Music

I've been a huge music fan all my life, with a varied set of interests, mainly focused around different varieties of folk, blues, and pop/rock music. I come from a very musical family. My father is a fabulous blues guitarist who taught me more than anybody, and my brother is also a killer guitarist, playing mostly harder stuff (big Eddie Van Halen fan). I play a variety of instruments, primarily guitar (on which I'm largely self-taught except for my father's influence) and piano (having studied classical piano for about six years). I also fool around on bass guitar, mandolin, ukulele, various keyboards, all sorts of whistles and recorders, percussion of varying stripes, and I can play the riff to "Satisfication" by the Stones on the flute. I also sing, probably more frequently than most people would like, but I'm getting better. My earliest influences on the guitar were English blues rockers like Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page, but since then I've taken inspiration from folkier types ranging from Neil Young and Bob Dylan to Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, and Nick Drake.

For gear I have a variety of stuff, but my main pieces of equipment are my '81 Epiphone Spirit (a '59 double cutaway Les Paul Special copy, approximately; note also the similarity to Joan Jett's '7x Gibson Melody Maker), my '02 Epiphone SG, my vintage Fender Super Reverb amp (silverface, cira '70/'71), my totally awesome best-$100-I-ever-spent Ibanez Tubescreamer overdrive pedal, my Marshall VS35R studio amp, and my Peavey practice amp, in addition to my nameless but trusty acoustic guitar, my little 3/4 classical (my first guitar), my Yamaha YPP50 Electric Piano, my flute, my grungy A-shape mandolin that I got from some guy at a flea market, and my cute little ukulele that Dominic gave me. My music collection is pretty wide ranging, and my only criterion for music is that it sounds good. For a random, representative sample of my tastes and influences, the CDs sitting by my computer in my office right now are: The Stooge's first album, Love, God, Murder by Johnny Cash, Summerteeth by Wilco, Chocolate and Cheese by Ween, Live at the BBC by the Pixies, Traditional Love by the Orange Mothers, Chieftains 7 by the Chieftains, Against Nurture by Suckle, Franz Ferdinand's first LP, Light and Magic by Ladytron, and Time (The Revelator) by Gillian Welch.

I've been in a variety of informal (or formal) bands and jam outfits over the years.

Dead Tongues

Dead Tongues are a Stanford Linguistics Department based blues, 60s rock, and rhythm and blues cover band founded by Ivan Sag and Geoff Nunberg and maintained ever since then primarily by Ivan. For more information about Dead Tongues in general see The Official Dead Tongues Homepage. I was their lead guitarist from 2003-2007. The most recent permanent line-up (from 2005-2007 more or less) was: We also had regular guest vocals by Neal Snider, Penny Eckert, and Daniel Casasanto. We played a number of linguistics-related gigs, including two at the Linguistics Department end-of-year parties in June 2005 and June 2006, one at the March 2006 prospective graduate student open house, and one at the Theta Delta Chi house in Cambridge in July 2005 during the LSA Summer Institute. We played on a stage in the basement pub of the TDC house, which I later discovered was the same stage that Boston played some of their early gigs on (their original drummer being a TDC brother). This means I have played lead guitar on the same stage where Tom Scholtz got his start. Like Tom, I played a number of wailing, screaming guitar solos. Unlike Tom, I have not subsequently gone on to release four bitchin' albums of late 70s hard prog/pop rock. But I'm assuming it'll happen pretty soon.

Most recently, with the addition of John Niekrasz to the band in 2007, Dead Tongues played two gigs sans moi in March and June of 2007 for the Linguistics Department, and in the summer of 2007 I reunited with the band for two more gigs at the 2007 LSA Summer Institute (July 7th and July 21st). Here's me and John N. from the latter gig. The final gig for this line up was on Sept. 8th, 2007 for Laura Staum's wedding reception (which unfortunately I had to miss). Here's the set list from our gig on June 3rd, 2006, for a representative sample of the songs we've done (plus the keys and singers because I could tell already you wanted to know that). Before this permanent line up took shape, I had originally joined Dead Tongues (playing with the Abbott Brothers Band) for a July gig at Michigan State University for the 2003 Linguistic Society of America Institute dance party. The personnel for that concert were: Here's a good snapshot of that gig, and here's another one.

Acorn

Acorn was a loose jam band largely centered around the Acorn Co-Op in Palo Alto, where we met on odd Wednesday nights from late 2001 to early 2003 to run over whatever material came to our heads, ranging from Irish folk to Barry Manilow to Australian drinking songs to Beatles, Stones, and other 60s rock covers to 80s cheese to more recent stuff like The Cure, Pulp, and The Pogues to impromptu funk jams to hokey country songs to the occasional spontaneous original (which we never wrote down). Somewhere in early 2002 Edmund, in a drunken bluster, negotiated our way into semi-regular gigs at this dive called The Island in Palo Alto, where we played in the back room and scared away the passers by and annoyed the regulars and entertained only the most hideously drunk. We quit playing there in December 2002 after narrowly avoiding getting our faces bashed in by this 7-foot wino named Stretch. Normally Stretch was quite a lovely guy who used to sit around in the back with us and good naturedly request all these Jackson Browne songs we patently refused to play. But one night when we just stopped in for a drink he suddenly developed some kind of very serious problem with us and things got a little ugly. We beat a hasty retreat and never again darkened their doorstep with our presence.

Acorn kinda dissolved when Oliver moved to Edinburgh and Edmund moved to San Diego and then to Australia and Dominic and Maryl moved first to Pacifica and now to Pittsburgh, and I stayed in Mountain View and then moved to San Fracisco, Washington, DC, and Austin (in that order). Various configurations of us still jam when we get together. Most recently, in June 2004 we (sans Oliver) had our triumphant return to what was once The Island, now renovated and called Dan Brown's, for Dominic's farewell party. We played exactly one song (a Dominic original) and left it at that on account of the fact that we'd brought two guitars and one mic but only two amps. That's three things to plug in and only two things to plug them into. For those of you keeping score, I have a BA in math from the University of Texas and Dr. Widdows has a DPhil in maths from Oxford.

Core Members

Cast of Thousands

If you or someone you know has played with Acorn, let me know and I'll immortalize you (or them) forever on this webpage.

Solo, Duets, Trios

In the meantime, there are lots of folks that I like to play with from time to time, usually just as duets or trios, depending. These include especially Dominic Widdows (with whom I've been playing since 2000 and it's only getting better, even though the bastard moved to Pittsburgh), Ivan Sag (who has a real Hammond B3 organ in his garage and knows the words to all the Fugs songs), Oliver Lemon (who I see when I'm in Edinburgh), Liz Coppock (who sings beautifully), and Lis Norcliffe (who's a great singer and plays guitar to boot). My most recent jam buddy is Malachi Clark, the next Joey Ramone (or Shane McGowan, we're not sure). I've also been known to go solo for open mic nights, folk sessions (debuting at a singer's night at The Royal Oak in Edinburgh), and parties for my friends.