Sarcasm is so meta! Wait... maybe it's the other way around?

Man, I haven't posted in quite some time!

It's been a little nuts in my camp recently, but to make up for it here's a time-lapse video showing how we hand make records.

Don't forget to come to the Fairfax, AK CD Release at the Nomad January 20!

Stream the MP3 preview now!

_ I consider today a time of reflection. As my partner Beth and I start a new Thanksgiving tradition with friends, I can't help but look back on the road that led me here. It maybe cliche and schmaltzy but isn't that what the holidays are for?

_ _ I think of my family and how they supported a selfish little long-hair's wild pursuit to move half way across the country out of angst and artistic ambition... and how I don't call them enough.

I think of all little schemes I pulled off with my friends: political protests, urban exploring, pirate radio, and several long rides across the country playing music in a van.

Time never stands still. Heck just two years ago I wrote this blog post...




This is one of my favorite days of the year...

The family, the friends, the food, the football. I needed one more 'f' in there for some solid alliteration, and yes, I am aware that despite my use of poetic devices the above is only a sentence fragment.

Now is not the time for tangents. Now is the time to give thanks, relax, and eat yourself into a coma (Yay America!). I myself am thankful for a lot of things: I'm thankful for the roof over my head, I'm thankful for good music to listen to, I'm thankful for my family and friends, but most importantly I'm thankful for all of you!

To everyone who as helped out Radio Noir by donating, Thank you!

To everyone who reads this nerdy collection of musings everyday, Thank you!

To all the people who consistently come to Second-Hand Opera shows and scream along with us, Thank You!

Have a safe and happy holiday. I'll see you all next week, and don't forget to call your mothers!

And rest assured, I'm eating at the kids' table. Those guys know how to party!


I've changed immensely since I wrote that. A lot has changed and a lot has stayed relatively the same, but I'm thankful for all of it.

Everything that happens shapes you as a person, and don't just focus on the excessively good or the violently bad. Most of life is stuff you don't notice: peeling a potato, long commutes to work, or what a friend does when you're not around. We flat out dismiss these moments because they're too bland or we think they don't involve us, but here's the truth... it's flat out incredible that life sustaining things like potatoes exist naturally on this planet, you could die at any moment on that ride to work, and you wouldn't have been able to accomplish anything with out those people standing next to you, so enjoy it all: The good, the bad, and the neutral.


Happy Thanksgiving... oh and don't forget to call your mother!

"Well why don't you make the tenth a longer day?
Because these calendars go up to 11."

I am not one to pay attention to/care about the goings-on of Hollywood, but it's time to talk about Kim Kardashian. The woman has no credentials other than a sex tape and has done nothing but purchase a bunch of useless consumer goods with her father's money in order to pose annoyingly in front of eager cameras, but I am not here to ponder why she is famous --she is and will continue to be  and there is nothing we can do about it--  I am here to pose a question: Why isn't gay marriage legal?As far as I'm concerned, if marriage has any hope of remaining sacred it lies in the gay community. Being gay isn't immoral. It never was. It never will be, and government has no authority on morality, nor should it have any authority on saying what morality is. Love is the only moral authority, and it knows no boundaries between gender, race, creed, or sexual orientation. 

Surprise, I'm playing a solo show! One of only two in the last... three years? Come see a severely unpracticed Pat Dougherty play weird arrangements of Fairfax, AK songs, Jill. songs, B-sides (A.K.A. songs you don't want to hear), and brand new songs... badly!

I go on at 11 p.m. because some joker thinks I'm important enough to headline. See you there!

The first of which being the Saint Patrick's Day Parade. The second being the Lynx Championship Parade. 

Now I'm sure most of you know via our artificial relationship on the internet that outside of Fairfax, AK I'm a pretty big sports fan, a Philadelphia sports fan but a sports fan none-the-less. 

To be fair, it's not that I don't root for the home team. It's just -- how should I explain this -- us Philadelphians waste so much time and energy on our beloved sports clubs that there really isn't any available real estate in our hearts for other franchises. That being said if a bandwagon presents itself in Minnesota I'm pretty quick to slap on the uniform of the fair weather fan.

I don't have the most conventional career so of course I had free time on a Tuesday afternoon to check out the extremely orderly and extremely polite mayhem. It was clear that the majority of the attendees didn't follow the WNBA -- myself included -- but who cares we won something!

Unfortunately I don't have any audio evidence of crashing the parade route, but I did manage to snap a few shots with my cell phone. I wasn't the only one yearning to be a part of the party. Thousands of people felt the urge to royally screw over the downtown traffic, so unlike the St. Patrick's Day Parade I wasn't in danger of getting awkwardly dragged out of the street.

The whole affair got funneled into the Target Center. The fair weather flock sat and watched a victory ceremony that I felt ambivalent about. I didn't know a single starter on the team, and the Phillies had just been eliminated in a heartbreaker by the friggin' St. Louis Cardinals. The whole thing was nice but I couldn't help wondering what one of these shindigs felt like for a team I actually cared about.

Say hello to my new band Fairfax Alaska!
www.fairfaxak.com