May 2026

FALL – Starting in September, I'll be on tour around the country with John Convertino on the drums, one of the most beautiful musicians I ever got to play with, and one I'd heard on records by Rainer Ptacek, Giant Sand, Calexico, Richard Buckner, Neko Case, Tift Merrit, and a pile of others before I ever met him. I always knew it was John from the first snare shot. We'll abduct Eric Heywood in the mountain west and Erik Koskinen in the Midwest to round out some trio shows, and otherwise keep the footprint small, making stops in ten states (so far... write me if you have bright ideas). A few more dates will get lined out and it will take a moment for the clubs to create the ticket links, but for now just mark your calendar and tell everyone you know, even people you don't like.

UFSA – Summer before last, as I was getting ready to start the full-band tours for The Universal Fire, I sat down and re-recorded that album alone on guitar, along with eight other songs from the same batch that hadn't made the album. The forms of the songs required instrumental breaks and it felt funny if I skipped them, so I started cutting overdubs and ended up playing slide, banjo, octave mandolin, and piano. I hadn't made an entirely acoustic record since my first one. That December I released the THE UNIVERSAL FIRE: SOLO ACOUSTIC RECORDINGS to the mailing list as a download, and then printed up some copies and started selling them on the road (when I remembered to point out that they exist). Today, for Bandcamp Friday we've made that album available again as a download, and as of next week it will be available as well at the store, in the compact disc format.

READING – The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes; Fiskadoro, Denis Johnson; Behind the Shades, Colin Heylin; The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene; A Woman of No Importance, Sonia Purnell; Why I Am Not a Christian, Bertrand Russell; The Fire Agent, David Baerwald; The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty, Sebastian Barry; A New Path to the Waterfall, Raymond Carver; Earth is a Mother, Ocean Vuong; Maximus Poems, Charles Olsen; The Earth is Weeping, Peter Cozzens; The Bible Says So, Daniel McClellan; On Life After Death, Carl Jung. RE-READING: The Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius; The Narrow Road to the Great North, Bashō; Holy the Firm, Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard; Nick Adams Stories, A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway; Things That Bother Me: Death, Freedom, The Self, Etc, Galen Strawson; The Nature and Destiny of Man, Reinhold Niebuhr.

LISTENING – Sweet Grass Halo, Sam Weber; Speak to Me, Julian Lage; Jutta Hipp with Zoot Simms, Jutta Hipp; Life Lessons, Tim O'Brien, Bill Frisell, Dale Bruning; The Best of the Ink Spots, The Ink Spots; I am Both, Margaret Glaspy; One More Mile, The Suitcase Junket; Travelall, Calexico.

SUITCASE – My old friend Matt Lorenz, who performs an astounding one-man band show under the stage name The Suitcase Junket, has written a gorgeous, tender cycle of new songs for a forthcoming record called To Go On, and he's taking pre-sales now. Think of this as a sort of CSA model for musicians: you share the risk the farmer takes on by paying up front, and share in the reward when the crop comes in. I've heard the record in full and it's beautiful. 

That's it from here folks. I have shit to do and can't sit around writing all day. Jeez.