novelist ∙ sports biz journalist ∙ celebrity interviewer ∙ culture humorist

Rock n’ roll music and sports are two of the greatest things humankind has ever invented. And every once in a while these two great mediums cross paths. I was lucky to be there to see it happen more than once.

Six months into writing for ESPN’s Page 2, I had only written about quirky off-beat sports and prep football. I was contemplating the idea that my very short career as a sports writer was almost done when I had stumbled upon an opportunity.

A Chicago local –also a multi-platinum recording artist– had started a professional wrestling league that had started to get press from the Chicago Tribune and FOX Sports. An email I got said pretty simply, “don’t email me, but” if any of us Chicago Now bloggers wanted to attempt to get an interview with Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins, then to contact his press agent.

It took a little finagling and some of the good old-fashioned follow-up I’d learned during my business career. But by the next day at noon I had set up my first interview with a bona fide rock star.

What followed was a conversation about Corgan’s new venture as well a second interview piece about the Pumpkins’ next record called Oceania. For the next two years, ESPN let me continue to talk with musicians about their sports hankerings and fandom.

Zach Lind of Jimmy Eat World talked about growing up in the household of a Major League Baseball scout. Spoon singer Britt Daniels joked that he was a Dallas Mavericks super fan way, “way before it was cool”, and long they were world champions.

The funny thing about me that most people never really understand is that, at heart, I'm really a jock.

-Billy Corgan, ESPN.com, November 2011

Likewise, Morrissey revealed that he is not just a rock icon, a singer, and a poet, but once, during his high school years, a fairly athletic lad, too. Oasis guitarist, songwriter, and founder Noel Gallagher talked about staying up late in the wee hours of the English night to watch NFL football.

Alice In Chains rocker Jerry Cantrell told me about his love for both fantasy football and drumming up NFL trash talk with his band mates.

Rage Against the Machine founder-guitarist Tom Morello spoke about the Cubs, leading up the 2016 World Series and a little about the Cubs folklore figure named Steve Bartman.

Eventually, my dabbling with rock stars led in a roundabout way to writing for Rolling Stone — strangely, most of it about not music but sports.

And since my Rolling Stone days, I have written for CHIRP Radio in Chicago, profiling Oasis, The Stone Roses, MTV’s Beavis and Butt-Head, while conducting interviews with record producer Brad Wood and great artists like Fig Dish, Neptune’s Core, Pinksqueeze, 6kitty, and Madame Reaper.