The Beloved State

Though the image will indeed look familiar to readers, the experience that the above image suggests will be entirely different. Indeed, I will be playing a show in California next weekend, and California this time of year, is quite different from Washington DC. While I am of course excited to see my family, some friends, play some music, and eat copious amounts of Mexican food; at this juncture of winter I am looking forward to being warm out of doors. Relatively speaking. I read The Sheltering Sky, The Old Man and the Sea, and The Power and the Glory in the last weeks, in the hopes of some feeble escape. Which worked in a way.

So today is my son's first birthday, and we are awash in memory. He was still not yet born a year ago, though close. It is hard to quantify or even begin to explain with words the magnitude of this experience; what it has done to my heart. What else can I say? Alas, I cannot help the below.....

The Wind is King

I receive the news that the groundhog went back to his/her hole. Crackpot science or not, this is not what one wants to hear living in this part of the world. The last few weeks have been something of a blur, as my wife has been busy finishing up a new book. I have been anxiously watching the days grow longer (though it was 17 degrees below zero fahrenheit when I walked the dog this morning) and making time to get some work done myself. I have been in the midst of cleaning out my musical closet as it were, which means re-mixing old odds and ends, and beginning the process of finishing up the last of the unfinished things I have lying around.

The above photo and subsequent ones below, were shot at a recent show in Washington DC. Suffice it to say, I could put every shot up here, of which there are many, but I will spare us all. They were shot by Brooklyn photographer Jeff Hutton, who was as kind as his lens.

In the meantime, as always I read. I just finished The Sheltering Sky, by Paul Bowles, an astoundingly good novel. Of course I am glad to have read it after a trip to Morocco, not before, though it did make me wish to return. I lament that we did not somehow make it to Timbuktu.

And I ramble. I realize that I have little to say on this sunny, cold, February evening. I hear my son upstairs banging on something, my dog asleep at my feet. It sounds so quaint until you go outside, where the wind is king and the snow squeaks.

Below are Christian Kiefer and J. Matthew Gerken respectively. I wanted to be democratic, and put photos up of the whole band, but I would have been here for hours. Dinner is upon us.