Photo by Chase Macri of some Vegetarian Chili I made for New Years I bought three shirts on Monday, January 2nd. My family—namely my parents, sisters Melody and Katelyn, Aunt and Uncle, and my grandparents on my mother’s side (those on my father’s side are dead)—also bought me various clothing items as Christmas presents this [...]

Photo Damian Strohmeyer/SI In sports the cliché goes “may the best team win” and that cliché is often the expectation. However, unlikely things happen all the time in sports like when the underdog Dallas Mavericks swept most experts pick to win it all, the Los Angeles Lakers, in the second round of the NBA playoffs [...]

This is the full text of a features piece I wrote for the October issue of Eleven Magazine. The piece was the cover story. See the scanned version here [PDF]. The Secret’s Out: Music and Arts Renewal on Cherokee Street The mysterious St. Louis Secret Sound Society has something to share with you. No codex [...]

We’ve all heard it said. Almost without fail any time an established band releases a new album, especially a new album that is well received and adds to the band new fans, someone (or some many) will say “Ehhh, I like their old stuff better.” Reasons for liking a band’s earlier work are as diverse [...]

This is part 2 of a series of articles on Dashboard Confessional’s frontman Chris Carrabba: an attempt to dissect his public persona in order to understand his inner person. You can read part 1 here. The Swiss Army Romance is a voyeuristic trip through a 20-something’s diary that feels as naked as it is. Thoroughly [...]

During a rehearsal with a band I was in the subject of Dashboard Confessional came up. Dashboard was probably first mentioned negatively, maybe as a joke about the band’s overly emotional nature but the bassist of my band reacted strongly against our jest saying that “Dude, Chris Carrabba means every word he sings!” If you [...]

Last month a few of my college friends and I were talking about music via twitter. The discussion eventually descended into nostalgia over a particular moment when we all sat in a room, listened to a record uninterrupted and then talked about it immediately after: the album listening party. The album listening parties were hosted [...]

Now, the next album in our series is one that held a huge place in my development as a person and musician. It marks a turning point in my life. Through P.O.D.’s Warriors EP from album number 2, I discovered Tooth and Nail Records. This discovery turned me on to Tooth and Nail’s harder subsidiary [...]

I know, another Deftones record in the top 15? Yes. White Pony (Maverick, June 20, 2000) was a landmark album for me. After hearing “Change (In the House of Flies)” on the radio I was stoked for its release and actually counted down the days before it finally came out. I remember taking the trek [...]

I was so excited about my musical discovery in the Deftones that I couldn’t keep it to myself. I told all my musically inclined friends including a dude I met online through, of all things, P.O.D.’s message board. His name was Mike, and he had a P.O.D. fanpage that he made on AOL’s hometown servers [...]