Morning folks. I don't have much to say and less time to say it, as I have to catch a plane west and I forgot to rent a van. My daughter is getting ready for school, I can hear her singing. I'll give you this Jack Gilbert poem - read it sideways on your phone to get the line breaks right - and ask you to share our itinerary with your people if you can, please and thanks.

A Brief For The Defense

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

- Jack Gilbert

WEST - The Blood Brothers west coast release tour starts this week at McCabe's Guitar shop in Santa Monica (11/2), and heads up the coast with shows at Soho in Santa Barbara (11/3), Sweetwater Music Hall in Mill Valley CA. (11/4), and the Triple Door in Seattle, WA. (11/6). From there we'll wander the wilds of Washington and Oregon for a while, with shows at some places we've never been, including the Artisans at the Dahmen Barn in Uniontown, WA. (11/7), and the Studio at Building 270 in Walla Walla (11/8); then a return to the lovely Alberta Rose Theater in Portland, OR. (11/9) - a favorite stop - and over to another first time play at Perham Hall in Zillah, WA (11/10), and back to The Bartlett in Spokane, WA (11/11). Heywood is pursuing an advanced degree in dry land wheat farming, which is why we're dedicating such a larger portion of the tour to Washington state.

MONTANA - The western tour ends with a perfect little run of shows in Montana, at The Myrna Loy Theater in Helena (11/14), The Rialto Theater in Bozeman (11/15) and the Top Hat in Missoula (11/16), and then the Strand Theater in White Sulphur Springs (11/17), put on by our friends at the Red Ants Pants Company. Our good friends in the Minneapolis duo Dusty Heart, who opened our Midwest and some of our overseas release tours, return to open the west coast tour supporting their eponymous debut album.

AHEAD - In December I'll play a few TBA shows in Wisconsin; in January I'll return to northern California to hit some of the towns we miss this month; in February I'll return to Colorado; in April we'll be doing an 'All-Wisconsin' tour, where instead of touring all the major cities of a region, we concentrate on playing little towns in my home state.

VOTE - Vote the bastards out.

November 2018