Reflections on my upbringing, fatherhood, and trying to be a better person.
When I can, I like to get up early. I do this because I have four boys under the age of fourteen. They are like unconscious flies on a cold windowsill. As soon as the room warms, or the sun shines on the glass long enough, they begin to stir, then walk around, then buzz. […]
Closed Captions of a Quiet Morning Read More »
Last month in Vietnam, I started The Postcard Club. The plan was simple: buy postcards from a local shop, write a handwritten note to each member, and mail them off. The problems began when I couldn’t find any postcards I liked. They all felt overly calendar-photo-y. So I thought, maybe I’ll just sketch a little
How Not to Mail a Postcard from Vietnam Read More »
Hi Jaime, Noah is friends with me, not the other way around! Joking, of course. I met Noah a month before his nineteenth birthday—before he could rock such a great beard. (Still, he had pretty good stubble.) It was December of 2015. He came to Nashville to work on songs for his debut album. My
Jamie asks, “Are you friends with Noah Kahan or is that just a rumor?” Read More »
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Protected: How to Bomb an Audition Read More »
That’s what I was doing when I overheard two guys talking in the men’s bathroom in my dorm hall. Aerospace students, dressed smartly with combed hair. “This is huge,” one of them said. I had just turned 20 at the University of North Dakota. After hearing them talk—about what I still wasn’t sure—I walked to
On 9/11, I Was Brushing My Teeth Read More »
August 7, 2025 – Port Vila, Vanuatu My kids and I were on the sectional sofa watching Despicable Me. “Stop moving the couch,” Silas, my oldest, told August, the second-born (not sure why I’m including their birth order). August said he wasn’t shaking it. I told him to turn off the TV. Lorentz (#3) and
About Last Night’s Earthquake Read More »
I couldn’t concentrate in class. I kept thinking about my guitar, lyrics to songs I was working on. I’d daydream about performing in front of thousands. Old high school classmates in the crowd. My junior high crush apologizing for not noticing me: “If I could only go back, Aaron,” she’d say, “I’d do things differently.”
From College Dropout to Career Musician: A Letter to Worried Parents Read More »
It’s Christmas Eve, and you’re about seven or eight. Your family has this tradition of opening gifts on the night before Christmas. You’re pretty sure the reason is to convince your young brain that there’s no Santa Claus. How could there be? It’s 9 PM. He hasn’t even hooked up his sleigh yet. Furthermore, your
I am six years old and a member of the Old Dutch Potato Chips hockey team. We have orange jerseys with big white letters. Aaron Degerness is our star player. Saturday mornings are game days and this particular morning the stars align: I catch the puck and begin a long breakaway the length of the
The Breakaway: A Hockey Story Read More »
I know the lyrics to “Take Me Home, Country Roads” are about West Virginia, the Blue Ridge Mountains and all. But last year, when my wife and I hauled our family around the Midwest in a camper for my Living Room Tour, I took a wrong turn near the Montana/North Dakota border. Though we tried
Happy Accidents: Where This Picture Came From Read More »