Let me tell you a story: once upon a time there was Michael Flynn. With his buddy Josh Kaler and a few other friends he made a record called No Disassemble. Somehow it was successful enough to get him signed to a record deal with SonyBMG, and it was decided among all that an alias/band name would fit the eclectic pop sound of that record better than the name on his driver’s license. So Slow Runner was born. It would be the basket into which he could put all his personal creative output, however varied it might be. Slow Runner made several albums and had many adventures, evolving into a true partnership between Michael and Josh. Then about 10 years ago Josh moved to Nashville to start a career as a badass producer and musician, and Michael started releasing solo records under his own name.

In 2016, the name Michael Flynn became ungooglable thanks to geopolitical events and one particularly mischievous retired Army general. Michael noticed that suddenly his name attached to anything made the algorithms of the internet go all screwy. He got tagged in foreign news stories. Posts got buried or promoted depending on the news. Venues didn’t love putting his name on the marquee because sometimes deplorables would show up. Despite plowing ahead with multiple solo records (each of which was, it must be said, utterly spectacular) it became clear that his evil doppelgänger and the issues he created weren’t going away any time soon. Michael would look over at Slow Runner stuff longingly. A simpler time. The solution was obvious.

CUT TO present day (and first person perspective)! So! I’m retiring Michael Flynn as a creative entity and taking Slow Runner out of cryo-freeze, to once again become the vessel for all the music I write and release. This will help more people hear my music without fighting against the headwinds of current events. My plan is to release more music more often. And what better way to celebrate this paradigm shift than with a bangin new jam??? ‘Secret Journal’ is out now everywhere and features both myself and Josh Kaler, just like the SR of old. In fact, while Kaler won’t be a full-time contributor, he’ll definitely be involved in a lot of future Slow Runner projects (in fact he has played on nearly every record I’ve ever made and as long as I don’t annoy him too hard that should continue unabated). Slow Runner remains his baby too. We’ll have more to announce on something special we’re cooking up in the very near future.

So to TL;DR this thing:

—I’m retiring ‘Michael Flynn’ and moving back to ‘Slow Runner’

—Slow Runner 2.0 will evolve with me but stay tethered to its origins

—There’s a new song ‘Secret Journal’ out now

—More cool new stuff coming in the very near future

But Michael, what can I do???

—Find and follow Slow Runner on all your social medias

—Stream the crap out of ‘Secret Journal’ on Spotify to help it dominate and pwn all other songs

—Sign up for the mailing list at my spiffy new website slowrunner.net

—Stay tuned for more announcements coming in hot

I want to say how grateful I am for all the old fans and friends that came along for the Michael Flynn era and the new ones that only just discovered my music that way. The actual music won’t really change, or rather it will change the same way it would have changed under any other name because I’m restless and frisky and that’s just how I was made. Still learning and evolving and falling in love with music every day like anybody else. Thanks for listening.

Really excited to announce a few upcoming shows in the big bad city. They happen at lunch time, which is thrilling for someone who prefers to be in his ‘comfortable clothes’ no later than 5pm on a good day. And they’re FREE. So grab your brown bag and your thermos and come listen to me play with a pretty kick ass lil band featuring Charlie Rauh on guitar and Alec Spiegelman on woodwinds. October 12 and 13. See you there, city dwellers.

Cover art by the incredible @palehandgame, based on Bradley Peterson’s original Endlings cover.

Here’s a fun surprise. Get you a friend like the incredible Stolen Spoons, with whom you have the kind of trust that you can send him a song with zero guidance, knowing full well he will tear it down to the studs and rebuild it completely differently. Then get @palehandgame to make a 1-bit version of the Endlings album art that makes you feel like you just booted up a Cinemaware game on your Commodore 64. You never know when your sparse moody diatribe against the music industry will end up reborn as the feel good dance hit of the summer. Stream it everywhere, or buy it on Bandcamp so I can actually make monies from it! Thanks.

Album art by the incomparable Bradley Peterson, @bpetersonillustration on the gram.

Hooboy. Been waiting and waiting for this day and finally I can share this new thing I made with some truly special people. Might be my favorite thing I’ve ever done? Five songs chock full of sadness and love and all the feelings I can’t help but process through music because I am a large adult baby.

The EP is called ‘endlings’ because these songs were written during a period when I was really reflecting on my life in music and how long it has now lasted. Many of my friends and fellow songwriters who I went to school with and started out playing shows with in sad bars long ago have for the most part (one could argue wisely) moved on and grown up and are doing useful things like being chefs and nurses and teachers. An ‘endling’ is a creature who is the last of its kind, whose death will mean extinction for its species. It’s not entirely apt though, because arranging and performing these songs with my bandmates (Jonathan Gray and Hannah Seng) has been one of the most creatively inspiring projects I’ve ever been a part of. They reaffirmed my belief in the power of music to speak to emotion in a way no other language or art form can. So while I have stubbornly outlasted a few peers, I also feel like I just washed up on the shore of a new world, a whole novel’s worth of story unfolding with each step inland. I’ve never made a record like this, a small and intimate and unvarnished family of songs that couldn’t just sit and wait to be included in a larger release.

It was mixed by Josh Kaler (who also threw in some clutch pedal steel and baritone ukulele) and mastered by Dave Harris at Studio B. Badass illustrator Bradley Peterson drew the cover. You can hear ‘Damage’, helpfully premiered by my friends at Under The Radar, by clicking this link right here. Then you can be a real chum and presave it on Spotify right here (or, if you’re a staunch traditionalist, you can pre-order the digital release here on bandcamp). ‘Damage’ will be on the streamings as of this Weds Jan 19 and the full EP releases Feb 4.

I should also say that this release wouldn’t be happening without all the love and support from folks who bought Survive With Me, bought shirts, came to shows, watched live streams and dropped a few bitcoins in the mef Venmo/Paypal tip jar. That’s how I paid for this brazen act of self-indulgence and how I stayed positive through the darker parts of the last few years. I am so, so grateful. Hope this new music finds a cozy spot in your lap and helps you stare meaningfully out the window. That’s what it’s all about.

Current view from my barn, where the spiders are absolutely regulating Warren G style..

Welp. Fall 2021 was shaping up to be a bacchanalian thrill ride of vaccinated music lovers but then some fool agreed to hold Delta variant’s beer and here we are, dancing between the raindrops. Some folks are just going for it, some are requiring proof of empathy to let you in the door, and many are just using it all as a completely justifiable excuse to not get up off the couch. There’s a little of me in all 3 of those categories but I’m certainly not playing as many shows as I’d hoped. But I am playing two more in 2021 and I really hope you’ll come to one of them!

Both shows are full band (that’s me, Jonathan Gray, and Hannah Seng). The first is Friday Oct 1 (gosh that’s soon) at Sigal Music Museum in Greenville SC. This is a distanced show so it’s limited tickets (which you can get right here) and ultra safe. I’m going to be desecrating a beautiful Steinway grand and hoping my high school music teacher doesn’t notice all the parallel 4ths and 5th in my arrangements. It’ll be an intimate evening in a beautiful place, which is also how I’d describe eating dinner alone at Shoney’s. Only $5 for students (my show, not Shoney’s unless you only eat the rolls)!

The other show is happening Saturday November 13 at American Vinyl Co in Asheville NC (tickets here). We’re being joined that night by the incredible Carly Taich, and this is my favorite Carly Taich song which should win you over all on its own. The room is incredible and like a vinyl museum so even if the dad ballads bum you out you can wander around and look at super old turntables and learn stuff. There are other reasons why this will be a special show but I’m going to keep those tucked under my fedora for right now. Vaccine or proof of negative test required.

And that’s it. Those are your two chances to see me and hear me until 2022 arrives and we can all have our dreams scuttled by Omega Variant, forged with the gemstones of the Infinity Gauntlet and powerful enough to level entire kingdoms and make you WISH you could go eat alone at Shoney’s like in the good ole days. Please come say hi!

Just blending in with normal folks at the Purple Onion.

Pumped to play Isis Music Hall for the first time next month with my dream band and the stellar Joshua Carpenter opening. Get some tickets and let’s gather in a place (safely) before we have to go back in our underground caves!

Lots of this.

It’s been a hot minute since Slow Runner has poked its gnarly head out of the ‘hiatus’ hole, but we’ve got a little surprise today: 22 songs from deep in the archives spanning our earliest days in Boston all the way through Damage Points and after. That’s something like 13 years of us trying stuff! All available today on our Bandcamp page.

Two warnings. One is these are DEMOS. They are really rough. Most only exist now in mp3 form, unmastered, the original ‘tapes’ lost to history on a broken hard drive currently baking in a landfill somewhere. Some were made on a cracked copy of Vegas Video I got from someone in the Berklee dorms. We really had no clue what we were doing. So if you go in with your expectations nice and low you’ll be fine. Think of it like you’re an archaeologist and you’ve stumbled upon recordings from an earlier, inferior civilization. They sound downright bad in places but, you must admit, they’ve just got a certain charm that is undeniable.

Warning number two is that these will only be up on the Bandcamp for ONE MONTH. Then they’re coming down. So feel free to stream/listen during that month and satisfy your morbid curiosity, or go ahead and buy them and download them to your own hard drive so you can listen for all time (or until your hard drive ends up in the landfill). Buying them will also give you the smug satisfaction of knowing you’re funding the further creation of music by both of us. We are recycling. Regardless they’re coming down Aug 16.

Volume one covers the earliest days, from the turn of the century through No Disassemble. Volume two picks up during the SHIV! era and runs through the mid-2010s. Hope you enjoy, though I can promise you won’t enjoy listening to them as much as we enjoyed making them. It was such a fun time to be in a band with what felt like limitless creative ambition (even when the craft was sorely lacking). I listen to these and hear all the faults and the limitations of early aughts bedroom recording but also the joy of experimentation. Above all they make me miss my sweet and talented friends.

Smith’s Olde Bar Atlanta GA circa 2004 cause why not

Got a smattering of good ones coming up in just a few weeks:

July 3 Private Event near Hot Springs NC. If you’re cool you already know what’s up with this.

July 8 The Purple Onion, Saluda NC. Can’t wait to finally return to this hallowed stage with my friends Hannah Seng and Jonathan Gray. Note that unlike in the Before Times you need to buy tickets to this beforehand and can do so here.

July 10 Charleston Music Hall supporting Valley Maker. A solo set in probably my all time favorite place to play. Tickets for this bad boy can be found rightcher.

More shows coming as the year progresses, until the next crisis forces us all back underground. Can’t wait to see some faces!

He just LOOKS like he writes genius lyrics. Right???

Super pumped about this one friends. I’ve long been a fan of Valley Maker’s songs, which to me always sound somehow timeless but also from the future but also possibly written by a transcendentalist 200 years ago? The new record is especially potent and I can’t wait to get my set over with so I can sit in the wings and float off on his musical stardust.

It doesn’t hurt that it’s happening at the Charleston Music Hall, probably my all-time favorite venue and the home of so many great memories. Groundhog Day shows, playing with Jay Clifford and the Charleston Symphony Orchestra, the ‘farewell’ Slow Runner show, the release show for ‘Face in the Cloud’… so much happiness it leaks through the walls into the streets outside. So grab those tickets and let’s all stir up some more stardust together July 10.

Live look at my insides

Well we did it people. You filled my bucket and sold out our show this Friday night at the Grey Eagle. Now you might say ‘Michael, this doesn’t count, it’s socially distanced so seating is below capacity and—’ SLAP! right there I cut you off with a vicious Ric Flair chop across the breastplate. We don’t need that kind of negativity in here. It’s 2021, we’re counting victories wherever they might appear and however illusory they might be. And this is a genuine thrill regardless.

If you had a conflict and couldn’t come to the Friday night show, we have now added one for Saturday night. Tickets can be purchased rightcher. As this will be a second night we’re going to lean much heavier into the Slow Runner catalog and mix the set up considerably. Completionists should really attend both nights to enjoy the full measure of my life’s work. Jane Kramer will be opening both nights, to our great fortune. This is going to be a really special weekend for me and everyone involved and we can’t wait to make a bunch of quality noise for you.

The last time I played music with humans in the room was Feb 21 2020 at Orchard Coffee in Waynesville. Since then it’s been nothing but sugary beverages, recording equipment, and the occasional dog. I put out a record in October and did some really fun streaming shows, which I’m going to continue, but never really did a proper ‘release show’ where those songs could have a chance to fully inflate themselves and fly around a room. I don’t know how your quarantine has been but we’ve kept the hatches pretty firmly battened down for the past year over here and it doesn’t look like actual touring is going to resume for anybody anytime soon. But I think we’re at a point where a single show in a legit venue with a serious, safe, socially-distanced protocol in place COULD actually work. So I’m going to do one, the ‘Survive With Me’ release show that time forgot, performed by me and a band full of badasses: Hannah Seng, Josh Kaler, and Jonathan Gray. This will be the first time Josh and Jonny and I have played together since I think the first High Water Festival in 2016, so we are planning to plow through some Slow Runner classics with wild abandon. AND the incredible Jane Kramer will be your opener for the evening.

A few important details: this is a socially distanced, masks-required show with extremely limited seating. You buy tickets by the table and there aren’t that many so this just might be the loophole I need to put ‘sold out the Grey Eagle’ on my resume with just a tiny asterisk. If you’re in a situation where you can come be a part of this special night I hope you’ll snatch a table for yourself and join us.

I get anxious just watching TV characters (in shows filmed pre-pandemic) standing close to one another now, so who knows what it’ll feel like, but when I think about playing music with my friends in a listening room, with actual people listening, and we could all close our eyes for a moment and be warmed by the hint of normalcy while some bangin’ songs about dogs and time waft through the air, friend I get pretty excited.

Here is the link for tickets. Let’s party like it’s 2019!

We made it people. The album is finally out (unless you’re waiting on vinyl; COVID delays mean those won’t ship until early December unfortunately). It was a ton of work but I am so glad I was reckless enough to go through with making it. I think this is my favorite batch of songs I’ve ever written. Somehow you start off making music a certain way in high school and college, then you grow up and learn better ways to do it, then you grow up some more and learn that the way you were doing it at first wasn’t all bad. So this record really incorporates all the different versions of myself, stacked up like Russian dolls inside me: my earliest attempts at finding a voice, my jazz phase, my indie rock phase, my electronic phase, my warm liquid goo phase, it’s all mixed up in there. Life is apparently this long process of separating from your childhood self, then slowly as you get less insecure going back and salvaging the parts of that self that you never should have abandoned. Making a massive full length album is an expensive and exhausting way to do that, but I highly, highly recommend it.

You can listen to ‘Survive With Me’ on Spotify, or Apple Music, or you can buy it (or the vinyl!) on bandcamp. It’s on the other platforms too if you’re that kind of contrarian. Thank you to everybody who helped make it, who encouraged and supported me anywhere along the way over the last few decades I’ve been making music professionally, and special thanks to the people in my life who’ve had to sometimes deal with the downsides of being within the blast radius of a bumpy life in the arts. I wish for all of you the same dumb luck that carried me here.

So dark and moody when I thoughtfully apply my photoshop filters to the album art…

Ok the second single from my forthcoming album ‘Survive With Me’ is out today on all your streaming services (Spotify, Apple Music, etc). American Songwriter calls the album ‘Sinatra meets Lord of the Flies… a new sonic journey for the pioneering solo artist’ (THAT’S ME).

There is a subgenre in pop songs called ‘meet cute’ and for much of my twenties that was my wheelhouse. Singing to an imaginary girl across the room, trying to convince her that I was somehow worth her emotional investment. ‘You’re in Luck’ being the prototypical example. This song is basically ‘meet cute during a rapidly escalating climate crisis’ because 2020 refuses to let us have nice things. It was a blast to write and therapeutic to get out some generational frustration at the lack of climate action by people in charge who for the most part will be comfortably resting in their graves while the problems they set in motion force a reckoning. Thinking of the western US with a heavy heart as I type this and people who love each other, running from the smoke. What a world. Downer context notwithstanding, the music is cheery! John-Flor Sisante’s sax stabs are practically begging for a Tic Toc dance routine! The world is still redeemable if we all grab an oar! And love is still love.

Hope you like it.

art by John Brooks / layout design by Steven Fiore

Survive With Me is the NINTH full length release of my career and in some ways I feel like I’m just now starting to figure some of it out. This is the first batch of songs I’ve actually beta-tested on tour before recording them. It was also the record where I selfishly made several creative decisions based around which friends I wanted to involve, often using guilt as a means of coercion, which probably isn’t how you’re supposed to do it but guess what, it’s my ninth record, I’m da captain now.

Not pictured: Andy Dixon, sweating behind the monitor trying to record the quietest drummer to ever drum.

I started by recruiting Stephen Johnson, a longtime friend and creative partner and the most peculiar drummer I’ve ever played with. Hard to describe except that he drums like a painter. I came to Johns Island with demos in hand and Stephen played to them beautifully while Andy Dixon engineered in Shovels & Rope’s incredible lil backyard barn studio. That became the crooked backbone upon which we hung everything else.

You can’t see them but there are microphones under all that comforter.

Most of the record was recorded at home, on a piano I didn’t even have a year ago. My buddy Todd needed someone to piano-sit this gorgeous little guy and I had just the spot.

Don’t you dare judge me on mic placement, I’m a self-taught semi-professional

One of the most inspiring people I’ve met since relocating inland is Hannah Seng, who sang and played banjo and violin like a boss. Certified badass by The Badass Institute in multiple pursuits.

Ron Wiltrout: incessantly non-plussed.

Did a remote session w Ron Wiltrout at Fairweather Studios to get that sweet sweet marimba down. Nobody more fun to make noise with.

Lots of this over the years.

Had to get my special musical soulmate on it. Kaler plays some bass and additional drums. This is what it looks like when you’re sending files back and forth and collaborating remotely, but at this point he and I only have to say like 20% of it out loud because we’re all up in each others’ heads. Ah, love.

The man. The legend. Lambchops for days.

Obviously I’m not stupid, I’m not going to make a record and leave off Jonny Gray.

There were more, too: John-Flor Sisante, my roommate from Berklee and the sweetest man alive (since Mr. Rogers died), played all the sax parts. Ward Williams played some cello. Joel Hamilton played guitar. It took a damn village to make these songs people.

Besides the music part, there’s a person I’ve always wanted to collaborate with on a project: poet and artist John Brooks. We went to C of C together and like many of the folks in this post he’s one of those people who leaves a cloud of inspiration behind him everywhere he goes. I asked him to paint something that would spread across the front and back of the vinyl cover. I was envisioning an image that somehow evoked the ‘come away with me’, crooners-looking-at-camera album covers of the 50s/60s. I told him that and the title and here’s what he made:

I mean look at this shit. Just look at it. So cool.

I’ll probably do a separate post about everything going on here but he brilliantly recognized that the 2020 version of that kind of image with that album title should be harrowing and natural, with eyes that are less ‘come hither’ and more ‘come with me if you want to live’. It stunned me, and at first I was scared/self-conscious, but the more I lived with it the more I loved it. He dragged the whole project into fresh sunlight and there was no going back.

Having done everything I could, I sent all my files to my longtime buddy Villain Lighting in LA, he mixed the shit out of it, and David Little mastered it. Steven Fiore designed the layout. The ghosts of eight albums past blessed it in a mildly-satanic ritual in the woods behind my house and BOOM! A new record was born unto the world. That’s all it took.

Oh hi! I made a lyric video for the new single (you heard about the new record right? There’s a new record coming Oct 13). I used my daughter’s white board because scrappy DIY aesthetic comports perfectly with the pandemic lifestyle we’re all growing increasingly tired of, and my wife and her were kind enough to help with some illustrations as well. It was fun to make but know what won’t be fun? Cleaning out my camera roll HEYOOOOOOOO

This video is helpfully debuted today by The Vinyl District, who also asked me to write an entry in their ‘First Date’ series of posts. So I couldn’t resist a deep dive into the first record I really had a personal relationship with: New Edition’s self-titled debut. it explains so much. So much.

Finally, I’m doing a performance for Jam In The Van that’ll happen 7pm Tuesday August 25. I sold the SR van to Heyrocco and I’m not making them drive it all the way back from California just for authenticity’s sake so I’ll be in a non-van most likely but will try to make it special nonetheless. Maybe I’ll just refrain from showering for several days beforehand to really give it that ‘I’m so dirty my hair hurts’ road-weary realism.

Thanks to everybody for listening to the new single and preordering the album on bandcamp. I am so grateful to have fans who trust me enough to pay for something before they’ve heard it. Yes, you’re all going to feel pretty silly when I use your preorder money to start a completely separate business breeding marmots for an underground marmot fighting ring, but at least you’ll have an album full of bangers to help yourself feel better.

Can’t stop won’t stop? Gosh, looks that way. I wrote all these songs in 2019 but as fate would have it my decided lack of chill resonates even more strongly here in 2020, the year the fire finally burned the ‘This is fine’ dog in his chair. And since making an album (for me) is very much a ‘steer into the skid’ kind of exercise in sustained stubbornness, I couldn’t stop making it even when the world flipped over and I probably should have put music aside to focus on my scavenging. But no. I barreled through like a true champion. Here are some things that inspired/affected this record as it was being imagined: getting a dog, moving to a small mountain town, existential angst, Stranger Things, mortality, bears, the passage of time, Carrie Underwood, Satan, the marital discord of others, sitcom tropes, global warming, and so on and so forth. I love it like I would a baby manatee. I’m so glad I was dumb enough to try and make it.

‘Survive With Me’ releases October 13 and as of today you can preorder the digital and/or vinyl version at my bandcamp page. This will let you download the first single ‘Easy To Love’ BUT THAT’S NOT ALL, I’ll also email you the demo for ‘Anything But’, a song I wrote with this batch but ended up leaving off of the record proper. This is not on any of the streaming services and can only be found on this version of the record. You can also find ‘Easy To Love’ on Spotify, or Apple Music if you’re a stubborn contrarianist, or Tidal if you’re one of those people who thinks they can hear a difference in the sound quality of streaming audio.

I’ll go into more detail in future posts about the winding road it took from imagination to reality and all the special people who pitched in to help me drag it into the light. Really proud, really excited for you to hear it all, really grateful to still feel compelled to throw new songs into the gaping maw of the internet. It’s just a little noise and I wish I had a better way to try and make the world a little more beautiful but this is the best I’ve got and I hope you listen.

Taken right after my drummer apparated into cosmic dust, leaving me all alone on stage. Typical.

Lots of cool stuff coming up for 2020 but before I start banging on about all that let’s look back on what turned out to be a pretty fun year in Michael Flynn Country (TM). It started out with some crazy dream shit: a movie came out with my song all up in the opening credits and I got to sing with a few legends of stage and screen to promote it:

Not bad at all. The spring tour w/ Kris Gruen took us from NYC all the way down to Mobile, where my only regret was that we didn’t rent a bicycle built for 2 and drive it around making adorable social media content. Ate 3 kinds of crab for lunch in Norfolk (that would end up being a big regret as well) but then played the most fun, weird show of the year.

Played an awesome Sofar show in Charleston in June at the kind of apartment complex I could never afford to live in but WOULD watch a Melrose-esque soap opera all about. Sang this song there and met lots of cool folks:

What else… I wrote a LOT of songs this summer. More on them in 2020. Also got this lil firecracker:

Ladies and gentlemen, the worst roommate I’ve ever had. BY A MILE.

First dog I’ve ever had and while I remain a non-dog person, he is wearing me down. Several times a day I think ‘hmm… maybe I like you. Maybe’.

Fall tour reunited me w Kris Gruen and took me from NYC up to Boston and rural Vermont which is surprisingly reminiscent of western North Carolina. We melted all the faces

The winner is me.

Spent a lot of time writing and recording what will be a new record born unto the world in 2020 assuming we all live that long. Finished off the year playing a ‘songwriters in the round’ show at the Purple Onion that went straight into my all-time top 5 favorite shows I’ve ever played.

Actually that wasn’t my final gig of 2019; this week I accompanied my daughter singing in the Christmas variety show at her elementary school (she is currently crushing the 2nd grade). I wanted to throw up beforehand and cry with joyful pride during but somehow found the strength to do neither. We are currently accepting solicitations for daddy-daughter record deals, though we will only read over the contracts in our brief free time between play sessions of Luigi’s Mansion 3 so responses might be slow.

So yeah. The world outside of my little bubble might be melting/crumbling/dissolving into Thanos Dust (TM) but I personally had a hell of a year. Thanks to everyone for listening, coming to shows, buying CDs even though they don’t own a CD player besides the broken one in their car, being my friend, and being nice. Here’s hoping 2020 slaps.

My daughter really captured the essence of me when she snapped this photo. I am blurry, inside and out.

Well first here’s a nice lil live performance of SR classic ‘Strange Days’ lovingly captured by One on One in NYC during the recent fall tour.

Got a few shows coming up that might interest you: first I’m super excited to be opening for Amanda Anne Platt and the Honeycutters at Open Chord in Knoxville TN on November 16 (tickets). Love that town and have wanted to get back for some time so that should be a good one.

Then a week later on Friday November 22 this is happening:

It’s against the law for songwriters to look directly at the camera.

Really excited to share the Purple Onion stage with two incredible writers and performers, Jane Kramer and Hannah Seng. Really hope we can drag friends and music lovers out to this one and turn the PO into a listening room for a few hours. Write it in your planner. IN PEN. Make it your beeswax! Thanks and see you soon.

Kris looks down lovingly at the back of Michael’s head. Michael sees squirrel.

Hide your feral wild hogs, I’m finally returning to the northeast for the first time in a year or so and pumped to be doing it with my buddy Kris Gruen. We played some shows together in the southeast this past spring and fell deeply, deeply in love. Also thrilled to be joined on 9/14 by towering genius Paul Hansen of The Grownup Noise.

Playing new songs, telling folksy tales, RADIATING charm and charisma… if that stuff is your bag then make it your beeswax to be there. Go here for more info.

Tour starts this coming Saturday! Dang! Looks like I have some outfits to pick out! While I’m packing I thought I’d post this live mashup I played a bunch last year on the Jump tour. To my discerning ear, Foo Fighters and 80s solo Don Henley go together like chicken and waffles. A hearty, substantive, nutritious blend. This was recorded at the Nashville City Winery in 2018 by Chris Slack at a show engineered by Herbie Jeffcoat.

If you’re thinking about coming to one of these upcoming shows, this is what it’ll be like. So I hope goofy piano shit like this is your jam.

These are the shows at which I shall play, all with the incredible Kris Gruen:

MARCH 30 | NYC, NY @ City Vineyard at Pier 26$
Tickets --> http://bit.ly/2tPSPjr
MARCH 31 | Baltimore, MD @ House Party
APRIL 1 | College Park, MD @ Milkboy Arthouse
Tickets --> http://bit.ly/2TGUTIM
APRIL 2 | Norfolk, VA @ Charlie's American Cafe
APRIL 3 | Greenville, SC @ Coffee Underground
Tickets --> http://bit.ly/2EFGxPp
APRIL 6 | Charleston, SC @ Redux Contemporary Art Center
Tickets --> http://bit.ly/2XN6Lbo
APRIL 7 | Columbia, SC @ Curiosity Coffee Bar%
Tickets --> https://squ.re/2J03K4s
APRIL 8 | Atlanta, GA @ Smith's
Tickets --> http://bit.ly/2NKFPVo
APRIL 10 | Charlotte, NC @ Evening Muse
Tickets--> http://bit.ly/2ESCiSc
APRIL 11 | Mobile, AL @ SouthSounds Music Festival
Info --> https://southsoundsfest.com/
APRIL 12 | Mobile, AL @ SouthSounds Music Festival
APRIL 13 | Athens, GA @ The Rooftop at Georgia Theatre
Free Show--> http://bit.ly/2XKsVep

$ with Benjamin Cartel
% with The Lovely Few

Let’s hold hands while civilization goes over the waterfall of authoritarianism and chaos together. Hope to see you!