Music I've had dozens of jobs in my adult life, but I've never been anyone's boss. I never stuck around long enough at any one place to rise up beyond an entry-level position. But in my band all the fellas like to call me Boss. It started out as kind of a joke a few years ago and now it has repla...   More

Music I was at a loud bar in Buenos Aires, Argentina watching a three-piece klezmer band along with a bunch of new friends when one of them, Freddy, turned to me after some thought and said:

"Imagination is experience."

I think that's what he said. It was really loud in ther...   More

Music Some of us walk the borderline between believing in something and believing in nothing. Whether it is our country or a divine creator, we are certain that we feel something stirring inside us, but if it is a true feeling we are afraid to let it out, because we see other people wi...   More

Music Sometimes there are coincidences in this world that are so incredible that you can't actually appreciate them. For example, the sun is about 400 times larger than the moon at the same time that it is 400 times further from the Earth than the moon is. This creates the illusion in the sky that t...   More

Music As we were being thrown out of Canada the other day, the immigration officer coldly said to me the words that truly hurt:

"You're just not offering any benefit to Canada."

And I know he meant that in an economic sense. But still. Ouch.

We were driving fr...   More

Music We drove down from Salt Lake City to the redder and redder rocks of Southern Utah on Friday, to the little town of Torrey, Utah. There lives David Williams, a man who looks like Jesus, and who humbly and Jesus-like puts on shows in a little pizza place in this tiny town and asked me several t...   More

Music Oh glorious day! We're incredibly excited to share the latest entry in the epic Nick Jaina tour diary. This time Nick (traveling all across the country with his ace band) reports from Salt Lake City.

A Brief History of Western Pop Music


One problem that w...   More

Music Yes! A new post-tour diary entry from Nick Jaina!

I recently had a dream where I was asked to play second base for the New York Yankees. Just me, in my street clothes, with no particular baseball skill, suddenly asked to jump into the middle of a game and start...   More

Music Olivia Pepper gave me a haircut on a bench in a small park in Austin, Texas. The park was filled with strange birdfeeders that looked like Scandanavian condominiums. A random man walked by and saw what was apparently the first outdoor haircut he had ever seen and shouted, jokingly, "H...   More

Music The sickness grew and mutated. It had a name and a face, though I promised the sickness that I wouldn't tell anyone what it was. It tormented me like a bully at school. It pushed me down and let me get up and then pushed me down again. It was psychedelic. It entered my brain and made...   More