All Your Days

One of the pleasures of being alive in the company of artists that you admire (and love) is that they make new art. Today, it’s a new album from Jim Infantino, a songwriter who’s been on with us before, all the way back in Season One, and it’s not only a new recording of songs, but it’s a big swing and dramatic departure. These are a few of my favorite things. And you, dear listener, are in for an electronic treat.

The time to think and say something about Sinead O’Connor — who is, not was but is, vastly important to me — that time is now. I’ve been thinking about Sinead, especially these past several weeks, for reasons we all almost certainly understand. And so, today, an essay focusing on an album and a night I spent painting and what there is to know about a hurting heart that beat for too short a time among us.

This is the first installment of the next chapter in the story of ‘All Your Days.’ For the past 18 months, we’ve gathered on Tuesdays across three seasons a year and shared the ideas, the experiences, the lessons and losses, letdowns and liftings and illuminations, the early days and twists of fate. Now, these are the Tuesday stories. They’ll happen in two ways. One way is this way, this short podcast every Tuesday. Another way is the new ‘All Your Days’ newsletter. You can subscribe on Substack and the newsletter includes a bit of material that the pod won’t, while the pod will give some things the newsletter doesn’t carry. There’s a sense and reasoning to both formats. I hope you enjoy this new chapter of the project.

One night in the late 1990s I walked up to a big black door under a tattered green awning, and I walked through that door, and I was in a room. I was at a crossroads. I was a kid with a guitar, and I was about to meet a man named Geoff Bartley. I’ve seldom respected an artist and a host and a curator of a room the way I respect Geoff. He’s our guest on the season closer of ‘All Your Days,' and for the first time, I have the privilege of learning where this man, this musician that critics and producers and artists have described as “one of the most under-recognized musicians alive today,” this award-winning fingerstyle player, this picker, this poet, this bluesman, this maker of a space that was essential to the songwriter scene in Boston and Cambridge came from, what he meant to do, what he achieved, where he has been and where he is going tomorrow. A must. A deep and soulful talk.

Please meet Timothy Mason. There is probably no one more consequential in terms of my awakening artist’s mind in the 1990s. There was no early room in which I discovered or started to practice art that was not either produced by Tim or for which he was not in some way materially responsible. Nothing that followed would have played out the same way. This one is a catch from the deeper waters, the personal depths. We’re swimming with the tides of the cosmos in this one: the story of a person who created a network of stages and performance venues across geography and time, bringing luminaries and future luminaries together in places unlikely or spaces imperiled — all the while practicing his own craft as a poet and performer striving to channel voices and experience both inside and outside the human condition. 

Back in the early 2010s, I met a man named Rafat Ali, who’d just co-founded an online travel news company called Skift, and he gave me an assignment. And that changed everything. In my journey, Rafat has unlocked incredible next steps and new chapters, but we’ve never really talked to each other about his journey, the whole thing, from India to Indiana to New York and many circles opened and closed along the way. Culture shock, climbing the cliff face of a career in writing and journalism, triumphs, injustices, escapes and narrow passages, fearlessness lost and found again. This is Rafat’s story and it’s a great privilege to have had such a deep and generous conversation. Many lessons within. Spend some time with the mind of Rafat Ali. You’ll be glad you did.

This week our conversation turns to Africa with the brilliant Gift Kiti, who has been building water resources and a crucial health clinic for the people of Kashani, Kenya, since 2017. I've been fortunate enough to be along for parts of Gift's journey, thanks to The Resolution Project, and in this episode, 'All Your Days' unpacks the nature of a project that is materially changing lives but that has also come with prices, costs, lessons and revelations for all of us

Some songs and their writers get to you by degrees. Some creep up on your consciousness, a verse here, a chorus there. Others land on your world in a song. That’s all it takes. It’s not a lot, and then it’s everything. In this episode, songwriter Randy Kaplan and I talk about the moment his song “Slow Eater” landed in my world, and then we unpack a lifetime of incredible moments, from Los Angeles and coming up with luminaries like Dan Bern and Andras Jones to a career on TV, including ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ scenes with Jennifer Aniston in ’Ferris Bueller,’ and more. And that’s just scratching the surface.

Clips in this episode: 

1. Slow Eater (Randy Kaplan, ‘Boyish Hips’) - 1997 
2. Tootsie Roll (Randy Kaplan, ‘Perfect Gentleman’) - 2004
3. Crushed Berries (Randy Kaplan, ‘Miraculous Dissolving Cures’) - 2001
4. Shampoo Me (Randy Kaplan, ‘Five Cent Piece’) - 2006
5. Mosquito Song (Randy Kaplan, ‘Five Cent Piece’) - 2006 
6. Candy Man Blues (Randy Kaplan, ‘Shake It and Break It’) - 2019
7. Beauty and the Beast (‘Snow’ d. Gus Trikonis) - 1989
8. Ferris Bueller (‘Without You I’m Nothing' d. Steve Dubin) - 1990
9. I’m Not Hungry (Randy Kaplan, ‘Boyish Hips’) - 1997
10. Live Tigers (Randy Kaplan, ‘Boyish Hips’) - 1997
11. Angel Eyes (Frank Sinatra, ‘Sings for Only the Lonely’) - 1958
12. Sad to Be Happy (Randy Kaplan, ‘Songs for Old Lovers’) - 2011
13. Volunteers (Randy Kaplan, ‘Miraculous Dissolving Cures’) - 2001 

The second part of our conversation with the topical songwriter David Rovics. Part one traced the evolution of a political mind to the moment when tragedy undid the shackles of expectations and set David on his path. This week we follow what happens next, the collapse of the college circuit that supported activists throughout the later 20th Century, the implosion of the CD revenue stream and the rise of an atomized social-media-driven culture.

Clips in this episode:

1. Today in Charlottesville (David Rovics, ‘Ballad of a Wobbly’ - 2018)
2. From Kabul to Khartoum (David Rovics, ‘ Living in These Times’ - 2001)
3. Operation Iraqi Liberation (David Rovics, ‘The Commons’ - 2007)
4. Somewhere on Spotify (David Rovics, ‘Songs for Today’ - 2019)
5. Israeli Geography 101 (David Rovics, ‘Meanwhile in Afghanistan (Solo Acoustic) - 2019)
6. David Rovics is a Nazi (David Rovics, ‘David Rovics’ YouTube - 2022)
7. I’m a Better Anarchist Than You (David Rovics, ‘The Commons’ - 2007) 

Some songwriters, they yearn for a mantle — they strive for the political mark. David Rovics’ songs move musically in the way of the great protesters, singers and poets — the Seegers and the Guthries, Baez, early Dylan, the Anne Feenies and the Alix Olson. I’ve finally had a chance to talk with David. What I discovered, and what fills the next two episodes of this show, is an artist still at work on the specific and the topical and the positively protest-oriented, but I also found a person deeply embroiled in the new tides of the present. this is a story of protest, and of being protested, and it is a story of minds and souls that are searching for the paths that navigate both of those poles while staying in the light and, if were are lucky enough, offering some guiding point, some pinprick of illumination, to others.

Clips in this episode: 

1. Henry Ford Was a Fascist (David Rovics, ‘Live at Club Passim’ - 2000)
2. Who Would Jesus Bomb? (David Rovics, ‘The Commons’ - 2007)
3. Hobo’s Lullabye (David Rovics, ‘Live at Club Passim’ - 2000)
4. Make It So (David Rovics, ‘Make It So’ - 1996)
5. Song for Eric (David Rovics, ‘Live at Club Passim’ - 2000)
6. If I Die Tomorrow (David Rovics, ‘We Just Want the World’ - 1998)