We released a new EP yesterday. As a musician on the cusp of playing gigs, and showing my music to my friends and little group of followers It feels a bit like a non-event. Here’s four songs I like, put em in your pocket!

Back when I was releasing my first couple albums it felt like such a big deal because there was a mystery about what would happen after the music was out in the world. Would it get found and reviewed? Would it find a huge audience? Would it make some kind of money? I carried around a lot of hope and fantasy about what I could get from my music. Obviously none of that happened, and I decided after my second album that I needed to play shows to get any kind of audience because I just didn’t get how online promotion was supposed to work. It’s six years later and I’ve played solo twice and just now got a band with me to play this stuff for real.

The main difference I feel between who I was as a 21 year old creative person and who I am now at 31 is the change in scope about what I want from what I make. I had a large, desperate ambition when I was younger to be the best and do the most. Success was vaguely defined by “get followers” and “get money”. I could make the music but I didn’t know how to do any of the other stuff that would have (big maybe) gotten me the definition of success I craved.

I’m so happy I don’t have that crazy want anymore. Late in my 20s my creative agility atrophied and time sped up around me. I had jobs and relationships and a backyard to grill in and then I moved to Chicago and got engaged and here we are. Now I’m way more concerned about where to find good Thai food than I am trying to get rated on Pitchfork.

What I want today is to just make the best possible thing I can with the people around me and enjoy the act of making and performing. I have Maxine and Loren with me in the first ever live band arrangement for Sleeper Muscle and it’s so damn good to play with them. I feel like I’m back in music school again, the sound of the ensemble hitting me like sunshine. That feeling is what I’m chasing now, and it’s what I want to give to the venues around town. I’ll take whatever else comes without expectation.

The EP sounds excellent, Maxine and Loren (especially Loren who mixed the whole thing) were essential in getting it to sound that way. My friends really like it and I am so, so excited to play for them someday soon.

There’s a pigeon living right outside our back door. She made a little circle of straw on the doormat left by the previous tenant and then it laid a little egg. Every time I open the door to throw something in the garbage she looks up at me and squishes down a little.

I’m worried the egg’s not going to hatch cause she laid it when it was still around 20 degrees outside. I looked it up and saw that it takes around three weeks for pigeons to hatch, I think we’re in the one week window now.

If it does hatch that means that we’re going to have to contend with having a small pigeon chick by our garbage can all summer. I feel like I should make them some kind of dome. We’ll see what happens.