I dropped out of college as a junior in the fall of 1996, after attending a single class. I had rented an apartment, bought my books, and suddenly I couldn't stay. I was tan and strong from working outside, I was in love – in the dangerous, basically deranged way that a twenty year-old may fall in love, or join the army, or take missionary work among cannibals – and I had never until that point left the sluice gates of public education. I went to college because it was explained to me that people went to college, but then I couldn't figure out why I was there.

It was a comparative literature course that knocked me loose, a professor in a suit that didn’t fit him, with his cuffs riding up above his ankles, exposing a dismal length of pooling gray sock. He was pale, with lank, greasy hair, and he looked like he might not have left his office in twenty years except to lecture. He spoke in venomous abstractions, using heavily geared sentences to deliberately obscure a subject that I cared about. It was like hearing someone give a thickly ironic and leering speech about notes without ever mentioning music. I went home, called my Dad, and told him I was out.

A week later I was drinking coffee on the back porch of the house where I'd grown up, and circling notices for farm jobs in the back of the local paper. I had a copy of Huckleberry Finn on my lap and a furtive cigarette going, and I was mulling the shock of my leap from the traces. Until that time I had done more or less what I was supposed to do, and when grown people asked what I was doing, the answer always seemed to make them happy.

It was hot, early afternoon, the day quiet and the traffic out on county N thin enough that a single car could be heard dopplering a great while, beginning as a low whisper somewhere out by Cold Spring and developing into a thin whine. Then a wall of cool air moved across the near field, pushing a high tumble of leaves and debris ahead of it. The temperature fell ten degrees, and all the summer wet left the air. The seasons moved like the tumbler in a lock, and it was fall.

I picked my head up to listen, trying to isolate some odd quality in the day that I felt but couldn't identify. Then abruptly I knew: it was a weekday. Everyone was at work, or school, or embarked on some chore or domestic errand, and I wasn't. I was just alive, outside, and paying attention. I was playing hooky, and not just from school, but from the whole moving walkway of what had passed for regular life.

I went back to school eventually, but I’ve chased that feeling ever since and in a variety of ways, and mostly I've been real lucky. Here's what it looks like in February.

FLOODWATER – February 10 we'll be down at Floodwater Brewing Company in Shelburne Falls, MA., doing our part for the local beer economy, and donating the proceeds to Franklin Land Trust during their Winter Matching Gift Challenge, supporting their work to preserve and protect land in our region from unwanted development. These won't be pin-drop folk shows, just bar shows, playing loud enough that folks can listen or talk a little, or God help us, dance. The last real duo show Billy and I got to play together was down at Floodwater on an off night, and I have a real fondness for this sweet little bar the size of my dining room.

CALIFORNIA – Later this month I'll be on tour in California and Nevada, with shows at McCabes Guitar Shop in Santa Monica (2/24), The Lost Chord in Solvang (2/25), Felton Music Hall in Felton (3/1), the Hopmonk Tavern in Novato (3/2), Freight and Salvage in Berkeley (3/3), Old Ironsides in Sacramento (3/4), and then we'll skip over the pass to Reno for one show in Nevada at The Peavine Taphouse (3/5). Erik Koskinen opens everything but Novato, and backs me on electric guitar. He also drives the car.

NEW ENGLAND – I'll play a couple shows out east in April when I'm not fishing, starting at one of our favorite places, the Cock'n Bull restaurant (questionable deployment of the apostrophe there, but let's go with it) in Galway, New York, then out to the gorgeous Shalin Liu Performance Centerin Rockport, MA, up to the Zenbarn in Waterbury VT, and finishing down in the valley at The Drakein Amherst MA (4/15). I hope some of you Boston people come up to Rockport, because it looks pretty fancy.

MIDWEST – There will be a run of shows in early May centered on Michigan and Wisconsin: Looks like Kalamazoo, Traverse City, Marquette, Ripon, Appleton and then I'm going fishing with my brothers. Keep an eye on the TOUR page as those dates fill in.

READING – Poetry: Jim Harrison, Saving Daylight; Antonio Machado, Times Alone (edited by Robert Bly); Ray Carver, Where Water Comes Together With Other Water; Teddy Macker, This World; Non-Fiction: Shelby Steele, A Dream Deferred; Jim Harrison, Just Before Dark; Blaise Pascal, Pensees and Other Writings; M. Wylie Blanchett, The Curve of Time. Fiction & Etc: N. Scott Momaday, The House Made of Dawn; Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm; Günter Grass, The Tin Drum; Cormac McCarthy, The Passenger. Audiobooks: Hilary Mantel, The Wolf Hall Trilogy (read by Ben Miles, who is a total badass).

LISTENING – Bob Dylan, Fragments – Time Out of Mind Sessions (1996-1997): The Bootleg Series Vol. 17 (Deluxe Edition); Dire Straits, Brothers in Arms; Jose Alfredo Jimenez, Grandes Exitos; Ahmad Jamal, Live at the Pershing: But Not For Me; Frank Sinatra, A Man Alone: The Words and Music of Mckuen; Rowland Salley, Killing the Blues; Kacy and Clayton, Strange Country; His Lordship, All Cranked Up; Charlie Rich, The Fabulous Charlie Rich.

That's all folks. As always, if you know someone in one of these towns, please do the civil thing, and send them out to find us.

February 2023