The Weed Garden is a songwriting and recording project that I originally started in the mid-2000s, assisted by a few friends who can do certain things far better than I can, like crush a drum set or be a soprano. I’m the composer, arranger, vocalist, guitarist, bassist, percussionist, synthesist, IdontreallyplaythisthingbutImdoingitanywayist, recording/mix engineer (with occasional help) and producer. Thanks to Bob Klotz (engineer), Spencer Inch (drums), Kevin Lowe (drums), Sebastian Goodridge (drums), Elisabeth Jeremica (cello) and, of course, Elizabeth Barsom (voice) for their contributions to the project. You can hear it here: The Weed Garden on Spotify or The Weed Garden on Apple Music. It’s also available worldwide on pretty much every distribution platform. If you get me your email address I’ll let you know when new things are coming out (and when/where I'm playing). Obviously, I can’t play those instruments all at the same time so, for now, this is mostly a recording project. I do, however, perform some of it solo.
The Weed Garden songs cover a spectrum of topics. Keeping peace with life as we think we know it, the sag and groan of the earth, the hopes and shams of politics. Being within and without nature, holding serve in a game of global destruction or survival, combats of and with the ego, vapors of childhood memory, puffs of liberated stardust. What and what if, or nothing at all.
About the name.
Contrary to some assumptions, the origin of the name of the project isn’t cannabis-related at all. At the time it was created I was teaching in a university school of music, and writing music for orchestra, chamber groups, and other classical media. Not many of our faculty played professionally outside the classical canon; it occurred to me that my songs (and I?) were like weeds popping up in the middle of a formal garden. Once I decided on that name, it actually took a few weeks for it to dawn on me that it sounded cannabis-influenced.