David Williams — Sunday Morning.

The last brief blink of a conversation I had with David Williams, breezing through Utah sometime in the late spring or early summer, I made mention of this video and how great I thought it was. I don't claim to know whose idea it was but, well, you don't see many music videos recorded in the outdoors, in the frosty light of early morning, and not in places I'm readily familiar with, either. The song is superb, yes, but doubly good because I can recall that state that felt like it once belonged to me. I told him he ought to head to Wyoming and record the song he named after that state next, but I don't think it's happened or even if it will. 

I've my head all wrapped up in some of that Utah music today, I do. And if there's one thing this spot of the web needs more of, it's music. So watch this one, listen and even maybe love it some, as I do.

David Williams-Sunday Morning from Michael Friberg on Vimeo.

On the eve of Fall.

on my back patio in the morning. my version of Fall.

Wordless Wednesday.

st. augustine, fl. labor day weekend, 2011.

Bring it back.

A week ago today, I took a young pine cone from the mountains of Utah, threw it in my bag and claimed it a souvenir of sorts. There were so many there to spare already and my friend and I had broken so many of them in half, our hands ended up impossibly stained by the sweetest smelling sap I can remember having experienced. Even as I traveled those couple thousand of miles back, that sap remained on my fingers; I wasn’t entirely eager to wash it off. The goal was that, in my darker times, I might be able to break it in half and breathe in a little of that blink of a visit, that it might take me back to the kind of outdoors I adore so much.

Now, just a few days later, that same pine cone is falling apart, shedding pieces of bark and such all over my place, protesting my having taken it from there to here. That, or it’s choosing to spread itself further than it ever would have on a dirt floor. I don’t want to break it in half, either, not now and maybe not at all. Besides, it seems it’s on its way out as it is.

I hate to look into the future any further than I have to, but I already know this will be a truth of mine to add to the others: I’ll miss that little pine cone.

A short Gillian Welch review, Salt Lake City chapter.

Gillian Welch Salt Lake City set list (Sept. '11).

Life's slowed long enough for me to let everyone with ears to hear and eyes to see know this: the Gillian Welch show in Salt Lake City last weekend was all kinds of worth it. I'm pretty glad I bought two tickets straightaway when she didn't add Orlando to her list of "must play" cities. I'm very thankful my friend Genevieve tipped me off about a pre-sale, landing me in the second row to witness that goodness, too. It was a good two-and-a-half blessed hours of good, solid, craftsmanship. It was stepping back in time, when concerts used to be more substance than they were spectacle ... a big stage in an old theater with a couple of chairs and a couple of microphones and a couple of the most solid performers I've wrapped ears around ... David Rawlings never missing a note on that guitar and Gillian sounding better than I'd ever have expected she might (and that goes for the horse hooves clippity-clop sound she made with her hands and the unexpected off-to-the-side clogging, too). 

They dipped into their deep well of songs and I left wholly satisfied, having heard every song I'd have wanted to and some I was surprised by (I'm looking at you, Johnny Cash song of a show closer). I suppose the songs they gave us were sad, too, for they said the same ... Depression era styled music for a more modern day ... but I wasn't there to shed tears. I was filled with something else. In fact, I wore a grin so long on my face, I didn't know I was doing just that until my face started to hurt. Earning a couple of extra laugh lines to see one of your favorite musicians for the first time, though? Worth it. So worth it, a-thousand times over.    

Wordless Wednesday.

KRCL was my happy place.

This Hurting Song.

Wrote a lonesome song for a friend, one that started with a chorus that appeared while I was on an island in Seattle. He was kind enough to spend three hours with it on his porch and turned it into a country waltz. Happened to be in a Louvin Brothers sort of mood, so that's the way it went. I haven't heard it yet and don't know when I'll get that chance to. I do know I heard his voice singing it before I finished writing it completely. I do know he trusted me enough to take it, run with it and work the kinks out the only way he knew how to do. And, while I'm some kind of novice in this songwriting arena, I also know that this can't help but bring me great big bucketfuls of joy.

Wordless Wednesday.

The Features — Content

Does this bring me a curious kind of joy? Why, yes, yes it certainly does. May it lead you in the right direction this long weekend. It's been a long time coming, it has.