When it comes to my most significant artistic endeavors, I haven't always operated alone. About a decade and a half ago, I was part of a collaborative project at Bill's Records on South Lamar (now Botham Jean Blvd.) with my longtime friend and occasional co-conspirator Alex Pogosov. The project was a reincarnation of an earlier open mic which ran from 2002-2006 at Bill's old location off Spring Valley in far north Dallas. The Lost Art Open Mic, as this later enterprise came to be known, began in May 2010 and ran until early June 2011. But there's one night in particular that I have largely avoided facing for a long time, and I'm finally going to talk about it here... read more

Just a quick update here about a Houston bookstore I was introduced to a couple of years ago, and that I decided to pay a second visit to on a recent trip back to H-town. Becker's Books is a small, independently run bookstore, one of those places where a former residence has been converted into a mom and pop business and whose design philosophy comes straight out of the most dedicated DIY practitioner's playbook... read more