I got home from the singer-songwriter festival in Cape May, New Jersey last week and was finally able to relax. February and March were a blur. I was recording, performing, even meeting up with a former high school teacher and her choir that performed in Carnegie Hall. So finally, I was sitting on the couch with my housemate George just relaxing, watching Sports Center. He’s a NYC comedian and hip-culture lover. We got talking about something and he brought up a Volkswagen commercial from 1999. The commercial shows traveling friends in a convertible on a perfect summer night. Pulling into their party destination, they take one look, and turn right back around to keep driving. The whole thing is synced with Nick Drake’s Pink Moon. George dug up the video on YouTube and it struck a chord with me. First thing the commercial evokes is that ‘traveling down an open road’ feeling. Pink Moon so perfectly captures and amplifies that quiet, content feeling. On my Friday 3 a.m. train and bus ride from Brooklyn to Cape May I had plenty of that kind of time. Dozing in and out, my guitar case a pillow, the sun finally deciding to wake up. The Jersey crowd got on and off the bus; I sat and listened silently to their (loud) conversations. Arriving around noon I checked in and took a look around at the desolate seashore from my empty hotel room. I hadn’t been out of New York in three months – it felt so good to be alone – After a quiet lunch I jumped right into the festival’s workshops; so many business cards and people. There was a lot of licensing and copyright information. Each night was full of talented music acts. Overall, the best part of that weekend was meeting up with musicians and people behind the business. Like the VW commercial, there’s always going to be a quiet few moments away from the party (by coincidence my weekend actually involved a little ride in a VW). In light of all the commercialism and legal things that actually get music on the screen, it is easy to forget what making music is about in the first place. When all was said and done, I figuratively backed the car out of the driveway and got back to the human side of what it is to be a musician. — PS – The EP is coming along GREAT!