats."
"I also advocate producing content for social media more than consuming content. The former makes you create. I mean, you're using your brain to synthesize and put things together. Think about what can you put out into the world that's educational, that's entertaining, that's inspiring; so you're adding value, that's where more of your time should be spent. Consuming, you're just basically going down the rabbit hole of jealousy and wasting time away that you could be using producing something."
"I think sometimes as a songwriter you want to kind of be strategic and deliberate about the timing of your output and what trail you leave behind."
"Marathon"
"In My Heart"