You were my friend when I had nothing to my name.

It's okay to get stuck on a song for an entire weekend, right? Certain songs just tend to go about matching circumstances with the weather, after all. Plus, well, I'm of the opinion that the REPEAT button just isn't used enough.

Go on, give this one a try.

Better Days - Peter & The Wolf

It's real wet where I live. I've seen snowfall and rain and fog for the past two days, though I can't say I mind. It just means you gotta go about cocooning into a homemade blanket cave and gazing at the beauty from the warm side of the window while creating a soundtrack to go along with your thoughts. This comes from one of Red Hunter's last albums, the difficult-to-find but beautiful-to-hear work of lo-fi genius that is The Ivori Palms.

There are lyrics in this one that resonate with me more now than they have before, words like "You were my friend, when I had nothing to my name/ When all the world turned on me, you treated me the same." And the cooing promise of better days ahead causes that old stranger of hope to make an appearance. You gotta love hope. You gotta love that you just can't keep it at bay. That said, he ties it together with his worldweary voice and some percussion I haven't been able to shake from my mind. Simple, effective. Simply effective.

For a live take on the tune, try this one on for size, grabbed from a house concert a few years back. Can you go wrong with an audience that snaps along? I submit, you cannot.

As for Peter & The Wolf (if that's what he's still calling himself these days), the last I heard, he's hiding in Austin for the time being, attempting to put finishing touches on another album or two. He recently lent his vocals to a Sunset album, which you can scamper over here to hear if you'd like. It's all kindsa pretty.

Open your eyes that you might see.

Yesterday, in the late afternoon, I was driving down a mostly deserted road when my attention went to an uncommonly blue sky. There were a hundred or more Canada Geese flying there, not far from where I was; I opened my sunroof to hear them talking/honking excitedly to one another. I even stopped my car in the middle of the lane, completely transfixed by this unexpected sight, unaware for a few minutes that I’d done so. Inside of these long moments, the geese finally went from partially formed letter Vs and zigzags to all at once deciding to land in what used to be a corn field in a season now past. No stalks stood there, just stumps of what used to be. There was a part of me that wanted to photograph this experience, though I quickly dashed the thought. There wasn’t any real way of capturing the beauty or the emotion, I decided, not by a long shot. I lived inside the present a while instead.

It was later in the night when I found myself on the freeway somewhere close to 7 PM. The Wolf Moon was just then making itself known, just above the mountains to the East. The supposed biggest and brightest moon we’ll get all year, it did look like it was about five times’ larger than normal. It was a curious hazy shade of cheddar cheese orange and, again, I contemplated parking on that overpass and staring at it some more, lest I run myself right off the road. I wanted everyone to know about it. I wanted to understand the seeming mystery locked up inside of it. I wanted to howl. And, it’s true, I felt a tug at my soul to photograph the marvel, but instead I went about memorizing what it looked like and how it made everything stop for a spell. I probably sighed twice.

We may be inside the winter, a time many complain about, considering it a largely washed out, faded ugly season ... but it isn't. It's cold, sure. But there are roses like these to smell if you take the time to do so. There’s beauty to discover if you simply have the eyes to notice it.

No one should have to live all of their life on their own.

For as often as I find myself seeking out and adhering to quotes from various people and thinkers taking it upon themselves to speak truths, it's not terribly often that I discover a nugget from a musician that I can connect with. Then again, Murray Lightburn of The Dears is no ordinary musician by any stretch of the imagination. I've always found myself drawn to the powerful, melodic sound he's created with his band—he's one of those few singers who sounds like he's got muscles in his voice—but now he's given me another reason to like him. I stumbled across some thoughts he had to connect to his song "Lights Off" (via Daytrotter) recently and, well, here they are:

Watching a sleeping child can be incredibly inspiring, profound. And the night light became a metaphor. Perhaps we seek that kind of comfort our entire lives. The second half is the soundtrack to the comfort we get in our adulthood from having a warm body next to us at night. Supposedly it replaces the night light. Maybe that's why adolescence is so miserable.... no comfort.

"Perhaps we seek that kind of comfort our entire lives." And, perhaps, for those who don't have someone they sleep next to on a regular basis, maybe they still have a good chunk of that misery to deal with. And, as much as we might tout that we don't mind being single and alone, a comfortable bed just isn't as comfortable as having a warm body next to us. So we continue then, however haphazardly, searching for that forever lasting comfort.

P.S. A good starting point for the band, if you've never listened to them before, is a tune called "The Ballad of Humankindness." I especially enjoy when he starts to unleash his true power around the two minute mark.

and i can't believe that
i haven't lifted a hand
and i'm just standing here
well i'm gonna change
i'm gonna change
i'm gonna change
i'm gonna change
i'm gonna change
i'm gonna change
i'm gonna change
i'm gonna change
i'm gonna change

Wordless Wednesday.

Letter from a fan.

You'll notice that, when I wrote that headline, my tongue was crammed into my cheek. With that in mind, then, you can proceed with what fell in my inbox the other day.


"Remember way back when you said you weren't that impressed with Laura Gibson, or you didn't understand why other people were? Way back.
And then a few months ago you tweeted something like "Tell Laura I love her," and you started playing her on your show. Maybe you had been unable to appreciate her until you saw proof that enough certain types of other people did? Shame. Did you hear that Beasts of Seasons was the only record to make all three NPR producers' top ten of '09 lists? Eh? Eh?"

Wasn't that fun? She prolly doesn't know I recorded this with my own two hands or that I have a crazed sweaty fan photo where I'm grinning like a buffoon next to her at one of her shows. Then again, none of that matters, does it? This one's got me all figgered out.

That said, Laura is coming to Slowtrain in March to show us some more amazingness. You should come (and, by "you," I do mean You, The Reader and You, The One Who So Clearly Understands My Music Taste).

P.S. I don't much listen to NPR. I just don't.

Sunday night listening.

Not bad ... not bad at all, I say.



Clickety-click.

Kenny advised early on not to fall
in love with the dreamers and I scoffed.
See, he failed to add the asterisks and details
but I soon found the dreamers were the ones
with the hearts of gypsies, the legs
of wanderers.

I thought I was a dreamer, too, that a
double shot of romantics on the hunt
for one another would mean a match.
Instead I found the pragmatic in me
the realist who yearned for who he
shouldn’t have. Dark hair
attached to an accent and warm eyes
made for a fantasy, the one who
felt too true to be good
proving instincts right.

Now I choose to fall in love with dreams.
I had one in my awaketime last week
and in it I dug for sand dollars
with my feet
on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.
I collected seashells, seven plucked
from millions being saved for
seven-year-olds with empty buckets.
It was 83 degrees in November.
I stole a touch of sunburn.

Entered broken and left three days later
cast in the brand new, the newly focused.
And, while dreams are never entirely safe,
they never lie when it’s past time
to do so
when real feelings get sucker punched
and I’m left with my thumb out again
folding myself gently into
the security
that accompanies friends.

11/12/06

You probably missed this.

It's a good thing I was there, then, to serve as your eyes for a spell. Enjoy a few minutes of what once was and will never be again.

Wordless Wednesday.

Thank you, MLK.

Today, I feel empowered to accomplish some of what I used to think and believe to be impossible. I'm not entirely sure what that means necessarily, whether it's helping write a movie or mending one of those proverbial fences with a forgotten friend or proving myself in that droll job arena or whatever ... but it feels more possible today than it did yesterday or the day before that or even at this time last year. I wish I knew the reason for that. It's a curious thing to be balanced on the edge of greatness. I suppose it's even more curious to feel like you are, without ultimately knowing. I'm all for dragging that out some.

This is timely, then, in the waning hours of this holiday, as we remember one of the greatest men I think I've ever had an opportunity to learn about. He is one of those human beings and heroes truly worthy of all the admiration he has received, both during his life and long after his death:

"If you can not fly, then run. If you can not run, then walk. If you can not walk, then crawl. But whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward." — Martin Luther King, Jr.

You ought to be in pictures.

One time I went all the way to Wisconsin for work, giving up a gifted pair of Avett Brothers concert tickets in the process. It hurts ... oh, yes, it most certainly does still hurt. I grumbled about it a lot then, but made do pretty much okay. Came back plenty exhausted, but here's a taste of what went on with that crazy long 2-day photo shoot and interview session, for yer perusal. I hope you love it long time.

I'm special.

Is it too far past Christmas to talk about what my favorite present was? Nobody's made any kind of rule to say I can't, right? Because mine came in my traditionally gift-filled stocking ... and it was my very own personalized pen! Every one of my brothers and sisters got one, only well ... mine was a little different than the rest. In the spot on the pen that proudly displayed the others' names, mine said (and I'm not making this up): "THEY DIDN'T HAVE YOUR NAME." And then, perhaps to soften the blow a bit, the words Clearly a unique individual were on the box. Clearly I am one special person. And, should anyone dispute that fact from this point out, I will carry my pen around as proof. I will show them. And they will believe.

Wordless Wednesday.

And these.

Quote of the day.

"If you observe a really happy man, you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi desert. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that has rolled under the radiator. He will not be striving for it as a goal in itself. He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living life twenty-four crowded hours of the day." — W. Beran Wolfe

Sunday music.

It's nice to have these guys around so much that I'm able to see them on a fairly regular basis. The Devil Whale is planning to release an EP and new album later on this year (and I can't help but be fairly excited about that) but, in the meantime, here's a dose of the one they've been touring on the past couple of years. She's a beauty, she is.

It's good to be King.

And, for Elvis' 75th birthday ... which is TODAY, folks ... I somehow wound up on CNN, snarling at the camera in my Elvis getup. No, really. Unreal, eh? If you wanna see for yourselves, go take a gander. I'm hiding behind No. 3.

Clickety click HERE. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Barely Famous.

I let my mind run rampant after posing a question. I asked her what she would do this new year if she could have any job in this wide world and, after some thought, she said she would like an office job. Barring that, she might take a stab at being a publicist. And, at once, I felt a little bit sad at the answer; my immediate thought was that she was operating under a smaller scope of dreaming. Then again, was she? If these jobs topped her list, then she’d be happy with that reality, should either become part of hers.

My answer to the same question surprised me a bit, but it came out immediately. If I had my druthers, I do believe I’d like to continue with writing, only taking it a different direction altogether. I’ve toyed with doing so in another country off and on and I’d love to do something akin to what David Sedaris has accomplished, sketching out essays to my heart’s content in, say, France. But, at this moment, I caught hold of something new. If the Universe wanted to make my year, it’d allow me to travel around with a band, recording all that went on in tablets of paper, capturing the lot of them at their most candid. Who would it be? Does that matter? It could be Peter & The Wolf as easily as it could be Thao or Wilco or a whole slew of others. And, as long as wishes are getting granted here, why not travel back in time and follow Elvis around for six months? I’m pretty sure I could handle that, too. I’d have to wear an adult diaper on account of my being just too excited for my own good, but still. At the end of the day, I might even make some writing others might enjoy reading. And the grand tradition of storytelling and music journalism would continue and thrive.

That would be some pricelessness. That would truly be some happiness. Thank you, imagination. You’ve served me well.

P.S. Happy 75th tomorrow, Elvis.

Wordless Wednesday.

Re-beginning.

"Things do not change; we change." — Henry David Thoreau

I’ve been gravitating towards quotes on change lately; for whatever the reason, I have all kinds of ideas and thoughts all up in my head to go along with this start of the new year. I’ve even scribbled a bunch of things I’d like to change about myself (okay, resolutions) down on a piece of paper, as well as a smattering of stuff I hope to accomplish. I won’t go into how long that list is or how I continue to add things to it as the days move forward, but they are things I believe I can do and will.

"I have no fear of the future. Let us go forward into its mysteries, let us tear aside the veils which hide it from our eyes, and let us move onward with confidence and courage."

That was Winston Churchill. (And he’s onto something there; if there’s one thing I fear, it’s the fearful.) Now, I’m not usually one to go about setting very many goals … and those I stumble after exist as ideas and usually fade away pretty fast by mid-February. That aside, I’m fairly optimistic about what I'd term a "re-beginning". I don’t know quite know the reason for that, but I’ll go ahead and ride that wave.

It doesn’t make sense for me to list everything here, so I won’t. However … I do plan to run a race or two, start writing those stories I’d stopped writing in '09 and, well, I'm going to spend a whole lot less time on this computer and more time with the real life instead. I’ve started picking up books again, even. How old-fashioned are all of these, eh? But that’s just the beginning of this whole thing. There’s so much more in store.

Somewhere during last year, I simply decided to give up. This year, I replace apathy with the wide-eyed dreams I once had, along with some I’d yet to conjure up at the time. I sure sound like some kind of motivational speaker, but that’s the truth. It’ll be interesting to see where all of this leads.

Joshua James - Daniel

Joshua James didn't make my Top 10 list of last year, but that's okay: see, I never got around to making one. However, his album and the music that came from it were plenty enjoyable. I'd even put his "Coal War" in my top, oh, 15 songs of the year. Here's a slow acoustic burner from a performance he did at KRCL, right around the tail end of last year. I hope you dig it.



Clickety click.