Portfolio

I write. I edit. I understand how to make stories work, and I’ve been doing it for nearly 30 years as a journalist, author and communications expert. You can find more about my books, Jimmy Buffett: A Good Life All the Way and Springsteen: Album by Album, by following the links. A small sampling of other work follows. Download this page as a PDF»

Brand Work

In 2022 and into 2023, Chevrolet wanted to push its new electric vehicles with a full issue of New Roads magazine devoted to just EVs. There was a problem: None of the EVs existed yet in any meaningful way. How did we solve the problem? We leaned on people and told their stories. I led the conception, execution, editing and (in some cases) rewriting of what became known as the EV issue. These are the digital executions of some of those stories.

A few other recent pieces:

Campbell Ewald organized an evening of STEM learning and mentorship, connecting our OnStar clients with the Girl Scouts of Southeast Michigan. We developed site copy, video and social assets.

OnStar’s Advisors are at the core of what the brand does. Every day of the week and every hour of every day, if an OnStar Member needs assistance, there’s real live person ready and waiting to help. I helped develop the videos and conducted the initial interviews with more than a dozen Advisors at the main call center in Charlotte, North Carolina. These will roll out over time.

Journalism

Jimmy Buffett was one of a kind CNN, September 3, 2023

It’s hard to imagine any place quite like Key West in the early 1970s ever happening again. Part of its allure was its distance from everything else. Today, nothing feels terribly remote. Everywhere is one TikTok away from being overrun.

In Key West in the early ‘70s, there was room to breathe at the end of the road. Parking was easy. Rent was cheap — drinks were, too. And there were few of what most of us would recognize as “rules.” People who didn’t quite fit in any other place found their way down there to try to find themselves. Painters. Writers. And one very special musician.

The Margaritaville empire: Jimmy Buffett fans won’t stop looking for that lost shaker of salt Salon, April 2017

In January 1977, just ahead of the record’s release, Buffett decided to make a run to the Bahamas in his new sailboat, the Euphoria. Strolling about Staniel Cay, Buffett saw the only phone on the island, in a squat yellow building marked by a “Bahamas Telecommunications Company” sign next to the door. Turning to Tom Corcoran, his friend, navigator and a photographer, Buffett said he should probably call ABC Records in Los Angeles. To see if he still had a job.

More than just a job, he was told might well have a hit. A disillusioned-but-sunny track called “Margaritaville” was showing promise, and Buffett needed to get his ass off the boat, back to the States and onto his tour bus. A few days later, a chartered Beechcraft King Air lifted off from the islands en route to a tour that’s never really ended and a career that became a lifestyle that became a brand. And these days, that brand is closing in on $2 billion a year in sales.

The Ballad of Pete Krebs: One legendary musician unites decades of Portland music Portland Monthly, November 2015 (Winner: Best Profile, City and Regional Magazine Association Awards)

Krebs has played a thousand of these nights in a thousand different bars. He played the Portland punk dive Satyricon, and he’s played New Orleans jazz shrine Preservation Hall. He’s also played scores of the local bars, cafés, nightclubs, and restaurants that just come and go. He opened for Nirvana, scraped paint with Elliott Smith, and learned gypsy jazz from actual gypsies. For a snap in time, he and one of his many bands, Hazel, teetered on the next-big-thing precipice, until they tipped the other way.

A career that now touches four decades makes Krebs the human thread that ties bygone eras of Portland music to now: the nihilistic and obscure ’80s underground, the ’90s grunge-rock moment, right up to last night, tonight, and tomorrow—when he’s entirely likely to have some gig, somewhere, playing one of the half-dozen genres of music he’s mastered, for audiences old, young, engaged, indifferent, whatever. Krebs was there as Portland’s music scene became a scene, and he’s remained a constant ever since. Today, he might be the most respected musician in town—if you’re talking to other musicians. “He makes you think anything is possible,” John Moen, drummer for the Decemberists, says.

The energy and anxiety of Oregon football Wall Street Journal, October 2014 (PDF)»

The Hatfield-Dowlin Complex might be the most aggressive salute to Mom ever built.

Paid for by Nike founder Phil Knight and his wife Penny, and named after their mothers, the University of Oregon’s 145,000-square-foot football building features rugs from Nepal, barber’s tools from Italy, a Finnish sound system, German tables, Ferrari-leathered seats and urinals from Turkey.

On the outside, the complex of offices and training facilities is sleek and black—an angular, armored Death Star.

“It is kind of an ominous looking building,” offensive-line coach Steve Greatwood says. “I guess it does send some kind of statement subliminally,” Greatwood says. “Maybe there’s an evil empire in there.” Or maybe that’s just they want us to think.