2023 In Review

Let’s just be honest: I’m a few months late putting together my annual look-back.

It’s not because I didn’t have anything to say about my year last year. On the contrary, 2023 was a pretty great year, even if I didn’t shoot as much as in some previous years. I shot a couple of the biggest tours on the planet, and some artists that are the very definition of “legends” (look the word up in the dictionary, I’ll wait!) I have been trending toward being a little more selective about what I shoot in recent years, in an effort to balance my personal and working life with my photography life. I’m not chasing as many up-and-coming artists like I used to, which is a little sad, but much easier to manage (after all, those club shows tend to start and end a lot later!)

So what are these big tours and legends I had the chance to shoot this year? Let’s start with THE tour of 2023, The Eras Tour by one Taylor Swift. Photographing her show in Santa Clara was an amazing experience made even better by her incredible, thoughtful and helpful team. I don’t normally stick around till the end of shows anymore because I like to avoid traffic (it’s no fun editing your photos till two in the morning, and even less fun if you have to stay up till 4am because you decided you had to stay and watch the whole thing) but for this tour, I stayed for all three and a half glorious hours. No regrets.

Taylor Swift

The Eras Tour was the tour every was talking about this summer, but it wasn’t the biggest show at Levi’s Stadium I shot this summer - that honor goes to Ed Sheeran, who set an attendance record of 77,000+ for his show there. Finally getting to photograph Ed was a treat. Even better, he played an intimate show at the Fox Theater in Oakland the night before, which I was also able to get a ticket to (no photos allowed for that one sadly!) Two nights of Ed in two very different sized venues made for some pretty special memories.

Ed Sheeran

As great as these huge spectacle shows are to see and photograph, there was one small show this year that was my favorite. I was given the chance to cover the annual “Acoustic-4-A-Cure” benefit show held at the (legendary) Fillmore in San Francisco. Hosted by Sammy “The Red Rocker” Hagar of Van Halen and Bobby Weir of the Grateful Dead, Acoustic-4-A-Cure is a wonderful night of surprises as incredible, legendary (there’s that word again) performers come together to benefit the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital. This year’s lineup was stunning along with the hosts included: Joan Baez, Taj Mahal, Michael Anthony (Van Halen), Chris Isaak, Don Was and Nancy Wilson (Heart). Seeing all these incredible performers, a few of which had been born out of the San Francisco music scene during its 60’s heyday, was awe-inspiring. There were moments, such as when Bob Weir and his Wolfpack trio were playing the Dead’s hits, or when Joan Baez and Taj Mahal played their guitars as I crouched in the pit at their feet, that I just had to put my camera down and soak it all up. Goosebumps.

This year I made my return to the BottleRock Napa Valley music festival, where I had the chance to photograph a number of artists that I’ve always wanted to see live, including Nile Rodgers, Carly Rae Jepsen, Lizzo, Dogstar (with Keanu Reeves), Leon Bridges, Danielle Ponder, and many more. Festivals are exhausting and at times chaotic in the pits, but they can really pay off with some special performances.

I got to shoot another artist who I grew up listening to on the radio, and whose record So is in my all-time top 5 of favorite albums: Peter Gabriel.

Peter doesn’t tour a lot and takes his time putting out new records, so when he does release new music (the incredible I/O) and goes on tour in support of it, you knew I had to find a way to cover it. Thankfully I was able to for RIFF Magazine. This is one of those shows where as I’m standing in the pit taking pictures and Peter glances in my direction, I can’t help but wonder how I got to be so lucky to be there in that moment. A bucket list show for me.

Peter Gabriel

Last but not least, there’s DEVO.

This was a personal one for me. I happen to have a small family connection to Mark and Bob (aka aka "Bob 1") Mothersbaugh, lead singer and guitarist respectively, of the influential and should-be-in-the-Rock-Hall-of-Fame synth-pop outfit. The Mothersbaugh family were members of the church my Dad pastored in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, where I was born. DEVO made their debut and soon hit it big during the years we lived there, and while Mark and Bob were off making music and no longer hanging around the church by that point, their parents were still active members and served in the children's ministry of our small church. (General Boy taught my brother's Sunday School class - if you're a Spud, you know how cool that is.) We moved away before I was old enough to remember much of Ohio, but this connection has always been a part of our family lore, so I've had it on my bucket list to photograph one of their shows before they stop playing live.

DEVO

Thankfully, I got the chance not only to catch their 50th annivesary tour stop in San Francisco, but to also participate in an interview with a member of the band prior to the show and take a few photos. And even luckier for me, the member that was offered to us for that interview was Mark Mothersbaugh himself. The interview was wide-ranging and engaging, and Mark was a lot of fun to talk to. You can read the interview over on RIFF Magazine, written by David Gill.

As the interview was wrapping up I seized a moment to tell Mark about my connection to his family, and when I mentioned the name of the church, he immediately lit up. He began retelling his memories of growing up there, sometimes playing the organ in the church sanctuary. He got his first pair of glasses - which changed his life, as he tells it - from a shop across the street. He recounted how his Confirmation class photo features him, off to one side, with scrapes and two black eyes due to an unfortunately timed skateboarding incident. I regretted waiting till the end to bring it up, I think we could've talked much longer but his dinner was waiting!

So yeah, bucket list item: ✅

(L to R) Me, Mark Mothersbaugh of DEVO, and David Gill of RIFF Magazine

So all in all, 2023 was a pretty great year. And as always, a big part of what made the year so enjoyable was the fans. From Swifties to Phishheads, Devotees to Sherrios, and everything in between, they continue to be the fuel to my fire, my reason for putting in all the work year after year. Hopefully I bring all of them a little bit of extra joy from my lens. Here’s to more joy in the year to come!

Want to see a few more favorites? Check out the slideshow below!

Or revisit my “Year In Review” for previous years: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015

Introducing My First Concert Photography Exhibit

If you haven’t heard by now on my social media feeds, late last year I launched my first concert photography exhibit in downtown Pleasanton, California at Inklings Coffee & Tea. I couldn’t be more excited. And while the pandemic threw a monkey wrench into my plans and made the exhibit inaccessible for awhile, it reopened this spring and has been available for viewing all summer. And now, I want to share a little more about how I curated the images chosen for the exhibit, and what inspired me to put it all together.

The Theme

When I first started thinking about putting together an exhibit of my work, I knew from the beginning that I wanted to show my work around a theme, rather than just show off my best or favorite shots. There had to be something tying all the images together besides the fact I created them.

The theme and title I ended up settling on is “Tell Me All Your Thoughts On God…”, which is taken from the chorus of the catchy rock hit “Counting Blue Cars” by the band Dishwalla. If you were alive in the mid-90’s, you probably have the song stuck in your head now (sorry!) The trailing ellipses in the title are important, because the second half of the lyric is “…’cause I’d really like to meet her”, and it’s sung from the perspective of a child who is willing to ask questions without fear of sounding ignorant or offending someone. It’s that kind of humility and bravery to ask big questions and - critically - the willingness to listen respectfully to one another that I wanted to encourage in this exhibit.

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The images were selected for the exhibit because the artists depicted have likewise shown a desire to ask deep questions or express a viewpoint about God or religion in one form or another through their music. Ever since my days at Calvin College where the incomparable Ken Heffner encouraged us students to engage deeply and critically with the artists we listened to, I’ve been fascinated by artists who have something meaningful to say through their music about the human condition and our relationship to the divine. Anyone can write a love song, or a party anthem - the radio is full them! - but what really grabs me is the artists who grapple with complicated questions that demand difficult and sometimes uncomfortable consideration.

Raising Money For A Worthy Cause

I also knew that I wanted the exhibit to serve a greater purpose rather than be a vanity project, or a means to make a few bucks on the side. For awhile now I’ve wanted to find a way to use my art for a greater good. And so I knew that this exhibit would be a great opportunity to raise money for a non-profit, and I had just the non-profit in mind: Blood:Water.

Blood:Water is a 501(c)(3) charity based in Nashville, TN that was founded in 2004 by the GRAMMY® Award-winning rock band Jars of Clay and Jena Lee Nardella. It was created because the guys in the band had their eyes opened to the challenges facing millions of people living in Sub-Saharan Africa related to water security, sanitation, hygiene and HIV/AIDS, and they wanted to find a way to use their platform to bring meaningful change. Their approach is different from many other similar charities. Rather than simply trying to quickly drill as many wells as possible (which often leads to long term sustainability issues), their goal is to identify excellent local partners who have the necessary local knowledge but need equipping in whatever form that may take. Their solutions are tailored to the communities they serve, and are designed to be sustainable long term. I’m proud of their work and have supported them personally for many years, and I’m excited to introduce them to more people through this exhibit.

To help raise money for Blood:Water, I’m asking everyone who visits to make a donation on behalf of the exhibit as a sort of “tip jar”. No amount is too great or too small. And as an added incentive to give generously, I’m offering the chance to take a framed print home at the end of the show to anyone who donates at least $80 to Blood:Water. Why $80? Because as Blood:Water is fond of saying, $40 is enough to provide clean water and sanitation to someone in Sub-Saharan Africa for life. So I figure, why not go beyond the minimum and ask for enough to support at least two people?

For more details on donating and claiming a framed print from the show, please contact me.

Putting It All Together

Curating a show around a theme meant that I couldn’t just pick my favorite images, or the most impressive images from my portfolio. I had to first identify which artists in my archive had songs that fit the theme, and then narrow that list down to those for whom I had images worthy of displaying in an exhibit. I spent many months researching lyrics and the meaning behind songs, while going through my image library and producing test prints. Sometimes I had great images but the songs were lacking, and sometimes it was the other way around.

But eventually, the set of images began to take shape, and soon I began to find connections between various images and lyrics. Monsters of Folk (featuring Conor Oberst, M. Ward and Jim James) would ask God “why do we suffer?”, and John Mark McMillan offered an empathetic response. LANY and Lecrae both reflected on their pasts and their upbringing. Twenty One Pilots and Sufjan Stevens both explored how sleep relates to faith. And on and on. I made an effort to group these connected images together in the display.

Other topics explored in the exhibit include: doubt, wonder, absence, encouragement, grief, praise, and struggle.

Artists featured include: Twenty One Pilots, Coldplay, Arcade Fire, Sufjan Stevens, Bon Iver, David Byrne of Talking Heads, NEEDTOBREATHE, John Mark McMillan, Monsters of Folk/Conor Oberst, Francis & The Lights, Julien Baker, Johnnyswim, Switchfoot, Colony House, Lecrae, LANY, Cold War Kids, Counting Crows, Jars of Clay, MuteMath, and more.

There’s also a Spotify playlist I’ve curated with songs featured in the exhibit, along with a few extras: https://sptfy.com/tellmeallyourthoughtsongod

The Location: Inklings Coffee & Tea

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Inklings Coffee & Tea is an amazing coffee shop in the heart of downtown Pleasanton, California. Opened in 2016, its mission is to “seek the good of the city”, and it accomplishes this by providing a space for people to gather over Stumptown coffee and locally-sourced food, and for many local non-profits and charitable organizations to host events and interact with the community they serve. Inklings features a large event space in the back that can accommodate groups of up to 120 people which routinely hosts everything from concerts to artist markets, book clubs to church services, and private events to high school students catching up on school work. It’s in this event space that I’ve installed the exhibit, and it’s open to the public during normal business hours as long as the room hasn’t been rented out.

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The exhibit is on display indefinitely, but I don’t expect it to remain forever. So if you’re in the neighborhood, I’d love for you to check it out! And if you enjoy it, please consider making a donation to Blood:Water through my donation page. It’d mean a lot to me if you did!