Jason Peterson, Writer...er

I wrote about Jeff Tweedy's new memoir for Peformer Magazine - check it out here! Super excited to see Jeff in Dallas in early March. I've been to a few Wilco shows, saw The Autumn Defense (John Sirratt and Pat Sansone's side gig) at the Basement in Nashville a few years back, and now Jeff Tweedy solo. All I need is to check out The Nels Cline 4 and one of Glenn Kotche's projects to round out my complete Wilco fanverse. Also have to post this video, which Jeff mentions in the book with the following quote:     Indeed. 

There aren't many restaurant jobs I haven't worked - well, except for the most important one: cook (if only you didn't have to be a good cook to be a cook). But name almost anything else, and I've done it. Dishwasher, busboy, host, waiter, bartender. Some were terrible, some were a blast, and all were made cool in hindsight after reading Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential.  I first read Kitchen Confidential while in New Zealand on a working holiday visa. I'd gotten a job washing dishes at a spot were I was hoping to bartend, and his book made that decision feel romantic and exciting (rather than depressing). While I'd worked in restaurants before, I'd never worked in the kitchen. It was a different planet from the front of the room.. Bourdain captured it better than I ever could, and I highly recommend reading his account. I only stayed back there a few weeks, but it's a few weeks I'll never forget. Night after night, I hustled like

Raising a glass of Kool-Aid (non-electric, but thanks) to Tom Wolfe, who wrote the book that set me on a course of exploring too many books and bands to mention. I was fifteen or sixteen when I first picked up The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (from my high school library no less), and its wild tale wildly told opened up possibilities of writing that I hadn't considered until then. I started listening to The Dead, wearing terrible tie-dyes, and using ellipses and exclamation marks like crazy. (I stopped with the punctuation because only he could really pull it off). The tie-dyes took longer to shed. I'm going to put his other great reads on my list to check out soon. Here's to Tom Wolfe and his electric writing.  

I love photo caption contests. My favorite site for them is the Nashville Cream blog over at the Nashville Scene , which offers one up every few weeks or so. I've entered maybe ten of them in the past few years and somehow won three times, and I'm more proud of that than I should be. But there's just something about having a caption match up with a picture in a funny way that feels so... right . And, you know, prizes. I've posted my three winning entries below for posterity's sake: Sometimes life imitates art, and sometimes it imitates Art. This remains one of my favorite pictures I've ever seen. I don't know if it's the seriousness of the guy, the weirdness of the moment, or how much I wish I were there to see this in person, but it's all amazing. I really hope his name is actually Art. The Old Man and the Sea (of sadness) When I was in college and practice-teaching 8th grad

Had a chance to interview UK's Shame, a great young band that lives up to the hype they've been generating. Check it out in Performer Magazine 

Here's to staring at blank white pages, adding words to them and then obsessively reworking them until they're just right (or just right enough). It's good for the soul.