People always ask what kind of music I like.
That’s an impossible question.
It’s like asking someone, “Which oxygen was your favorite?” Music isn’t wallpaper or a snack. The songs you hear at the right time don’t just entertain you—they move into your head, rearrange the furniture.
I’ve realized there are two artists who can absolutely derail my day. Not because they’re sad, not because they’re nostalgic. Because they accidentally left fingerprints of who I became.
The first is Steve Poltz. Well… technically, the Rugburns first. I found the Rugburns back in junior high, which is a wonderfully awkward period of life. You’re old enough to develop opinions but too young to realize nearly all of them are ridiculous. You’re trying to become a person using whatever scraps you can find: a movie quote, a T-shirt, one cool older cousin, and a band nobody else in your school has heard of.
For me, one of those building blocks was the Rugburns.
Steve Poltz somehow figured out how to write songs that could be hilarious and heartbreaking at the exact same time. One minute he’d be singing something completely absurd; the next, he’d sneak in a line that hit you square in the jaw before you even realized he’d wound up. That’s a rare gift. Most people spend their lives deciding whether they’re going to be the funny guy or the sensitive one.
Steve apparently looked at that choice and said, “Nah… both.” That felt revolutionary to a teenage boy.
Growing up, we’re quietly taught that emotions should be rationed out like ketchup packets. Use sparingly. Don’t cry. Don’t care too much. Definitely don’t let anyone know you write and feel. Meanwhile, Steve Poltz was over there making vulnerability seem like the coolest trick in the room. He made it okay to laugh at myself in a time I was worried to much that I should have an ego.
He made it okay to care.
He made it okay to be weird, and that’s a pretty decent philosophy for getting through life.
His solo career only deepened that feeling. The songs got wiser without losing the childlike curiosity. Somehow, he became even more himself, and that’s probably the hardest thing anyone can become. He made complex feelings in a sinple world, and my teens and twenties I was doing the opposite outside of my performing.
There are people I’ve met over the years who remind me of Steve—not because they look like him or even sound like him—but because they aren’t afraid to be emotional one second and completely ridiculous the next. Guys like Spanky (Steven McFarland) and Buddy Bolton, who was always silly, caring, and empathetic to everyone around them. They stood up for things even if it wasn’t their fight, and I respected that. They were one of the first people I saw stand up against sexism, homophobia and racism, and they were straight white dudes.
Those are my people. Life’s too short to trust anyone who’s serious or tough all the time. And lately, something strange has been happening. We need more empathy.
I’ll be driving on some completely ordinary, boring day—probably to Lowes or Petsmart, because apparently that’s where middle age takes you—and one of his songs comes on.
Suddenly, I’m not driving anymore.
I’m seventeen. Or twenty-two. Or living in New York. Or sitting in somebody’s apartment laughing until two in the morning. It’s amazing how a little melody can ignore every law of physics and time travel without any effort.
Steve also has one of my favorite creative habits. He writes songs constantly. Sometimes on the fly. Sometimes in songwriting challenges and write-offs with friends, where everyone throws ideas around just to see what happens.
Imagine if accountants did that. “Okay, everybody… you’ve got twenty minutes to invent a funnier tax code.”
The world would be a different place.
Instead, musicians do it, and occasionally one of those spontaneous songs ends up changing someone’s life.
Mine included.
A Few Songs That Never Really Left Me
Tree Hugger
One of Steve’s sweetest songs, “Tree Hugger” somehow manages to be both whimsical and profound. It’s a reminder that kindness isn’t weakness and that looking at the world with childlike wonder might actually be the smartest way to live.
Gold’s Gym Guy
This is classic Steve Poltz: finding humor in everyday characters while somehow making them feel completely human. It’s funny on the surface, but underneath it’s another reminder that we’re all just trying to figure ourselves out.
Me and Eddie Vedder
Only Steve could write a song about a rock star that feels less like celebrity worship and more like a conversation with a drunk old friend. It’s funny, self-deprecating, and full of the kind of storytelling that makes you wish you’d written it.
License Plate Eyes
One of those songs that sneaks up on you. The lyrics paint vivid pictures while leaving just enough room for your own memories to move in. Every time I hear it, I’m transported back to when my kids were newborns.
You Were Meant for Me
Most people know it as a Jewel song, but Steve co-wrote one of the defining songs of the ’90s. It’s vulnerable without being sentimental, and its simplicity is exactly what makes it timeless. I’ve always had this strange feeling that, when I’m gone, this is the song people will think of while thinking of me.
Wrong Town
There’s something beautifully restless about this song. It captures that feeling of wondering if you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be—or whether life took a left turn somewhere along the way. I feel that every time I walk into a comedy club on the road.
Folk Singer
This one is Steve poking fun at himself and the world he inhabits. It’s clever, self-aware, and proof that you can laugh at your own tribe while still loving it. Honestly, change “Folk Singer” to “Comedian,” and it works even better.
I Want All My Friends to Be Happy
If I had to explain Steve Poltz in one song, this might be it. It’s funny, sincere, hopeful, and heartbreakingly honest. It sounds simple, but it carries a philosophy I’ve tried to adopt myself: if the people you love are okay, life gets a whole lot better.Let’s laugh and be good to each other.
I know I’ll forget some—probably a ton—and next week I’ll think, “How could I leave that one out?” That’s the problem with writing about people who’ve been riding around in your heart for thirty years.
Then there’s Townes Van Zandt.
He’s a completely different experience. I didn’t discover Townes as a kid.
My wife, Angie, and I discovered him together.
That’s an entirely different kind of memory. We started watching documentaries, listening to every album we could find, following the breadcrumb trail that eventually led us to artists like Steve Earle, Keb’ Mo’, Guy Clark, Blaze Foley, and so many others. Good music has this remarkable habit of introducing you to more good music, like it’s quietly saying, “If you liked this, wait until you meet my friends.”
Townes wasn’t background music. He was conversation music. When Angie and I lived in New York, we’d put on a Townes Van Zandt record and just… talk.
No phones. No scrolling. No notifications informing us someone we’d met once in 2005 had posted a picture of a sandwich.
Just music. And conversation. Hours of it.
Those nights are some of my favorite memories.
Now, whenever I hear Townes, I don’t necessarily think about the lyrics first.
I think about us. I think about tiny apartments. I think about cheap wine. I think about dreams that hadn’t happened yet. I think about how lucky I was to have someone willing to sit in a room for hours talking about everything and absolutely nothing while one of the greatest songwriters who ever lived quietly narrated the evening.We would talk about what we think the songs meant and what he was thinking.
Townes could be dark. Really dark. But darkness isn’t the same thing as hopelessness.
His songs acknowledged that life can hurt without pretending it isn’t still beautiful. I’ve always appreciated that. Being alone from leaving Ohio as a teen to traveling the world by myself, I understand the hurting loneliness while seeing the beauty of my surroundings
Maybe because I’ve always believed comedy works the same way. The best comedians and the best songwriters are usually standing in the same place. They’re just holding different instruments.
One gets laughs. One gets tears. The really special ones somehow manage both.
Music is strange that way. A three-minute song can preserve a decade better than a thousand photographs. You don’t hear it. You revisit it in your head.
Every time Steve Poltz comes through the speakers, I’m reminded of the kid who was still figuring himself out and somehow found permission to be vulnerable, ridiculous, and sincere all at once.
Every time Townes Van Zandt comes on, I’m reminded that some of the richest moments in life don’t happen like a movie. Sometimes it’s just two people sitting in a room… listening.
I guess that’s why certain music makes me emotional now. I’m not mourning the past. I’m grateful I got to have one worth revisiting. And if a song can still make a grown man pull over because he’s smiling too hard or trying not to cry…
That’s not nostalgia.
That’s proof it mattered.