A speeding ticket in Nebraska changed my life.

While working in New York composing and directing an extremely demanding multi-media theater show, a friend and i decided to take a sanity break and drive non-stop to Portland, Oregon in order to spend New Years with some old friends.

On the trip back, somewhere around 4 in the morning, i was pulled over in Nebraska and given a speeding ticket. Upon returning to the unending drama on the East Coast, i prompty forgot about it completely.

Somewhere around a year passed.

Several months after completing the project, i was passing through a college town in Pennsylvania, visiting an old friend who was working at a coffee shop, The Coffee Cellar, a vibrant, decadent, and rather artsy hang out for the student population there.

I was pulled over by the police only to find that due to my failure to pay the speeding ticket, my license had been suspended. My car was subsequently impounded, and i was stranded there for a good three weeks sorting it all out. I ended up spending 12 hours a day in the Coffee Cellar, becoming completely sucked in to the roaring social scene that had assembled around the place. I mopped the floor in the mornings, played piano in the evenings, and left only late at night to go drink. The social scene revolving around the place was raging and i became immersed. Eventually i went out and bought a cheap little hand held tape recorder, and spent several days sticking the tape recorder in people's faces, leaving it unobtrusively on random tables, and collecting a myriad of sound bytes to later put to music.

When i finally returned home i dug through the hours of recordings, saving the usable chunks in smaller sound bites, and for whatever reason categorizing some of them into general themes.

The music was made in a heated and passionate fury, truly one of my better creative bonfires. The bites were pasted into the music in place of sung verses and chorses, and the music surrounding it eclectically looped, played and collaged in whatever grooves struck my fancy.

A few months later i moved to the town, and began one of the most interesting 2 year periods of my life, which included remodeling and helping to run the Coffee Cellar, meeting my wife, meeting my current best friend, and living a particular bohemian excess that has been the source of much subsequent musings, misgivings, and inspiration.

All that has followed afterwards has come as a result of the domino effect started by a speeding ticket one late winter's night in the middle of Nebraska