Autumn in New York,

Singing at Substack & other stories

Good morning from NYC! When we arrived here ten days ago summer was still hanging on. We wore t-shirts and baseball caps, squeezed out the end of the sunscreen, I got some final mileage out of my broken sunglasses. But this weekend the winds have changed. The scarves are out, the pumpkins too. It’s Autumn in New York! Or fall, as they call it here.

Speaking of fall, I had a big fall! Actually two, on the same day. I don’t fall for twenty years and then I fall twice in one day! I have very little to show for it. A tiny Marilyn Monroe-style dot above my lip from face-plant-mouth-full-of-mud fall #1 and a very sore bruise on my butt, as they call it here, from sideways-lurch-off-the-chair fall #2. I’d blame the chair, but you might ask who the designer was… so I’ll blame the baby. I’m totally fine, my body aches more from the 20-30k steps we’ve been clocking each day.

One of these overly ambitious walks was to Midtown Manhattan, to the NYHQ of — wait for it — Substack! That’s right, I visited the physical home of my virtual home! I sang at Substack and now I’m telling you about it, on Substack! I do love me a bit of meta… and I’ve always loved playing slightly awkward shows in people’s work spaces… a rare glimpse behind the scenes… Like when I was invited to play in the Paper Magazine kitchen on a long-ago NYC trip… or on the Soundcloud rooftop in Berlin… or at The Hindu Newspaper editorial meeting in Chennai… I always leave secretly wishing I worked there… at least for a day or two… If I worked at Substack I would be on the Trust & Safety team. Everyone would trust me and I’d be so young and friendly with favourite bands I’ve never heard of.

[Someone (my mother) suggested I let you know that the words in orange are clickable links, just in case anyone (else) doesn’t realise…]

I kicked off the mini-set with Prospect Park — not only because it was the first song I shared here on Substack, but also because — though we could see the Empire State Building right outside the window — at least half the people in the room lived in Brooklyn. Go on Gowanus…

Then I played 1934, my song for Leonard Cohen — not least because of last Sunday's Leonard offering (and, spoiler, the theme continues next week), but also because the special occasion allowed for an in-person meeting with fellow Substacker and Joni Mitchell biographer, David Yaffe. David has endless Leonard and Joni stories, which as you can imagine I can never get enough of.

At Substack NYC with David Yaffe and Katie O’Connell.

I ended by singing a Magnetic Fields song with JF — not just because it was the first song we ever performed together, but also because it’s called San Fransisco, which is where most of the Substack team are based. Come back from San Fransisco, it can’t be all that pretty, when all of New York City misses you… It’s a beautiful song. It’s also a very short song and the baby’s patience was waning. Yes, he came along too. The first baby to grace the Substack offices! (If this was a test to see what touring with a baby might be like, we failed.) (Though he did sleep during the entire walk home, through the honking horns and flashing lights of NYC’s nighttime).

I won’t tell you about the even more ambitious walk we did to Francesco Clemente’s Broadway studio — another work space in which I’ve performed — and what a space! — but I will share a few pictures, for those of you who aren’t avidly following my instagram stories...

And don’t be too jealous. As I type this the baby has fever, the builders are making more noise than I thought possible outside our window, and it’s pouring rain!

Playing Morton Feldman’s piano at Francesco Clemente’s studio in 2016.