My Music

Some stories don't want to be written. They want to be played.

Music has been running alongside food for most of my life.

As a kid working in my grandparents' restaurant, I was in charge of the "playlist"—which meant a stack of records: Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Dean Martin and the big bands. Somewhere between filling water glasses and helping in the kitchen, I started picking out songs on the piano by ear. Moon River was one of my first great accomplishments.

By sixteen, my grandmother had paid for me to make a demo tape at the local radio station. Later, New Orleans gave me the chance to listen to—and occasionally play alongside—some extraordinary musicians. The music never really went away.

These days I've started writing and recording my own songs. They come from many of the same places as everything else you'll find here: love and loss, family and memory, wandering, getting older, and a few things I still haven't figured out.

Sometimes a story becomes a Field Note.

Sometimes it finds a melody.

Welcome to my songbook.