Hydrangea

The last new song of my fifties

Apr 28, 2026

If everything goes according to plan, I will be exiting my fifties this coming Saturday, celebrating the occasion much like I rang in my entrance — with a visit to a museum, and a gathering with some of my favorite people at a favorite watering hole.

It doesn’t seem as if much time has actually passed since that last big milestone birthday, at least until I take a step back and consider how different my life is now, as well as how drastically (and depressingly) both the country and the journalism/publishing landscape I inhabit have changed since May 2016.

And then, of course, there are all the friends and loved ones I’ve lost since then — a significant uptick from the previous decade, as goes with the territory — the medical scares that were generally more intense than the ones I’d previously weathered, and the various dietary modifications that have been implemented whether out of caution, necessity and/or changes in outlook. I feel like exactly the same person I was when I turned 50, but I know in my soul that the last ten years have irrevocably changed me in ways both subtle and profound.

But for all the trials and turbulence of my fifties, I can’t say that I wasted them. I wrote or contributed to more books over the past ten years than I did during my forties — including Now You’re One of Us: The Incredible Story of Redd Kross, and the forthcoming Made On Earth For Rising Stars: The Electro-Harmonix Story with Joshua Heath Scott of JHS Pedals fame — I’ve continued to write features and profiles that I’m proud of for the likes of Rolling Stone, Revolver, FLOOD and The Forward, and I’ve managed to establish a loyal readership and supportive subscriber base with this here Substack. (If you’re reading this, THANK YOU!!!)

In that time, I’ve lived in three vastly different settings — major Midwestern metropolis, Southern college town, East Coast mountain hamlet — rebuilt my heart and life after a shattering divorce, and fallen in love again. I’ve made some great new friends and kept most of the old ones (the fascists and bootlickers showed themselves out), traveled to places I’d only dreamed of seeing in person, and enjoyed countless experiences which further reinforced my long-held belief that love, kindness, joy and creativity are the things that truly make this life worthwhile. And on the creativity tip, I started writing music again in my fifties, after a layoff (and creative block) of nearly two decades.

I had played in bands from my late teens to my mid-thirties, three of which (Lava Sutra, The Fancy Trolls and The Jupiter Affect) actively tried to get noticed by the music industry. As with so many of our compadres of the “alternative rock era,” these bands only managed a few independent releases that few people knew about outside of our scenes; and while I would not trade those recordings or experiences for anything, a combination of personal and professional pressures convinced me around the turn of the millennium that I would be better off putting all my eggs in the writing basket, as opposed to the rocking one.

While I continued to play guitar on a regular basis, I soon found that writing songs — something which I’d regularly done to greater or lesser effect since I was 18 — felt newly impossible. My trusty Tascam Porta-2 that my father had generously given me as a college graduation present had finally bitten the dust, leaving me without my favorite songwriting tool, and I was deeply unenthusiastic about entering the brave new world of digital recording. But I think the songs really stopped coming because I felt like I no longer had a purpose for them, and because years of trying to “make it” in the music biz had made me completely neurotic about songwriting.

After a while, everything I’d written or tried to write had been almost instantaneously scrutinized by my inner quality-control department: Does this song sound like too much of a departure for the band? Does it sound too much like a retread of some other songs in our set? Does this riff or chorus sound too much like something else on the radio? Does it not sound enough like something else on the radio? Etc., etc…

It’s been said before, but one of the great things about being in your fifties is that you start to not give a fuck about things that you unnecessarily gave a previous fuck about. Oh, I’m too old to be “relevant”? Oh, I’m not rockstar skinny like I was in my twenties? Oh, there’s no audience for the kind of music I want to make? Whatever, dude — turn up the fucking amps and let’s rock!

After an aborted attempt to get a new music project going in Chicago with some old bandmates — the will, chops and good vibes were all there, but getting everyone on the same practice schedule page proved far more difficult than it had been in our twenties — I decided to finally dive in to the world of GarageBand. The learning curve was initially pretty steep for someone who had only ever done home recording on cassette tape; but after a bit of messing about, I managed to come up with this little 70s cop-show groove in the first weeks of 2020…

I decided to dub my home recording project The Corinthian Columns — a nod to my archaeology/architecture-obsessed youth, plus I’ve always loved how the word “Corinthian” rolls off the tongue — and I’ve been intermittently writing new music and revamping some older songs on GarageBand ever since. (Here’s a YouTube playlist of my favorite CC tracks, if you’re interested.)

Music came easier than words at first, as it was tough for my brain to click out of prose mode and back into the lyrical realm. But after reminding myself that I didn’t need to try to compete with Bob Dylan, Robyn Hitchcock or any of my other favorite songwriters, my brain relaxed its inhibitions and started to let the lyrics flow. I still love making instrumental tracks inspired by my continuing fascination with 1970s library music, but I’ve become a lot more comfortable with writing “song” songs again.

At the beginning of this year, I decided that I would try to write and record one new Corinthian Columns track a month — both as a commitment to keeping my creative light shining amid the darkness of what promised to be an extremely turbulent year, and as a way to draw attention to (and maybe even raise some funds for) some worthwhile charitable organizations. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I can’t solve the world’s problems, but at least I can be the pebble that sends positive ripples across the pond…

While I haven’t completely kept up the hoped-for pace, I have managed to finish my third Corinthian Columns track of 2026, a song called “Hydrangea”. A jangly psych-pop ode to love, flowers, springtime and renewal, it feels most appropriate for April — and a well-timed spiritual shove back against the human awfulness I’ve witnessed (both on the news and in person) over the last few days. All proceeds from Bandcamp sales of this song will go to benefit Ziggy’s Refuge Farm Sanctuary in North Carolina, which has been doing incredible work on behalf of abused and abandoned farm animals since 2016. It’s the last new song of my fifties, and I hope you dig it…

On a technical note: While several musician pals have tried to get me to upgrade to other recording programs like Logic, I’m still happily working in GarageBand; the technical side of things has become so second-nature by now that the ideas and riffs can just flow without me having to stop to consult a YouTube tutorial. Also, if you noticed a significant improvement in the guitar and bass tones on this track, I’d have to say that they owe much to EarthQuaker Devices’ new ZEQD-Pre, a tube-driven pre-amp that adds some serious analog oomph to digital recording; it makes my JHS Supreme fuzz pedal sound so mighty that I’m tempted to record a whole set of early Jesus and Mary Chain covers…

I should also note here that while I did write for the EarthQuaker Devices blog from 2023 to 2025, this is in no way a paid-for plug; I’m a fan of their effects pedals in general, but the ZEQD-Pre has been such a game-changer for me that my trusty studio assistant Hugo is guarding it with his life as we speak…

Finally, I’d like to dedicate “Hydrangea” to the memory of my dear old pal Phil Rosenthal; I just learned of his untimely passing as I was finishing up this post.

I first met Phil in 1994, back when he was fronting the L.A. power pop band Twenty Cent Crush; he was an unfailingly shining and hilarious presence on the local pop scene, and a tremendously talented dude to boot. (Among his many accomplishments, he wrote the theme for the ABC sitcom Boy Meets World.)

Phil was always incredibly generous with his praise for The Fancy Trolls (our first real gig was opening for Twenty Cent Crush at some now-forgotten Melrose-area coffee house) and for my songs. For years after the Trolls broke up, Phil would come up to me at one L.A. club or another (and now that I think of it, even at his wedding) and ask, “Are you still writing songs?” I would always give him a shrug and an annoyed eye-roll, like, “C’mon, man — I’m done with all that shit.” “You’re a great songwriter, man,” he’d insist. “You’ve gotta keep at it!”

Well, my brother, you got your wish. Thank you for your friendship, and for your constant encouragement; I always appreciated it, even when it made me grouchy to be reminded of part of myself that I’d temporarily lost. May your sweet soul rest in eminently tuneful peace. This one goes out to you…