I play in an old-time band called the Varnish Cooks, and we just released our first album! We recorded it in my dining room with GarageBand. I've listened to it many times now, and think that the band's sound is unique, although I hear a lot of things I need to work on. I think the band has enormous potential. We developed a musical philosphy that guides our aethetic decisions about playing traditional music; the first time I have experienced that in a band. It will help us play old-time music with consistent integrity while keeping the sound distictive.

Sample MP3s are available on the Varnish Cooks website. Check it out and let me know what you think!

I remember when I broke the evil piano teacher’s vase. A frustrated child will often fend off his enemies through seemingly careless impropriety. He was not a pleasant man; he had large bones in his wrists that protruded outwardly like great malignant pulleys under his skin. He had me play the same piece of music for several months. It was about a song about the sea and the notation featured a picture of a schooner. I might have practiced it twice. I mostly focused on my own compositions, which consisted of careful dissonances and shoving Legos in between the strings of the piano. (This was also an excellent way to torture Lego men from the evil space alliance.) I did not know how to read music, but my giant-handed piano teacher assumed that because I could tell him what the names of the notes were, I would be able to play the music with little effort. He would ask me to play it in lessons, and then when my incompetence so inspired him, he would use the piano to violently render a schooner crashing into the side of a young boy’s skull.

I’m not sure I meant to break the vase. Nor am I sure what moved me to kick the shards methodically from the entryway onto the asphalt driveway. Or what brilliant emotion possessed me to continue to kick the shards around the driveway even after a rude admonition from the gorilla-handed piano boxer. But I did not feel guilty, even after my mother made me apologize, because I knew that an artist and king of a Lego empire could not flourish under the tutelage of such a maladroit oaf.