Scenes From Bellevue Park

Bellevue Recreational Park in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, became my defacto backyard in March 2020.  I was only visiting Eliza when everything shut down, and due to it’s gravel track it became a peaceful place to walk where you felt like you were doing something but  weren’t getting too far from the apartment. I got to know every tree in that park, observed many of the other regular characters, and wrote a lot of songs. I hosted friends there, we brought cocktails in mason jars and picnic blankets. We’d watch the sky turn at sunset and listened to helicopters fly over head. I still couldn’t believe that I was in California, the place I had traveled as a child that I was most mistified and enchanted by. The mountains and cliffs were like something I’d read about in Lord of the Rings or the Chronicles of Narnia. The rolling hills and coastal oaks were the ones John Steinbeck wrote about.  Los Angeles had all the same dimly lit corners and canyon roads that Raymond Chandler set in the heavy rains of his noir stories. Soon it became home to my own little recording studio- my friend and patron Emily’s garage, where I learned how all the ingredients of different instruments fit together to make a song groove the way I might hope. I reached out to various musical friends and heroes around the country and they added color and new moods to the grooves I’d created. They made it fully technicolor.