October 2019

Well, Billy and I have decided to go ahead and get famous. We’ve tried it the other way and it’s a hell of a lot of work. At shows, people sometimes express their astonishment that we haven’t auditioned for American Idol, or appeared together on late night television. They evince a delicate skepticism that we’re even trying very hard. And they have a point. We should probably consider making our move here pretty soon, or at least in the near term. But we’re sitting in a rental car at sunrise on the Tsawassen ferry dock in Vancouver, halfway through a Northwest tour, nursing our coffee on 5 hours sleep, watching the gulls fly around, and sufficient unto the day is the mileage thereof. We’ve met a lot of nice folks running around, sat up late at their kitchen tables with a bottle and talking about these times, the comedy and terror of Late Empire. We’re getting to where if we never played a major city again, we’d probably be alright. We may hold off on getting famous, actually. In case we don’t, here’s how the next couple months shake out.

MONTANA - We finish the Northwest tour this week, head for Spokane to play The Bartlett(10/3), and then over into Montana for a few nights, to play The Alumni Club in Great Falls, (10/4), and The Attic in Livingston (10/5) - with Billy Conway opening Livingston and singing some of the many great songs he's written and largely withheld from the world at large, in his selfishness - and then winding things up at the Red Barn in White Sulphur Springs (10/6). If you live near White Sulphur and want to go, just call the folks at the Red Ants Pants store downtown, and they'll sort you out on the details. Who needs the internet?

NEW ENGLAND - In the second half of October, we tour New England, starting at The Town and The City Festival in Lowell, MA. (10/18), and progressing with all decorum through shows in New York City at Rockwood Music Hall (10/20), the Listening Room in Syracuse, NY (10/23), The Cock’n’Bull Restaurant in Galway, NY (10/24), The Stone Church in Brattleboro, VT (10/25), the Capitol Center’s new Bank of New Hampshire Stage in Concord, NH. (10/26), and finishing up at a new club called the HiLo in North Adams, MA (10/27). Our old pal Zak Trojano opens in Concord.

MT-WY-COLORADO - In November we’ll start the Colorado tour in Montana, and drive down through Wyoming. I spent my 40 days of solitude in Wyoming as a young man, care-taking four dogs and a house in the ranch country north and west of Parkman, and the state suggests to my mind a spiritual condition as much as a place. We’ll start at the Stapleton Gallery in Billings (11/16) as part of Move the Needle, a collaboration between artists and musicians that re-imagines the gallery as a record label, and musicians as people who actually get paid for their work, joining a host of largely western musicians for a series of in-the-round shows at the Stapleton, and from there head down to Sheridan, WY - a town where I used to buy beer and get film developed - for a show on 11/17 (venue TBA), then down into Colorado for shows at the La Veta Mercantile in La Veta (11/19), Lulu’s in Manitou Springs (11/20), the Magic Rat in Fort Collins (11/21), and returning to The Soiled Dove Underground (11/22).

SENIOR - In 2016 my dear friend Chris Dombrowski, a fishing guide and acclaimed poet, published Body of Water, a work of biography, memoir, and natural philosophy centered on the life of David Pinder Sr. - 'Senior,' to his friends and family - the first native Bahamian bonefishing guide in the islands, and a towering soul. Jim Harrison said the book was 'destined to become a classic.' Now Senior and his family have lost everything in the recent hurricane. The places they lived and the boats they used to earn a living, the cars they drove, all of it. The islands look like a war zone, and people are surviving at best. Dombrowski has launched a GoFundMe campaign, with all funds going directly to the Pinder family via Senior's daughter Delcina in Florida, and seeded it with $500 of his own money on a credit card. If a poet and fishing guide with 3 kids can give $500, I can give something, and you can give something. Thanks in advance.

It looks like we’ll be in Ireland in January, California in February, Texas and the southwest in March, the UK in April, the Midwest in May. We’ll look for you.