There's some chance I owe you a letter, and let me apologize. I caught up on correspondence shortly before Christmas, carrying the typewriter and its pleasant weight of metal two-handed into the kitchen, corralling the carriage with a thumb to keep it from sliding in a clanging rush against the catch, and set up by the Christmas tree with a cup of coffee and a stack of paper. The oldest letter on my desk had come with a book of poems from a man I met years earlier, and upon investigation revealed a lapse of 1,575 days. Even by my standards the interval is indecent.

But it’s nothing compared to my inbox, a leaking boat I wake up to furiously bail each day, without any recollection of having bought it. Whole years consume themselves as emails requiring only a sentence in reply moulder away unanswered, and perversely the more care I mean to give them, the less likely they are be taken up at all. The desk work involved in releasing an album - months of eight and ten hour days wrangling information on a screen, as trees bud and bloom, and trout rise delicately on streams just minutes from my home - has created in me a kind of internet PTSD, the ongoing sensation of being made to stay indoors at recess and finish math homework.

All this to say, if you have written me an e-mail in the last two years, I plan to write back, eventually. It may take a while. There's a lot, and occasionally nothing at all, going on. In his moving elegy, 'About Ed Ricketts,' published at the beginning of The Log From the Sea of Cortez, John Steinbeck wrote that Ricketts, "...believed completely in the theory that a letter unanswered for a week usually requires no answer, but he went even farther. A letter unopened for a month does not require opening." It's the kind of nonchalance one strives for, but seldom achieves.

If I were to write you back, I'd tell you that one of my songs just showed up in a trashy Netflix series about figure skating, so that's one more career goal met. My old pal Spotify wrote me an e-mail high-five last month, to tell me that my music had been streamed by 6.7 million people on their platform in 2019, for 350,000 hours, or just shy of 40 years. Apparently this added up to an 'amazing year' (for their shareholders). My wife Kris has a new record in the can, and its so good I'm mildy upset. Also, I swapped out the rectifier tube in one of my amps four times, but it still wasn't right. What all do you want to know?

NEW ENGLAND - I have two shows in New England this week, just to keep up appearances, solo at The Word Barn in Exeter, New Hampshire (1/10), and then at Common Fence Music in Portsmouth, Rhode Island (1/11). These are both listening rooms, as opposed to bars or clubs, and if you've been holding out for the show where you can sit close enough to chance a small amount of my saliva landing in your drink, this is your shot.

IRELAND - On January 24 Billy and I begin a brief tour of Ireland, with our old friend Ry Cavanaugh (Session Americana) opening. We'll start at the Tea Room Sessions in Carrick-On-Suir, Tipperary (1/24), and play Wexford Arts in Wexford (1/25), Levi's Corner House in Ballydehob (1/26), Mick Murphy's in Ballymore Eustace (1/27), Monroe's in Galway (1/30), the DC Club in Dublin (1/31). Ireland is a lovely country where traditions of poverty, humility, good manners, acute speech, love of culture, and a stubborn determination collide head-on with the easy morals of the boomtown economy, and an unsettling sensation of new wealth. Unlike here in the States, they seem aware of the tension. One may go through life as the ugly duckling, with a sharp tongue, a quick temper, a gift for turn of phrase, a lusty love of drink, smoke, talk, and music, and an impenetrable sense of privacy that makes one seem bizarrely and ultimately unknowable even to close friends, and, stepping off the plane into Ireland, find oneself a beautiful swan.

NOHO - In February, I'll play another solo night in the Northeast, a double-header just down the road at the Parlor Room in Northampton, MA (2/22), with one show at 7pm and a second show at 9pm. I don't have a plan for this one yet, it could be solo acoustic, or it could be something else. I'm off the road trying to write fifty songs at once, which makes it hard to remember what it feels like to be on stage, and also, anything else.

WEST + SOUTHWEST - Early March we'll make a run from the Bay Area of California down through the desert southwest and into west Texas, which is the only part of that state I haven't ever got to see, and always meant to. Look for shows in Felton, Oakland, Santa Monica, Santa Fe, Lubbock, and Eden for now, with a few to fill in. I'm hoping to bring the boys on this one. Nothing fills up a Dodge Caravan like a four piece band. Check the TOUR page for confirmed dates.

UNITED KINGDOM - In the first half of April, Billy and I will return to the UK for the first time for a number of years, hoping that Brexit hasn't made a smoking crater of the economy, and consequently the exchange rate. Ry Cavanaugh opens this tour as well. Tickets are going fast for these shows, because we are fantastic.

MIDWEST - In early May we'll be back in our beloved Midwest, with shows in Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, and Wisconsin. It looks like there's some chance that a dear friend and hero of mine, Iowa's Dave Moore - who in the last 40 years made some of my favorite songs and records - will open the tour, and join us with his harp and accordion. We're looking forward to running around the prairie, and getting to some towns we haven't seen in a while. It's hard to show up everywhere. As Steven Wright said, it's a small world, but you wouldn't want to paint it.

January 2020