Well, they say things happen in threes. The day of my show in London (October 30th), I started by heading downtown from the borough I was staying in (Lewisham) to a street called Denmark Street just off of New Oxford Street. It was my first experience of downtown London coupled with the subway and the “overground” trains. Honestly, the one…   …read more.

When I got into the taxi yesterday for the airport with a big suitcase and one guitar case and my carry-on bag, I was heading to the airport to fly to Europe FOR THE FIRST TIME. Yes, I have never been to Europe, for gigs or pleasure. All those years of constant touring and not a single airplane ever routed…   …read more.

So, it turns out that the new album needed more time. It’s now officially a 2017 release. That’s okay. I’ve been saying that it’s taken me 5 years to release a new album, but now, as per the calendar change, I’ll have to conceded that it’s officially…… 5 years and 3 months… (can’t say 6 years! lol!)   The last…   …read more.

I am very excited that this record is finally finished. Five years of songs — and you’d think there’s be more knowing my rate of writing in the past, but I blame children for there only being 16 tracks…  🙂 I will be releasing this collection in Beijing, first. Then, throughout 2017, I’ll continue to have release performances in various…   …read more.

This arrived in the mail yesterday. I had just come through the door after several hours at my local “office” (aka: a nearby cafe) doing some paid writing work. Nearly 3-year-old Pazzy was tugging on my sleeve to play “train tracks” with him but my jacket wasn’t even off yet. My boots were only half unlaced. My mother-in-law was there,…   …read more.

  FREE MP3 DOWNLOAD DONATE TO THE ART-MAKING This was the first song I wrote after first becoming a parent. Echo was just a few months old and I was so tired–CONSTANTLY–that I couldn’t think about anything else except sleep. The rhymes in this piece are simple and predictable because they’re the product of a sleep-deprived brain that couldn’t think…   …read more.

  FREE MP3 DOWNLOAD DONATE TO THE ART-MAKING “The most substantial songs [on the album] are… innocently foreshadowed in the kiddy song “Balloon”, whose lesson is that it is all too easy to be careless and watch something joyful and treasured slip from your grasp, never to be recovered.” — Gerry Lipnowski, Montreal (early preview write-up) Echo wrote this song,…   …read more.

  This summer, I had the chance to work with Pat Klaasen of Whiteboardvideodrawings.com. They helped me put together the promotional video above. Basically, it’s an overview of my career and an “I’m back” type of video, specifically letting people know about my new album (2016) but also reminding people that there’s a long story that precedes this album release….   …read more.

  FREE MP3 DOWNLOAD DONATE TO THE ART-MAKING It hasn’t been easy to be in a cross-cultural relationship that is always operating in my non-native language, but rather than complain about it all the time (as I started to feel my blogs were doing), I’m proud to have captured the beauty of its beginnings in this song’s lyrics. The track…   …read more.

It is not surprising that the Chinese bureaucracy is confusing. Even Chinese people express this, acknowledging that paperwork issues are enough to “grow your head,” (让你头大了) which is the literal translation of an expression used to convey the feeling of your head about to explode. Two years ago, when my son was a newborn and we were returning to China…   …read more.