I initially was stuck on the idea of using some good old-fashioned wordplay when calling my first batch of solo material Hero City. The suffix suggested a “being in the state of” type of scenario and what better word to position this post-Romantic genre-hopping songwriter than “Hero.” A city made of heroes. These different versions of me. This examination of the self as hero, and the hero as myth. And then with words like "toxicity" or "velocity" or "scarcity" somehow also present in the mind, the full phrase started to evolve.

Nick Czarnecki took a photo of a place called Hero City that actually sold heroes / sandwiches. South Slope. 90s. I was living with Greg at the time and working at The Brooklyn School of Global Studies. I snapped the photo of the busted sign for Hero City (was it missing an "O"?). Keith Gladys played with the design bringing together both images. I remember Nick said something about not wanting his image played with in that way, and I realized I have much to learn about working with people and not just their art. He's an amazing human who has built a terrific life for himself through the lens of the camera.

The album is a collection made from three disparate sessions. One is live. Munchaba Lounge in Levittown. A night in 1998, I think. Paul DiBenedetto was behind the board. No real fireworks in the production. Just pretty much straightforward capturing the Guild DCE-1’s naked and honest truths. Bob and Taryn at the helm of the scene at Munchaba. Jen Chapin played after. I was living in Huntington Station at the time and learning how to be alone and play music alone and get around alone and work alone and all the alone things including learning how to love while being alone.

The second session is with my friend Bill Verdolino. I’m going to say that I recorded it at his basement apartment but I don’t remember it very well. All I remember was his generosity and his wildly imaginative Astrocab project. That kind of intersection of outsider art and accessible indie folk. If that doesn’t serve as a de facto definition of me and much of what I love, I do t know what does.

And the third was a shitty recording from the Walt Whitman Birthplace. "Boxes," the song, is still one of my all-time favorites. I never played it at any big shows but here and there in a quiet basement radio station or two in New England or perhaps a late night at The Cup. That’s where it lived. That’s where most of this stuff lived and where these songs were born. Most of them, anyway.

Mainly, Hero City was a document of a guy who played in bands trying to understand the estrangement of what it means to be alone, which, for this only child, turned out to be not that strange at all. The city of heroes is that place we sometimes move through…a place of illusion, of course...or staying in the early illusion we all have, which is, of course, that we are the heroes in our life stories. We’re the hero (tragic) of our story not necessarily because we see ourselves that way but, rather, because of the nature of solipsism and the human condition’s unavoidable tether to it.

It's only later that we learn that the hero has to be - must be - the other.