In the early dark a song sparrow we call Norman clocks in, accurate to the minute, a tiny rooster punching a tiny, irresistible time-card. We sleep with the window open, and his theater of action is centered on the Azalea and Andromeda branches just outside. First to sing, he lays out a complex, riverine fioritura that anticipates the appearance of the sun over the eastern ridge by an hour and half. Song or call, love or territory, his conviction he is hard to resist.

When I hear Norman I get up and make coffee, light a thick smudge of white sage, and carry both out to the porch, to sit on an old wicker chaise under a pile of wool blankets with a stack of books, and note the light changing as a thicket of birdsong rises around me. A thin, greasy smoke threads up and I read poetry, history, sometimes religion, but not generally fiction, and never The News. It’s best to stick to the facts before noon.

50 days into lockdown, weekday austerity measures are in force, notably what we call The Uno, the rubric under which we are allowed one, but only one, of anything good. Thus, a five o’clock beer doesn’t lead to wine with supper and a brandy afterward, and the prospect of falling sleep sprawled on the floor by the wood stove with the dog, the pattern of the rug printed into one’s face. I speak theoretically.

I have the home recording rig set up, and I've been working on sketches for a variety of projects - a solo/acoustic thing, a covers album, various collaborations - and otherwise fishing as much as the weather allows, and cooking. There are two streaming shows on the books in May, and not much else I need to tell you about, so this will be extra long.

PASSIM - May 8th I'll stream a show from my home, via Club Passim. I've only played one streaming show so far, and while initially it felt like giving a Best Man speech, blindfolded, from the lip of the Grand Canyon, once I settled in it was sweet, and frankly humbling, to feel so connected to so many people all over the world. Some of you have asked whether, in order for the clubs to get paid, I lose money, but finding ways to share the revenue from these shows is how we'll all - clubs and agents, and my band - get through a fallow year. I have a long list of song requests left over from the last show, and will imagine everyone shouting them out at the same time from the darkness, so that I can't understand what anyone said.

KITCHEN DUETS - May 23rd Kris Delmhorst and I will play a live-stream concert of duets from our kitchen, with its thrilling backdrop of assorted dry goods, and the unique acoustic properties of linoleum, under the auspices of the Freight & Salvage in Berkeley, CA. We'll play our own songs, new and old, and in a nod to verisimilitude maybe sing some of the songs we might actually sit around and play in the kitchen: Charlie Rich, George Jones, Lucinda Williams, Hazel Dickens, that sort of thing.

SUPPORT - Platforms like Spotify and Soundcloud have recently allowed direct-to-artist donation buttons on profiles, allowing listeners to pay directly, say, ten dollars all at one time, to hear to my entire published catalog of music; an amount that is half what I charge for a physical album, and which I wouldn't normally make until you had streamed my music just over 30,000 times. Now, I know most of you are going to hit that number pretty fast anyway, but wouldn't it feel better to just square up on the front end?

GUZZO PINC - My old friend Jeremy Guzzo Pinc (rhymes with 'mince') went back to school a few years ago to pursue a Masters of Fine Arts in painting at the University of Wisconsin, but his MFA show - culmination of three years of dedicated work - was abruptly cancelled due to the pandemic. Rather than stay home drinking, Pinc took the show on the road, photographing his paintings in various outdoor settings, and making the exhibition, 'EGGS: A Grand Scale Painting Comedy,' available online. You can see it now, and you can support Pinc by buying one of his paintings, various of which - like the one in the photo above - have hung in our home for many years.

MOSES - For those of us paying attention, Jeremy Moses Curtis is the man holding the weathered, cream-colored Fender bass guitar, the one who always dresses sharp, smells good, plays great, and rarely appears to break a sweat, but whose bottom lip, when things begin to get interesting, folds slightly down into a mild pout that signifies that we are all about to become awesome. Billy and I call this moment, When the Lip Comes Down. Moses is an accomplished band leader and producer, and happens to great write songs too. Bandcamp isn't taking a cut on Fridays, and you can buy his beautiful new song Unlikely Hero right now.

CAITLIN CANTY - Caitlin Canty, whose 2014 album Reckless Skyline I produced and played on with the boys, is one of my favorite writers and singers, with a sort of Wyethesque clarity of image, and a range, timbre, and subtlety in her voice that communicates the contents of her heart without irony or comment. She opened our shows and sang in the band on the Salt As Wolves tours, later relocating to Nashville, where she recently announced the delightful news that she and her husband Noam are expecting a child. She was about to record a new album when the lockdown started, and had to cancel that session, but she's launched a Patreon page - a subscription model where, in exchange for your monthly support, you can get direct access to new music - in order to make up her losses, and stay in contact with her community. If you're looking for a way to do right by the artists whose work has meant something to you, Patreon is a great way to do it, simple and direct. The digital revolution in music has destroyed the middle class of working musicians, and this is one way to rebuild it.

TEATRO - One spring a few years ago when Kris was on the road, I took my daughter to school, cleaned the house top to bottom, made a list of everything I would get done that week, and then sat in the kitchen with an amplifier and an electric guitar and played five or six hours a day. Mostly what I did was put on Willie Nelson's Teatro, and play along. The album was recorded in an old movie theater in Oxnard, California, in 1998, produced by Daniel Lanois, and consists mainly of songs Nelson wrote for other people in the 1960's, with a lovely band, and Emmylou Harris singing back-ups (in terms of phrasing, this is like hearing two people fighting for the very last seat on a bus). If you wish to understand country music, there are many ways to go about it, but the easiest is to put some on of the best, and pay attention.

JOHN STATZ - The new album Early Riser from my old friend John Statz is out TODAY, and available across platforms, featuring known accomplices Billy Conway and Jeremy Moses Curtis on rhythm. I produced John's album Tulsa in 2015, and I always like his work. He's a good Wisconsin boy, open-hearted, and writing thoughtful, searching tunes that navigate the crossroads of history and culture, story and geography.

JAMES GALVIN - When I was in Wyoming in the fall of 2001, a friend sent me The Meadow, by James Galvin. Years later, when I met Billy Conway, our first conversation began with that book. Still later, when Billy and I met up for drinks with Galvin in Iowa City, it became clear to us that for him, the best-selling Meadow is essentially a footnote in a life dedicated to poetry. Once I became familiar with his poems, I understood. His most recent collection is called Everything We Always Knew Was True, and reads as prescient:

Americanathon

Waiting for the new ice age to come along
Like a dawdling child from a previous eon,
Waiting for the homeless man to go on home
With his tired cardboard sign that says “anything helps,”
Waiting for a cure, waiting for the closeout sale,
The black sail, a new tarboosh and a tiny red car,
A new improved and safer war,
A harmless war, a war that we could win,
A brain tumor in your smart phone, an entitlement check
(Will you please check on my entitlement?),
Waiting for the bank hack, the backtrack, the take,
Waiting for a calabash, the calaboose, an acquisition,
An accusation, resuscitation from a total stranger,
Waiting for the finish line to explode.

BARRY LOPEZ - What Jim Harrison was to my third decade, Barry Lopez has been to my nascent fourth, as I work through everything he wrote, and slowly, because conversation with his mind is a pleasure I wish to extend as long as possible. He's patient, impossibly learned, humane, and honest. At some point modernity gave up on wisdom in favor of cleverness, technical facility, identity. Lopez is as close to an elder, in our intellectual tradition, as anyone we have left, and I recommend that you begin anywhere. I'm currently reading About This Life, aloud to Kris, in the hour before supper, when the kitchen smells like frying onions, and we're enjoying The Uno.

That about covers it. There are other things I could tell you but there appears to be plenty of time for that later.

May 2020