Introduction

The Carnegie Sessions will be my first album. Its story is as follows:

I have been in a couple of bands; during one of their short lives, I emailed my friends requesting lyrics. I figured anybody can write better poetry than I can. I got back lyrics only from one person (thanks, Tristan!), and though they were pretty sweet, I realized it wasn't going to be enough material to support my musical aspirations.

One Sunday afternoon, I was sitting outside Kaldi's trying to write. First I tried working on my concerto; that failed, so I tried writing lyrics. That dissolved into me taking notes on the people around me - something I've done a few times before at Kaldi's. I kept this up for about 20 minutes and then decided to head home.

On my way home, I crossed paths with a very cute girl, but had absolutely nothing to say to her, and really wanted to just go home anyway. I put her out of my mind and began to ponder how to get material for songs. Immediately, a friend's face sprung to mind, along with the idea to do some interviews. My mind started churning, and I recalled a story about the book Think and Grow Rich. This is a self-help book born of Carnegie's quest to codify the laws of success within capitalism.

The story of the book is that Carnegie found an energetic young whippersnapper - Napoleon Hill - and told the lad, "I'll get you interviews with all the most powerful people in America; I want you to gather their thoughts and write the secrets to success." The result was the Laws of Success, but it was too long to be useful; Hill later boiled it down to 15 rules in his more famous Think and Grow Rich.

So I decided I'd like to do 15 songs about understanding the American female mind. I went home, looked up my friend's number, called her, and headed over to campus to do my first interview.