Neck Deep and Grateful

Plus Hillsborough, NC at Eno House 1/30 w/Wes Collins!

Happy New Year, friends!

How you feeling?

I am grateful to be neck deep in songwriting. After an intense season of producing Jess Klein’s Big Table, it feels great to return to my lifelong, unerring passion for setting words and feelings to music.

Every time I write a new album, I hope to write something mind-blowing right out of the gate. The actual process looks more like this:

1) I scratch the surface, come up with a few snippets, dream big dreams about “how GREAT these songs will be!”.

2) Play the snippets for Professor Feathers, my producer, who gently suggests they could use some more work before they see the light of day.

3) Commit to an actual daily writing practice: dig in, face the fear, find the gems, cultivate the satisfaction of doing the actual (non-glamorous) work.

Despite ending up as music, most of my lyrics get hashed out silently. I sit with an idea and check my gut: do the words say what I mean but also stay out of the way of the feeling I’m trying to evoke? If not, they’re not done. It takes a lot of peeling back layers for me to see the core true thing I’m trying to say. Once I find it though, I can decide what added details support that core truth. In other words, build the scaffold first, then decide what color to paint the walls.

Seeking Your Input…

For a class I’m taking, I want to understand what my music does for you, the folks who listen. Does it make you feel seen? Understood? Soothed? Fired up? Something totally different? Whatever it is, your answers would be helpful. If you have a minute, please drop me a line and let me know. Thanks!

The only way I know to get to the purest distillation of an idea is to have boatloads of quiet time alone, with a pen in my hand and blank paper on my writing table. I need the physical sensation of moving the pen across the page, crossing shit out and writing more (hopefully better) shit until until I come across something that stops me in my tracks because it’s the truth - not what I want to believe, but what I actually feel.

I know how fortunate I am to have the time and space to do this plumbing of the depths. I also don’t consider it a luxury anymore. To me it is a necessity.

I just started reading Mary Oliver. I know I’m about 20 years behind the curve, but fuck! Her work is everything!

From her poem When Death Comes, which I read and re-read to myself three times in a row last night:

When it's over, I want to say: all my life 
I was a bride married to amazement. 
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder 
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened, 
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.  

This is how I feel about life all the time. It’s the reason I write, the reason I love rock n roll, the reason I love touring.

***

Wes Collins is one of the best living songwriters I know. I would put his storytelling and eery, dark progressions up against anyone. I am very excited to do this song swap January 30th right here in Hillsborough, NC. Eno House is a sweet community space. It’s byob and THEY ENCOURAGE SNACKS. How much more motivation do you need?

Upcoming Shows:

1/30 Eno House, Hillsborough, NC - Song Swap with Wes Collins

3/19 White Horse Black Mountain, Black Mountain, NC

5/2 Trinity House Theatre, Livonia, MI*

5/3 WFMT Folkstage, Chicago, IL*

5/4 Bishop Hill Creative Commons, Bishop Hill, IL*

5/8 Cafe Carpe, Ft Atkinson, WI - Supporting Richard Shindell. Tickets go on sale soon!

5/9 Venue TBD, Effingham, IL

5/10 Bluff View Concerts, La Crosse, WI

*co-bills with Jenny Reynolds