I was born in Pittsfield, MA in 1973. Since then I’ve moved more than 40 times to quite a few states and Japan (twice).
Like most people, my life has taken many twists and turns. I started out as a professional musician, and I’ve continued to play music professionally up to the present day, though not for my living any longer. I mostly play with singer-songwriters these days, despite starting out in latin dance and jazz. You can hear some of the odder musical stuff I sometimes get up to on my Bandcamp page.
At around the same time I started my music career back in the mid 90s, I also got my first paid gig as a radio announcer. I’ve worked in radio on and off ever since, hosting music shows in a variety of formats, including indie rock, jazz, classical, oldies and more. I’ve also hosted a couple different talk shows over the years, and worked as a station manager, program director and music director for both noncommercial and commercial stations.
During one of my breaks from radio I decided to try podcasting, which was then in its infancy. I founded the podcast The Jazz Session in 2007. It was the first jazz interview podcast, and it continues to this day. I’ve run several other shows over the years, including First Laughs (about my stand-up “career”), The Jason Crane Show, and a limited-run series called 3 Minutes of Buddhism. My general interview show A Brief Chat has been running since 2019.
I started writing poetry in high school. Not good poetry, but still poetry. I got more serious about it many years later when I became part of the poetry scene in one of the cities I lived in. FootHills Publishing put out my first book, Unexpected Sunlight, in 2010. In the years since I’ve had poems and haiku published in a variety of places. More recently I’ve delved into the world of audio poetry, writing music or collaborating with other musicians to set my spoken words to music. You’ll find a complete list of that work here.
Besides music and radio, my other main career has been as a union organizer. Over the years my vision of what activism means has changed, and now my main focus is on hyper-local work in my own community.
I have two beautiful kids who are well on their way to becoming beautiful adults, which must mean I’m kinda old. That’s cool, though, because I like getting older.
And there you have it. A hilariously incomplete but vaguely accurate overview of my life thus far.