I'm the founder and songwriter of a couple rock and roll bands, These United States and Ark Life, who've released 6 full-length albums and performed 1,200+ times in the last decade (everywhere from SXSW and Glastonbury to Lollapalooza and your favorite local dive). Before music recaptured my heart, I got to write books, articles, and speeches with economist Richard Florida, work in an international criminal tribunal in The Hague, help shoot a documentary on water rights in southern Mexico and Guatemala, and run an Italian deli on the Jersey Shore. I'm in Denver now, where I work with the city on festival programming, the governor’s Council on Creative Industries on statewide music strategy, the Bohemian Foundation on community development, and the Biennial of the Americas on a western hemisphere exchange of arts, ideas, and music.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

Because people are the best. They beat hotel rooms every time. If I had to guess, I'd say my bandmates and I have successfully surfed about 1,500 different couches, futons, floors, hammocks, grassy knolls, beanbags, porches, and so on and so on, in the last decade. And that was before we even knew about an amazing website CALLED Couchsurfing. Still haven't met a single place or community that wasn't a beautiful awful hilarious painful rejuvenating story just waiting to be told.

Interests

• arts
• books
• documentaries
• glastonbury
• festivals
• running
• music
• economics
• mountains

Music, Movies, and Books

Being a touring musician and traveling for the biz side of things so much, I'm continually amazed by the sheer volume of incredible music in the world. There's honestly very little of it that doesn't resonate with me in one way or another - it's just one of the most inspiring activities we humans get the pleasure of participating in, regardless of the particular genre or artist or context or purpose. And I feel even more strongly about movies and books (probably mostly because I don't have as much first-hand knowledge of how they're made).

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

They almost always involve mountains. Or oceans. Or massive cities. Anything that humbles humans, really.

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Guatemala, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Puerto Rico, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States, Vatican City State

Countries I’ve Lived In

Denmark, Mexico, Netherlands, United States

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