March 2022

Friends, it's March, and it's raining. In the morning I'll cook a triple recipe of Molho de Ovos from the Portugese Homestyle Cooking cookbook, the one where the pages are so broth-stained you have to pry them apart, and I'll take it, with seven guitars, two amps, three mic stands, two mics, a ten-input Neve sidecar console, and pile of groceries, and drive up to Billy Conway's house in New Hampshire to record some of his unpublished songs. After that, all hell breaks loose and we start moving around again. So let's keep this short and sweet. Read on, Gentle Reader.

MIDWEST – March into April, we'll be on tour in the Midwest, with shows at the beautiful Stoughton Opera House in Stoughton, WI (3/31), The Parkway Theater in Minneapolis, MN (*Split bill with Erik Koskinen - 4/1), The Grand Hotel Ballroom in La Crosse, WI, The Historic Chief Theater in Bemidji, MN (4/3), The Rhode Center for the Arts (JUST ANNOUNCED) in Kenosha, WI (4/6), CSPS Hall in Cedar Rapids, IA (4/7), Vangarde Arts in Sioux City, IA (4/8), The Lark in Hastings, NE (4/9), and the Dyck Arboretum of the Plains in Hesston, KS (410). Maybe not the whole Midwest, but a nice stretch of it, and we'll come back to the other parts down the line. We generally do. We’ll be traveling full band, with ace combine and tractor driver Erik Koskinen opening the tour, and joining the band on electric guitar.

UK – In the second part of April I’ll play three shows with Kris Delmhorst in England, first at The Water Rats in London (4/19), then at The Slaughtered Lamb in London (4/21), and finally as part of the Ramblin' Roots Revue, in High Wycombe (4/22). It's just a handful of shows, but I'll be coming back this fall on my own, at which point I will play more than three shows, and everyone will be happy.

NORTHEAST – In May we tour the Northeast with shows in ME, NH, MA, and NY. Starting at The Atlantic BKLN in Brooklyn, NY (4/4), and moving through Portland, ME at One Longfellow Square (5/5), Concord, NH at the Bank of NH Stage (5/6), City Winery Boston, MA (5/7), The Egremont Barn in Egremont, M (4/11), Caffe Lena in Saratoga, NY (5/13), and the 443 Social Club in Syracuse (5/14). Erik Koskinen opens the tour and we might pick up an accompanist here or there, if we can sweet talk them into the van.

RIVER – This September I'll be the musical guest on a raft trip down the Main fork of the Salmon River – running through the largest piece of contiguous wilderness in the lower forty-eight – via Middle Fork River Expeditions, the longest running guide service on the river. The deal is, you sign up for the trip – September 15-20, 2022 and tell them I sent I you – and then we all show up in Idaho with a minimal amount of gear, and float that beautiful river together. They handle the logistics, food, and amenities, and crew the rafts. We enjoy the river, maybe do a little fishing and swimming, and every night I'll play songs around the campfire. If that sounds like your cup of tea, get on it. The trip has a maximum capacity of 23 seats, and they are going.

Now, do you have people in any of these places where we are going? Do you understand how to save an image to your device? Do you remember learning about the Middle Ages, before the printing press, those rough-thousand dark years when all we had was rumor? That's what the thing we charitably call Western civilization has devolved back into, and so we need your help to get the word out. Grab a tour graphic in this email, save it to your phone or laptop, send it to your people via text or email, and tell them the bearded man in the photo who appears to be in some pain is actually a real nice guy with a great band, and they should all buy tickets.