January 2017
January 2017
NORTHWEST // TEXAS // NEW ENGLAND // MIDWEST
Happy New Year. If the phrase itself doesn’t cue the mirthless laugh-track in your mind, we probably shouldn’t drink together right now. I’m having a hard time making peace with the idea that a third of the country voted to hand the nuclear codes to a bullying man-child without the power of consecutive thought. I digress. I bought an old red Dodge half-ton pickup and it runs. I patched and painted my daughter’s room, wondering about the ancient horses whose hair they used to thicken the plaster. I got out on cross-country skis, and one morning the steep grade I had used the day prior had turned to ice, so that halfway down it my skis shot out from under me and I traveled through the air horizontally for a while, and then bounced. It made a neat little reenactment of 2016. I’ve been reading McGuane’s fishing essays, The Longest Silence, by the fire, along with Ron Chernow’s life of Hamilton, which shockingly has little or no singing in it. Also Brad Watson’s fiction, Miss Jane, a calmly lyrical story. Working on the house I listened to Kevin Gordon’s Long Time Gone end-to-end a bunch of times. We traded albums when we played together in September and I’m beginning to think I got the better deal. All this to say that though I've been writing a lot I've been trying to live like a normal person and avoid the degenerate lunacy of the internet, which we should probably just start calling television. I'll give you the short version.
NORTHWEST: I’ll tour the Northwest very briefly next week, solo on the road for the first time in a few years, as Billy has some work to attend to on the ranch. Bring your requests; I don’t have anything like a plan. I’ll start in Vancouver BC at the Rogue Folk Club (1/15). If you know people there send them along, because I haven’t played Vancouver in a number of years, and as a rule it's more fun when people come to the shows. After steelheading on the Skagit I’ll play the Green Frog Acoustic Tavern in Bellingham WA (1/17), a regular stop, and an old favorite. Get there early for a good seat. Then it’s down to Portland OR and the Doug Fir with old pal Jeffrey Martin opening (1/18), and finally a radio stop in Ashland on Jefferson Public Radio (1/19).
TEXAS - In the first week of February Billy and I will start at the Dyson Listening Room in Baton Rouge LA (2/1), and then head into Texas to play McGonigel's Mucky Duck in Houston (2/2), Strange Brew in Austin (2/3) and the Sundown at Granada in Dallas (2/4). Will I go to Texas and Louisiana? I sure will, in the winter.
WISCONSIN - April we have four shows already on the books for tour of the home state, at The Cavalier Theater in La Crosse (4/5), the Heyde Center for the Arts in Chippewa Falls (4/6), the Mineral Point Opera House in Mineral Point (4/7), and the Thrasher Opera House in Green Lake (4/8). I believe this tour will extend to take us up to the U.P. of Michigan, so we'll get to enjoy the seasons in reverse, starting in spring and proceeding north back into winter. Keep an eye on the Tour page as things progress.
We'll see you out there.