August 2024
The THE UNIVERSAL FIRE comes out this week, Friday (9/6), and that night I'll be on stage in the Northeast with the full band and I won't be sweating details or re-painting the internet billboard of my face. I'll be playing music with people I love, for people who decided to come hear us. How lucky.
You live, think about things, do your work, and call up the band to make an album. The moment it's made you start thinking like a salesman, and the thing you poured your heart into becomes something to sell. It's always jarring. Then one day the thing is out in the world, and they play it on the radio, and maybe someone writes to say it means something to them, that it's become a part of their life, and then it's no longer something to sell. That transaction is just a placeholder for the real transaction, and a way to keep the wheel turning. It's hard to remember this in the selling time, like January in July, it doesn't seem quite real.
This week the last single – 'Nightshift' – comes out on Wednesday, (9/4), and it's a rocker, with Dana Colley from Morphine joining the band on bass sax. All the singles have been rock'n'roll, but the album isn't all rockers, so I'm sending you an unlisted music video for the song 'Moving Through.' This is one of my favorites on the new album, the last song on the B-side, one producer Mike Lewis heard me fooling around with on Erik Koskinen's Mexican gut-string guitar at the breakfast table during the session in Tucson. He said, "What's that song?" and I said, "Just something I didn't finish before we got here." He said, "Well, could it be finished?" I said it probably could, and I wrote the last verse on the way to the studio.
When we got there, I started playing the riff as the boys were setting up and tuning, and when I had their attention I told them it would eventually change to a minor chord. That's all I told them, and then we rolled tape, and the band learned the song as I played it, and it's the only take we did. I'd like the rest of life to be as lucky as that. But of course, as Jack Nicklaus said, the more I practice, the luckier I get.
If you haven't got your tickets for the fall tours yet, or sent our tour schedule around to your friends in the towns where we're going, or pre-ordered the album on vinyl and CD, or bought three copies to hand around to your friends, or called your Mom up to tell her about me, that's how this whole deal works. Please and thanks.
THE UNIVERSAL FIRE — NORTH AMERICAN TOUR
08/30 Skal, Vinalhaven, ME (SOLD OUT)
09/05 The Word Barn, Exeter, NH *
09/06 Iron Horse Music Hall, Northampton, MA *
09/07 Narrows Center, Fall River, MA *
09/08 Cotuit Center for the Arts, Cotuit, MA
09/11 Cock ’n Bull, Galway, NY *
09/12 Fruitlands Museum, Harvard, MA *
09/13 Iridium, NYC, NY *
09/14 The Cut, Gloucester, MA *
09/20 Millennium Stage, Washington, DC (solo)
09/26 Live from the Divide, Bozeman, MT *
09/27 Live from the Divide, Bozeman, MT*
09/28 Wilma Theatre, Missoula, MT (solo)
09/29 Monk’s Bar, Missoula, MT *
10/2 Moxi, Greeley, CO*
10/03 Gold Hill Inn, Boulder, CO *
10/04 Delicious Orchards, Hotchkiss, CO *
10/05 Mercury Cafe, Denver, CO *
10/06 Vultures, Colorado Springs, CO*
11/01 McCabe’s, Santa Monica, CA *
11/03 Sweetwater Music Hall, Mill Valley, CA *
11/06 Mississippi Studios, Portland, OR *
11/07 Tractor Tavern, Seattle, WA
11/08 Trout Lake Hall, Trout Lake, WA *
11/09 Juicebox Public House, Centralia, WA *
11/10 New Prospect Theatre, Bellingham, WA *
12/05 The Ark, Ann Arbor, MI*
12/06 James Theater, Iowa City, IA•
12/08 Trempealeau Hotel, Trempealeau, WI*
12/10 Parkway Theater, Minneapolis, MN*
12/11 SPACE, Evanston, IL*
12/12 Stoughton Opera House, Stoughton, WI*
12/13 The Cactus Club, Milwaukee, WI*
*Erik Koskinen opens
