Listen: Black Lives Matter
My first week as a freshman at the University of Texas, after an orientation with hundreds of students, they broke us out into smaller discussion groups, and the topic quickly turned to access. I was one of only a couple of white kids in the group, and I remain grateful that 1) the students of […]
New EP Announcement: The Rain Becomes a River
Our new EP, featuring five tracks, will release digitally on May 8, 2020. This collection represents a more forceful, loud, and insistent vision for more insistent times. Pre-order now and get an immediate download of “When the Levee Breaks.” [bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=1215400955 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small]
“Voices” Music Video: Process Blog
For “Voices,” the first single off of our latest album, I worked with multi-hyphenate artist Mark Landry to create this video: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUrYz-qmkqI] Here’s the process we took to get there: For the song “Goodbye at the End of the World” on the last album, Dust Among the Stars, I created an animated music video. I […]
Half My Life: In the Studio 20 Years Apart
Three months before I turned 20, two friends and I — we were a band called Black Spiral — loaded up a car in Houston, drove to Austin and crashed at a stranger’s house, then went into a makeshift studio early the following morning to try to make a record. That was June 20, 1998…twenty […]
Strange Dreams on a Nervous Night
Over the course of maybe the last year, I have had a series of dreams that I had not thought much of and I thought were unrelated, until last night, when they all came together. They clearly Mean Something, or Are Trying to Tell Me Something. But I don’t know what. Here are some facts: […]
Hurricane Harvey: When the Levee Breaks
We are releasing a cover of the 1929 song “When the Levee Breaks” to help benefit the victims of Hurricane Harvey. Download it here: [bandcamp width=100% height=120 track=3828813259 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small] My Hometown I was born in Houston, Texas, and lived most of my life there until I moved to Los Angeles in […]
Fun With Word Clouds
As I work on demos for the next album, I’ve been thinking a lot about lyrics, naturally. Then I decided to have a little fun with the lyrics on our releases so far, and make word clouds out of them. Here’s what happens when you plop all 40 Sci-Fi Romance original songs into a word […]
Hollywood vs. Online Dating
This morning, NPR Morning Edition ran a story called, “Why Hasn’t Online Dating Made it Onscreen?” Of course, as the story discusses, online dating has made it onto TV screens, and studios have made tons of tech-that-kills sci-fi and horror movies. But, the story points out, “[T]here’s one movie genre that’s still struggling to incorporate […]
RIP Chris Cornell
In 1992, I had a page cut out of a magazine hanging on my wall with a picture of Chris Cornell onstage with Soundgarden, and the caption, “It takes a big heart and a healthy set of lungs to be the voice of a generation.” This one hurts a lot. Chris Cornell pretty much got […]
A Letter to Trump Voters
You won, and everybody in America wants to know what happens next It always feels good when your side wins, and you won big. You now control the White House, both houses of Congress, your guy will appoint potentially several Supreme Court justices, and you’ve got a big lead in state governors and legislatures. You’re […]