(Sunday Paper, Year VI, Issue 33)

Last week when I wrote about listening to music and not understanding Spotify…

(Oh man! Have you guys tried Spotify?! It’s amazing.

I can listen to, like, anything I want, whenever I want.

It’s almost overwhelming. But when I think of a song instead of being like, “Oh man, I wish I had that song on my phone,” I can be like, “Hello, song I’m now going to listen to on Spotify!”

Anyway, it’s great. But I have no idea if it’s great for the artist. Oh! That reminds me. I’m supposed to be writing about that today!)

Sorry for that digression. But last week, I mentioned I wanted to figure out how best to support artists and their work.

I still haven’t figured that out, exactly, but I know two people this week who are putting their great work out into the world (in two very different ways!) and I want to share about them both.

First of all, in case you missed it on Wednesday, let’s share some music love for my brother.

I’ll just share his website here, and from there you can find tour dates and links to his music (he’s on Spotify!) and links to his social media, which I recommend you follow or like or just click on stuff and drive traffic…whatever is supposed to happen for each site. I’ll also put his new video at the end of this post because it’s sweet and it’s a great song. Enjoy it all, share it all!

Last Sunday after I published the Sunday Paper we got word that the Boston (and Youngstown, Ohio) Counting Crows shows were postponed because of COVID. Someone in the traveling party (just to be clear - not Matt) tested positive.

The moves were precautionary, but they worked - by Thursday night in Tennessee, everything was back on track. (The Tennessee show happened, and Saturday night in Cincinnati as well.) That picture above, incidentally, is from the Tennessee show, and the venue looked like a really cool place to catch a show. And perform, I guess, if you’re the type of guy who opens for the Counting Crows.

Anyway, the bummer about last week is not that I didn’t see Matt open for the Counting Crows. It would have been nice, but I’m already sold on him.

The bummer is that however many more people didn’t get to see Matt - the hundreds (capacity at Leader Bank Pavilion is 5,200 so I could conceivably say thousands) of other people who would have heard him for the first time and fell in love with his music, as I’ve seen a bunch of audiences do before.

So I want to shout him out again and get him some attention and try to make up for that a little bit.

The show was technically postponed, and not canceled, so maybe there’s a chance it’ll still happen. But give him some love anyway - and the best part is by doing so you get the reward of his music. Everybody wins.

The second thing I want to tell you about is my writer friend Julie Vick’s new book. (Full disclosure: I’ve never met Julie Vick but we’ve been connected on social media and through various sites we’ve both written for ever since I began my writing journey back in 2014 so I feel like I know her. But also if someone said to her, “Hey do you know John Sucich?” she would probably give the same answer, so I feel OK calling her a writing friend.)

Anyway, she wrote this book - Babies Don’t Make Small Talk (So Why Should I?) - and it came out this week, and I read it, and I loved it. I legit loved it - not just because I know the author, not because I have some ulterior motive to win favor with the writing community here….it is such a good book.

I expected the book to be funny - that’s what Julie does. (Maybe you’ve read her work on The New Yorker’s Tiny Shouts or on McSweeney’s.) There are some laugh-out-loud moments in the book. But it is filled with actual good advice for parents (especially those who are introverts) and has some really great ideas and gimmicks throughout…it’s just wonderful.

If you’re looking for a gift for someone who is a parent or will be a new parent or you yourself are a parent or will be a new parent or if you just want to read a fun and funny book, buy it.

Here’s the link to Julie’s website and you can do all the social media/newsletter sign-up stuff.

This last thing is a hard thing to explain but it speaks to how much I really loved the book: Sometimes someone will do something in a field where I work - comedy, writing, whatever - and I’ll get jealous. I’ll think, “That could have been me.” It feels dirty to admit but we probably all go through something like that.

I read this book and I didn’t once have that thought…well, I kind of did in that I wondered why I wasn’t having that feeling. But I was genuinely happy and excited for someone to do something and do it so well and I just want to tell people about it.

And here’s the best part - the other thing her book did was inspire me. Not out of jealousy but out of genuine “Oh this is great and it gives me an idea” inspiration.

So go buy her book and listen to Matt’s music and enjoy it all.

Notes

*Running Update: I ran 16 miles last week and next week’s run will cover 17.2 miles so this week I was thinking I would do something shorter. And I laughed when I realized I was planning a 10-mile run as a ‘short’ run.

It’s tricky when I don’t have a set plan and set mileage - I like knowing what I’ll be doing and being able to think about it during the week. That’s why having a program is so helpful. This week all I thought about was, “What exactly am I going to do for my run on Saturday?”

My biggest plan for this week was to run the hills. (Even though I’ll be running them again next week - I hope that doesn’t turn out to be a mistake.) I ended up doing roughly five miles from Wellesley to the top of the last hill by BC and then back. I kind of hoped I could squeeze out eleven miles but I got to 10-and-a-half and the temperature was almost 90 degrees and I was basically a sentient puddle so I called it a day. I think I’ll be OK for next week’s big one. (Natick to the finish line! Come out and cheer on the charity teams running the route Saturday. Or not. I don’t actually know if that’s a thing people do.)

*I also didn’t bring my water backpack - I thought I was going early enough that I wouldn’t need to hydrate as I ran. I was wrong. Definitely a little dehydrated on Saturday. But, I think it speaks to how good of a job I’ve been doing all summer with drinking water that August 14 is the first time I felt at all dehydrated after a run.

*A reminder that my spot with Team Framingham is a charity spot and I am raising money for the Framingham History Center. If you care to give and help me reach my fundraising goal, you can do so at this link. Thank you very much.

*Oh! One other Spotify note: I figured out how to sync my Peloton to my Spotify. So on Saturday’s run I listened to my Spotify playlist, which is all the songs I clicked “Like” on during bike rides. It was just nice to know that all those times I clicked ‘Karma Chameleon’ when it came on weren’t for nothing.

*You can also find me on the social media stuff - Click here to Like the Facebook page, and you can follow me on Twitter here.

*And last, but not least, the video for “I Don’t.” Don’t forget to listen to the vocals from Adam Duritz in there.