The Littlest Fiddler of the Land

March 16th, 2026. SXSW week in Austin, which means the whole town is running on no sleep and somebody famous is always standing next to you at the bar.

I got the call to be a featured artist with the Kill Tony Band for episode #765 — the SXSW episode, with Dustin Poirier and Ari Matti. If you’re not a fight fan: Dustin Poirier is “The Diamond,” one of the toughest guys to ever step in a cage. Ari Matti is the Estonian Assassin, which might be the best nickname in comedy. The Comedy Mothership that night was absolutely electric.

Here’s what you don’t see in the YouTube version: the green room before, the band running through cues, everybody trying to look calm while the room fills up. Then the lights go down and you’re playing fiddle in front of a crowd that came to laugh, and your job is to make the music earn its place between the jokes. That’s my favorite kind of pressure.

Tony called my solo “one of the greatest musical moments in the history of the show,” which is the kind of thing you get framed. Or tattooed. Haven’t decided.

The Mothership posted photos from that night — April 28 and April 29 — and I still look at them when I need to remember what a room feels like when everything clicks.

Huge thanks to the Kill Tony Band for featuring me. You can watch the full episode here, and here’s my post from that night.

Somebody asked me recently what my “thing” is. Like, what’s the brand. And I kept coming back to the same image: me walking into a room with a violin case while everybody wonders what exactly is about to happen.

A comedy club at midnight, playing between stand-up sets for people who came to laugh, not to hear strings. A wedding in a tux and a cowboy hat, because Texas. A pirate festival in full costume as Fiddle — yes, that’s a real booking category now. A recording studio where the producer says “just try something” and waits to see if I’ll embarrass myself. (Sometimes I do. That’s the job.)

The through-line isn’t the violin. It’s the room. I like being the thing nobody planned for that turns out to belong there. A fiddle can sit in a string section and behave, or it can walk onto a pirate ship, a comedy stage, a cocktail hour, and make the whole night a little weirder and a little better.

That’s the whole pitch, really. I know how to bring a violin into a room and make it belong there.

I’ve started producing my own album. In Logic Pro, by myself, which means I am simultaneously the artist, the producer, the engineer, and the guy who has to be told to stop adding tracks at 2am.

The first song I’m working on is called “Lie.” It’s unfinished, which is the honest word for it — some songs arrive done, and some need you to sit with them a while.

What I’m learning: playing an instrument and producing a record are different sports. When you play, you’re inside the music. When you produce, you have to step outside it and hear what it actually sounds like, not what you meant it to sound like. That’s a humbling Tuesday.

I’m playing most of the parts myself, which is equal parts fun and ridiculous. There’s a version of every song where I do 47 fiddle tracks and have to talk myself out of 44 of them. (See also: my studio session bio, which warns clients about exactly this.)

No release date, no big announcement. Just me, learning how to finish things. I’ll keep you posted — and when there’s something worth hearing, you’ll hear it here first.