I am currently a Sommelier in the Penrose Room at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs. If you were to translate my job title from French into English, it would mean “pack mule†or “beast of burden.†Sommelier is a slang term that was given to the officer in the French army who was in charge of distributing rations, which inevitably included wine. Basically, I am a wine and spirits guy.
Some other interests:
Reading/Writing: I am an information junkie, and context is my drug of choice. It is not gotten from over the counter pharmacies of media (black market appeal only). No sound bites, only the stories with real chops that chew through propaganda.
Activism: Critical thinking has reached critical mass.
Photography: A picture says a thousand lines, two thousand if you listen between them.
Music Production: A sound unity, power in the revolutions of records, revelations, the pen is mightier than the sword. The Mp3 is more powerful than the Pentagon.
I have had some wonderful collaborations over the years:
Candy Apple Grey:
Nick Smith
Adam Wolyson
Andrew Wilmot
Tim Alexander
Family, Friends and Roommates:
Eric Pasto-Crosby - From Stories to Greyhound-- those were the times
Dave Malloy - Midnight Mackey
Sarah Nichols- Toca El Tambor
Derek Geison
John Guise
Bridget Guise
Jenna Faber (It was before L.J. -- Depends on the Weather)
Ex Girlfriends-- A lot of material came from this collaboration.
Greedy Politicians-- You are all a true inspiration for what not to be.
Other Influences Include:
In terms of musical groups, there are way too many to mention, so I narrowed the list down to one act for each letter of the alphabet:
Arctic Monkeys, Bob Dylan, Counting Crows, Dire Straits, Eliot Smith, Flaming Lips, Green Day, Hem, Imogen Heap, Jeff Buckley Kanye West Lauren Joy, Massive Attack, Nick Drake, Offspring, Panic at the Disco, Queensryche, Rage Against the Machine, Sufjan Stevens, Traveling Willburys, U2, Vienna Teng, White Stripes, Xzibit, Yes, Zero 7
Inspiration in Paper Form:
1984 (So what if Orwell was off by 22 years, it’s still a good bock.)
The Watchmen (Alan Moore is the genius behind V for Vendetta as well)
Art and Lies (Janette Winterson— shoot down the tracks on a post modern train with several conflicted ideas of people.)
A People’s History of the United States (Howard Zinn’s look at history through the eyes of the disenfranchised)
The New New Journalism (Robert Boynton interviews top creative nonfiction writers like Ted Conover and Jon Krakauer)
The Art of War, The Prince, Power (Three self help books by Sun Tzu, Niccolo machiavelli, and Robert Green, respectively.
