A friend asked me the other day why I wasn’t on a Folk Cruise, or maybe an Outlaw Cruise, at this winter moment. Why was I not, for instance, drinking an Outlaw Piña Colada adorned with a tiny plastic Outlaw parasol, watching the indelible Outlaw sun set over the Outlaw American Empire, a long trail of untreated human excrement paying out in our wake? I told him that no one had asked.

     I answered truthfully that I was fundamentally prepared to sell out, but no one appeared to be buying. No one had asked me to play their Folk Cruise, so here I am in early February, shoveling rain-laden snow laced with chicken shit off the path to the barn, and contemplating my actual work, whatever that is.

     You wake in the dark and slip silently from your bed, gathering up your clothes, and muffling your belt buckle with a palm as you creak down the stairs to make coffee. Leave your loved ones sleeping to drive a pre-dawn hour to the airport, and sit in a chair in the sky for three or seven hours, burning jet fuel and serially unwrapping plastic things to drink from, eat, wear. Watch a bad movie you find strangely moving, six miraculous miles above the earth, with the window shade drawn. Arrive in another town, another time zone. Rub your eyes, rent a car, find the hotel, drop your bags, head for sound-check. Wait around, then play music for 75 or 90 minutes. Wait, like a Tibetan monk, for your soul to locate your body.

     The only way this sort of thing makes any sense at all - and that's an open question, every night - is by holding the insanity of the proposition in exact counterpoise with the reality of play, the beauty of the thing itself, the knowledge that you're doing the only thing on earth you can reasonably do, and if you were to keel over dead in the middle of it, you would at least be in the right place. Unless you were on a cruise ship, maybe.

NOHO - In February, I'll a double-header just down the road at the Parlor Room in Northampton, MA (2/22), with shows at 7pm and 9pm. Are you Late Crowd or Early Crowd material? No one can decide for you, and I don't want to pressure anyone, but all the cool kids are going to the late show.

WEST - In March we'll make a run out west from Oakland, California down through the desert southwest and into west Texas, with shows at the Starline Social Club in Oakland, CA (3/5), Felton Music Hall in Felton, CA (3/6), McCabe's Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, CA (3/7), Last Exit Live in Phoenix, AZ (3/10), Coconino Center for the Arts, Flagstaff, AZ (3/11), GiG Performance Space in Santa Fe, NM (3/12 - SOLD OUT), Blue Light Live in Lubbock, TX (3/13), and the Green Apple Arts Center in Eden, TX (3/14). TICKETS are, as always, available through the TOUR page for confirmed dates. Our friend Jessie Bridges opens Oakland; Ismay opens Felton.

UNITED KINGDOM - In the first half of April, we'll tour the UK from Winchester to Aberdeen. Our friend Ry Cavanaugh opens the tour, supporting his forthcoming solo album Time for This, and sits in with the band. Full details on the TOUR page.

MIDWEST - In May we'll tour a part of the country that we love, and which many educated people on both coasts know exists but could not easily delineate on paper: Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Iowa's Dave Moore - one of my favorite songwriters and performers of all time - opens the tour, and joins us on harp and accordion. Dates and ticket links for most of the tour are up on the TOUR page, and we'll fill in a few more around the edges in the next month or two. I think we're trying to fill a date in Omaha May 2nd, if you have bright ideas.

KD - Last thing, my wife Kris Delmhorst will be on tour California and the Northwest at the end of this month (2/20-29), while I stay home, move an amp into the kitchen, make a long list of all the things I should get done, and play guitar until she comes back. You should go see her.

That's the plan of campaign. This whole deal works best if people come to the shows, so to whatever extent you feel comfortable broadcasting this email, go ahead, and I'll forego my native humility and reticence.

February 2020