I've been having trouble writing this thing. I mean, if we pulled on our boots and wrapped up in heavy jackets, drove down to the falls below town to walk the access road to the No. 2 dam, I'd have my opinions. After a while. After a decent interval. But I'd want to hear what you've got going first. I'd want to hear about your folks, and your work. Your kids. Probably I'd hesitate to get into the heavy stuff. A stray barb and a dark chuckle might be all.

I wake at three, humming like a tuning fork, vibrating with the collective churn of a few million other souls, everyone wondering where the ship of fools is headed. I get up and dress, start the water for coffee, go out to make kindling in the moonless dark. Empty the pan from the stove into the fire scar out by the barn, and watch as the sparse coals from the night prior blaze up as they fall. I kick the snow from my boots in the front hall, twist last years newsprint into the stove, and absently note outrages I barely remember now, splashed across the front pages in heavy type.

I read Takahashi, and Larry Levis. Set them down to fight through a chapter of science, until, distracted by an unfamiliar word, I find my notebook, and begin a poem. Or maybe it's a song, or a grocery list, or nothing. Eventually I’ll locate my phone and check messages, look at the news of the world. The stove ticks and the light comes up, inexorable as an artesian spring.

My heart is sore, like yours. There was a story that most of us believed about this country, regardless of party, about who we were, what we did, why did it, and what it meant. That story was our culture, and it wasn't always true, but now we don't even tell the story. Not to ourselves, not to each other, and not to the rest of the world.

******

Still, there are things we all agree on. In our country, no one is meant to be above the law, and because officers of the state have the law on their side, they don't wear masks, they wear uniforms. Masks are for outlaws. We don't threaten our allies with wars of territorial aggression, or depose the leaders of other countries in order to expropriate their sovereign resources.

Those of you familiar with our history will know that we have, in fact, done these things. In the second half of the last century alone we interfered with the governments of forty-plus nations and deposed democratically elected leaders everywhere from Iran to Chile to Congo, when they didn't fall in line with our cold war policies. We lost fifty-eight thousand Americans – and killed two million Vietnamese – in a war prosecuted on the basis of lies. But when those and other things came to light – usually through heroic journalism or civil disobedience – we held hearings, fired people, and passed laws. It was messy, and too late, but it's what we have. It's how we preserve the story, and the story is everything. We have to tell it over and over.

Righteousness is dangerous, and I don't want your approval. I don't confuse anything that happens on the internet, where nearly every available platform is a corporate tool for data surveillance, with my moral stature. I could get on the socials and ask the thirty thousand people who already apparently approve of me to approve of me again, over this, and some people would applaud, while others would quit me, or send irate letters (I have a folder of these). In either case, I'm not famous enough to give a shit. I just feel conscience-bound to tell whoever I can tell: what's happening right now in our country is wrong. If you live in a state with Republican legislators, they need to hear it from you directly.

I don't write what people like to call protest songs. The last thing in the world I want is to have a lot of people who think they agree with me show up to agree with me in person, in order to feel the thrill of having a correct opinion, without the work of having done anything. Music is a mystery, as strange as dreams, or laughter, and at its best it enlarges the space for our common humanity, our sense of the soul and of aesthetic possibility, in a world full of blindness and pain, and joy. By that definition, every song is a protest song.

******

SOUTHWEST – I'll start a tour next week in Denver that takes me through Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and out to Salt Lake. I like to be in that part of the world in the deep winter, to make some long drives, eat a lot of tacos, maybe sit out with a blanket and watch the moon on a night off somewhere in the desert. It's the first solo tour in years, and I'm looking forward to playing new songs, and drilling down on the simplest version of things. You can't play the way you play when you're alone when you're in front of a room full of people, but there's another thing that might happen, and when it does, it's the reason I started doing this job.

EUROPE – My friends in the band Session Americana had some dates booked in Europe this March that they had to cancel, and my old pal and touring companion Ry Cavanaugh asked if I wanted to take them over, and build a tour around them, to visit some of the countries we didn't hit last fall with the band. Places that I either haven't been, or haven't been in a while. So we're making a trio tour from Spain to Italy – with a stop in Marseilles – and up to Austria and Switzerland, with Ry and me on electric guitars, playing my songs and his songs, and John Convertino on drums. We'll list all the dates on the TOUR page when we have them finalized, but for now, keep an eye out for shows in Valencia, Santander, Valladolid, San Sebastián, and Girona, Spain; Marseilles, France; Savona, Torino, Piangipane, Chiari, Bolzano, and Castelvetro di Modena, Italy; Innsbruck, Austria; Solothurn, and Stans, Switzerland.

MAGIC DUST – Last month we put on a beautiful celebration of the songs of Dave Moore down in Iowa City. It was an all-star bill featuring Iris Dement, Greg Brown, Bo Ramsey, Pieta Brown, Joe and Vicki Price, Kris Delmhorst, Erik Koskinen, Kevin Gordon, David Huckfelt, David Zollo, and Phil Heywood, everyone singing their favorite songs by or about Dave Moore, backed up by Dave himself, and joined by me and the band (featuring Eric Heywood, Erik Koskinen, John Convertino, and Jeremy Moses Curtis). Then Dave came out and played a set of his unreleased songs with the full band. Now, if that sounds like a hell of a show, it was, and we recorded it. I've put one hundred prints of the limited edition, large format show show posters (18x24" on heavy gauge paper, suitable for framing) designed by Jordanna Rachinsky, up for sale at the STORE, and we're selling them for $50, to raise the money to mix, master, and release the recording from the night. You can read more about the show and how it felt, and what it meant, in this lovely essay by Michael Judge.

BOUNDARY WATERS – Congress is trying to open the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness to copper mining, a wild place I love dearly, and where I spent some of the best times of my life, canoeing the back country with a fishing rod and a tent, listening to the loons call at night. A great deal of copper is going to be necessary if we're going to electrify every last thing this century and make the pivot away from inefficient and destructive power. But the projected yield from this project adds up to .27% of the global production in any given year, an amount that could be far more easily, and at less cost, gained other places and other ways. Read up, and then write or call your legislators.

CAITLIN CANTY – Our old friend and bandmate, is out on the road on the west coast next week, with a few of my bandmates and friends. If you live out there, show them some love. Good people doing good work.

That's it for now. I'm sending love to my friends in Minnesota, including our guitar player Erik Koskinen, who's been out there quietly doing his part to help and protect vulnerable people in his community. I'm sending love and regard to our friends in Denmark, who've always taken great care of us. Better angels all.

January 2026