Month: May 2020

‘We Were a Disaster’

(This story originally appeared in SPIN.)

I’ve been blown away by Jason Isbell’s work for a long time now, in a way that has made me reconsider how I feel about music, in general. I used to say that I was a fan of classic rock, or of British rock, or of jam bands, or whatever. Then it was indie and alt-rock bands, whatever. Either way, I always thought that there were genres that I liked and genres that I didn’t like, and I thought that the music world worked that way.

I spent enough time with Isbell’s music, though — and later, with Brandi Carlile and others, to say nothing, in retrospect of how much Ryan Adams I played back in the day — to realize that genre is fluid, and interests are, too. This probably should have been obvious. Am I a country music fan? I don’t know that I’d say that. What I would say for sure, though, is that Jason Isbell isn’t a country music artist. That’s too limiting.

So when SPIN asked me to interview Isbell for a piece coming out around the release of his new album, Reunions, I obviously jumped at the chance. I had so much I wanted to talk to him about, so much that I wanted to learn from him. When I heard the first single, “Be Afraid” — ironically, while in London for some Hold Steady shows, just a few days before the whole world shut down — I was excited by a good, driving rock song that had something to say. A few weeks later, when I really sat down with the whole album to prepare for the interview, I realized what I had missed the first time around. Somehow, Jason Isbell had written the perfect album for this precise moment in time, only he did it long before the moment started. Which makes you understand that this all started long before we might realize.

I don’t imagine I’ll have too many interviews over my career that I’ll enjoy more than this one. Isbell was awesome — open, challenging, engaging. He really helped me understand how his brain works, how he sees the world around him, how he draws inspiration, and how he turns it into beautiful but brutal and admonishing songs.

I hope you’ll read and enjoy.

https://www.spin.com/2020/05/jason-isbell-reunions-interview/

Twist of Fate

(This article originally appeared in New Jersey Monthly.)

Almost four years to the day before this article ran in NJ Monthly, my family was at a birthday party for a friend’s 2-year-old, and the entertainment was a guy named Miguel Cervantes. We knew Miguel as our then-5-year-old son’s music teacher, so we were excited to see him at the party.

A few months later, randomly scanning the Playbill.com website, I saw an announcement of the new star of the Hamilton production opening in Chicago: Miguel Cervantes!

It was an incredible thing to confront, this idea that maybe should have been obvious but hadn’t impacted me yet. How many of the people that we confront every day — our kids’ baseball coaches, their teachers, our waiters — could one day become one of the biggest stars in the theater world.

Cervantes led the Chicago cast for all three years that it ran, and while there, he suffered an unimaginable tragedy, losing a daughter to a brutal struggle with epilepsy. He and his wife were very open about the whole process, and when Adelaide finally succumbed to the disease, the entire theater community embraced the couple. Despite having just a middling connection to Cervantes, I felt heartbroken, too.

So when he was announced as the new lead of the Broadway production, I pitched a piece about him, not expecting that just days after our interview, the entire industry would go dark indefinitely. Someday, though, Cervantes will be back on Broadway in the role of a lifetime, and I’ll always remember the chat we had, and the moment that I realized that my kid’s music teacher was Alexander F’ing Hamilton.

Aaron Everlasting

(This story is from Yankees Magazine Online)

This one came out of nowhere. I was planning on traveling to Las Vegas for a conference, and because I was going two-thirds of the way across the country, and because a co-worker had a sudden conflict arise, my editor suggested that I follow up the Vegas trip by checking out an Aaron Judge All Rise Foundation event in Fresno, California. Obviously, I wasn’t about to say no to that.

Since I was heading out there with a few days to spare, I somehow convinced Aaron’s people to let me go to the fundraising dinner they were holding, then spent some time at Fresno State’s football game two nights later, where they honored Judge on the field. In between, I used some downtime to check out Yosemite National Park.

The story that I eventually wrote came out a lot of confusion I was feeling throughout my time in Fresno. The events were … small? I don’t mean that in a negative way, and I think it’s probably a function of my New York–area mentality that I even bumped against it. But the fundraiser didn’t have any media, didn’t have any celebrities. It certainly could have. If Judge had allowed the media inside (or even outside), plenty of reporters would have jumped at the chance. I was there almost by accident.

In spending time around the family, and with Aaron’s agent, what became very clear was that this was by design. It’s not that they don’t have big goals for the foundation, it’s just that they want to honor those who have been with them from the start. What they seem to be saying is that there will come time for the massive events. For now, though, better to reward those who have been loyal. It was blindingly obvious as I watched Aaron chatting with his former college teammates that it just doesn’t cross his mind that there might be some distance between them, some difference in where the world has taken them. That’s remarkable, and it’s a skill!

Aaron’s family is insistent on loyalty, almost fanatically so. And as you talk to his parents, Patty and Wayne, and watch them interact with people, you can see how Aaron became the way he is, the standup superstar in New York, the humble megastar.

I really tried to show that side of him, and the way he got where he is. Largely, what I saw was that he is who he has always been, in a good way. I hope you’ll read and enjoy.

https://www.mlb.com/yankees/news/aaron-judge-is-always-consistent?t=yankees-magazine