Tomorrow I’ll fly overnight to Ireland, new green to new green, leaving the peach tree out by the barn throwing pink sparks and magnolia flowers littering the ground, cherry and plum blossoms just opening. It's axiomatic that the most heartbreak-inducing weather of spring or fall will inevitably be the day that one drives to the airport, looking longingly out the driver’s side window. But then, It was my own idea, and I'm going to Ireland.

Our original Irish agent, Larry Roddy (God rest him), started bringing folk and blues artists to the country in the sixties, and by the time we worked with him the last piece of new technology he had adopted was the fax machine. He loved the fax machine, and anything beyond it was a bridge too far. E-mails he would print out, reply in an almost legible, certainly lyrical hand, and fax them back. A week before the tour, your manager would receive the fax of a handwritten schedule covering only the first week. At the bottom it would say, "Next week = next week."

Anyway, it didn't matter because he rode along with you, not as your tour manager exactly – though he did conclude business at night's end, unless he forgot – and decidedly not as your driver, but as a sort of passenger on an extended drinking holiday. As you drove along, he would explain Irish history. Never in a straight line, always as a giant painting where everything was happening at once, the only order imposed by the eye traveling over it, so that Fenians rubbed elbows with Vikings, and medieval monks in their clocháin listened to Van Morrison records. Sometimes, if it was late, which it often was, he sang.

My new record THE UNIVERSAL FIRE — our new record, fair to say, as we were a six-piece band tracking, and five people added parts after the fact — went to print last week, and comes out 9/6. It’s been six years since I released a new studio album, because life is complicated. Thanks for sticking with me, and when we announce the pre-sale, we'll announce it here first.

IRELAND – This month I'll headline two solo shows – the first at Colfer's Pub in Wexford (5/5 Dietrich Strause opens) and then returning to play the Kilkenny Roots Festival (5/6) – before opening for England's John Smith on the Ireland leg of the release tour for his new album The Living Kind, with stops at Whelan's in Dublin (5/8), Dolan's in Limerick (5/9), Debarra's in Clonakilty (5/10), Coughlan's in Cork (5/11 - 3pm and 7pm), and The White Horse in Ballincollig (5/12).

OREGON – At the end of this month I'll play The Shedd Institute in Eugene (5/30); The Red Barn in Hood River (5/31); and Mississippi Studios in Portland (6/2 co-bill with Jeffrey Martin). Everyone where I grew up in Wisconsin pronounced it Ora-GON, but I have become a man of the world.

MICHIGAN – In June we'll convene the full band for three shows in Michigan. We'll start in Marquette at the Ore Dock Brewing Company (6/7) on a split bill with our lead guitar player Erik Koskinen and his own great band, then we'll head south to headline the twentieth annual Nor-East'r Music and Art Festival in Mio, Michigan (6/8) before heading east to play another split bill with Koskinen in Paw Paw (6/9) at The Lucky Wolf. Our friend Matt Eich of Mule Resophonic Guitars will be tailgating the fest in Mio with his Mule Bus, so if you want to know more about his beautiful guitars, or stand around drinking beer and nerding out about things like string gauge and tension, here's your shot. Matt said I get to drive the bus, but only in the parking lot.

WORCESTER - Tickets are on sale now for our trio show at Club 321 at Mechanics Hall in Worcester, MA (6/20). Our appearances in Worcester have the periodicity of a comet, so this is probably your shot for the 20's.

RED ANTS PANTS – This July we'll return to our favorite summer festival, the Red Ants Pants Music Festival in tiny White Sulphur Springs, MT (7/26-28), alongside Los Lobos, Sarah Jarosz, Lukas Nelson and a pile of other bands (including bandmates Jeremy Moses Curtis and Erik Koskinen supporting their new records). We've done RAP twice and it's consistently one of the best curated, best run, most community-focused festivals in country, bank-rolled by elbow grease and ingenuity, totally independent, and mostly run by women, so everything pretty much works, there's enough porta-potties, and no one yells at you about parking. Get your tickets early, they cap the attendance to keep things reasonable.

We'll see you out there, maybe.

May 2024