September 2017
September 2017
MONTANA // THE WILD
Driving an old truck requires that you do everything slowly. It takes a few minutes to warm up, and an old carbureted engine won’t be gunned into traffic, because it’ll kill or falter if you don’t feather in the gas. Likewise, stomping down on the brakes of a truck built to carry a payload - when trucks were inexpensive farm vehicles rather than high dollar nostalgia therapy for first generation middle management - will lock up the rear tires as the truck carries happily on, and this makes tailgating unwise. The tape player in my Dodge ate a brand new cassette of Biograph before I realized that the after-market sound system behind the bench seat was a Mouse Motel furnished with pine needles, and all the wires were chewed through. Now I have neither tape deck nor even the radio, just the wind through a badly sealed cab, and a windshield so big it's like going to the movies. All this to say an old truck is a governor on behavior and the lessons it offers can be generalized to the rest of life, where so much time is spent in thrall to the unhappy marriage of speed and nonsense: do one thing at a time, and do it slowly. As Billy is fond of pointing out, the outer limit of multi-tasking ought to be smoking while taking a leak.
I have one show this month, Thursday night (9/14) at The Attic in Livingston, MT, with my friend Christy Hays opening. Then Bill and I decamp to Wyoming for a little while, and after that I have nearly a month to figure out how to play lead guitar and sing backing vocals at the same time, as I’ll be on the road with Kris Delmhorst and the band around the country this fall, touring her new record THE WILD and giving a preview of my own forthcoming album, BLOOD BROTHERS, in back-to-back sets.
As for THE WILD, I co-produced and played on it, along with Billy and Moses from my band and Alex McCollough, who played steel in Cold Satellite. It comes out September 22, and it’s beautiful. There’s a pre-sale campaign up at Pledgemusic and it ends at noon Thursday (9/14), so this is your chance to hear and own the record early, get the vinyl while there are still copies, and have access to some of the other tangibles and intangibles. A pre-order campaign is basically the same as a CSA for your local small farmer - it moves payment for the yield up front, and creates some certainty in the bottom line as new expenses approach - and it’s one of the best, most concrete ways you can support a musician these days, when records still cost money to make but the only way to advertise them is to tell people to stream them for free, on demand.
https://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/krisdelmhorst
Alright then. Easy now.