• Janice Ho & Friends – Dance Without Judgement

    The Song Talk Radio Backup Band, consisting of Phil Emery on bass, Bruce Harrott on acoustic guitar, and myself on drums, along with Eric Sorenson on guitar, and Alon Rodovinsky on guitar and backup vocals, accompanied Janice Ho on her soulful song, Dance Without Judgement, in an energetic arrangement. I got to channel my inner [...]

  • Song Talk Radio with Neel and Peter

    Last summer, I met Peter at the Songwriter's Cafe meetup group, and shortly afterward, we began collaborating on songs. Peter is a poet and singer, with some rather intense and compelling lyrics around sexuality, politics, and other themes. Paired with some of my neat keyboard parts and arrangements, we created some unconventional music. Listen to [...]

  • Hyphen dom – free-dom in chains?

    For several months in 2014, I worked closely with singer-songwriter Dom Ventura, aka Hyphen dom, on producing several songs for his album free-dom in chains?. Arrangements included drums, strings, bass and piano parts to fully round out his songs. One of the biggest challenges I found as a producer was being able to embrace Dom's [...]

  • Destiny Train

    For a few months last winter, I was stuck having to take the regional “GO” transit to get to work.  I found it strange that so much of my schedule was now much more dictated by train schedules, and the associated stress of getting to the station on time, and frequent delays. At the time, [...]

  • One Great Mistake

    This song resulted from a webinar with songwriting coach Alex Forbes. Alex presented a method for writing, and attendees were supposed to follow her step-by-step instructions to formulate their own song. Her method centered around taking a stand on something you believe in, have a deep thought about, or a topic or phrase upon which you [...]

  • Cyberpunk

    I wanted to write a song about society’s obsession with gadgets and technology. This is not a new idea, I realized.  A good lyric writing trick for me is to adopt the point of view of a made up character. That gives me the freedom to be silly and quirky, while at the same time [...]

  • Hurting. Choosing. Learning.

    The verse lyrics were actually written several years ago, after I was talking to a psychology student about the paradoxes that can exist in people’s internal thinking. As I decided to paint a few vignettes about different life scenarios, the use of haiku poetry seemed somehow fitting, as well an interesting lyrical and melodic challenge. [...]

  • Unceremoniously

    There's nothing like devastating emotions to spur on a new song. After going through some recent hard times, the lyrics for the bridge came to me several days after the incident, and certainly they reflect the exact state of my inner experience at the time. From there, the title came to me, and then the [...]

  • Song Talk Radio Interview

    As part of our "hosts as guests" series on Song Talk Radio, I had my turn to present one of my own songs and get some feedback from my co-hosts Phil and Bruce.  I presented Telepathic Androids, and we talked about odd time signatures (9/4 in this case), changing up your rhyme scheme, and how [...]