Category Archives: From the Road

Gud Gawd Ah Been Busy, But Don’t Ask Me How

Directed by J. Cody Baker
Produced by Ram Paul Silbey
A Saloon Studios Job


The very fifth day in the fine month of May,
After a cross-country, my tenth time or so,
The studio started to roll and recorded
Thirteen songs, some written full five years ago

Another week later, the hills of the Satyr
Saw me back a-bounding my homewoods aga’n
I planted the garden i feigned to work hard in
But mostly i practiced my bow and handstand

The top of the pumpkin had started to jump in
The dirt by the time i had promised to part
And so the zucchini, the pea and green beanie
I watered, and wandered to Manhattan’s heart

In old San Francisco, the curse and the kiss co-
exist, as a fist hides a holdable hand —
But back in Manhattan, it’s harder to fatten
A flatfooted lacklust if still he won’t stand.

Now Calendar’s calm, come secular Psalm!
Fall into my palm as it pushes its plow
I feel like a fraud but when busily trod
O gud Gawd ah been busy, but don’t ask me how.


PS many Thank You to all who contribu’d

To making this album, due later this year

It may take a while, but calm crocodile

remember reptile, that never ain’t near

Linguistics thought #6

W , what a weird letter
Double – U ?
First, no, those are V’s.
Second, it’s a mouthful.
From now on, the letter W is simply pronounced “dub”.
Web addresses start “triple-dub dot whatever…”
Unless you feel like saying “sextuple-U”
(which is still shorter than what we say now)

Or rather, “we” or “wo”. Like, whoa.

Anyway, I’m on a bus to Rosendale NY for tonite’s show, I love that little town…

New Mexico, Maybe?

very soon there is a new music video coming out for “Right Together, Left Alone” directed by Brandon Vedder, who also made the great “Judas” video for The Shimmies. There will also be a digital EP, five songs, pay what you like, from Shatter Your Leaves records. More on that and much more soon…

you may have noticed i’ve moved the blog onto my website itself. hope this hasnt screwd things up for you.

Sangeleno New Year

Ring the bells, and bang the drums
The sun foretells, a new year comes!
Rain or snow each afternoon
Earth eclipsed the winter moon
Still we hum a harking tune: A new . year . comes.

Hey all. Out west for a couple weeks getting some new balls a-rolling and tending the old fires. Thought i’d share a photo: director J Cody Baker (center) sets up a shot in the Ojai hills for the new video Won’t Be A-Findin Her There. It was an awesome three-day shoot and we’re all excited about the beautiful things Cody and his fantastic crew captured. can’t wait for you all to see it.

I haven’t kept a diligent dream record lately, but in a way it has made the dreams a little more intense. Last nite included:
I’m at the beach near my childhood home at nite. Much of the town is there, something is happening. Enormously tall waves are rising 40-100 feet, but aren’t yet crashing down on us. Still we gotta evacuate. On the road back to town, on foot with a flashlite, I spot a bear. No problem at first but when he does spot me he becomes a buffalo and charges. I dash up a hay loading chute thing made of logs but he rams it repeatedly, breaking logs and collapsing it and I am stuck.
I’m in the hills, at Rainbow Ridge, where the water is the purest. Someone says that other water molecules are blurry and poisonous, this is clear. The lake has a huge inflated thing floating on it, one of those things people bounce off. There are ancient stone pillars capped with busts of heads toppled and overgrown all around. At the base of a redwood tree my feet get warm, I look down and see a dug out pit where old bark lays burning as embers, glowing and sparkling orange. I pull some black charcoal from the ground down upon the burning bark, extiguishing (or at least managing) it.

Dig your self. Live your self
Give your self some time

Johnny

free live download

OffTempo.com has a free download of my recent show in Seattle which was a blast, and also Rachel’s set from the same nite.

rebel $$

i got a horrible sudden fever – smoked two cigarets the other nite and sore throat in the mornin. the next mornin was my friend’s wedding and i handled it alright. the energy was hi, but by midnite i felt like dyin. achy messd up chills. my friend from boston blames herself – says “evry time i come to town, you get sick!”

got to bed around two, and tho it’s crazy hot in nyc i pulld out all the blankets and wrappd myself like a cocoon. no cool drafts, no head out, after a few midnite get-ups, i drank a bunch of water and then the vivid-yet-abstract eternity dreams came, and the sweat broke

i was in a void, an endless black space, on a grand spiral lens. rocks and famly members – it was all about pickin the right ones, and tyin them together right. the “normal” ways are no good, nothin is working. i get one lens set up and when i reach the next, i find they are out of sync with each other. for hours of real time and years in the dream, i workd to find an answer or a cure.

these are only impressions, there are no words or even pictures for the place i was and none of this is accurate. but it’s the closest i can get, and i recall a sudden epiphany, an enlightenment of sweat and problem-solving, where it all lined up and made sense. i understood the past and problem, i understood the people, i could feel my throat as soft as bone and knew i was moving downhill, that i could sleep in and wake happy and healthy, tho weak and exhausted for not eating in some 36 hours. (i had many liquids. it was not just a puzzle, but a battle, like defeating orouboros to steal his crystal eye!

SO, epilogue: now free to have normal, linear dreams i dream Rachel and i arrive to play a show in southern california, but it’s really more like ghetto midwest. the sky is a heavy gray and the buildings are squat beige brick, the people in puffy black coats and smileless. i walk into the sporting goods store where we are sposta play, and it’s like the place to be, evryone hangs out there tho i can’t understand why. the most drab depressing browns evrywhere and what do they call that fake wood-paneling wall stuff from the 70s? baseball bats, and two cops ask what i’m up to – i’m not gonna play a show right? oh no sir, just… who knows what! then two drunk girls approach and i try to pass but one stumbles into me, grabs and pulls me down to the floor with her. she says “well aint you the most prostitutin muthafucka in these parts?” like some sort of come-on (at best) or legal deal-sealer (at seediest).  ”no maam i’m really not but thanks all the same” and i litrally dust myself off and walk on outta there.

these suspicious bots

hey, i’ve discoverd that the spam-filter on this blog has been busy and has blockd many comments from those of you who have written. so this note is simply to let you know i appreciate your appreciation, and have not been willfully ignoring your outreaches!

love

johny

A Horse With A Piano

I suppose I ought to use this Opportunity
The final hours of a three-day-plus ride
The final hours of a seven-month absence,
Or presence,
Staring at the lighted sign
“EXIT, Restroom other end”
Trying to fix my eyesight and wondrin
Why I suddenly see double!
Yet the ghost-double is 20/20.
Trying to blank my mind
Waiting for enlightenment, now!
Cuz enlightenment is easy…

“With nothing to read, I just go on writing”
I remember writing that not far from here, DC
October 26th? And now May 28th,
And living it again.
The city is imminent! Evryone complains
About the long ride, or the weather,
And I stare straight ahead at this
Galaxy of molecules,
The constellation in the red sweater,
And laugh unstoppable,
Picturing Mr. Patrick tell the Dalai Lama,
“I’m glad to meet you too.”

Evryone has their problems
And complaining is ridiculous.
The world has its problems,
And complains.

Third-world violence,
Hand-held streaming video,
Both keep you awake!

What am I working for?
Not in a sad or bleak way,
But shouldn’t I be farming?
Why is the internet in my face?
What’s with the trains?
Another fool, fed by fame,
Is soon to say he’s starving.
One second fearing he’s unwatched,
Next afraid of how he acted in sleep.

What can I say but complain,
Or state the obvious?
Words are useless!
Language is propaganda!
Me with words,
Like a horse with a piano.

goldendian’s return

Some of you know I enjoy old coins,
And one contemporary american too
The Sacagawea 2000 gold dollar
I put $20 bills in vending machines
Just so I can collect them in change
And carry them in a drawstring pouch
In order to slam a goldpiece on the bar.

Some of you know I detest the later
“Presidential commemoratives” that
replaced Sacagawea a few years ago
We have but one bit of currency
Without a white male on it,
All those coins of silver
We had one of gold
Displaying a Native Woman!
(Lincoln has copper, yes,
Because he was, y’know,
“Different”… like Dolly Parton)
And suddenly replacing her with losers
Like W.H. Harrison? W.H.o Cares, son?

Well I’d like to let some of you know,
That I’m south of san francisco
Holding change from my train ticket,
Shiny new 2010 gold, not only with
Sacagawea and “Liberty” on the face,
But a back of bundled arrows,
“Haudenosaunee,” the true name
Of those the white calld “Iroquois,”
And their “Great Law of Peace.”

Maybe I’m too quick to be pleased,
You know I’m not so easily appeased,
But I’ll spot the little signs of good,
Where I can!
As what’s misunderstood,
We come to understand!

run! mercury’s in retrograde!

Two days ago in Santa Cruz, our friend Maurice was advising that the planet Mercury is in retrograde, and communication would get difficult, particularly with electronics.

Today: my website server won’t connect, so I can’t change or upload anything.

My phone keeps freezing on myspace messages

My friend Dylan askd me to read him a phone number of a store. I read the general number,specifically NOT the pharmacy. He dialed and was connected to the pharmacy. They said “oh sorry our phones are all screwy today.”

My phone alerted me that some program was failing.
Now my phone says I have four new emails. When I go to read them, it says “no unread messages.”

….I have felt great for a long while, especially the last couple days in santa cruz. But I broke my new rule (No Greyhounds!) and took a Greyhound bus yesterday: It arrived 40 minutes late, which was bad enough, and then it took me to Oakland! So naturally I was a little bummd. My friends pickd me up, and then one of them rode his bike back home ahead of us. On the way he was hit by a car! We spent the rest of the nite in the hospital (he’s okay).

I dreamt of effortlessly riding my horse friend and jumping the gate that held us in. We moved in slo-motion and spoke to each other. Then the sky grew black and she drew my attention to a tornado. We jumpd the gate back inside to help people, but once back in she went wild and wouldn’t come with me, and knew no language or reason. Her owner came, whipping her face until she retreated into the barn.

What’s my point? I dunno man. I shouldn’t even post this, but I will and THEN retreat from communication until this tornado passes! On my way down market street, san francisco, a guy named Alex working for Greenpeace said “dude, smile!”

Then he told me about their campaign to make electronic communications devices less toxic.

Post Script: When trying to post this blog, an error occured.