i really fell out of habit of blah-blah-blogging, but here goes a new round.
first, announcement of my only NYC show in the near future, which is next Saturday, April 6 at Muchmore’s in Brooklyn (williamsburg). Doors at 8 and also with my good friends in No Sky God. It’s 7 bucks, All Ages, and will be a new experience.
At The Tip, San Francisco, August 2012
secondly, the matter of my whereabouts the past 18 months or so. I guess i never talked on here about the German tour. Well it was most enjoyable mayhem. Those people do not stop. For two to three weeks i zipped around Germany and the Czech Republic on trains playing the best shows yet to wildly loving audiences with attentive ears. And the nights went on to the wee hours, too much wine and ever-present cigarets and beautiful women abounding. Also there i delved into old family legend, a part of my bloodline shrouded in mist, when the french escaped into Germany for a generation in the 18th century before continuing to America. Rumors of a castle and a fortune. I saw many castles, and followed many leads, tracing lost places back onto new maps, feeling like Tintindiana Jones. Never found a fortune but enjoyed the magic. Also discovered a songwriter whose work i deeply enjoy named Anna-Lena Bludau. I can’t wait for her new record, hear some of her work at her BandCamp site.
I came back to the USA and finished mixing GET ANCIENT, as it was now calling itself, in New Jersey with James Frazee. And then i packed my things and returned to the Lost Coast where i grew up. I moved into a new cabin on a garden farm near my family, a cabin i used to rehearse in years ago. I hauled a piano in and got to work writing the songbook and making the artwork for the album, and writing new songs. Immediately my vices were cut to near-nothing, i painted maps and pictures, studied botany and mathematics and history, learned the names of the woods and the birds and the mushrooms and the stars, and worked on a new phonetic English Alphabet. I got good at jogging the five miles to town (and walking the five miles back), and practiced handstands in the moonlit grove. I grew vegetables and fruit, planted redwoods, chopped firewood, charted genealogy. I discovered a new variant of non-Stinging Nettle, which i called the Triforce Nettle, but it died when i attempted to isolate it for cultivation. Should’ve waited til it was dormant. I improved in Archery and did not get worse in marksmanship. And all the while, family things happened.
When summer came, i had to leave that place, so i traveled around the West, playing some shows alone and with my good friend Rachel Fannan. I helped build a barn and some fence, i lived in my truck and slept in a treehouse with a bat or two above me. I was with my grandfather when he died, and i stopped smoking and drinking completely.
So now I’ve returned to New York City to put my feet back on concrete, find a proper outlet for GET ANCIENT, resume the on-going tour and prepare to craft the next album — which i’m VERY excited for (there are about 60 songs on my work list). I won’t be here long, but I’ll be around. More soon, love you and see you…
