the clatter of keys

"the clatter of keys" has moved

2011-03-14T16:29:00.002-04:00

here's our new digs.....

http://theclatterofkeys.tumblr.com/

join us!!

35%

2011-03-14T15:35:00.002-04:00

this article first appeared here. and it was crafted with the help of my friends at the Future of Music Coalition.

The most important piece of furniture in the living room of my cabin in western Massachusetts isn't a comfy chair or functional table, it's a vintage radio and record player from the early 1920's. Almost as big as a modern refrigerator, it's a monument to a time when music had a physical presence that was hard to ignore. Next to it, you'll find my laptop and smart phone charging, taking a brief rest from their daily toil of communication, commerce, and yes, entertainment. Seeing them side-by-side reminds me that, while the core of what we love about music has remained constant through the years, the way we interact with it and its creators has changed dramatically.

Recently, President Obama made a bold commitment that can open up a new world of possibilities for musicians around the country. Speaking in Marquette, Mich., the president laid out a framework to ensure that 98 percent of Americans have access to the next generation of high-speed wireless broadband. His vision included a future in which young people no longer need to leave their hometowns to succeed because they are able to connect virtually with new education and business opportunities formerly only available in big cities.

This type of universal connection would not only transform our economic future, but also the future of music and our engagement with it. Along with dramatically increased exposure to new artists and sounds, high-speed Internet gives us unique and meaningful ways for us to deepen our connections with the acts we love.

As a recording artist, I'm dependent on the Internet for the basics of maintaining my career - everything from tour dates to record releases to my virtual storefront. For an independent musician like myself, the Internet is as essential as electricity. Artists make their home at the intersection of the old and new. When we create, we apply innovative ideas to transform tradition, making better sense of shared human experiences. Consistent high-speed access to the Internet is one of our most powerful instruments in this process.

Unfortunately, while many of us are reaping the benefits of this evolution, a staggering 35 percent of Americans don't have the high-speed Internet they need to participate. They are quite simply left out of the revolution.

I draw an incredible amount of inspiration from where I live. From the river that runs below my back porch to the quiet hills that surround my cabin in rural western Massachusetts, my surroundings are inseparable from what I write and perform. I wanted to find a way to share this experience with my fans and also tap into the artistic possibilities of the Internet.

In order to do this, I created an ongoing series of concerts called "Cabin Fever," broadcast live over the Internet from in and around my home. I like to characterize them as "Wayne's World" meets "The Judy Garland Show." These concerts allow me not only to share my surroundings but also share in what my fans are saying to me beyond the merchandise table and social networks, in an artistic format not limited by time or travel. The experience has offered the most inspiring work of my career and has brought home the incredible opportunities the Internet offers for connection, community and art.

That is why it is so important that we work to fulfill the commitment that President Obama laid out to bring high-speed wireless Internet to all corners of our country. Before wireless, those in rural communities like mine faced tremendous cost and infrastructure obstacles to getting connected. Today, access may be in reach of so many more Americans. As long as this access remains open and allows for direct participation, it could transform local economies and creative culture. In the same way that it makes my tiny rural cabin a concert venue of infinite size.

The time is now for this historic investment. We must urge Congress to support the President's call to ensure that every American has access to the economic, educational and artistic opportunities that universal access to high-speed wireless can create.

tears of a clown

2011-03-08T12:30:00.000-05:00

last night i watched a fantasic movie about bill withers, "still bill". besides his music being deep as all get out and more than standing the test of time, it was amazing to watch a man who is truly in touch with the humanity around him and his own feelings. and he is totally able to show it. or, really, he is unable to hide it, stuff it, or mask it like so much of "masculinity" demands.

the movie reminded me too of one of my favorite sports clips where then USC head-coach pete carroll (who got out before the shit hit the fan) brings in bill to speak to his team about the power of asking for help. i've probably seen the clip 10 times, and i cry every time.

on sunday miami heat coach erik spoelstra tweeted that some of his players were "crying in the locker room" after a season-series sweep of losses at the hands of the chicago bulls. it launched a monday morning debate about weakness, leadership, privacy in the locker room, and a coach's responsibility to protect his players.

so what if a basketball player was expressing himself after a loss, one that obviously mattered to him? why should emotional displays be limited to women? tears come from frustration, exhaustion, grief, anger, or joy. or any combination. or sometimes we dont even know why we're crying. those are my favorite tears.

when kevin garnett pounds his chest, screams to high heaven, then proceeds to dismantle his opponent, his intensity and display are lionized. tears are of the same coin, and whether it's bill withers or the miami heat, they show a whole, human man moving through the world. how exhausting must it be to maintain a masculine front, with so much going on inside?

ain't nothing neutral in how i feel

2011-02-18T00:44:00.002-05:00

it's late, here in grenada MS. i'm out on tour, and i'm just getting to the hotel after my 7th show in a row. 3 more to go before a day off monday in austin. so you can see why i have been behind a bit in my po-litical work. let's catch up....

there's some important net neutrality stuff happening this week. house republicans succeeded today in attaching an addendum to the upcoming spending bill that would block funding for the recently adopted FCC net neutrality principles. except now we call it "the open internet order" because the republicans have commandeered and poisoned the term "net neutrality". either way this is seriously important stuff. it directly affects how we will access information and how new applications and platforms are developed (and by whom). for a primer here. watch me talk about it here.

here's what i have been able to do this week, in between hauling gear, selling CDs, and driving our rented minivan through chicago, st louis, kansas city, oklahoma city, memphis and new orleans:

a letter to congress that myself and some other incredible artists have signed on to.

and a site that gives you 3 specific actions that you can take on this issue:

it's really easy to get involved. and the fight will continue on way past feb.17th.

green and yellow

2011-02-06T17:38:00.001-05:00

i just finished the latest version of my "Cabin Fever" webseries. episode 5 was "Songs About Sports". in it, i took wiz khalifa's "black and yellow", followed the lead of some awesome MCs (Prophetic & Pizzle, Lil Wayne) and did my own version for the green bay packers. go pack go!

you can watch the complete episode here.

lyrics below the vid, check em out, because i didnt get all of it right in the performance:

yeah, ah hah, you know what it is

everything i do, i do it big

3 feet of snow, that's nothing

western mass, keep on dumping

step into my cabin you know everything

green and yellow, green and yellow

cabin fever, we webcasting

green and yellow, green and yellow

2 teams, big game

1 quarterback droppin my name

hotter than the hottest flame

aaron rodgers spells it different

but we shine the same

i drop tracks like a quarterback drops back

tossing deep cuts off like a triple threat wild cat

not an athelete but still a player like that

green like the earth, yellow gold like money

the riches go to those who play as one, see

the politics of a non-profit corporation

i'm a citizen of a democratic packer nation

steel city's a dope place, yes

but i will never ever root for a rapist

the times, they are new orleans

2011-01-19T21:45:00.007-05:00

i've got a routine like anyone else in the northeast: work and snow. but i'm just getting back from breaking that routine and visiting a place that continues to be a touchpoint for every important conversation going on in our country.

i've been to new orleans now 8 times, 5 before and 3 after. i've been to play shows, to write, and to record an album. i've passed through with friends; i went once for a retreat with like-minded activist artists. this time i went for a novel purpose: vacation.

i did all the touristy things i never do. we rode the street cars. we ate at coop's, the camellia, and cafe du monde. we visited cemetaries and museums. we went to see brad pitt's houses he's building in the 9th ward. we walked and walked and walked. we stayed with friends. we slept alot. unconventional as it was as a "vacation" choice, we definitely got away from our own lives for a few days.

but new orleans has changed. it isnt the city i remembered from my last trip, taking small but firm steps toward recovery. or the city i had fixed in my mind from "before". it felt like an entirely different place.

perhaps it was the process of sharing it with someone who had never been there before that caused this feeling. perhaps it was my own life changing and shifting, such that i cant see a familiar place in the same way. this is, in fact, one of my favorite reasons to travel, re-read a book, or watch a movie again. how do we feel returning to the same place? it's usually that the place stays constant in its solid mass of buildings, streets, and natural contours, and thus we see the change in ourselves as we age and shift.

yet new orleans has changed in a way beyond what i know has changed in me. i dont know why this has surprised me so much. part of the magic of new orleans is that it has never been a place you could pin down or categorize. i have never been to any place like it, and at times, it can feel other-worldly. and when i say that it is a touchpoint for every important conversation going on in our country, consider what that means. economic recovery, urban renewal, arts economies, gun violence, race relations, gentrification, corruption, music, and politics- new orleans has something from experience to contribute to all these national dialogues.

but, for better or for worse, change in new orleans has always happened at a snail's pace. the government is notoriously slow, the erosion of the inner city has been like an acid river eating at the walls of a canyon, and the post-flood recovery has inched back. katrina was a sudden, but inevitable, cataclysm of water built on years and years of neglect, a man-made disaster fomenting for decades.

yet something has moved too fast now in new orleans. i think it is two-part.

first, i recognized some familiar signs that i have seen elsewhere traveling the country these last two years. vacant store-fronts sit next to vacant store-fronts. "for sale" signs emblazon house after house. there are more people lining up for services and fewer people on the streets outside their houses. in a time of foreclosures, unemployment, and isolation, the recession has left its inimitable mark here, as elsewhere.

secondly, there is a new tension in parts of the city. before going, a friend had warned us to be careful:

"new orleans isnt safe," she said, referring to some recent gun violence, sexual assaults, and a warehouse fire that claimed the lives of several young people. the underlying fear in her statement was that new orleans wasnt safe for white people.

i hate these kind of statements: alarmist on the surface, masking many more complicated factors underneath. rather than keeping any one person safe, they only make everyone more mistrustful and on edge. many people unconsciously conflate race and class, expressing class tension by perpetuating racial fears. this kind of thinking isn't new to new orleans, either. the tension that poverty brings has been a defining factor there for a long time.

we stayed in a neighborhood called the bywater, a place i have called home every time i have visited new orleans. the bywater is technically part of the 9th ward, but as its particular mix and motion became more pronounced, it acquired its own neighborhood designation. the bywater has been slowly gentrifying for the last 20 years. again the emphasis is on slowly.

so what was different this visit was this: a neighborhood that was for a long time a unique and vibrant mix of race, class, and occupation, has been suddenly infested by young white street kids. and it is not just in the bywater. it's in treme, the 7th ward, the upper 9th. here is an article from the times-picayune that came out while we were there. it explains who these kids are, but it also, rather predictably, leaves out a real exploration of the tensions they are causing.

this has happened fast.
and it's highly visible.
and it makes me so sad.
and it makes me uncomfortable.
and it makes me examine myself and my motives for being in new orleans. what am i contributing to the city as i visit each time- as a tourist or for work? when i walk around new orleans, am i afraid? if so, why? and why do i feel so sad about "new orleans being new orleans", that this dynamic city has changed again and will continue to change?

new orleans interrupts a lot of easy narratives with the hard facts of its reality. we saw this interruption on a global scale after katrina, a third world city made visible, a blight on the mythic narrative of our first world self-image (our dirty secret: in america, many many people- disproportionately of color- live in systemic poverty). in that same way, visiting new orleans interrupts my own easy narratives of a city where diversity exists without tension, where the grand unifier of music colors the landscape with a rose colored lens, where i can just pop in with my white-ness and economic mobility, soaking in the "real-ness" as i get inspired. and then i leave, back to my own comfortable, functional life. i'm trying to take responsibility for myself here. i'm trying to notice my own privelege, predilictions, and fantasies.

and then, i get mad.

no, crust punks, you dont get to just drop in with your dogs, jeans as tights, and thick framed glasses. somebody used to live in that abandoned house you're squatting in. ever wonder why they're gone?

reading rainbow- 2010 wrap up edition

2010-12-30T21:03:00.007-05:00

it's been too long since i took the time to write a blog. i am always so full of ideas, and less full of execution. who out there in the tubes can relate?

i do want to remind regular readers that i spent a substantial portion of my fall blogging over here as part of my "distillation 10th anniversary tour". if you missed it, you can still catch up and grab lots of free music downloads.

i usually try to do some kind of year end wrap-up on the blog. 2010 was a highly varied year for me... i began it with a grueling super DIY european tour (read: lots of trains, dragging around lots of stuff), and i ended it with the "distillation" anniversary project. in between i acted in a play for the first time, joined a softball team (though i had never played before), and went on tour to alaska. for a "down" year in an album cycle, i was incredibly busy.

2011 looks to be more of the same. i wonder if this is the new shape of "making" it in the music industry? we put even more irons in the fire, more pots on the stove, start more and more income streams. however, you want to put it, creative people in 2011 are going to be doing many more little things to add up to what the one big thing used to be. that suits my restless nature just fine. more on that as we get into 2011.

meanwhile, i thought the 2010 wrap up would be some thoughts on my favorite books i read this year. i've included links to more info about them, but please consider asking your local bookseller first before you buy online.

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
tells the story of a small business owner who stays in new orleans as the katrina floodwaters rise. i could not put this book down. i have been to new orleans many times, and i have seen and heard firsthand what happened during the flood, but this book makes a page turner out of real-life. which just made me angrier than ever about the aftermath of katrina.

Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
we liked it. we really did. in spite of ourselves and our best efforts otherwise, this book gnawed at that desperate place we all try to ignore, the place that says our cubicle is the best we can hope for. and so we told people about this book. we had to. we wanted to share that something that we couldnt name that made this book so good- not only to make sure we weren't left out of important book conversations, but really because in the end, we are all incredibly lonely.

Decoded by JAY-Z
ok, so i'm not totally finished with this one. it just came in the mail the other week, but i've been super into it. i'm not a JAY-Z fan. something in there hasnt connected for me. i'm still not, even though i hands-down love this book. i feel queasy when i read about JAY's constant devotion to capitalism (or entrepreneurship- depending on your politics). i think the exposition of lyrics is borderline pretentious. but i appreciate the honesty and the vignettes of day-to-day life leading to unique observations of humans.

State by State ed. by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey
what a great companion on my travels this year. i tried to read the relevant entries as i went to each place! 50 essays from non-travel writers... and each has a different connection to the state: tourist, native, moved there for a job, spent time there as a kid, never predictable. in the same way i was reminded of why i like "friday night lights" so much. you know there is gonna be a football game, but sometimes it happens early in the episode, or later, in part or whole, or sometimes it's just referred to: anticipated or in the afterglow.

Floodlines by Jordan Flaherty
i heard jordan speak at an event and had to buy his book after. it's a great history of new orleans, activism in the city, and ways that community has responded to the katrina flood. it also documents how the resistance community formed in new orleans post-katrina has impacted other social justice work outside of NOLA.

The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac by FreeDarko
is it cheating that my favorite book of the year is more graphic novel than wordy read? no! not when you love sports as much as i do! i got hipped to this book through an article on the freedarko blog that described rajan rondo as a shark. not in the usual "he's gonna kill you" way, but in this way that took into account a modern sense of dislocation, exacerbated by technology, and the unique emotional wallop of good sports story. the almanac breaks down the games of the top current NBA players via schematic diagrams, charts, and whimsicle illustrations. did i ever mention i want to start a second career as a sportswriter?

and as a bonus (just for you) i'll share my first book of 2011: Preaching with Sacred Fire: An Anthology of African American Sermons 1750-Present. i got it for christmas from somebody who knows exactly how to make my heart melt.

the fight for net neutrality

2010-12-15T21:13:00.005-05:00

if you've been following the news lately (or me for awhile), you'll know that on 21st DEC the FCC will be ruling on "net neutrality" (the ability to access legal, online content without interference, gate-keeping, or tolls from your internet service provider). i've worked on this issue for some time, from my cabin fever series to my latest "distillation anniversary webcast" this fall from chicago.

my friends at future of music coalition have posted this clear wishlist for the homestretch of this fight. check it out here.

and i thought i would take a sec and post the comments i submitted last spring to the FCC in support of clear net neutrality rules:

Comments submitted to Federal Communications Commission in support of Net Neutrality. Spring 2010.

Hello, FCC! My name is Erin McKeown, and I have been a professional musician, writer and producer for the last 14 years. I'm 32 and currently live in rural western Massachusetts, but my career has taken me all over the world, playing an estimated 200 gigs per year.

In those 14 years, I have recorded ten albums and 3 EPs for a variety of labels. I began on my own, releasing my music via the internet and touring while I was still an undergrad at Brown University. From there, I signed to a small independent label, Signature Sounds in 1999, a mini-major, Nettwerk, in 2002, and I am currently with the indie label Righteous Babe Records. Along the way, I have performed on "Late Night with Conan O’ Brien,” "Later with Jools Holland” and have been featured in theLondon Times, the New York Times, People Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, on NPR and many other fine radio stations at home and abroad.

As an independent artist with a committed fanbase, the internet is the engine that powers my career. I use it to disseminate information to my fans (tour dates, record releases, etc.), maintain a virtual storefront for my music and other merchandise, and interact with fans via my blog, social networks, and my youtube channel. I communicate with my support team — agent, manager, label, etc. — mainly via the internet and use my website both publicly and privately to present new work, move large files, and facilitate business transactions. I have almost 2,000 Twitter followers, more than 3,500 Facebook fans and an email list of over 20,000. To me, this represents the power of an independent artist to reach audiences across multiple platforms, all made possible by the internet.

This summer, I used the internet for a very specific project in support of my latest album. “Cabin Fever” was a series of "house concerts" that allowed me to continue to connect with fans, offset my recording debt and contribute to a broader conversation about how the internet fits into our daily lives. For the series, we broadcast live over the web from my house in rural western Massachusetts. Fans could subscribe to the series or purchase individual episodes to watch live or later on-demand. In passing the “virtual hat,” I connected to the longstanding tradition of communities coming together to support art. Each concert had a specific theme and location: my living room, my porch, my river and my front yard. Fans could chat with each other as they watched and even send in requests. In his keynote speech at the 2009 Future of Music Policy Summit, FCC Chairman Genachowski highlighted my "Cabin Fever" series as one of the most creative ways that musicians were pushing the boundaries of the internet for communication, commerce, and creativity.

I began my career in 1996, right as the internet was becoming widely available and affordable. My career has never existed apart from this technology, and I often feel that the internet and I have gone through some growing pains together. For as much as the internet has made communication with fans easier, self-promotion easier, access to music and video easier, it has also created an extremely crowded marketplace. As a 21st-century artist, it is a greater challenge to find and retain a mass audience than perhaps my predecessors experienced. That said, I now have more tools, direct access to my fans, and many more creative options to express myself via the internet than ever before. And I don’t need to depend on outside entities to determine how and when I communicate with audiences.

As a copyright owner and someone who makes a substantial portion of their income from record sales, the rise of illegal filesharing via the internet has had a direct and detrimental affect on my bottom line. However, I view with great dismay some of the tactics that ISPs, record labels, and copyright owners employ to disproportionately punish illegal downloaders. I believe we should shift the debate and resources away from punishing and policing and more toward the question of “how can we make being a creative person a viable vocation?” I do not think illegal downloading of content can be currently mitigated in any way that doesn’t impact privacy, fair use and the lawful exchange of material — audio, or otherwise. Future policy should not be guided by punitive or restrictive approaches, but rather by answering a basic question: does the policy inhibit expression and the cultural/economic potential of creative people?

Another important point to consider is access. For me, it’s a twofold question: how do I get online at home and how do I get online when traveling? At home, I currently use DSL bundled with my phone. My other ISP options would be cable or satellite. But do not own a TV, so DSL was the most affordable and appropriate option. However, in making that decision, I did not have any choice as to a DSL provider. I have regularly experienced issues with the quality of my connection, and, living in a rural area, resolution of these problems has been slow. I know people just a few miles down my road who still don’t have access to high-speed internet at all. There is also no wireless coverage where I live. I don’t think that a creative person or any other entrepreneur should be forced to relocate simply because they lack a connection to such a vital communications platform.

My life on the road is a different story. Internet access when traveling is a must. So much of my business requires constant communication that I’ve become my own office, and I require connectivity at all times. I choose to use an iPhone with a data package which has been extremely helpful, otherwise I end up at the mercy of a hotel that often charges charge me $25/day for slow internet (and even more for better speeds). Only in emergencies will I pay that much for internet, and even then it seems overpriced. For moving large files and activities like updating my website, I often find myself hoping that a venue will have a free wireless network that I can connect to. If I cant find anything else I will find a cafe, but it is not my preference.

Moving forward, it is vital that we expand broadband internet access to as many people as possible, regardless of location and socioeconomic status. As more of the world functions “virtually,” we run the risk of leaving behind vast segments of our own society. We should spend the money now, lest we end up spending lots more down the road. Why create a digital underclass when we have the option not to?

I also believe that net neutrality principles should apply to the wireless space. A different and perhaps conflicting set of rules for those two platforms would only result in more ways for companies to take advantage of consumers. I am suspicious of the argument that net neutrality would somehow "inhibit competition"— as I see it, there’s not a lot of competition to begin with. Net neutrality rules would be necessary and positive provisions that would encourage innovation and protect consumers (and creators’) right to expression.

I often think of "access" on the internet as equivalent to "speech" in the Constitution. Where we can freely access the internet, where we can speak freely, read freely, educate ourselves and others without interference, we engage in the same democratic process that inspired the vibrant and diverse country in which we live. The internet as it was conceived is a democratic place, allowing equal access to information.

Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case in practice. Just as not everyone in this country gets a fair shake, not everyone has the same level of access to the internet. But if it can’t be a truly free marketplace of ideas, then at least we should know what the rules are. An internet user is a consumer of information, and as such should be afforded the same protections and level of transparency that we’d expect to be placed on any other product. Net neutrality rules would be a major step forward in guaranteeing that all users — creators, innovators, small businesses and regular citizens — have the means to compete in a legitimate marketplace that isn’t slanted to favor only the powerful players.

As the internet continues to grow and evolve, I thank you for your efforts to maintain its openness and transparency.

the final inning + last free download

2010-11-23T20:52:00.003-05:00

the last download of this project is a live version of “the little cowboy” from our show on 8 OCT in Portland ME. it features the awesome slide playing of “distillation” producer dave chalfant. thanks to everyone who came out to the shows, watched the webcast, and took home some anniversary schwag!

as i wrap up the anniversary project, i’ve been thinking that being a musician is a little like being a professional athelete. if you’re in a band, you’re like a baseball team; if you’re me, you’re like a tennis player. but check this out:

in many of the same ways, the business of sports and the music industry reward youth. travel and performance are physically demanding, especially over a long period of time. you ride an emotional rollercoaster, getting yourself up every night for a game or a gig, and riding your adreneline until you crash- in victory or defeat. only to do it again the next day, in the next town. from the outside, the life appears glamorous, but behind the scenes the work of practice is hard and the down time is often incredibly boring. both demand endless self-promotion and an ego of a certain size and toughness to weather the grueling work and inevitable rejections.

older atheletes will tell you that what they lose in flexibility, speed, or stamina, they make up for with experience, wisdom, and wiles developed over seasons. the same is true with music. my listening skills only get deeper the older i get. my writing continues to hone itself of its own accord through repetition. what my hands can no longer do, i’m learning to do with my voice. the pleasure of music, the nuance in the art, is only growing deeper and more apparent to me.

doug glanville, a former pro baseball player, wrote a fabulous blog last year for the new york times. one of his entries described the end of an athlete’s playing career. as a certain pitcher said it, you never stop loving playing the game, you stop loving preparing to play the game.

when i read that, my heart leapt. i feel exactly the same way, and like in so many other ways in my life, sports is able to articulate something i couldnt otherwise put my finger on.

in the past few years, i’ve been building an identity and community outside the music industry. one that is more consistent and not based on someone else’s approval. i have a community that cares for me whether i have 2000 twitter followers or none, whether i have a new album or not. i’ve worked so hard for so long in an all-consuming business, that i didnt know the toll it was taking on my body or my spiritual life. now that i have slowed down, it’s painfully obvious to me.

i’m not gonna stop playing music. i can’t. it’s how i think, how i express myself, where i find joy and creative fufillment. i absolutely love getting to meet all the folks who have supported my music for so long. but in many ways, my playing days are done. the “distillation” anniversary project has allowed me to see that and to celebrate the hard work i’ve put in so far. i say that from a place of acceptance and excitement about what my future holds.

as i sit here this november, looking ahead to 2011, i’ve got an awful lot on my plate. i’m starting to write a new record. i’ll be heading to a few more conferences this year to share and connect with inspiring minds of all sorts. i’m going to put more time into my acting. i’m going to start a production studio. i want to do a bike tour and collaborate with some new artists. and, who knows, maybe i’ll go into coaching.

go west, young man + free download

2010-11-03T20:55:00.003-04:00

as i head to the west coast, this week’s download is “love in 2 parts”, which ends the album “distillation” and opens the anniversary shows. it is most definitely one song and describes a relationship i was in that was… shall we say, manic. it also mentions the incredible burden of rent in the bay area!

…………….

looking back on the early years of my career, i’m surprised at the kind of travel craziness i used to sign up for. i routinely hopped planes, cars, and buses in the same day- early in the morning, long after gigs, and often carrying obscene amounts of gear by my lonesome.

from the very beginning of my career, it’s been important to me to play as far and wide as possible. so even before it was financially feasible or responsible, i was trooping off to the west coast or overseas. i have always just wanted to be out there, beyond the friendly confines (and perceptions) of the northeast US.

so, in this dire economic climate, and even more dire music industry epoch, i’m heading out to the west coast to bring the “distillation anniversary tour” to Oregon, Washington, and California. my shoestring budget and creative travel decisions are reminding me of the first tour i ever did on the west coast, in the summer of 1998.

at the time, i had just finished my second year of college, and i was on my way to that rite of passage known as “time off”. but before i settled in for a fall of finding myself, i decided to play on the west coast. i had a few friends in LA who helped me get my first gig- at a place called “fais dodo”. i made calls and sent packages and eventually hooked up enough gigs to get me to seattle.

even though i was 21, i somehow was able to rent a car, which i gigged out of all the way up the coast. i remember stopping for a few days in san luis obispo, where the gig came with a night at the local hostel. then it was on to san francisco (first gigs: a berkelely house concert, then the bearded lady). from san francisco, i ditched my rental and got on a greyhound bus heading north. i stopped for a gig in redding, before hitting eugene and portland. i stuck around for a few days with friends in portland then headed up to olympia, seattle, and bellingham, again by bus.

i met alot of musicians like myself- hungry, happy, making it work somehow. i crashed with friends and did a lot of walking. and i carried everything i needed in a frame pack, including a tiny guitar amp. i brought one guitar and rolled a cardboard box of cassettes along behind me, strapped to a folding cart.

i felt exhilarated, playing for 20, sometimes 25 people. i wasnt tired. sometimes, i was scared, especially when i had a lot of time to kill and no place to hang my hat. i kind of marvel looking back on it now. how did i know what to do? how did it all work out so well?

philly works!

2010-10-18T20:57:00.001-04:00

philly works. it’s that simple. my experience as a musician playing in the city of brotherly love has been the model of what’s supposed to happen, when it’s supposed to happen, how it’s supposed to happen.

early on, i got hooked up with my friend jesse lundy, who was promoting with the awesome rich kardon at the point. they believed in me when i was still a wee pup figuring out my show. they set me up in little coffeehouses and opening for bigger acts in places like the TLA, until i graduated to my own shows at the point.

one of my favorite stories ever as a musician began one night at the point. i had heard susan werner at a folk festival in the summer of 1998. she blew my mind. i began to study her records and shows like a med student cramming for boards. i found out that she lived near the point, and through friends, had contacted her to invite her to a show i was playing there that fall. i put her name on the guest list that night, and after the show, i scanned the buzzing crowd hopefully, looking for her. i didnt see her, and felt disappointed that she had somehow missed the show.

about a week later, i went to my PO box in providence and found an envelope with a mainline return address. it was a typewritten note from susan werner! she had seen my show, but slipped out when the lights came on. she was so complementary and supportive and funny and tough, too. getting that letter was one of the sweetest moments of my young artistic life.

a few months later, i got the opportunity to open for susan at another special philly spot, the tin angel. it was the first of many nights on that fabulous, tiny stage. i got to watch a master work that room, and i took in every detail. 12 years later, susan is one of my closest friends, and our relationship has evolved way past my hero-worship.

just like new york, it was radio that changed everything for me in philly. bruce warren at WXPN and david dye at world cafe took a shine to “blackbirds”. they played my music, put me on their festivals, gave me so many fantastic opportunities to get in front of their loyal listeners. i’ll be forever grateful.

10 years later, i wouldnt be able to still be going strong without the belief and support of stations like WXPN. neither commercial, nor public, the listener supported model of radio is flexible, local, and responsive and grows relationships between artists and listeners.

from great promoters, to artistic heroes, to loyal radio support, philly has always been there for me. thanks philly!!

WFUV and Making It in the Cit-tay

2010-10-11T20:58:00.001-04:00

this week’s download is “la petite mort” (or “the oh estelle” song), from the original versionof Distillation. it tells the story of a wedding day gone wrong!

……

i went to school in providence RI, a medium-sized city with a gritty arts scene and a surrealist bent to its public art. living in a city was a new experience for me. i had grown up in a small town in virginia, and, at the time, it was far enough away from DC to feel like its own entity. today, with the swell of cookie cutter housing developments, it’s harder to make that argument.

i started my career in high school, and by the fall of my freshman year in providence, i was in full swing. i didnt have a car, but i could “tour” by taking the bus to boston, or northampton, philly, or… new york. i’d been to the City a few times as a kid, and then later to visit some older high school friends. but starting to play there seemed daunting.

what i remember most is how often i went. multiple times a month. and i also remember playing a lot for free or for tips plus a modest guarantee. there was that epic night in brooklyn with my friend trina hamlin where i took my shirt off during my set in an effort to get people to shut up and listen. there were many nights on the matchbox sized stage at postcrypt, under columbia. and a little later there were many nights at the old living room, on the corner of stanton and allen. i would be one of 5 acts that night, slowly getting more and more people to pay attention. i also dipped my toe into the sacred waters of the bottom line, opening for anyone they asked me to.

everything changed for me in new york when “distillation” came out. “blackbirds” marked my entry onto radio playlists for the first time. and for the first time i began to see how powerful radio could be. what radio did in a few months would have taken me years to get to on my own.

so i feel incredibly grateful that “blackbirds” caught the ear of my friend rita houston and WFUV. in new york, if you’re listening to songwriters, you are listening to WFUV. over the years, they’ve cultivated one of the coolest, most loyal, and fun audiences i have ever played for.

i remember one night, at the old knitting factory on ludlow. it was my first real headlining show at a proper venue in new york. i had my band, and one of my favorite songwriters, veda hille, was on the bill with me. standing center stage in a quiet moment, i was able to take a second and appreciate what i saw before me. to a packed crowd on the floor, and the people filling the little balcony, i said, “thanks FUV for playing my music!” the roar that greeted me was tremendous.

10 years later, celebrating “distillation” at the highline ballroom, i’m so happy to also celebrate my relationship with FUV. they’ve grown with me and continued to support my music through all it’s own left turns. the music business is a complicated and delicate tightrope walk, but i thank FUV for taking the risks with me.

light up the series of tubes + be a virtual audience member + free download of “queen of quiet”

2010-09-28T21:00:00.002-04:00

this week’s download is “queen of quiet (fancy radio mix)” – a remix from an EP of the same title. the original song appeared as the first track on “distillation”

……….

last summer, i had an idea: why not broadcast over the internet a series of concerts from my rural cabin and use them as a fundraiser for my next album? cabin fever seemed like a pretty simple and clever way to raise money and give listeners a unique experience.

turns out i loved webcasting. i got to interact with listeners in a new and intimate way. i got to act like a TV presenter or old-fashioned master of ceremonies. i got to bring in amazing friends as special guests. i got to create a visual style to match my music. i also got to solve audio and other technical problems. i love figuring out how to make things work!

i’ve been wanting to do another webcast and the “distillation anniversary tour” is an awesome opportunity to continue exploring how we can all use the internet for new creative purposes.

so, on oct 20, 9p EST, you can tune in and watch one of the “distillation anniversary tour” shows, live from chicago’s lincoln hall. like cabin fever, this webcast will be super interactive. there’ll be a chat window and twitter feed, and you’ll be able to request songs for the second set (remember, the first set will be distillation in its entirety).

but i also wanted to step up the visual experience. this time, there will be 3 cameras, a video montage made up of clips you send in, and we’ll be pulling in live feeds from fans all over the world. plus you’re going to get to hang with me backstage during the setbreak. in a few months, we’re going to offer an HD archive version that will have all kinds of extra footage. i even get to write a theme song and the bumps that will take us in and out of setbreaks.

to help me up the ante, i’ve partnered with web.illish.us, multidisciplinary design studio that produces live webcast experiences. it’s run by a fire-cracker of a woman, dejha ti. i met dejha last year at the future of music policy summit. we quickly recognized in each other kindred artistic and political souls.

dejha’s company and i are sharing the investment and splitting an equal profit from the webcast. we are sharing the risk and the reward in order to build a longer term relationship. i could have easily employed web.illish.us and funded the webcast myself. or, like many artists, i could have found corporate sponsorship for my event. partnering with web.illish.us is not only a choice to support and develop with a company i believe in, it also affords us creative tools not limited by my budget.

if you’re still reading this far, thank you! this webcast also fits into important work that i’ve been doing around maintaining a free and open internet. i’ve long been a public supporter of net neutrality. here’s a quick primer, but basically it describes a free and open internet absent of gatekeepers and artificial bottlenecks of service or access.

i have made deliberate choices in my career to maintain an honest and open relationship with listeners and to give them new and exciting music that is affordable. i have partnered with companies that i believe in and worked with people i trust. my webcasts are an extension of this philosophy. thus in the current climate of media monoliths and invisible hands, i see webcasts from independant artists as radical tools.

ever notice how when a company like american express sponsors a web event, it doesn’t cost anything? but think for a moment. do you really think it’s free? by allowing american express to brand and pay the overhead for a webconcert (whether the artist receives a fee or not), that artist has essentially sold their fanbase to american express. this sets up a disturbing trend. only artists with large financial (read: corporate) backing are able to offer these “free” experiences. just like in the old fashioned music industry, this has very real creative implications for the “have-nots”, those of us not on major labels or associated with other media conglomerates.

your webcast ticket price is going to myself and dejha, two women who are building relationships and companies that are outside the mainstream. in turn, we’re giving that money to the venue, lincoln hall, who is hosting us. to the crew who is filming. to the band that is playing. to cover our gas, our flights, our cameras and guitars. do the math and you’ll guess correctly that we’re not turning a profit or selling your attention to another company. your $8 means more than watching a webcast, it is a vote for a responsible, transparent, and creative experience. web.illish.us and i want you to be there!

download of “easy baby” + remembering my first gig at passim

2010-09-17T21:02:00.001-04:00

this week’s download is “easy baby”- recorded from the stage of club passim, cambridge MA on 7 december, 1997 and broadcast live on boston’s WERS. it’s part of “small deviant things, vol.1 1997-99″, my handmade archival series.

……..

in exactly a week, i’ll be heading over to boston to do a radio appearance on WERS and play a gig at club passim as part of the Anniversary tour. i feel incredibly lucky that my first time on the famous passim stage was broadcast live and documented for posterity. i can guarantee that on that cold sunday afternoon in 1997 i was not imagining what it would be like to play at passim 12 years later, i was just thrilled for the gig.

at the time, i was in my sophomore year of college in providence. i’d been seriously playing out for about 2 years. i’d made my first demo cassette (anybody out there have a copy?), and i was running my career myself. i spent a lot of time sending out packages and calling folks asking for gigs. passim was like the promised land; it was a real venue in a real city. i’d just played my first real new york gig at the postcrypt, was a regular already at northampton’s fire and water, but i hadn’t cracked boston or the venerable passim. i couldn’t even get my calls returned.

sunday afternoons, passim did a writers-in-the-round showcase and ERS broadcast it live. as i remember it, an old friend of mine, the songwriter andrew calhoun, called and mentioned that another artist (i’ve since forgotten who) had cancelled at the last minute. could i get up to passim in time to take her place in the round?

i remember being so concerned about whether i “belonged” in this historic home of folk music that i made a joke about it onstage. i wondered whether using my wah-pedal was sacrilege in that space. i was definitely overcompensating to prove i belonged no matter how adventurous my sound, because i actually hate wah-pedals and cant remember ever using one again.

so i slipped in through passim’s back door, literally and figuratively. in the years since, i have played numerous times on the campfire weekends and have settled into a yearly visit of 2 or 3 or 4 shows. not counting the times i have sat in with friends, it’s added up to many many appearances on that tiny stage.

right alongside the iron horse in northampton, the tin angel in philly, and cafe du nord in san francisco, passim has been the site of some pretty incredible moments for me. i’ve debuted songs there, completely flopped there, gotten standing ovations, and been surprised by what’s come out of my mouth (anyone remember my dream about theo epstein?). bringing “distillation” back to a stage where it was first welcomed is going to be a real treat.

Asheville NC + the story of the dress

2010-09-07T21:04:00.001-04:00

it’s finally here! today i head to asheville NC to start the “distillation” anniversary tour. i’ll be performing the record in sequence for the first time, solo, for an intimate audience in a tiny theater. pressure? i’ll let you know.

i don’t remember the first time i played asheville, but i know i’ve been going there regularly since “distillation” came out, and it’s a town i have always felt at home in. i wanted the anniversary tour to stop in towns where i’ve built my best and biggest audiences, so asheville is a great place to kick off.

…

a couple weeks ago, an odd question popped into my mind. when was the last time i put on the dress i wore on the cover of my first record? hmmm, not since the photo shoot, 10 years ago. and then i wondered, does it still fit? i rummaged around my house until i found it again, in a box under a box at the bottom of a pile of sartorial bits saved from all points in my 32 years.

i’ve been planning the “distillation 10th anniversary” for a couple months now, but it wasnt until i tried putting on the dress that the anniversary became real. looking at myself in the mirror, wearing what had been so 2-dimensionally familiar for so many years, i suddenly felt like i stepped right back into the record cover.

10 years ago, i ran out the door of my loft apartment in providence, late for a photo shoot with my friend pam murray. i ran into my building-mate, beth, in the stairwell.

“do you want to borrow anything for your shoot?” she asked.

i had a few pieces of clothing, a tape deck that looked like an old radio, and my friend keith’s cowboy hat in my hand. other than that, i didn’t have much of a vision for my record cover.

“sure, got anything good?” i said.

i stood in the door of her apartment as she rummaged around.

“you want this dress? it doesn’t fit me.”

“sure.”

“you want some stockings? though they might be too fancy.”

“sure.”

“how about my banjo?”

“i don’t play banjo, but sure.”

during the shoot, pam and i used every single thing i brought, in different combinations. pam had a giant green chair in her studio, and the dress, with its little pattern of green and blue flowers looked good against it. i put on the stockings beth thought might be too fancy, and, all stretched out, they kept falling below my knees.

“oh well,” i thought, “it’s a look.”

of all the things i might remember about what turned out to be an iconic and successful shoot, what i remember most is that i had bought my first tube of lipstick at CVS so i’d look professional. i’d never worn, let alone bought, lipstick before. without realizing, i bought a garish and unnatural pink. i remember crouching in front of a reflective surface and gamely smearing some on while pam set up her lights.

“distillation” was my first attempt at a lot of things. recording an album. designing its look. embarking on this new life as a professional musician. putting on lipstick for the first time.

what you don’t know can’t possibly hurt you. in fact, regarding “distillation”, i’d say that what you don’t know would only get in the way.

Rachel Maddow and I Write a Song Via Text

2010-09-06T21:02:00.006-04:00

yes, it's true. maddow, an old friend from the 413, made time in her busy schedule and corresponded with me via text on the subjects of the gulf, oil, iraq, and the ways everything is all connected. i took our conversation, wrapped it up in a slow second line, and called it a song. my new friends barkuna backed me up, and we debuted it in the low-pressure confines of The Town Hall, NYC. all of this to benefit the American Bird Conservancy. watch how it turned out below. the lyrics as they were written (but maybe not sung) are below that:

from baghdad to the bayou
in the desert or plaquemines
for every gallon of oil drilled
we wanna know where the payoff is
in the strip mines or the lower 9th
fallujah to la fourche
for every gallon of oil spilled
we're gonna organize for truth

who is watching the watcher?
whose hand is in the pie?
who is reaping profits
on the back of our coastline?
for every feather oiled
for every katrina refugee
for ever soldier in harm's way
we want accountability

"Distillation" 10th Anniversary Project + Tour

2010-09-01T15:47:00.003-04:00

this week, i'm kicking off my "Distillation" 10th Anniversary Project + Tour. i have plenty o fun things planned (including a tour where i will recreate the album). watch the trailer and visit the "Distillation" Micro-Site for a free download of the original version of "Blackbirds". PASS IT ON!!

cast

2010-06-02T14:50:00.007-04:00

all photos by kristin angel. copywrite 2010 the august company.

i've been keeping a secret these last three months.

no, i'm not pregnant.
no, i'm not ill.

no, my secret is, i've become an actor. like a baby found in a cave and then raised by wolves as one of their own, i joined the august company, a local theater ensemble, and acted in their latest show.

ever since i was a kid, i've dreamt about being in plays. i never dreamt about being a musician; it was just something that happened along the way. growing up, i suffered paralyzing stage fright that kept me from performance camp or community theater. it was ordeal enough to play a concert in the middle school band or the smallest piece in my yearly piano recital.

my senior year in high school, i bit the bullet and took Drama I. every day on the way to third period, i would take a quick detour into the girls room and throw up a little. i was wrecked with fear and anxiety. people in my family did NOT draw attention to themselves. and god forbid, if they were recognized for anything, that they might enjoy the spotlight. in my dreams, i easily broke this unspoken rule. in real life, it was much harder.

my theater teacher must have seen something in me that i couldn't see because she cast me in our one act play festival entry, and later as an evil stepsister in the senior class production of "cinderella" (worst musical ever)(why couldn't they have done "annie get your gun"? i would have nailed that sucker).

i began to slowly get over my anxiety about being on stage. playing music helped. for some reason, it was easier for me to stand up in front of an audience alone and sing a song i wrote about my deepest feelings, than it was to dress up in costume and pretend to be someone else.

in the intervening 14 years, i've spent the better part of my days on stage. i love it and routinely do things up there that surprise even me. the transformation from scaredy-cat to entertainer is still a mystery to me.

so imagine my horror to find, as i drove to my first read through this march, that i was full-on nervous. it had been years since i had gotten nervous for anything. not even playing solo to 10,000 people or being on late-nite TV. yet there i was with a gnawing pit in my stomach, my mouth getting drier by the second.

i thought i conquered this! i thought being in a play would be no big deal, that the hardest part was finding time in my schedule. apparently, i was back at square one with fear and anxiety.

over the last three months, i've experienced a crazy train of emotions. my first rehearsals were exercises in anxiety management. i'd wake up in the morning and have to trick myself into eating (crossword puzzles help). once i got to rehearsal, i'd feel my body- which has always been a reliable extension of my voice and musicality- betray me. i'd feel frozen and small, when i wanted to be warm and big.

my therapist offered me some choices:

THERAPIST
you could quit.

ME
no, i cant, these are my friends. and i'd be letting so many people down.

THERAPIST
if you fell down the stairs and broke your legs, you would have to quit, so...

ME
no, i cant quit.

THERAPIST
ok, then think about this. what kind of grade are you trying to get in this play?

oh, right. i am always trying to do things best. my ego works that way. it always has. sometimes it's made me crazy successful, sometimes it's been downright crippling. but in that instant, i was able to deflate and understand i was a student in a generous and soft classroom. no one was expecting me or needing me to be spectacular. i exhaled, and that's when things started to change.

about halfway through the rehearsal process, it became clear that the company needed some help with the music they wanted to do for the show: a cover of a righteous everly brothers tune, "gone", and an a capella adaptation of the traditional "wind and rain". it was no big deal for me to jump in and help make those moments musical. in fact, it reminded me that even if i was new or inexperienced or just plain paralyzed by this acting thing, i could contribute to the company and help make this show great.

something started to loosen in me. i stopped trying to high jump my limits, and i started to simply walk up to them. i accepted that i only had as much experience as i had, and that it was a long time ago. i let go of trying to compare what i thought i knew from being a musician, and i asked for help.

my fear retreated to a manageable level. by the time we got to running the whole show, i was simply busy. first i sang and played guitar, then i moved some set pieces around, provided an offstage line. Next i was on stage for a tiny monologue, a two-hander, an ensemble scene, then sang another song. and then it was over.

i have rarely felt so satisfied in a creative situation. to get to use all my skills in a 90 minute show was a complete joy. and i did find a few things that my musical experience helped with: second shows are always looser (ie, better); dont forget to warm up; "hurry up and wait" is an art to itself.

and now, about those wolves. i spend so much creative time alone. i write alone, travel alone, more often than not, perform alone. to get to share the love and the work of putting on an evening of entertainment was a revolution for me. and to be accepted by folks who are much much better at this thing called acting was the ultimate complement. it was like finding a big ole circus family that needed my particular act and fitting right in.

we musicians are a wierd bunch, but the story we tell is that actors are even wierder. they throw great parties, but otherwise they're just freaky. i think i understand why now.

being onstage is like getting really really high. honestly, it is the best high ever, and i have tried a few. like any good drug, once you've tasted it, you spend the rest of your life chasing down that first feeling. a favorite phrase of mine about drinking illustrates this:

"a martini is the closest thing to a spiritual experience, that isnt."

which is to say that we humans are really looking for something greater than ourselves, something outside our quotidian perspective and experience. drugs help, but ultimately fall short. i think the thing that happens between an audience and a performer comes even closer. to give a good show or to see a good show is to breathe a special air for a few moments. it charges us, inspires us, leaves us different.

as a musician i have experienced this high and found its release to be part of the show too. the physical act of playing an instrument or singing, somehow helps me not to get overwhelmed with this energy. i exhaust myself even as i rev myself up. like a good joint, time slows down and softens. then you come down, then you do it again the next day, ad infinitum. yet, as an actor, i found myself flying high in a new way, like doing lines of coke or way way way too much coffee. it built slowly over months of rehearsal, and reached a frenzy in a too-short run of 4 shows. i had trouble finding a way to release that electricity. what could i do with myself to come down?

cast party.

and so i found myself on saturday night packed elbow to elbow in a crowded kitchen. the music was loud, the people were boisterous, and i was bouncing around amongst it all like a happy pinball. the sweet tea sloshed about in my plastic cup as i hugged and thanked and laughed with a roomful of new friends.

and guess what? it's no surprise to this kid, but i want to do it again, and again, and again.

the august company cast for "gone":
pam victor, mark teffer, claire kavanah, kelsey flynn, amy koske, liesel de boor, rachel braidman, julian olf, scott braidman, sheila siragusa, kerry strayer, steve angel, dennis quinn

the drinking clock

2010-02-12T12:04:00.004-05:00

howdy web deizens! i am spending a day in my house for the first time in... well since ireland, uk, italy, france, pennsylvania, ohio, indiana, and michigan. whew!

last night i played a benefit for haiti at UMASS-amherst. i got to sing with the young@heart chorus, hang with my old friend martin sexton, listen to lenelle moise's amazing new poem about michael jackson, and meet an ambitious young acapella group, sonos.

i also saw the following tucked in a corner of the fine arts center prop shop. i stared at it for awhile, wondering exactly how this won-drous machine could possibly work. then i wondered if it was a joke. what do you think???

the thaw

2010-01-09T23:14:00.005-05:00

i was writing about dancing yesterday. it's been on my mind lately, how i use my body to react to music. sometimes i get frustrated that i have an instrument hanging on my neck so often. my favorite moments on stage are ones where i can put down whatever it is i am holding and move unfettered.

i wrapped up cultureweek2010 last night with a night of dancing to new orleans bands. perhaps because the APAP conference is this week, the musical offerings this weekend were vast. a new friend from new orleans was here in town, so i tagged along while she went around visiting her hometown bands.

after an amazing ethiopian dinner at meskerem, we started at sullivan hall. john ellis, paul sanchez, jason marsalis, and christian scott all took the stage in some form or other. there was tuba, trumpet, harmonica, vibes, and more, all mixing it up. it was early in the evening, and the crowd was moving like they needed more drinks. me too. i hadnt been to a club to just dance in awhile. you have to dance to new orleans music, but it took me a second to get going.

by the time we transfered to the bitter end to see rosie ledet, things had changed. i was feeling looser, and so were the hundred plus people packed into that tiny club.
i played at the bitter end once in 1997. i met one of my oldest friends that night, and duncan sheik tried to buy my $5 cassette with a $100 bill. i just gave him the cassette. wonder if he even remembers?

so we danced and danced to rosie as she played traditional zydeco music. more than once, i stopped dancing to think, this reminds me of afrobeat. both musics are primarly for dancing. they have simple forms. percussion and drone are key components. the washboard and the shekere clatter underneath the music and form a constant backbone. and the music just goes and goes. every song must have been at least 6 or 7 minutes. i really have no idea exactly because i danced until i got sweaty, which was a fantastic feeling in the middle of january.

i hate the way my body feels this time of year. and i hate the way my body feels when i dont get to loosen up and let go with music like rosie's. it took me a week, but i eventually warmed up and thawed out.

just.fucking.dance.

2010-01-08T22:15:00.008-05:00

every time i set about writing today, i find myself distracted. i was never the kid who put off writing the paper. i was the cranker who turned it out in one sitting two or three days ahead of time and then coasted into the due date. i dont want to think about my blog as homework, but i am starting to feel that way. i felt the same way the other day when i had to write up a set of comments on net neutrality and my internet usage for the FCC. i kept finding reasons not to write. why? am i really that obstinate these days that any whiff of assignment, even self-imposed, results in intractibility? (by the way, you too can file comments with the FCC. instructions here, due on jan14th)

someone either here or on FB recommended the museum of art and design (thank you!), which has an especially attractive pay-what-you-wish thursday option. i went last night with my friend moose, a gifted producer and composer. we each paid $10 and saw a fabulous exhibit of paper sculpture.

both "paper" and "sculpture" were terms taken loosely by the curators. the show featured so many interpretations of that intersection, it was mind boggling. can you really do that with paper? i kept asking myself over and over. the advent of the laser certainly helped. many of the most detailed sculptures were made using high-tech cutting technology. but as a whole, paper as a material seemed to inspire the very basic aesthetic of accumulation. monstrous stacks were laser cut or lathed; tiny cuts on yards of paper added up to vast scenes; a multitude of quaker oats boxes stretched from floor to ceiling; minuscule paper rolls became a table top size floral mosaic.

here's my favorite, Jane South's Wall:

after grabbing a quick bite in columbus circle with moose, i headed downtown to meet the swede, an old old friend and mentor. the swede has recently been hired to write a broadway musical. what an assignment! i dont even know where you would begin, but if anyone can do it, the swede can.

i feel honored that the swede has shared a little of her process with me, and it's led to some really good conversations on the how and why of musical theater. we were talking last week about how broadway musicals sometimes try to manufacture emotion (or something with the appearance of emotion) via musically complicated songs and flashy stage craft. i've observed that i connect emotionally with music via rhythm. if it doesnt have some type of motion and depth rhythmically, i'm not engaged. this set the swede's mind turning. if this were true for more people than me (which i think it is, whether people are aware of it or not), how can this come to benefit a broadway show?

so the swede is here in NY now doing a version of her own culture week, taking notes on other musicals. she managed to get some tickets to the new musical "Fela!" and invited me to come along. i didnt know too much about the show, but i certainly knew that we'd get plenty of rhythm.

"Fela!" tells the story of the afrobeat pioneer and political agitator fela kuti. it's unusual as modern musicals go- there is no dialogue and there arent any scene changes. all the action takes place on the stage of fela's club "the shrine", and the only spoken words are by fela himself. the music is primarily pre-existing fela songs, with a few new bits thrown in for continuity and plot (warning: this musical has no plot, and i didnt care).

i have always loved afrobeat, specifically the drumming and the horns. you can hear both the influences of afrobeat (funk, jazz, hi-life, cuban) and what it has gone on to influence (modern funk and hip-hop, rock, and beyond). in some ways, afrobeat is a linchpin in 20th century music, everything rotates around it. does anyone agree, disagree?

the music of fela survives broadway-ification surprisingly intact. part of that is because core members of antibalas, the brooklyn based modern afrobeat collective, are the house band. and somehow, the simple explanatory style of fela's music lends itself extraordinarily well to the broad gestures of big-time broadway. broadway composers tie themselves in knots trying and failing to write songs that have as much clarity and emotion as fela's music.

broadway lends itself so well to spectacle because it's the one form that marries dance and song inextricably. most purely musical performance doesnt feature movement and most dance performance either works with musical forms besides song or breaks apart the song form with gestures. it was invigorating to see music that i love simply reacted to. it was not re-contextualized, not broken apart, not re-interpreted. the dancers moved as you would have thought they should, feeding on the inherent elements of the music and amplifying them physically without commenting on them. perhaps that sounds like a missed opportunity, but i think it's actually the more entertaining and emotionally engaging choice. if the music makes you want to dance, then just. fucking. dance.

if you can find a way to see "fela!" you must. it absolutely blew me away- eye candy and ear candy and heart candy.

elevate, escalate, remember

2010-01-07T15:04:00.009-05:00

i got home last night from a friend's birthday party in the far away land of the Upper West Side, and was too tired to type. a contributing factor i am sure was the pounds of italian food i ate at gennaro. squid-blackened risotto, kale salad, truffle salad, more gnocchi, octopus salad, fettuchini bolognase, then mousse, flan, and tiramisu. happy birthday jane!

i finished up "zeitoun" the other night, tearing through the 4th segment of the book like a mad-woman. i needed to know what happened more than i needed to sleep. i love books like that, even though they make my head ache from all that reading and leave me short of breath from all that excitement. i am contemplating a move to new orleans, and a book like "zeitoun" mostly makes me want to live there. i have always wanted to be a part of the type of community that has formed there. although there is a part of me that is consistently horrified by every new story i hear about katrina-related atrocities, i also wonder if an event like the flood has to define a city forever. i suppose like any place, there's gonna be ups and downs, and new orleans just happened to have had a very very famous down. i need to think more on this.

so instead of reading last night, i decided to watch a film. the first one i saw on the shelf was "ladysmith black mambazo: on tip toe". i could do a whole entry on this documentary. maybe i will when i dont have too many other things to get to in this one. like most people, i heard of LBM when i saw them with paul simon on SNL back in 1985. "graceland" had just come out, and paul simon was BIG. i was too young to catch any of the debates swirling around the record (politics, expoitation) and i still havent resolved my feelings on all that (and i have a damn ethnomusicology degree).

what i remembered about that performance then is what also struck me last night watching this film. i am so taken with the substance of joseph shabalala's music- its subjects of god and hope, it's harmonic form, and the choreography. something about the dance language that LBM employs always catches me. i love the synchronicity, i love the small movements in time broken by bigger athletic gestures, the freeze-frame posturing and then the supple way the pose is broken.

the movie traces the history and influences of the isicathamiya style of singing and gives a brief timeline of the group. watching it, i couldnt help but think about another movie, paris is burning, about a similiar way that dance, fashion, and performance competition fufill a distinct social function in a culture. can someone with more time compare and contrast these two films? i know wont get to it until the spring, and i think there's something really rich there.

my big cultureweek2010 adventure yesterday was to go to the guggenheim with my friend Z, a wondrously talented musician, writer, and painter. she's got an eye and a mouth on her, all the better to view and provide running commentary.

the exhibit in the main hall of the guggenheim was a kandinsky retrospective. one of the first artists to be collected by the guggenheims, the show worked its way in a roughly chronological manner as you walked up and up and up toward the top of the rotunda.

i didnt know much about kandinsky, but it didnt matter because i like any experience of visual art. i especially like to see where someone's biography intersects their output. perhaps it is not fair to wonder where someone was living, who they were sleeping with, what they were listening to, what were they were reading might have affected their creativity (god knows i get cranky when people do it to me), but i find myself hungry to have that information as i look at a person's collected work.

i dont have all that much to say about kandinsky's actual art, but that i liked where it arrived by the time he died. as he closed in on his earthly end, he had discovered bio-morphic forms and pastel colors. picture ernst haeckel meeting bed bath and beyond, which is surprisingly engaging.

i'd never been to the guggenheim before and was completely stunned and overwhelmed by the space. i have rarely been in architecture that inspires such a physical reaction (see my entry ages ago on the jewish museum in berlin). but as i walked up and up and up into the museum, my heart raced, my head spun, and my mood shifted from calm and grounded, to ethereal and floating. i almost wanted it to stop because i felt like at any moment i would teeter over and fall... where?

one of the gifts of the space too is looking down through the spiral and catching glimpses of work that you saw a few minutes earlier. the feeling is a physical translation of memory. with distance, you see something differently. with distance, you can see a lot of things at once. because of the spiral, you walk a few more feet and look again, and some things that were near are now further, and vice versa. here's a pic i took from the top before the security guard made me stop.

speaking of memory, my favorite piece of art in the whole museum (and perhaps my favorite thing i have experienced all week) was anish kapoor's installation "memory". i wish i had written down my thoughts on seeing it before i watched this little movie about it, because the curator and the artist of course explain it more eloquently than i can, but i will say the following:

i was struck by the size of the object, and its relatively organic feel despite being made of giant steel plates bolted together. it was as though a big construction crane had laid a quivering steel egg in the too small room at the museum.

Z and i approached it from the outside on two different sides before we saw what the artist called the "aperature". approaching it, from a room filled with picasso and gaugin, i thought it was a modern rothko-type painting- a giant 2-D canvas that explored the color black. but as i got closer, i realized i was looking into a giant void, and that void was the interior of the sculpture. i took my glasses off, as if that would help; i stepped closer and further, nothing helped me make sense of what i was seeing. slowly, as my eyes got used to the darkness i could begin to discern the curved steel walls receding into an interior that was too big and too far away for definition.

thank you Art for the way you can disorient and dislodge my day-to-day.

intermission

2010-01-05T23:29:00.002-05:00

i spent the day stuck in front of my computer and on the phone dealing with Real Life. no worries, after a day of nose to the digital grindstone, i think i got done almost everything i needed.

i did go out to dinner in manhatten at frankies 17. there is one in brooklyn too. amazing italian food. we had beets and meatballs with raisins and tiramisu and cheesecake.

i was joined by my friend, the irish director jimmy fay. he's got a new sam shepard play opening at the atlantic next week. i'm not going to get to see it until later in its run, but it promises to be, as they say, a corker. jimmy is one of the smartest, deepest guys i know, and that's from only hearing about half of what comes out in his crooked irishman's accent. imagine if i understood everything he said.

translations from the good book

2010-01-04T22:33:00.005-05:00

i woke up today feeling hungover and tired from all the stuff i have been pouring into my days. besides my cultural diet, i am also gorging on old friends and long catch-ups. so i took today easy, kind of.

when my friend c.Love and i had coffee this morning, i asked her if she was doing anything interesting tonight.

"yes, trans, dolly, gospel."

that's really all i heard, because i got so excited by what she was describing.

"stop," i said."i want to be surprised."

so i ended up tonight at joe's pub in manhatten seeing an incredible transwoman perform the gospel-oriented repertoire of dolly parton, complete with 7 piece band and choir.

it's so rare that i see something i knew nothing about ahead of time, and i think it's a major contributor to being blown away. i dare say, that only the first time or the hundreth time you see a performer, it has the potential for real transcendance.

our lady J got me tonight. she re-arranged and re-contextualized songs like "the grass is blue", "traveling", "two doors down", "9-5", "the seeker", "i will always love you", combining hits and more obscure tracks, switching between secular and non-secular music. not only was she a killer piano player and arranger, she had 4 costume changes! i was taking notes.

listening to song after song, i was also struck by the depth of the writing. that was the real brilliance of the show for me and what makes dolly parton such a rich vein to mine for comment. not only does she write with humor and flair and craft, she also writes from a deeply spiritual place that anyone can connect to. it's tempting to love dolly parton ironically, for her exagerated appearance, for her gaudy production values, for all her shiny country sheen, but that's all sequins to make people buy things. only later do we consumers realize there is the heart of a true artist beating underneath the costume.

it's really important to me that we make a space in our culture for people who don't fit in narrow boxes, who would rather make their own categories. people like dolly parton. or our lady j. and that's how i think of myself, for sure. the category of erin. i am especially attracted to those who push at the gender spectrum, who shade it with finer and finer grades. when you combine that with good old fashioned show biz, then i'm a goner.

the spirituality of subtraction

2010-01-04T14:42:00.009-05:00

what happens when we take things away? i've been thinking a lot about that recently. perhaps part of it is because of the new year, and many resolutions involve giving something up. but i am thinking of subtraction as something even more fundamental and lasting than a new years diet. what happens when we abstain? what happens when we set limits for ourselves around consumption and accumulation?

i dont drink, smoke, or take drugs anymore. the subtraction of these items from my life has been miraculous. everything has shifted for me- my relationships to people, places, and things especially food, sex, and god. i am closer, clearer, and more present for all three. it's been a beautiful and i hope permanent shift.

i have always been a house purger. every once in awhile, i comb through my place and get rid of things. mostly clothes and shoes i no longer wear. but also music and books. i try to keep only what i need. i have three plates, a few glasses, 2 pots, and just enough cutlery. i find that when i want something i used to have or i need, i like looking at why i wanted it in the first place.

some of my subtractions are temporary. i like to give up meat every once in awhile. it gives my wallet a break and my intestines too. i feel lighter somehow. and then when i pick the meat back up, i feel my muscles rejoice at the new fuel. i also like to fast. i usually do a seasonal cleanse of some sort. it's great for me to think about my relationship with food and get a big old re-set by shifting that around regularly.

i saw two shows yesterday that seemed to fit in with my current thoughts on subtraction. the first was "wishful drinking", carrie fisher's one woman broadway show about her life. based on her memoir of the same name (which i listened to in the van on tour), she hilariously recounts her family history, her mental illness, and her addiction and recovery. i always find it inspiring when people share their addiction memories, though it's a very fine line to walk between engaging and off-putting. the writing in "wishful drinking" is so bulletproof and flawless, that it makes the very question of "is this naval-gazing self-centered bull?" completely irrelevent. see it or read it, now.

one of the things that carrie fisher regularly subtracts from herself is her memory. as a treatment for bi-polar disorder, she undergoes ECT, a modern version of shock therapy. one consequence is she often loses her short term memory (about 4 months of it). as she says, anything important that happened in the last 4 months will probably happen in the next 4 months too. for her, the trade-off is worth it.

i like this idea. i hold on to too much in my brain that i dont need. i am wondering how i can let go of more that i hold on to. in the same way i like to change my perspective on food or material posessions by subtraction, what can i let go of emotionally to live more in the moment? that's the question, right?

there is a song by one of my favorite bands, the bad plus, called "silence is the question". in my current thinking about subtraction, silence is the answer too. the space between notes, the quiet parts of the day. what happens when we remove the clatter?

after carrie fisher, i went to see the bad plus at the village vanguard. i'd never been to this historic club, as much as i have heard and loved plenty of recordings made there. i went with another musician, and we sat right up close, about 3 feet from the drum kit.

the bad plus- pianist ethan iverson, bassist reid anderson, and drummer dave king- create by deconstruction. or really, thats too kind a word. they create by exploding songs and letting the pieces fall where they may. sometimes the deconstruction is so sly that you guffaw out loud when you realize what they've done. other times, its so raw and volatile that you can only sit back and be overwhelmed by it.

the set last night was a mix a cheek and bombast, though leaning more heavily toward physical cascades of overlapping explosions. this most obviously manifests itself in the drumming of dave king, who gave a virtual clinic on the dissolution of beats and drum kits as we know them. however, occasionally, and for me, most importantly, silence became the question, and the trio deconstructed by placing big hunks of silence where there once was chaos. in those spaces, where king makes his kit sound like it is coming through your next-door-neighbors wall, where reid simply breathes and occasionaly plays a note, and iverson goes two finger, there is that shift of perspective that leads me to clarity. i feel the fast, the abstinence, and the clearing of my memory.

time waits for no woman

2010-01-03T00:21:00.007-05:00

i couldnt sleep last night. not because of being in a new place, or even the clatter of the F tracks outside my window, no, i couldnt sleep because i was reading "zeitoun" until the wee hours. I Could Not Put It Down. a gift, that book is. i mean, we all know whats gonna happen. a hurricane is coming, then a devastating flood. so what could be the hook? real lives painted in hyper color. i wish someone could take my day to day and go beyond reporting to commentating, contextualizing, and in short, elevating to literature, the daily sentences of life.

it made sense then to start my day at the strand in manhatten. as i was wandering about, i spotted a celebrity or two, including gretchen phillips, the punk-rock queere-core legende. after perusing the stacks a little more ( i bought nothing, she art books and the autobiography of helen keller), we decided to get some lunch.

a short hop away was souen, macrobiotic and beautiful asian food. i'd been there before, but didnt realize until i walked in the door and saw the split level layout. i love their grain coffee, a chicory and root combo that lives somewhere between coffee and tea. it reminded me of the tea that the spaceship heart of gold tries to make for arthur dent in the hitchhikers guide. something "very like" coffee, but not quite.

i ordered "boxB" which was full of rice balls, pickles, seaweed, and salmon in ginger. i forgot to take a picture i was so hungry. halfway through, i remembered i was trying to blog about my week. document, erin, document!

thus here is a picture of gretchen with two important pieces of trash we spotted. there is a pun in here somewhere. how about a newyorker style caption contest?

i was hoping to walk the highline, the new elevated park that just opened above 10th ave. but if you were in NYC today, you know that would have been downright stupid. it's so cold here, it's dangerous. mind you, not chicagojanuarycold (which is the coldest i have ever experienced, colder than my alaskan trips), but very very close. fuck you windy cold air.

back in brooklyn, i ate dinner with my friend dame-o at flatbush farm. is this a relation of the farm on adderly? dam-o and i shared a salad with bacon then the ricotta gnocchi. my mom is straight up italian (parents born in italy) so i grew up knowing the proper way to say "gnocchi". it's not quite a silent "g", it's like youre still thinking of the "g" but dont need to say it.

i could have eaten myself silly and sat at the bar all night, but dam-o and i had other plans. we headed down flatbush to BAM to see my friend todd sickafoose's band. todd names his band based on his current album, so tonight, it was "tiny resistors".

i've known todd for a long time, and played with him alot. he's been a big part of my creative process- somehow being around and part of the writing of some of my best music. he plays on "sing you sinners", "lafayette", and he produced my sideproject, "emma". we also see eachother alot because he's been ani difranco's right-hand guy for years now.

the show was free and in the upstairs BAM Cafe space. i'd been to another show there a couple years ago, and the room was just as gorgeous as i remembered. an open industrial space, it's made more cozy by metal arches lined with thousands of tiny lights. the effect is something like a giant tin can with pinholes, or more elegantly, like a million little stars twinkling overhead.

todd always plays with an 8 piece ensemble. my brother erik deutsch was on the piano, and my good friend adam levy played guitar. last time i saw adam was on my tour with jill sobule. adam showed up just in time at our chicago show to jump onstage and kill on "survivor".

my favorite thing about todd's music is that it is open. i never think of form when i listen. i am not hearing a "head" or an "A section" or a "B section", i am simply hearing a sound that gets thinner or fatter, louder or softer, subdivided or elongated, depending. there is plenty of room for players to put their own personality into it, but no one voice ever dominates.

tonight, todd's music felt brawny to me. i heard something muscular and fierce in it that i have never heard before. like a big timber being heaved onto strong, thick shoulders and carried easily. i knew all the songs, but never felt like i had heard them before. it was entirely fresh to my ears. i closed my eyes a few times and thought of what i would play if i could join them. but, mostly i just swayed in my seat and took it all in.

culture week 2010

2010-01-01T22:20:00.005-05:00

for my vacation this year, i didnt choose to go to an island, someplace sunny, or even someplace warm. i chose instead to come to brooklyn for a week and pack in as much music, theater, art, and food as possible.

i have a friend who lives in carrol gardens. she has a fabulous little apartment not far from the F Train, where i've often stayed when i come to town. she's currently in africa, doing amazing political and activist type things, and she offered me her keys in exchange for watering her plants. i think i got the better end of the deal.

my plan is to be here for 8 nights and to pack every day with as much as i can hear, taste, and see. i regularly spend long stretches in brooklyn, but this time i am consciously setting out to overstimulate myself before i have to get back to work.

so, day one, i drove in and started out easy with an evening showing of guy ritchie's sherlock holmes. it's been awhile since i have been to a rock 'em sock 'em blockbusta. what a pleasure to turn off my mind and watch things explode. there was enough of a plot to hang some great fights on and plenty of eye candy (hello jude, and hello production designer) to satisfy me. sequel please. by the way, i dont know why but i am rooting for guy ritchie. was he done wrong by madge?

ok, how about some restaurant recommendations. i need an interesting dinner spot near BAM and a good sunday morning brunch spot (not too pricey) in midtown. also, what art should i see? anything special going on this week? hook me up!

PS: book for the week is zeitoun by dave eggers

top 11 moments of 2009

2009-12-24T11:43:00.008-05:00

in an effort to clear my decks and raise a metaphorical glass to the 365 days gone by, here's my listy of mem'ries from 09. by the way, i didn't think twice at the approach, but, um, the decade is over. wierd.

Andrew Bird @ Carnegie Hall sometimes you are just rooting for people. i have been an andrew bird fan since i was 19 and got turned onto him the summer i lived in chicago. in the intervening years, i have followed every note of every song, marveled at his evolution, and cheered every time more people found him. i wont claim any close friendship, but we are friendly, and it was pure joy to see a friend step onto the stage at carnegie and belong. more than belong, he molded that historic room to his singular vision. bravo!

angels@mariners, april, safeco field, seattle WA + mets@nationals, june, nationals park, DC you all know by now that i'm a sucker for beisbol. combine it with work, and i am a happy kitten. i got to two games this year while i was on tour, a low total for me, but at least they were in new parks, and i had great seats. at safeco, i munched on the garlic fries and walked the gorgeous open concourse that wraps the whole field. in DC, a light rainstorm let me sit first row, behind third base, for the whole game. david wright tossed me a foul ball at the end of an inning. i think he thought i was 12. oops, i dropped it.
read this cool blog on baseball camera-angles

beantown swing orchestra this year, my good friend sam got married. as part of his wedding, he wanted his musical friends to sing with a real, live, big band. turns out, the band he found, boston's 18-piece beantown swing orchestra, were big fans of mine. in the months leading up to the wedding, they let me sing with them a few times. i learned about 20 charts, and i learned that singing with a big band is like singing strapped to the front of a runaway 18-wheeler. something about the work of 3 set nights, of playing for dances and weddings, made me feel like i was running on the orpheum circuit, circa 1927. i felt like a trouper and i loved it.

New Orleans Artist Retreat with ATC/FMC in may, i got to spend three days in new orleans at an activism workshop. i met a slew of other amazing artists and got to see parts of new orleans i hadnt been to before. for me, that i got asked to be part of a group like that was a vote of confidence for my own nascent activist work. in short, i always wanted to, but didnt know how. air traffic control and future of music coalition have gave me the tools and then some.

Among The Oak and Ash Tour for three weeks in june, i got to be a bass player. that's it. nothing else. my friends garrison and josh invited me to fill in for a tour in their new band. their music is a beautiful mix of traditional apppalachian and modern punk rock. on paper, hmm, sounds clunky. in the air and on stage, it trancends categorization.

Cabin Fever Three, In the River of all the cabin fever episodes, this one was my favorite. perhaps it was the sheer impossibility of shooting a live web episode in 2 feet of flowing water. perhaps it was the long list of cool special guests. perhaps it was my neighbors gathering on the banks to cheer us on. perhaps it was getting to play songs about water in the water. perhaps it was getting baptised in the waters of the internets at the end. i dare say it was the proudest moment of my career.

Hike in Capital Reef National Park, Torrey UT i didnt get to do as much hiking/outdoor exploring as i would have liked this summer, but i was able to fit a little jaunt in the morning before my set at the Red Rock Women's Fest. gorgeous rocks, open space, and solitude. i do love this country.

Nature Camp Adult Session
through an old friend, i got to go back to my childhood summer camp and teach stringband in the adult session. i was in charge of the bass, mandolin, and guitar players. teaching music to non-musicians, or rather musicians who dont play anymore, was a challenge and a good reminder how blessed i am to be able to spend all my time making art. plus it was a trip to go back to summer camp and not have any rules.

Shoot for OUT Magazine 100
sometimes i get itchy about exclusively gay stuff. part of it is my pathologically fierce notion of "don't fence me in". perhaps its my growing attachment to a "queer" identity- as opposed to lesbian, bi, or straight but not narrow. in the end, i said yes to this honor, and got to spend an afternoon being fussed over by gay men and photographed by the lovely jason bell. i love how the picture came out, and i am proud to be included in such a diverse portfolio. they named me "the cool" girl. let me tell you, that was the furthest thing from who i was in highschool.

Ellnora Guitar Festival
my friend natalia zukerman and i got invited to be part of this fantastic weekend in champaign-urbana IL. as far as bang for the buck and diversity, this is the best guitar festival i've ever been to. there's a big tent called guitar, and i really liked all the people who fit under it.

FMC Conf / Lobby Day on Capitol Hill
as an extension of my new orleans time, i got to participate in the future of music policy conference. three days with smarty smarty people talking about more than theoretical mumbo jumbo. these are people who think about how to make the world better, then do it. one thing i have learned about activist work, narrow your focus and then concentrate. for me, that's led me to the question: how do we make the cultural job of Artist as viable and liveable as any other vocation? all my work is under the umbrella of answering that question!

fresh tracks

2009-11-29T01:20:00.002-05:00

isn't this new music world overwhelming? there is so much to listen to! as a rule, i don't read music magazines or look at taste-maker blogs. for me, they're a recipe for a disasterous bout of jealousy. since i work in the music industry, i prefer to hear about new music from non-industry types.

ahem erin, you say, you've painted yourself into a metaphorical corner.

ok, ok, so i don't really know how i find out about music, but like everyone else, at any given time there are a few records that are spinning heavily in my subconscious. for the final episode in this week's series, i'll share with you what i like these days.

"gospel legends" / "goodbye babylon" box set:
a month or so ago, i had an afternoon alone in a hotel room. as i was switching channels, i became mesmerized by an info-mercial for a compilation called "gospel legends". recorded live, it is a document of the convergence of 30+ contemporary gospel artists backed by a full-on choir and house-band. i ordered it on the spot, and i've been loving it alot lately. which also reminds me of another favorite gospel collection of mine: goodbye babylon. this 6 disc set collects obscure performances by both white and black gospel artists from the 20s and 30s. it's scratchy but more punk rock than any music being made today.

"erik deutsch's hush money":
full disclosure, erik deutsch is a close friend and one of my favorite musicians. he's made a name for himself with charlie hunter, norah jones, and a whole fistful of other talented people. his playing is bright and shiny without ever being cloying or cheesy. his usual band includes piano, bass, drums, guitar, oboe and saxophone. his newest, "hush money" adds a little grit, grime, and groove to his clear sound. my favorite song is called "dirty osso bucco". enough said. http://www.hammerandstring.com

"ocote soul sounds / coconut rock":
ocote is one of the many irons in the fire of musician martin perna. he's best known as one of the founders of antibalas, the seminal brooklyn afrobeat band, but his talent can't be contained in just one group. this record has all my favorite things: warmth, groove, and space sounds. check out "the revolt of the cockroach people".

"heartless bastards / the mountain":
a few years ago, i was setting up for soundcheck at one of my favorite venues, the tractor tavern in seattle. the soundguy had a record on that caught my ear. it was the heartless bastards first release, "stairs and elevators". i've been a big fan ever since. the first time i saw them live, i was worried that they couldn't match the energy and heft of their albums, but match it they did. the fact that they didn't excede their recorded sound is more a tribute to the brilliance of their records than a slam on their live show prow-ess. their newest, "the mountain", continues to scale the rock everest.

"regina spektor / far":
i don't have a lot to say about regina except that she is brilliant, and i love her. and the more i listen to "laughing with", the more i hear. did i already say, brilliant!

so, philadelphia, i'll see you tomorrow night at world cafe live. my friend jill sobule and i are gonna make you a show, and we've got a band to back us up. thanks for reading this week, and see you soon!

the lady of the house

2009-11-29T01:17:00.003-05:00

i am a reader, always have been. i can and do read anywhere: the car, on airplanes, at gigs, outside, inside, morning, noon, or especially at night. my idea of perfection is to climb into bed and read until the early hours of the morning.

i read some fiction, some poetry, but i am mostly a non-fiction junkie, especially biographies. some of my very favorites include my multiple judy garland tomes plus books on tab hunter, anita o'day, bette davis, rudolph valentino, and mary pickford. you see where my taste leans, no, perhaps topples.

recently, a friend gave me "mary todd lincoln: a biography" by jean h baker. yes, that's right, mary todd lincoln the wife of the asassinated president. i must confess, i love it. i haven't been able to put it down all week. in fact, when i have crawled into bed after long days of driving and shows, instead of falling gratefully to sleep, i am trying to prop my eyelids open so i can read more about the complicated, ornery, and desperate mary T.

it's unfortunate that MTL (as i like to call my new BFF) has been reduced by history to a grieved widow. dig just under the surface, and she becomes a nationally despised grieved widow. dig a little deeper, and you find a despised grieved widow who felt she was a role model and shopped for the part. and dig deeper than that long sentence, and you find a woman trapped in the limited space allowed for women in her time.

MTL was a highly educated, clever and charismatic chiid of kentucky royalty. her upbringing of privilege led her to the uncomfortable intersection of having learned to speak her mind and the burdensome assumption of marriage and child-rearing. in an era where women were beginning to be seen and heard, MTL outran the expectations of her sex. known for her vicious and accurate imitations, her strong political opinions often got her into private hot-water. known for her ostentatious dress, her unpaid shopping bills often led to back-room political patronage to settle them. had MTL lived even a generation later, she'd have had wider latitude for her bright and sharp personality.

books like this remind me i am lucky to be living in the 21st century. for all the crazy people who would like to limit or judge my lifestyle, i have plenty of space to ignore them and explore my self, unfettered. i think that's part of my wonder and fascination with MTL. i try to imagine myself in her time, and i just fail to see how i'd manage. for all her notoriety, mary todd lincoln was bound by her corsets, both metaphorical and physical.

by the way, thought i might finish with a list of a few of my favorite independent bookshops around the country. by no means definitive:

malaprops, asheville NC
elliot bay, seattle WA
powell's, portland OR
a room of one's own, chicago IL
kramer books and afterwords, washington DC

po-political adventures in the nation's cap-capital

2009-11-25T17:45:00.005-05:00

this is an edited excerpt from a much longer piece i am working on...

i think there is a mistaken air of rarification and mystery that surrounds capital hill and our senators and congress-people. it is a common misperception that somehow there are giant hurdles put in place to stop us from communicating directly with the people who are supposed to be representing us. we see them on TV, read about them online and in the papers, and perhaps in that way they seem as inaccessible as brad pitt or paris hilton. but twice now, i have gone on lobby days to the hill, met with senators, representatives, and representatives of the representatives and senators, and found the opposite to be true. all it takes is knowledge and time.

this year, i have begun working with organization called the Future of Music Coalition . FMC was started a few years ago by a group of artists, independent label owners, and lobbyists who wanted to create a pathway for artists to be involved in the political process. beyong the usual activities of playing benefits and tabling at shows, FMC bridges the gap between the concert hall and the congress.

our lobby day this october fell directly on the heels of the annual FMC policy conference. this year, i spent three days on panels and in workshops with other musicians, thinkers, internet people, and activists tossing around ideas and trying to make sense of the intersections of the current technology and music climates. i can't resist adding that during his keynote address, the FCC chairman Julius Genachowski name-checked me as someone who was "harnessing the power" of the internets with my Cabin Fever series . the chairman is a political appointee and as such is bound to be as boring and non-confrontational as possible, so i felt a little sheepish about being held up as an example, but as i am learning, "a foot in the door is a foot in the door". i'll take it.

on this most recent trip, we visited the offices of Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA), and Sen. Al Franken (D-MN). we were there to thank them for their support on a few key issues: increasing low power FM, protecting net neutrality, and the digital performance right. (for more info about these issues, see the FMC site). we also got to sit down in conference with Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI). Senator Feingold is an avid music fan, and he name-dropped a ton of obscure indie rock bands i had never heard of. who knew? in Representative Doyle's office, i was suprised to find his chief of staff is a big fan of mine, who was genuinely thrilled to meet me. who knew?

if you want to advance an issue and effect change on it, you need to find a champion- a representative or senator who will make your cause part of their portfolio of issues. for example, rep.Doyle has been a great champion of low-power FM radio. the tricky part is that every congress person has to balance a ton of interests and pressures. they may be your champion on one issue and your enemy on another. i've observed first hand that it's a complicated job, and things move slowly. for every victory there may be a setback, but over time with persistent energy, consistent ideology, and creative tactics, any everyday citizen has an opportunity to make change.

in political lobby-ing and activism, i have found the perfect marriage of my age-old dilemma between chafing at rules and wanting to be liked. in speechifying and rabblerousing on complicated technology and policy issues, i have found a way to own my cultural place as an artist without making activism the sole content of my art. it's a fine line and a delicate balance, but my most recent trip to capital hill confirmed my suspicions that it's the path i need to be on.

east coast / west coast feud

2009-11-25T17:28:00.011-05:00

i'm always a little sad when the van turns east and starts to head home. today, at 530am, we left los angeles to bang out a drive to denver in one day.

i grew up in virginia and have spent the last 10 years between rhode island and massachusetts, so i'm pretty firmly east coast. i've been touring since i was 17 (i'm 24 now)(just kidding, i'm 32), and i've traveled around the US in pretty much every direction and combination of geographies you can imagine. but, for economics and practicality, i always start my driving tours from home. thus, the east is the beginning, the freshest point in the tour, where the cities are clustered, and my days are busier.

as i head west, everything expands. the drives are longer, the landscape flattens, and with it, so does my mind. i slow down, life gets simpler, friends and obligations drift away in the rearview mirror. by the time i get to the west coast i'm like a zen master living in a cave, unaware of the hours of the day or even the people i am traveling with. i am concerned only with that night's show and not getting swine flu.

i've been on the road 42 days without going home. most of my shows have been with my friend jill sobule, and all of the days have been with my trusty friend and tour manager desdemona "bunty" burgin. every tour manager needs a nickname in quotes. bunty's dates from childhood, not from some unspeakable road happening that's remembered in an obscure nickname. wait! i should probably lie and say we call her "bunty" because of "that night in san francisco".

playing with jill has been a blast. i didn't know her before the tour; our managers thought we'd fit, and they were right. she's funny nearly all hours of the day, a great songwriter, and a fantastic musician. she's just got bucketfuls of style, whether it's her songs or her clothes or her palatial LA estate that she bought with money from her fans who thought they funded her record. just kidding about that last part.

in the east, i am a do-er. i never stop moving, processing, agitating either myself or those around me. i get quiet in the west and serious. the landscape is like a meditation to me, the soporific drives leave me feeling so relaxed and blank sometimes it's hard to rally to ordinary conversation. and sometimes in the west, i am just battling mere exhaustion, the result of the 4-5 weeks of touring to get out there.

for me, the east is plugged and west is unplugged. i hesitate to say which is better, but i can say after this long that the west is possibility and the east is the known comfort and electricity of home. so the moment where we turn back and start the trek home is always a bittersweet one for me. i'll be glad to get home, but i'll miss the simplicity of driving through unbroken horizon. as we head east to philadelphia, i'll try to fill in the blanks and share some of what's been happening for me the last couple months. here's some road pictures to start.

bbq in memphis TN

book in my dressing room, portland OR

sprinter the day we left goshen MA

pittsburgh PA. dont know why i think this is so funny.

lorraine motel in memphis, where MLK was shot

church on the interstate near cincinati OH

graffiti in the ark dressing room, ann arbor MI, from 2002

our van got graffitied in santa barbara CA. dont be jealous because we have universal healthcare and gay marriage

bedspread in a hotel, charlotte NC

new orleans revisited

2009-08-28T15:08:00.007-04:00

forgive the pun, but this week, in between the stories of health care and senator kennedy, we will be inundated with stories about new orleans. from npr pieces to cnn profiles and new york times articles, new orleans finds itself on the front pages again as the four year anniversary of hurricane katrina approaches. part of me is grateful, of course, for the coverage, and another part of me is cynical about how new orleans is continually defined by the story of the storm, and subsequently given the short shrift of being covered only on anniversaries.

the problems of new orleans are too complex to be visited once a year, and though the storm brought them to the fore, they are endemic and emblematic of the greater problems our country faces. all year round people who live in new orleans and care about new orleans face those problems and try to solve them. i count myself as one of them. however, with no reasonable excuse, here i am "visiting" on the anniversary. the following has in some form been languishing on my virtual desk since may, when i took an unusual trip to the city.

circa MAY 29, 2009.

i miss new orleans... and even though i have had to switch gears immediately and get back on the road, i am clinging to new orleans even as i spend hours in the van. even as i play other music, even as i think thoughts other than new orleans, the experience is still bubbling underneath. why this attachment? what is it about that city that grabs me, that envelopes me, that sustains me. for that is what i felt in the 4 days i was there. every time i visit, new orleans is both a spiritual replenishment, and a challenge to do more with that replenished spirit.

in april, i had gotten a surprising and wonderful email. Future of Music Coalition (FMC), Air Traffic Control (ATC), and Sweet Home New Orleans (SHNO) were inviting me to join the fifth version of their Artists Retreat. i'd be joining a group of artists and activists from across the spectrum of the music business for 4 days of workshops, music, and, of course, food. Our group would include singer-songwriters, old-school punks, spoken word artists and actors, indie rockers, jazz composers, afrobeat masterminds, and classical players. plus, we'd be joined by the people who run FMC, ATC, and SHNO- people who activate, agitate, and articulate the cause of new orleans, among other causes, professionally. i'd been to new orleans many times before- to play music, to write, to record, to visit friends- but i knew that this would be yet another side of the city, yet another way to experience it.

looking back on those 4 days, i am most struck by what happens when you put bright people in a room together. some of us were famous, some of us were not, some of us had experience with activism, some of us did not. yet from the first evening, when we had a "get to know each other" crawfish fry and jam at mother-in-law's lounge, there was a wonderful equality among us. it's a rare thing to go into a completely new group of people, meet and be met, and come out the other side with friends, but that's exactly what happened.

i suffer from terrible jealousy of other artists- i am constantly comparing myself. that person sells more, that person draws more, why is that person famous when i am not. it eats at me, it sickens me spiritually, and worst of all, it paralyzes me. as i've grown older and worked with this feeling, i have discovered an antidote, a serum that i can inject to heal that sickness when it fells me: IDEAS. and there were ideas in abundance in new orleans.

one of the first things we dug into was touring. most of the people in the group made their living on the road. so how can our touring be used as activism? it's a ready-made distribution network; we've already paid for the gas. so, tapping into that aspect was an immediate idea. tying our touring into the green movement was another. as was hosting local activist groups by tabling. if we all make small requests of venues together, then practices from recycling to food to merchandising will change.

it's impossible to be in new orleans, to consider new orleans music, without the buzzword "local" landing on your tongue. new orleans music has always depended on its neighborhoods for fermentation, support, and character. katrina was a brute force that has choked those neighborhoods at the roots. SHNO is working specifically on this problem, and trying to restore neighborhoods one block, sometimes one house, at a time. as touring musicians from other parts of the country, we took that idea and ran with it. we can make each of our shows more "local" by involving adjacent communities and rewarding those in walking and biking distance from where we play. we can give away our skills as writers, composers, interpreters to the communities that nourish us.

the efforts to save new orleans require yet another relationship besides the local and environmental: the political. some of us in the room had extensive experience dealing with legislatures and committees at the state and federal level, some of us had never done anything of the like. (i fell somewhere in-between) one of the best tools we hold is our cultural role as guides of opinion and attention. as artists, our job in communities is to point in specific directions and help our neighbors look the same way, at the same time. so, choosing a cause to educate ourselves about and advocate for becomes just as important as putting a new roof on someone's house. we found out that activism of this sort is easier than you'd think. just learn about it, then open your mouth. the FMC folks shared some amazing stories how the artist can often open doors of power that seemed would never swing and melt the heart of even the crabbiest senator.

so i found, that this is what happens when you put bright people in a room. when egos deflate and the ideas expand into that void, then change can occur. after our sessions, i felt like a part of an army who'd just received their orders and is ready to crash through a wall. there is also the saying that a grateful heart has no room for jealousy or hate or pain. put me in a room like that and my heart swells with inspiration and thanks.

so, yes, we ate at mother-in law's and and i bonded with leah at historic dooky chase's. yes, we toured the 9th ward and met some newly returned residents. yes, we went to the house of a mardi gras indian chief and accompanied him while he sang to us. yes, we spent a late night dancing to a live organ trio on frenchmen street and stumbling home at dawn. and yes, on the final night of the retreat, we played a benefit show at tipitina's.

yes, that was the time line. we did this. we went there. but for me, this time in new orleans, it was the people and the ideas that moved me more than the music or the architecture. it was the play of hearts as we sussed each other out, tried to explain ourselves without our foremost language of music, that made me dance inside. in simply sharing ourselves with our group, we were all capable of being as inspiring in our collective experiences, as we are in our notes, rhythms, writing and performance. so, when on the final nite at tips we cut open our chests to sing and play together, it hit with all the more force. a hurricane of hearts came blowing across the stage and moved every soul in that room.

having come to know my fellow artists without their art, i was all the more moved to see the ease with which luke worked the crowd and played drums, despite a separated shoulder. the way saul's voice rumbled and caressed and said what i wanted to say. the way i was carried away by jolie's otherworldly rhythms and the fierce vision of her music. how martin and mariam sang with their instruments as easily as i breathe, their ears leading them out onto a tightrope of risk, with no net below. how vijay, in his own quiet way, confidently gave us ground to dance on as bonerama worked us into brassy ecstasy. and then there was the force of wayne's guitar, not only loud, but intentional and biting the top of every note. how laura pinned up her braids, wiped her glasses, then tore the roof off the place.

at the end of the night, i went out into the crowd to watch scott. he seemed so right, so himself up there leading the band and singing "shit, shit, shit" over and over again, like some rock god pronouncing us whole from the mountain. amen and pass the community.

summer camp redux

2009-08-18T16:37:00.002-04:00

i'm leaving tomorrow to go visit the summer camp that i went to as a kid. i'm helping teach a music class with one of my oldest friends. the whole thing is crying out for more writing, so stay tuned. but i thought i would post this picture. where are you hudson heatley? (on facebook, i know.) i think we were singing "prince of darkness".

trip to utah

2009-08-10T13:35:00.004-04:00

i spent the weekend in utah. still a marvel to me of mod-ren life that i can take off for a few days ACROSS THE COUNTRY. i've been doing it for years, but really, its pretty amazing we can do this.

i had two shows, one in the desert of Torrey and one in the mountains of Snowbird. totally different, both incredibly fun.

on friday morning, before my Torrey gig, i went on a long solo hike in the Capitol Reef National Park.

and the gig in snowbird....

katy vs. jill

2009-08-05T10:20:00.004-04:00

the internets were afire yesterday about a supposed war between my friend jill sobule and katy perry. katy perry who is so famous right now that i am not sure where the person is underneath the gloss and hype.

the way the internet works, you probably already know the story: jill made a joke in an interview recently. she was fake mad at katy perry for stealing the song title, "I Kissed a Girl"- jill's 1995 hit. and maybe jill was a little fake mad for katy perry's sneaky relationship with queers. you can spin katy either way- does she support queers? er maybe. does she make queers the butt of the joke? er maybe. it's a little disconcerting to say the least.

speaking of dis-concert-ing. i have been to a katy perry show. i saw her in may at irving plaza in NYC. a friend of a friend works for her. an old college friend is in her band. so i went to the show and felt old (i'm fucking 31) and like this had nothing to do with the job i've had for the last 12 years. it was something entirely else.

but i was struck by how good some of katy's songs were. they pushed all my pleasure buttons with their hooks and highly singable choruses. and i am a sucker for a too small room. watching from the VIP balcony, i thought that katy perry was a good musician, and more than that i thought she knows exactly what's going on. she knows her songs are manufactured to be hits. and she knows there is a script written for her and if she sticks to it, she's gonna be famous now and make a lot of money. that's just the way it works.

but look into her eyes and i think she knows the difference between being real and not. and i'd be surprised if she hit back at a proven writer like jill. i think she looks at jill, sees her future, and hopes that she is as lucky as jill to still be doing it, and doing it better than ever, 15 years after a big-time hit.

at katy perry's level the music business is more business than music. but the other part of the story is that it will never stay that way. katy perry as we know her now will fade. she has to. there are too many others waiting in the wings with tighter asses and more pliant wills.

only time will tell what katy perry wants to do with her real self. when her notoriety fades, will she keep writing songs? will she still want that joy of too many people in a too small room, even if its 100 people in a room meant for 50?

i heard another friend of mine, ani difranco, get asked this question about her career: " do you ever wish you had a hit song?" and ani responded by pointing out the term "hit song" was pretty violent. we're being struck with a blunt object called katy perry and told to like it. who wants that out of music?

as for jill, you'll have to ask her how she feels about having her joke turned into fighting words. and you'll have plenty of opportunity because jill sobule is a real artist: articulate, accesible, creative and working every day in too small rooms with me this fall.

SERIES FINALE- episode 4 trailer!

2009-07-24T20:43:00.003-04:00

this is your last chance to watch and participate in the live experience of Cabin Fever!

Float On + An Internet Baptism

2009-07-23T22:20:00.003-04:00

songs from the water

2009-07-20T17:16:00.003-04:00

i'm finding it's a lot of work to produce, promote and perform a live TV show every week. not to mention the final two Cabin Fevers fall in one single week... whew! here's the episode 3 trailer... tickets available at the Cabin Fever Website!!

last chance to buy a subscription + new trailer

2009-07-13T15:30:00.005-04:00

it's your last couple days to get the Cabin Fever subscription... you can still watch episode 1 until this thursday.... meanwhile... the episode 2 trailer:

tonights the night!

2009-07-07T11:26:00.004-04:00

7/7/09 at 7pm
kind of poetic...
if you havent told a friend or bought a ticket:
http://www.erinmckeown.com/CabinFever

or this tiny trailer!!!

CABIN FEVER!!!

2009-06-18T12:30:00.004-04:00

i had this idea: why don't i broadcast live concerts from my house? i mean, i have a really fucking cool house. i love technology and the inter-nets. i've been working on this for a couple months... so here you go with the website:

ERIN MCKEOWN's GOT CABIN FEVER

here's the trailer:

and the schedule:

Tuesday, JULY 7, 2009- 7pmEST
an intimate, acoustic candlit evening in ERIN's living room + tour of her house

Thursday, JULY 16, 2009- NoonEST
interactive, all-request electric set from ERIN's riverside porch

Wednesday, JULY 22, 2009- 3pmEST
ERIN performs classic cover songs about water of all sorts from a rock in the middle of her river. We're not kidding.

Sunday, JULY 26, 2009- 5pmEST
the new album, "Hundreds of Lions", performed in sequence by ERIN and band, from her front yard

Rain Location:
We'll broadcast from the inside of ERIN's Sprinter Touring Van. We're not kidding about that either.

the way it should be

2009-06-14T20:28:00.001-04:00

found this stenciled on the side of a municipal power box in athens, GA. i say, "amen".

a new tenant, a new tenet

2009-06-05T15:56:00.002-04:00

i found myself today across the street from the white house. i had just finished lunch with Michael Bracy of the Future of Music Coalition, one of the groups that invited me to new orleans, and i didnt want to get on the metro just yet. so i wandered a little bit around the department of the treasury and eisenhower office buildings (under renovation), and around the grounds of the white house. it brought back memories of family trips to see the national christmas tree and to take the white house tour. and it brought back memories of marches i went on in highschool and gatherings on the mall. DC on a wet, early summer day is literally dripping with business. good business. people bustling around, now doing the work of an administration that points as close to my way of thinking as anything i can remember. what a change. i stood in front of the white house and just took it all in. a great leader lives there again. and my heart swelled a bit with a strange feeling: pride.

PS: i saw michelle's garden, and what i think was a beehive. is it possible the white house is making its own honey?

my ancient phone...

2009-05-19T18:02:00.002-04:00

... a tweeter asked, was my phone so old i had to dial the operator... well, almost. but 4 years later it's still alive and kicking AND it can twitter, tweet, twat.

words fail me...

2009-04-30T10:54:00.003-04:00

this is a postcard we found in schenectady NY advertising just what... i cant say.

on baseball

2009-04-20T16:20:00.005-04:00

i've got a tendency to make lists in my life. i generate massive lists of ideas for my manager. i make list after list of potential songs. i make grocery lists, lists of friends to call back, lists of appointments to keep. lists make me feel in control. they help my form-less, self-employed days take on a more formal shape. they help me figure out my priorities. my brain never stops spinning, so lists keep that spinning moving forward, instead of zipping willy-nilly all over creation.

on the list of Important Things I Like to Do With My Time are such activities as play music, exercise, read, and be intimate with people i care about. i dont tend to rank activities on this list for the most part, but this time of year, i am reminded again and again what is the indisputable top of that list. baseball. i would rather talk baseball, listen to baseball, watch baseball, go to a game, throw a ball, or swing a bat, than anything else. come february, when pitchers and catchers report, my life starts to lift a little. when spring training games begin, i smile more and take myself less seriously. and when opening day rolls around, i am positively euphoric. baseball is here!

i grew up going to games with my dad. we usually went once a year, on father's day or sometime close to it in june. the first games i can remember going to were at the old memorial stadium in baltimore. once, when i was 7 years old, i had broken my collarbone at gymnastics. my left arm was in a sling. my dad still took me to the game. we went down to the field after batting practice to get autographs. the orioles big slugger then was eddie murray- often a grumpy and irasicble man. but on that day, he smiled at me and signed my sling.

when the orioles built their new park, camden yards, of course we were there. what a step up from the shabby concrete of memorial! my dad and i used to love sharing a heaping plate of boog powell's BBQ and cheering on what were then very good orioles teams. you can't do this now, but in highschool, i was able to bring my fieldhockey stick to the park with me. i elbowed my way down to the field again after batting practice and leaned over the rail, waving my stick. cal ripken, my second favorite oriole after brady anderson, came over and took the stick from my hands. he held it like a bat, testing its weight. he took a few golf-like swings with it, then he signed it! believe it or not, i played the better part of two more seasons with that stick. i covered the autograph with layers of tape and prayed my stick wouldnt splinter.

as an adult, i have continued the tradition of going to games. my dad does too. we'll be traveling for business and find ways to get to ball parks. he mostly goes to the rangers in arlington, but he's also gotten to see st.louis and the nationals. i took my parents to fenway when i was in college and the redsox weren't very good. through touring, i've been to wrigley several times, fenway, old yankee stadium, shea, the metrodome, camden yards, and plenty of minor league parks. i was even able to see the better part of an orioles game before WALKING to my gig and hopping straight onstage. last week, while in seattle for a music project, i added a new park to my list, safeco field.

i like baseball because it is slow. i like baseball because it is rarely violent, but incredibly entertaining. it's unpredictable. it rewards individual performances, but is ultimately a team game. i like its rules and quirks. i like that every park is different. i like that there are two leagues with vastly different styles and strategies. i love the long season, with all its slumps and tears.

but by far, the biggest joy of baseball for me is listening on the radio. i stream games on the internet at home or in my dressing room, i have satellite radio in my van so i dont miss a pitch. from march to october, the background noise in my life is always baseball. i like watching games on TV every once in awhile, i love going to the park for atmosphere and friends (and safeco was MAGNIFICENT), but for the pure game, it's got to be on the radio. there's something about the emotion and description that the announcers bring. i love the matter of fact narration punctuated by crescendos of action. i clap my hands and shout out-loud when something good happens. i turn off the radio in disgust when my team is sucking, only to turn it back on a few minutes later, hoping for an improvement. i cry at home-runs and two-out, bases clearing doubles.

baseball lets me talk to anyone, anywhere. i cant tell you how many times i have sat in random sports bars and airports and AirportSportBars, all over this country, and had wonderful conversations with people i would never ever talk to otherwise. traveling during the playoffs is especially fun. just like an election, everyone is tuned in, and our collective consciousness is pointed in the same direction. yes, the business of sports is faulty. yes, mainstream sports is biased toward men's games. my favorite pastime is imperfect. but put aside its flaws and imagine the tension of a close game, between teams you love, listening or watching with friends who share your passion. you cant keep the smile off my face or the tears from my eyes.

oh estelle, you were right! (or how to play my songs)

2009-03-11T13:22:00.016-04:00

howdy! i wasnt planning on a bloggie today, but a thought occured to me as i was going through some emails from listeners and answering them... several of you have written asking for chords to some songs of mine. at one point, on an ancient version of my site, there was a TABS link. and i had quite a few songs up there that friends had sent in. maybe i will find it again and put it up. maybe one of you wants to become OFFICIAL ERIN MCKEOWN TABMASTER. yes? you can email me: mckeown.the.writer@gmail.com . meantime, i'll throw a few up here that were recently requested...

"you were right about everything"
the song is in A... the form is:

A A/c# F#m E D
A A/c# F#m E D
E F#m D A
E F#m D A
A A/c# D A
E F#m D A

for the outro, i just repeat the last line of the form, over and over. ad infinitum. or ad nauseum.
oh! and it's nice to throw in an Asus every once in awhile. suspend for drama!

"la petite mort (oh estelle)"
the song is in C, but i play it capo-ed at the 5th fret.
so here are the "cheating" chords so you dont have to transpose in your mind.
HINT: the song is in B (capo4) on the "distillation"recording

verse:
G D/F# Em C
G D/F# Em D7
B B Em C
G D/F# Em C D7

chorus:
G D/F# Em C
G D/F# Em Cm
G D/F# Em C
G D/F# Em C D7

in the second chorus, the last line looks like this:

G D/F# Em Am F

and then you're off to the races, solo-ing over whatever you like...

ok, now, here's your assignment... learn to play any of my songs (you can email me for help), make a wee video (a la "slung lo on the uke") and post them to you tube... get creative!

a little bit of a name drop

2009-02-17T09:45:00.006-05:00

i have waited as long as possible to post a new blog, because i have been LOVING the responses people have sent me public-ly and privately about the "knee-jerk" post... i have more to say about that... but this morning, i just want to put up something lite. the night i spoke of in the last post, i was opening for bettye lavette. when i met her after the show, she was incredibly complementary and gracious.

"girl, you have written a song about every emotion you've ever had. that is something."

and then we had a great chat about how hard it is to write songs, how important it is to speak your truth that way. and yet, i wanted to know how you could sing other people's songs as convincingly as you sing your own, something i have struggled with, for sure.

"believe them," she said. " you just have to believe them."

and i cant resist posting this one too... guess who, before she got crazy-famous? and whose T-shirt is she sporting?????

knee-jerk

2009-01-23T20:22:00.006-05:00

i hardly ever get nasty emails, and i think this is a product of my relative obscurity. to come to my show, to know about my music, you have to work hard, and it's unlikely you'll work hard to find something you want to complain about. so, how odd that in the last week, i have gotten two critical, dare i say, nasty emails from listeners. it's been my policy, based on my slim experience with this sort of thing, to not respond directly. if someone wants to complain to me in person, we can have a dialogue. if they just want to insult me via email, i dont need to engage in that.

one of the emails was about how i shouldnt wear a boyscout shirt (or any other uniform) if i am not a member of that society. however, the other one has inspired some thinking on my part. here's the backstory:

i have a song called "the taste of you". it got released in 2003, on my record "grand". when i play it in concert, i often introduce it by telling a story about why i wrote it. i used to live in providence, which if you have ever been there, you know has a lot of strip clubs. one of them, "the satin doll", was across the alley from where i lived. i could literally go out my backdoor, walk 20 feet, and be in a strip club. which i did a few times. i find going into a strip club, as a woman, a very interesting experience. sometimes it turns me on sometimes it feels like an anthropology experiment, depending on the vibe. i remember going into the satin doll and being completely ignored. i would sit at the edge of the dance bar, with my dollar bills and my watery drink and wait for the women to come dance near me. they never did. only once, in another strip club- "the foxy lady"- was i ever noticed. i was wearing a tiara that said "its my birthday". a woman offered me a birthday lapdance. i thought it over, looked around, and ended up refusing politely because of all the men staring hungrily at the scene unfolding. like i said, a very interesting experience.

so i told this story last week in fall river, MA, when i opened for bettye lavette (!!!). and then i played the song and went on with my show. i have literally told this story at least a hundred times and never had any reaction besides nervous laughter (older straight audiences) or loud guffaws (younger, mixed or gay audiences). either way, it works to set up the tune. and yet, a gentleman in the audience that night was so offended that he had to write me:

While suffering through your sub-textually convoluted tale about nights at the Satin Doll, I was reminded of early African American movie actors who would make fools of their own race on camera.No matter how many jazz chord progressions and clever vocal inflections you employ, the conclusion is that you have tasked yourself to resound the message to a full house that it's acceptable to objectify other females for entertainment purposes.

Holding out a dollar bill to extort bizarre behavior from a fellow human being is beyond repugnant. Maybe you have a special - "Gee, I'm bored tonight" - clause in your moral code, that allows you to randomly minimalize others.

I came to the conclusion some time ago that not all misogynists are necessarily men.

this email has set me thinking how to respond. in fact, there are several ways to view what i was talking about: firstly, there is a very good argument that women in the position of dancers at the satin doll are there of their own choice, are expressing their sexuality as they see fit, and not suffering in the least. my friend gretchen recommends the documentary Live Nude Girls Unite for more info on this viewpoint.

secondly, heterosexuality is assumed everywhere, regardless of gender. as a lesbian fruitlessly expressing desire in the traditionally male guise of a stripclub, i am drawing attention to the pervasiveness of heterosexual privelege. plus i find the image of wee old me in the stripclub, trying on the ill-fitting coat of the "misogynist" dance patron, to be comic.

thirdly, regarding the analogy about race, i am reminded of the great bert williams and his signature song, "nobody". have a listen right now. maybe it appears that bert williams, in blackface as he often was, is a pathetic specimen of a black man making a fool of his race. i dont think so. i think bert williams bravely uses himself, and the only language given to him by society, to artfully and effectually subvert the hegemonic assumption of white righteousness.

i respect the writer of this email for taking the time to express his offense passionately, and i enjoyed the mental exercise of considering and articulating my reaction. but i have a few questions remaining. how would i have reacted if it were a woman complaining? should i keep telling the story? should i turn this guys email into a story? what do you think?

resolution

2009-01-08T14:01:00.001-05:00

i've recently been hanging out with some friends who blog much more frequently than i do. they spotlight funny pictures, new toys, cool cover songs, general awe-some-ness EVERY DAY. how do they have time to do this? how do they keep it short like that? every time i sit down to write a blog it becomes a novel of personal growth. can i learn to keep it simple? do i need to? i actually think i am ok with my mostly-monthly blog of great heft (or the cyber equivalent).

i do write everyday. i am a proponent of morning pages- the oft-talked about process of waking up, rolling over, and spewing. i do 5 pages most mornings, with the exceptions of mornings like this one, where i got up at 7am. gasp. thats too early for me to take the extra 30-45minutes it takes me to do my pages. today is my annual trip to the dodge dealer in keene where i get my sprinter-van serviced. it's quite a van, if you havent seen it outside my gigs, and you cant just take it round the corner to meineke for a quick lube. it usually takes half the day. or most of the day when there's something wrong with the transmission. like today. so i am wasting time in the waiting room of the dealer, with the history channel blaring, and rotating cast of grumpy car-owners. who is ever happy to have to wait for their car to be worked on?

the ostensible subject of this blog is "resolutions". new year's or otherwise. in fact, it just struck me "resolution" has several meanings to me. but first, the easy definition. that which we resolve to do. resolutions can be tricky. they are often about change on a big scale. the kind of scale that ironically can only happen one day at a time. "i resolve to lose weight". this, for example, is not a one time statement. it's gonna take a while. i think that's why most resolutions fade. by april, they are a dim memory. or, sometimes they aren't. sometimes, it really does help change something to resolve it at the new year.

last year, my new years resolution was to stop using a set list. which i did. which has taken me most of this year to be comfortable with. at first it was terrifying. despite having written hundreds of songs and having them all memorized, i still worried that i would forget everything i knew the moment i walked onstage. what a lesson to learn to both trust yourself and to access all your knowledge even when you have to do it quickly, with a lot of people watching! from the very first time i tried it (22 jan 08, larchmont NY), i got results. i was more connected with my songs, more engaged with the audience, i played a longer, more dynamic set. the longer i've stuck with this, more has been revealed. i am constantly surprised by the new turns a show can take when you dont script the musical arc ahead of time. granted, this is easier when i play solo, but i've even started to be able to do this with some band gigs, which is really really fun. i think i'll resolve to keep on without a setlist.

this year, for new year's, i played at a fantastic little place in philly, the tin angel. my friend garrison and i did 2 shows, and at each i asked the audience to write their resolutions on a piece of paper at the merch table. here are a few of the ones people wrote down, divided into category:

the ordinary with extraordinary effects:
"to be more organized"
"to make a new friend"
"to be patient"
"to send folks "just because" cards, just because"

the masochistic:
"to go to boot camp 4x a week"

the denial:
"i will not use tobacco in 2009"
"to stop using the f-word in preparation for my child"

the entreprenureal:
"to make erin mckeown's tshirts" (ok girls, i GOT it)

the ambitious and heartbreaking:
"to tell my kids more stories about my childhood, learn to play my harmonica finally, and accept my husband for who he is"

i love this last one. it looks backwards, it looks forwards, and its painfully honest. my own new year's resolution was two part: to stop wearing jeans and to be more of myself, more often. ok, so i said this onstage, which i think means i have to stick with it or 250 people are gonna call me on it. actually the second part is easier. do you know how hard it is to give up wearing jeans? why am i doing this? i think i want to feel like i am stepping myself up. not just haphazardly throwing on the easiest thing. the ordinary thing. the comfortable thing. why am i doing this? does around the house count? what about in the snow?

it struck me, writing this, that "resolution" can also mean clarity. i think anniversaries provide clarity. they let us stop for a moment and look back. how are we different than we were the last time we stopped? what's changed? anniversaries provide awareness and perspective; they enhance the resolution of our view of ourselves. the more we look, the more aware of ourselves we are, the finer that resolution grows. eventually i will be able to witness myself on the cellular level.

"resolution" is also the close of something. it is the final chapter of a saga, it is a completion, it is a point after which we stop struggling and accept. i like that too. a new year's resolution to let go. to give up. to surrender. to let the plot be done. to walk away. easier said than accomplished. but thinking of "resolution" like that, i can let 2008, and all its details, float away. resolved.

happy new year, everybody! may it be your best!

all you single ladies!!!

2009-01-04T21:35:00.001-05:00

naked sunday

2008-12-06T15:44:00.002-05:00

old friends come back into your life for a reason. i'm finding lately, that they're back to remind me of a person i used to be, who bears some resemblance to the person i am now, from whom i can learn quite a bit, i think.

when i was 20, i left college for a semester. i toured that summer, spending part of my time interning at a label in chicago and part of my time driving around in my car playing coffeehouses. at the end of august, i moved to durham NC. my friend killer got me a job at ladyslipper, a venerable bastion of the independent women's music movement. i worked the last regular job i ever had, filling orders of music, calendars (we'moon, what what!), and books in the warehouse. my co-workers were kaia and STS. we went to biscuitville daily, and i slept on killer's couch. i cant say it was the best time in my life; i hated having a daily job and regular hours, but i was definitely learning lots about a bigger world and dipping my toe into the womyns / womans / womens community for the first time. after the christmas rush, i went back to providence, moved into AS220, and started my career.

i've been hanging out with killer again. she's gone on to have a myriad range of jobs in the music biz. in her current incarnation, she's a busdriver and tourmanager. this week, she's taking time off her main gig and helping me out a little. it's nice to be on the road with an old friend, who also happens to be very good at a job you really need help with. we've been showing each other shit on the internet and finding a little time for thrifting. today's outing will take us to a wig shop in norfolk VA. enough said.

the other day, we were sharing a hotel room, and i, as is my habit, was rocking it semi-nude on the way to the shower. i guess it triggered a memory for killer.

"hey, do you remember naked sunday?" she asked.

no, i certainly did not, but i was curious, so she explained. "naked sunday" was a tradition i had brought with me to north carolina from the co-ops i was living in at college in providence. our co-ops were student-run and student-owned giant victorians on providence's east side, with as many as 20 people living in them at once and another 15 coming to dinner every night. we rotated house jobs and cooking responsibilities. it is still the most satisfying living experience i've ever had. once a year my co-op held the famous "naked party" and we also had, weekly, "naked sunday", where it was ok, even encouraged, to spend your sunday in the buff. to praise the lord, of course.

i had completely forgotten about this. but once she reminded me, it set off a chain reaction of memories of my own. brazenly handing out donuts during reading period, cooking in the crowded kitchen with just an apron on, looks of surprise from unwitting dinner-guests, but mostly an ease with my body and silliness around life that i don't feel so much anymore. huh, when's the last time i felt that light? where is that person with a grin and paunch who didn't care if she had tits, or not? lost somewhere in years of working hard on the road. lost in going from studio to gig to writing. lost in worrying about making the right album, making the van payment, and making sense of a career that doesn't look like my dreams.

sigh. i miss her.

another old friend from that time just found me again (and not through facebook, scrubs). she's getting her doctorate, working on the Hill, and sending pictures of me in a vinyl catsuit and pink feather wig. and pictures of me naked in the bathroom getting the first of many many home-made haircuts. and a picture of my front yard, circa 1998.

my friend the fiz and i were celebrating the end of our sophomore year. it was may, which in providence equals heaven. early in the afternoon, we headed over to the co-op that fiz lived in for some light drinking. we planned to get a little buzz going, eat dinner, then get into the serious party-ing later. around 4 or so, the word "light" had disappeared from our vocabulary, and we were now heavily drinking. i decided to take a break, riding my bike the 4 blocks back home to my co-op. i don't drink anymore (which i am not nostalgic for) but i also don't ride my bike as much either. i know it wasn't safe, but i really did love the feeling of being tipsy and zipping through the streets and hills of provie.

when i got home, i locked up my bike on my front porch with the same bike lock i had had since i was 10, a flimsy chain wrapped in pink plastic. i crawled into bed and promptly fell asleep. i woke up around 7 and went to grab my bike for the trip back to the party. while i was sleeping off my semester and my drinks, someone had come, cut my bike chain, and taken my ride. up to that point, i had never had anything stolen from me. ever. i was a lucky and sheltered girl.

i was definitely still drunk, but i was also 20 years old with a pathologically mischevious bent. i called fiz to tell her what happened, and we sprung into action. first i took what was left of the bike chain and nailed it up over the doorframe of our parlor (yes we had a parlor). i signed, dated, and memorialized my bike. i haven't been in that house in almost 10 years, but perhaps someone can tell me if it's still up on the wall. i wouldn't be surprised if it still was. the co-ops were always evolving and organic spaces. one part crunchy living experiment, one part surrealist installation, it was like living inside a whole foods designed by duchamp.

by the time fiz came over, i had a plan. no one was going to do this to me without having their fire returned. we needed to send a message. a big one. fiz and i worked quickly, barely speaking, our mission unspoken and clear. we found a door in the basement, sealed over the knob hole, and gave it a good coat of primer. our co-ops were student maintained, and at this time, fiz was maintenance co-ordinator. one of her many talents, besides fixing boilers, meeting firecode, and shingling, was a facility with cement. we decided our message would stand the test of time. so while i sawed two 4 x 4s of pressure-treated wood, fiz mixed up a batch of cement. we went to the front yard and dug two deep holes. it was probably 8 o'clock now, getting dark. we had only consumed alcohol and hummus. we were running on our youth, our indignation, and our pure sense of purpose. we filled the holes with fresh cement and planted the 4 x 4s. we gave the door another coat of paint, then took it outside and mounted it on the posts.

i settled on a simple message that succintly summed up how i was feeling. i carefully painted the following;

"THANKS FOR STEALING MY BIKE
....ENJOY THE RIDE"

i added my co-op logo and a few graphic flourishes. fiz and i stepped back to admire our handy-work. yes, it would do. we promptly went back to her co-op and told our story over and over, extremely proud of our sass and industry.

my co-op sat on the corner of waterman and brook streets, a big intersection on providence's east side. for the next several months, we'd sit on the porch and just watch the motorists stopped at the light and their reaction to the sign. there were lots of smiles, horn honks, and "you go!". remember this was 1998. about a month after my bike got stolen, a knock came on the door. did i need a new bike? someone had seen the sign and donated a very fine old fashioned red racer with banana seat. i've never bought a bike again, always trading for my wheels. the sign eventually got painted over, and our billboard became a bulletin board for community happenings and co-op chicanery. i haven't been by in awhile, but it was up for at least 5 years.

i am still the person who loved to walk around naked on sunday (or any day really) and who sent a creative fuck-you after a petty crime. my heat might cost too much for me to be naked as often as i'd like now, and i might have changed the medium for my messages, but that was me and is me still. i am glad for this reminder to be lighter, to remember my younger self, and embrace my inner flaunt.

gratitude

2008-12-01T16:52:00.008-05:00

oh i have been a lucky girl this last month... let me tell you why:

i got back from europe at the end of october with november stretching out ahead of me, blank and open. originally i was thinking i would mix my new record during this time, but thats been put off a bit (no worries, its all for very good reason). what would i do with all this time? i think the lesson is that when i let go, good things happen, and they happen with good reason.

it turned out that this was the best possible time for me to be off the road. i was home and not working when i got the last minute opportunity to open for shawn colvin here in northampton. perhaps i ought to have my singer-songwriter card revoked for this, but i had never seen her before and wasnt that familiar with any of her music besides her bigger hits. let me tell you, this lady was bad-ass. firstly, she didnt soundcheck, which always impresses me that someone is that confident or busy or anything to skip that part of the day. she strolled in at 8pm, right as i was going onstage. we said hello in the hallway, and i went out and did my set. then promptly at 9, she took the stage. plugged her guitar straight into her DI and proceeded to play and sing impeccably for the next hour or so. she had said she was under the weather, but i have experienced that enough to sift out the song and the delivery. i was blown away. simple. confident. bulletproof songs. amazing guitar playing. warm and real onstage. may i be so lucky to do this long enough to experience that ease. i want to say, "shawn colvin, who knew?" except that thousands of people totally know already. i'm just late to the party.

a party i am not late to is amy ray. like a lot of other ladies my age, indigo girls were the soundtrack to my life age 14-18. i remember sitting in my tiny blue pick-up truck, alone in the highschool parking lot after a senior night awards ceremony-thing, listening to "nomads indians and saints" in its entirety. and just crying. i dont know why exactly i was crying. maybe saying goodbye to being a kid. maybe i was embarassed by my highschool awards. maybe something i cant name, but there the indigo girls were, with me. a couple years ago i got the amazing opportunity to join amy, emily, ani difranco, actor james cromwell, activist winona laduke, and others for a lobby day on capital hill... i wrote a long blog about it thats still up on myspace. i look back on that day as the beginning of my political consciousness. up to then, maybe i was sympathetic or supportive, but that experience inspired me to get educated, to get articulate and be articulate about being a citizen.

the next night after shawn came to town, amy ray came to town with her FUCKING AMAZING BAND. i dont think i can cuss enough to tell you how tight and rocking they were. amy's solo songs are po-litical, for sure. but they are also highly theatrical. hedwig meets the entirety of the 90's, in a good way. amy is blunt, but always with an ear for the poetry of being honest. after the show, i was catching up with the band, and amy invited me to join them in new york later the next week to play guitar on a tune of hers called "laramie". what a song. go look it up on youtube to see her play it in asheville. it was the last song of the set at the bowery ballroom, and i hopped up, borrowed amy's guitar and joined in. as i was playing, i felt enveloped by the depth of the music around me. i think thats what i took away most from that night... if you put all you have into your songs, and everytime you play them you put all you have into the performance, and you're joined by musicians who give all they have to give, the sum is something else. community is the next spiritual movement. and we arent granted it, it isnt discovered, it is made. by us. we have the tools!

whew! i feel a little carried away when i think about how i felt that night... and yet, my month kept getting better. because i was home and not working, when i got a last minute opportunity to open for ani difranco, i was able to take it. that tour is like family to me, i have been in and around it for so many years, always having huge fun and experiencing big emotions. i did a pair of shows: wilkes-barre PA and boston MA. here is "every state line" from wilkes-barre and "overlap" from boston.

photo by my bud desdemona "bunty" burgin

my father's entire family lives in wilkes-barre, so my 87 year old grandfather got to see me play for the first time. he loved it and i loved that he loved it. our grandparents sometimes only know us through the portal of our parents. to them, all they know is that we are tiny versions of their children, but to side-step that generation and get to hang with my grandfather directly, to have him see me and what i do directly, what an experience. AND he's a big rachel maddow fan. enough said.

so really, how can i sum up the gifts i have been given this month? by one more experience. i spent thanksgiving with about a 100 people of all kinds at the guthrie center in great barrington MA. the center is in the church made famous by the arlo guthrie song "alice's restaurant". arlo bought the church years ago and used to live there. now, its a performing arts center that plays host to a thanksgiving dinner that couldnt be beat. anyone from the community is welcome, and they make a real effort to include members without families or experiencing hard times. it was a beautiful collection of people. this was better than any tedious version of thanksgiving i have ever experienced. no one was going through the motions here, probably because everyone in that room, for one reason or another, was truly aware of the gratitude part of thanksgiving, not the emphatic consumption the holiday usually brings. how powerful, a room a people who were truly grateful.

i am in a deeply searching place right now in my life, and what i am finding i am most hungry for right now is community. i feel most satisfied when i am working to create it. i feel the most love when i sit right in the middle of it. i truly believe that its where we will heal ourselves (and our country). and as i said, we dont have to wait for it to be given. the tools are time, love, and willingness. thats it! now go!

PS: see the movie "rachel getting married".

the morning after

2008-11-05T11:30:00.002-05:00

let me say first: hooray! it's done! america has moved forward into something entirely uncharted. a man by his name and skin, if he never does anything again, has by simply being there and winning, lifted a tremendous weight off of our country. i am proud of us for that. deeply proud.

yes, we paid $600 million dollars for him, but we also paid with our loss of standing in the world, the erosion of our economy, and we have paid most dearlywith 4190 lives lost and 30,764 wounded.

here's something i wrote on september 25 in my journal, a black book with a picture of sarah palin in a stars and stripes bikini holding a rifle pasted on the cover. the occasion was a drive through the independence pass, on the way to aspen colorado.

when i travel america, the west, these mountains and huge sky, the sheer diversity of this country- flat peaked brown black white and every color person- i can say, i love america. i love this country. i am proud to be of this land- shaped by the forces of heat and rocks cooled. lichens and aspens in the most unlikely of places. i am proud of this land. and yet the other america- with its flag and armies and flat screens to improve your self-esteem, its markets crushed in speculation and panic- i cannot line up shoulder to shoulder with that. i could never understand how this america could move against another person, ever. what people who dare call themselves a country are those that would do that? would represent that? that's not my land. that is my continental divide.

that day i was literally and figuratively standing on the geographic split of this country. and this morning, i , like many many other americans, feel a sense of healing with that. i really do.

but i would not be true to myself if i didnt also express a few other thoughts. firstly, as michelle shocked says, with a new president, we are just getting a new CEO for USA, INC. another friend put it like this, we are changing the hood ornament on the car. they are both right. and though i am crying sincere tears when the "first family of the united states" is introduced and a beautiful black man and his righteous wife and their daughters come out onto a stage and greet hundreds of thousands of americans, i am also deeply suspicious of the hold that power has and how it clings. represent me, barack, yes. but show me that you are more than this symbol- with all your power, your history, your hope for the future- show me that you can also fundamentally shake up the corporation- add responsibility, fairness, and subtlety to what's usually drawn in the broadest of strokes.

speaking of broad strokes, my abiding feeling today, as this day becomes clearer and last night recedes, is of a profound sadness, disappointment, and disjunction with this new feeling of hope. california's proposition 8 looks to pass, banning gay marriage and writing bigotry and hatred into the constitution of the world's 8th largest economy.

how can people do this? by all exit polls, it looks like the same people that rightly carried barack obama to victory, also used their history-making vote to wrongly legislate the definition of a business arrangement into a fear-based, hypocritical and regressive definition of love. it makes my heart hurt to see this. just as we are symbolically moving past one kind of hatred, we re-inforce another. is there really no conscience that cant see the contradiction?

somewhat related, here's an interview i did last week for the UKwebsite, lesbilicious.com.

obama-rama

2008-10-16T10:54:00.000-04:00

yesterday was my birthday. my 31st... i have been saying onstage for some time now that i hope it means the end of my saturn returns. it's a story meant to set-up a new song of mine called "28" which describes how i was feeling exactly 3 years ago when i first noticed my life heaving. heaving... yes, rising up into big hills of drama then cracking and splitting and falling into deep wallows of inner life. if i were a waveform, my amplitude would have increased, and my frequency. it all just got busier.

i'm a big one for dates, so a birthday is an important holiday. my re-start every year. i like new years eve for the same reasons. any holiday has a calendar attached to it, a yearly cycle that overlaps with other yearly cycles, so in my mind we're living concurrent lives always. in our emotional life, our family life, our creative life we are constantly marking anniversaries and moving forward. this year, i wanted to mark my birthday in a deeper way so i decided to fast. today is day 4.

my fast is really a cleanse: you make a mixture of water, lemonade, maple syrup and cayenne pepper and that's all you drink. you can have a cup of tea at night, and in the morning you do a saltwater flush. i wont describe it further, but use your imagination and know that the saltwater flush sucks. i havent felt hungry or down or tired too much, but every hour is different. that's one of the things i like best about fasting. take away the ritual of food in your life, and you have a lot more time on your hands. take away the sensation of being truly satiated- of being "full"- and you really start to be aware of your body in a new way.

i try to stay home alot when i am fasting, it helps conserve energy and it's good to be near a bathroom. but last night, my friend jose ayerve invited me to come play a song or two at an obama rally in easthampton. i hardly get to see jose, and i miss him. he's fucking brilliant. check out this song we made together just this spring. its about 3 way relationships or the redsox bullpen. you decide.

so i hadn't ever been to a political event quite like the one i went to last night. it was much more than party trays of food and socializing. there was the expected table to buy obama pins and stickers and lawn signs and tshirts, but there were also tables where you could write postcards to undecided voters, laptops where you could sign and send online petitions, and a station where you recorded a youtube message about why you were voting for obama.

jose and i did our video together, and i held a sign that said "mc cain: more of the same". in truth obama isnt nearly lefty enough for me, and i get a bit queasy when he rattles on about "getting" osama bin laden. but i think he probably has to do all that to get elected. i basically trust him. i watch him speak- thoughtful, eloquent, intelligent, subtle- and i think, "i can relate to him and i would be proud to be represented by him". what a strange feeling! to feel some positive connection to the leader of your country. i have NO IDEA what that feels like. as my friend phillip price of the winterpills said last night, "i think it feels pretty good." he was wearing a button that said "moonwalkers for obama".

the room was full of people ready for action. the postcard table was busy with people writing actual letters to undecided new hampshire voters. western NH is just a few miles from here, and the easthampton democrats were organizing groups to go there and canvas for obama. other groups were getting people to go to ohio, pennsylvania and other battlegrounds. the point was that even though western mass is super democrat and lefty lefty, there was plenty of work to do.

i felt incredibly inspired being there. and humbled by the energy of the people working to put this rally and countless others across the country together. what an operation! it reminds me first of all, how giant this country is and what kind of effort it takes to corral a simple majority and get going in the same direction. if we had more than 2 parties, i think it would actually be less of a feat. but to get americans to fall one way or another, when we are so diverse, seems to me a mammoth proposition. and yet it's happening. the effort is extraordinary to me, but then you think of the prize. a truly new direction for our country. a new face for the world. a spring in our metaphorical step. the presidency. wow.

trouble the water

2008-10-08T22:32:00.000-04:00

i just got back from seeing the new documentary trouble the water. i won't try to summarize it here, just SEE IT.

in a related post, i'm still catching up with my back log of writing... so check out september 16...

what is the sound of a blog?

2008-10-02T01:58:00.000-04:00

the clatter of keys. the rattle of thought. i dont know why i havent done this before, but here it is... a blog. please comment and post and engage... i have a backlog of entries to post, so i'll start this spring with a trip i took to europe with one of my musical heros, michelle shocked, and catch you up with the tour i just finished. the posts are dated... so lets look back together, shall we?
x

the bits of real life

2008-09-30T00:14:00.000-04:00

even after all the times i have been on tour and come home, i dont think i'll ever get used to the letdown that accompanies the moment you pull into the driveway and turn the car off. tour is finally over and the frenetic pace of life on the road fades. and whats left? laundry, bills, phone calls, the bits of real life that you have put off for the stimulation of being on the road. the silence of your own house and your own mind. no more distractions!

so i'm home. and it isnt like i was out that long. just 2 weeks and we only had 5 shows in all that time. it wasnt a tour about music, it was about the time in between the music, and so maybe this time, its the friends and travel that i miss the most.

the path of ike

2008-09-17T22:51:00.002-04:00

we finally heard that our houston show had indeed been cancelled, so we ambled out of the bywater and headed west on RT.10, heading through houston towards austin. all reports had warned us about driving that route, but looking at the map, we didnt see any better way. we made sure we had a full tank of gas and took our chances.

what we saw on the way was quite incredible. as we approached the louisiana-texas border, we began to see caravans of electrical maintenance trucks, cars with gallons of gas strapped to the back, billboards in tatters and other smaller signs of the hurricane. yet, as soon as we crossed the border into texas, the damage was even more striking and immediately visible. no billboard was intact, and more and more buildings were missing roofs, walls, or were partially collapsed.

we stopped at the first rest-stop in texas, which, as we pulled in, we could see was closed. everything was covered in a cracked layer of smelly mud. clearly water had reached here. the whole place stank, though it took us a moment to realize why. as we walked back to the van, we noticed something odd. the parking lot was covered with dead fish and shrimp of all different sizes. the biggest pile of them was centered around a big drainage grate. literally hundreds of fish had come pouring UP through the grate into the parking lot as the drainage system was overwhelmed. as the water receded, the fish were left to suffocate on the pavement. it was an eerie site, an ominous version of the phrase "fish out of water".

as we approached the beaumont/port arthur area, the devastation was clear. the side of a hotel ripped off. whole swathes of urban sprawl without a single light on. we passed an arena whose parking lot, plus the highway approaching, was bumper to bumper full of tractor trailers carrying relief supplies. scanning the radio, we found that most stations had pre-empted their usual programming in favor of public-bulletins and call-ins. we listened in awe as listener after listener phoned in with information on FEMA, hotel-vouchers, food-stamps and relief kitchens.

it was growing dark as we came into houston. the downtown looked lit, but we passed through short stretches of highway without any streetlights and many many gas stations with no power. the scale of what we saw was overwhelming, something i dont think you can get an accurate representation of from the TV or internet. we drove 4 hours at highway speed through affected areas. miles of damage.

it reminded me of visiting new orleans after katrina. you stand in the wreckage, at whatever stage, but you dont touch it. you experience it, but you dont physically engage in it. it's a hollow feeling. i couldnt shake the suspicion that we were trespassing through these towns' post-apocalypse clean-up.

we arrived in austin late night, quiet and somber from our visions. austin would be our home base for the next 5 days.

SUGGESTED READING: ISSAC's STORM by Erik Larson (who wrote "devil in the white city")

2008-09-16T22:42:00.000-04:00

i'm headed out on the road again, after a summer of laying low and recording my new record. my partner in crime for this trip is my friend desdemona "bunty" burgin, a gifted photographer who moonlights as a tour manager for me every once in awhile. our first tour together, of the UK in spring 07, featured theft, mugging, and a car accident. no kidding. our second tour was the 9 week marathon "lafayette" tour in the fall of 07. bunts is the perfect tourmate, sweet and capable and funny as shit. you should also check out her photos.

we're heading out on the road for a set of shows with my old friend stephen kellogg. along with his band, the sixers, stephen has spent the last 5 years criss-crossing the country working his growing audiences into a fervor every night. i happened to have a spot in my schedule, he happened to ask, and we are reuniting for a few shows. everytime i see stephen, he sounds better and better, and i dont know anyone who works harder or thinks about how to make their career better, more often. my only regret is that we dont have more shows...

bunty and i left massachusetts on sunday and headed south toward houston, which had just been hit by the devastating hurricane ike. from the news reports we were watching, it just didnt seem possible to have a show there in two days, but we also hadnt received confirmation from the promoter that the show was cancelled. so we drove...

looking at a map, we saw that new orleans was on the way. i've spent some sizeable chunks of time in NOLA and even made a record there in 2004. the last time i was there was december 2006, on a writing trip. getting to go back, even for 24 hours was a treat. we're staying with my good friend, shawn hall, a painter, who also owns piety street studio, where i had recorded "we will become like birds". piety street is in the bywater, a funky neighborhood i have become quite familiar with and fond of. katrina impacted the area, though it did not flood. compared to 2006, it finally looks like the bywater was running on all cylinders again. the same cant be said for other parts of new orleans which are still mired in post-hurricane beurocracy and neglect. it's mind-boggling to think that the great and mighty american enterprise could turn so profound a blind eye to such a beautiful and important place.

shawn is relentlessly positive, but never unrealistic- qualities that have carried her through lots of tough situations. she's one of the main reasons i love new orleans so much. through her, i've seen unique parts of the city through her artist's eye and really grown to feel a connection to her neighborhood.

day thirteen. brussels and home.

2008-03-10T23:22:00.000-04:00

i had been to brussels once before, for a night on the way from amsterdam or to amsterdam, i cant remember. what i do remember is loving the town and wishing i had more time there. jan started by taking me to a tiny pasta place next to the opera, which was about a quarter the size of vienna's. i had spaghetti with truffle oil and sausage, a sign of the good food to come.

the first night i was there, we decided to go and hear some music. according to jan, not many of his professional musician friends like to go hear live music. and i can see why. you spend so much work time in clubs, why would you want to spend your down time there too... but i get so much out of being in the same room as anyone performing, that i eat it up and it fires me up. so we went and saw the cuban guitarist ray cabrera and his band. we got there late, so we sat in the front row. now i was the person i laugh at or try to ignore at my own shows. clumsily trying to squeeze in without being noticed by the person onstage. hah! we see you. always.

i loved hearing music where i didnt understand the words, which made me realize how much i had been enjoying being in countries where i didnt really understand anything anyone around me was saying. when your living is words, sometimes its nice to return words to just sounds, not meanings and references and histories.

the next day, we started earlier and went to a fleamarket in the old part of the city. it was surrounded by streets filled with antique shops brimming with amazing stuff. thats one of the things i love most about traveling: going into antique stores. it gives me ideas for my current house, it gives me ideas for my future house, it fires my imagination for the who and when and what of an object. plus, the more jumbled the store, the more juxtaposed the junk, the more i like it. i want to see a door frame on its side next to a sink next to an entire row of theater seats with antique helmets in a case behind. these stores reminded me alot of the antique stores and salvage warehouses of new orleans. something old and waterlogged about the style, not the dry, wheat harvest and open space aesthetic you see in most american shops.

in the afternoon, we went to the museum of musical instruments. it was incredibly thorough, with instruments from every family you could think of, from most continents. and each exhibit had a sound portion, of course, which was also overwhelming. imagine hearing 30 second clips of a hundred instruments in an hour. whoa.

i found myself looking more and more at the tags for the instruments and hoping to see "north america" on any of them. as much as i love being in europe- the food, transportation, people are much nicer- i have found as i have gotten older i have a real soft spot for america. not the politicians or the flag and the heaviness of all that, but the feeling of america. the best way i can describe it is the SPACE of america, the promise of america. i get nostalgic for every mountain, highway, canyon, forest in my country and the inspiration of someplace so big and beautiful and wild and open, unfinished always and wide enough for everything (if also wide in the pants).

brussels has a huge catholic cathedral ("are there any other kind?" asked jan thoughtfully but belgian-like), and last night we went to an organ concert there of music by the composer olivier messiaen. messiaen dabbled in a form of serialism he invented, but was influenced equally by his big time catholic faith and birdsong. in fact he considered himself as much an ornithologist as anything else. the cathedral was totally dark, except for a spotlight on the giantic pipe organ on the wall. we sat right beneath it. what an instrument! i had no idea what i was in for, being new to messiaen and not too familiar with the pipe organ reperatory.

i love it when the music you are listening to outside of your body, the music you hear that is made by someone else matches so perfectly your interior life, your state of mind, that it becomes a seamless experience. what you are hearing and what you are thinking and what you are feeling are all the same, coalescing into the singular sound in front of you. i will forever listen to messiaen and come back to this moment: this moment of regret, disappointment, of confusion, of being a traveler but longing for something to feel like ground i can stand on, for desperately needing someone i can count on, for putting my hopes and desires on someone who couldnt sustain them, let alone their own. this time that finds me still feeling like more around me needs to fall apart and strip down. as lost as i feel in this moment, i think i will have to get even more lost before whatever it is that i am supposed to do on the otherside can become clear. the rumble of the pipes, the squeal of the upper register, the solid stone of the cathedral sending all of it back to me, growing somehow closer to something inevitable.

day ten. paris.

2008-03-06T23:21:00.000-05:00

i had the loveliest time in paris on wednesday. michelle, her belgian friend jan, and i hopped on the metro, destination an art store by the louvre. my jet lag took its sweet old time kicking in, but it did kick in. i have been going to bed about 4am every night, despite my best efforts, and waking up around noon. a healthy 8 hours, but ones that make me feel like i have lost too much of my day. maybe its a small difference, but i am a 2-10 kind of girl.

we set out late, needing a meal. michelle suggested the cafe that overlooks the courtyard of the louvre. amazing! that it was a crisp bright afternoon only helped. i have had enough rain on this trip. after coffee and omelets, we headed over the river to sennelier, one of the oldest, if not the oldest, art supply stores in the city. when i was in highschool, i worked for an artist in her supply store and frame shop. just weekends, part time in the summer. i wasnt the most elegant framer and didnt have the best bedside manner (it was my experience, that people really just want you to tell them what they want in a frame and mat), but i loved it. for the craft of it, for the feeling of being at the center of a scene of artists, for my time with paula, the artist. it was the closest i got in highschool to approximating what my life as an artist could be. playing house at 17 with paints and pastels, frame chops, mats and glass.

walking into sennelier couldnt have made me happier. the store is tiny, on three floors, with nooks and crannies filled with the best art supplies you can buy. the cabinets are old and worn, shelves reached by rolling ladders, the staff dressed in long white coats. michelle's partner, david, is a painter and was looking for a duplicate to a brush he'd bought in the same store a few years before. apparently it was such a unique brush, that it had become central to his technique, and he was thinking he ought to have more than one. it made me think about, what if my guitars wore out. you invest so much time in the instrument, the guitar molds itself to you, taking up the oils of your hands, wearing where your fingers play it most, and in turn you mold yourself to the guitar. your style changes to get the best out of the instrument. yes, i could totally understand needing another brush. unfortunately the store didnt have another one and we left disappointed.

next, it was my turn to direct the tour and my single wish for being in paris this day (because i have done the tourist stuff other times) was to make a pilgrimmage to gertrude steins house. i didnt even need to look up the address, having known it by heart and whispered it to myself many times, to hear how it rolls off the tongue. 27 rue de fleurus. we easily found it on the map and walked to it from sennelier, down the rue de seine. the next time i go back to paris, rue de seine is the first place i am going. what an amazing street. gallery after gallery with such amazing art in the windows, on the corners, cafes, and then ending in the luxembourg palace and gardens. rue de fleurus was just a block and half from the park. as we rounded the corner to the house, i felt a twinge in my stomach. places matter to me. to stand in the same spot, especially a quotidian spot like the street someone lives on, is profound to me. we found the house, which has only a simple marker- it still being private apartments- to let you know its signifigance. i kissed the entrance way and michelle took a picture. that's all i needed!

we stopped for chocolate at a nearby cafe then headed to the pompidou center for the spectacular view of paris from the top. we considered eating dinner on the roof, but decided to head down to the square for a more terrestrial setting. at that moment, looking out over paris at night, pointing out landmarks, enjoying the air, i was happy. happy to have had a day with michelle and jan, happy to be away from home. as i said before paris somehow was feeling right to me.

day eight and nine. paris.

2008-03-05T23:15:00.000-05:00

a change of scenery has done me good. maybe it was the weather, maybe it was germany, not sure, but i am glad to be in paris despite my complete lack of french. i dont even remember the numbers from gradeschool. so i mostly just look blank when people talk to me and i try to apologize and say i dont speak french, but not much comes out.

i will say this, paris seems alot more diverse than berlin. much more to look at as far as people. i hate to say it, not wanting to finger any more heavy history, but i do think its true. perhaps if not more diverse, then berlin is more segregated and i didnt get to the brown parts of it.

i made it into town yesterday afternoon after a few adventures on the public transport. i took my first cab yesterday to get to my hotel. not bad, one cab ride in a week. i am loving the idea of learning a new underground system every day.

i got to play 3 songs last night of my own. which i have to say, i mostly hate doing. for me it breaks up the flow of michelles music and my own concentration on what my role is... its hard for me to switch gears from attending to michelle's idiosyncracies to shining up and displaying my own. and i think my voice is rusty from not singing every night... gonna have to do some singing on my own to keep in shape.

day seven. berlin.

2008-03-03T23:12:00.000-05:00

more of the same today. rain and cloudy skies. sigh. i suppose i cant expect a brighter mood from myself or the city. my friend ben weaver, a songwriter and poet from minneapolis, is a berlin aficionado, mostly because he has great friends here (see last post). i asked him for some suggestions of what to do with my day. he laughed because, as he puts it, "im not a great person for actual places because when I go somewhere I just basically walk around and sit in parks." which of course sounds perfect for me, if not for this weather.

so taking ben's advice, i headed for mauerpark, a park along a stretch of the berlin wall that remains. i stopped first at the "erotik museum" around the corner from my hotel. what a waste! sandwiched onto a couple floors between lame sex shops, it was an awful lot of old parchment with crazy cartoon drawings of straight people having sex. lots of big penises and fun for the guys. why must women always be depicted on our backs, receiving this heavenly gift of phallus? that makes me sick in an entirely different way than the medical curiousities yesterday.

mauerpark was equally bleak today. i am sure in the spring it can be beautiful and funky, with its graffiti and dog park and lack of tourists. today it just seemed to re-enact the futility of slamming yourself over the wall. i decided to go with that feeling and after eating my lunch in between raindrops, i hopped on the U2 to see checkpoint charlie. brushing up on my post-war history, i learned that it was one of several places where you could move between east and west berlin, but quickly became a focus for most escape attempts and protests. the museum there is so ancient, you want to go in with a sponge and wipe it down. it's been there a seriously long time. still, it was interesting to read the history of all the escape attempts. people under oppression get real resourceful, real quick. hiding in hollowed out cars, ballooning over, escaping via zip line strung in the middle of the night. be it for love, or job, family or freedom of other sorts, lots of people tried it and some heroically succeeded.

day six. berlin. the weight of the future, the weight of history.

2008-03-02T23:07:00.000-05:00

i cant believe its only day six. how am i going to get through the next 28 days? i suppose it just seems long because there arent that many shows. we play tuesday in paris, and our next gig isnt for another 10 days. i am happy to be a tourist some of the time, but thats not my passion. my passion is music and i am just not making enough of it right now.

i've been so looking forward to being in berlin, perhaps unfairly so. maybe its just another big capital city. and i am thinking this: its so easy to forget how much you need your friends, and how much the way you see a city depends on who you are with. some of my favorite times traveling, on tour or otherwise, have been in the most ridiculously unexpected places but with the perfect company. so here i am exploring berlin alone, and it just feels a little meaningless to me without someone to share it with. so i share it with you, little blog friends.

i got in last night around 6. i had grand plans to see some music or a show, it being saturday night and all. my attempts were thwarted, not too much english language to choose from, and my brain didnt want to translate. so i did some yoga for the first time in days, and then, drumroll please: went to the grocery store. i cant tell you how happy that made me. i took my time, spending over an hour in a big german supermarket just up the street. i bought fish and mueslix, apples and honey, vegetables and soy products. viva la soya! and so i returned to my hotel room for my first meal in a week that didnt include meat or cheese. yes!

my jet lag got me today, despite my best efforts, and i woke up at 1230. sunday in europe means you gotta start early, so i missed alot of the meaty part of the day for see-ing stuff. i was also warned that the weather here would be suspect this time of year. they were right about today! gloomy and raining and wind gusts so hard you had to stop walking and hold onto something. no kidding!

my first stop was the berlin museum of medical history. set on the campus of the charite hospital, the 3 floor museum included a huge collection of medical specimens from the 1700s onward. i saw everything from kidney stones to an iron lung, with early attempts at plastic surgery, two headed babies, cancerous lungs, and wax models of eye afflictions to boot. i must admit i have a little thing for medical curiosities. something about seeing the range of human malformation makes me feel more a part of the regular world, instead of on the physical fringes of it. i saw a version of "body worlds", the fancy new plastination exhibit, in new york a couple years ago. i found it interesting, but not nearly arresting enough. i left the museum today sick to my stomach and totally satisfied. i dont think in america they would have an exhibit like this. someone would protest that it was too graphic or somehow immoral. whats the problem with presenting a whole, and sometimes imperfect, picture of humans? europeans seem to trust themselves to make their own decisions, draw their own boundaries and come to their own conclusions.

of course its the babies that ellicit the most visceral response. as whole minature versions of us, we cant help but feel like we are looking into some kind of time warp, or mirror to our smaller selves. we could have, any of us, been that baby without a head, or the one whose organs formed outside its body, or the one that was normal from the head down until you got to the torso which literally melted into one long fin. i think the feeling is doubly immediate for a woman. what if that was the baby i grew inside me?

i took a long walk afterwards to clear my head and ended up face to face with the reichstag, the german parliament building. bombed during WWII, now beautifully restored, i still couldnt help but feel the weight of berlin's past in it. my dad sent me an email yesterday describing his own trip to berlin this past summer. "All the while we were in Germany, I constantly had a sense of being where the Nazis once were," he wrote. i feel it too, so i cant imagine what someone of my dad's generation would feel. thats all we've known of germany. what does that do to a country to have to extricate itself from under a stone like that? its impossible to start over. germany is Germany, so what do you do? i suppose they have done the only thing you can: soberly face the truth, tell it, and keep moving forward.

i passed through the brandenberg gate, which was bigger than i expected. you know how sometimes grand historical symbols seem so much smaller in person (like heroes)? the gate was grander than i would have thought. i turned right and found myself at the holocaust memorial, which here is called the "memorial to the death of european jews". its a city block of granite plinths. as you look at it, they seem all about the same height, but as you walk through them, the ground falls away until you are in the middle of the grid, with the blocks towering over you. it wasnt very crowded because of the weather, but occasionally i would look down a row and see someone's winter jacket and red scarf breaking up the bleak stone pillars. it was incredibly moving to be there. somehow it all conveyed the size and scope so succintly, all the more powerfully for its bleakness and silence.

another walk to clear my head took me surprisingly to a church. i've been in other cities that seem to have more churches than here. the franzohsichkirche is part of the complex of buildings that make up the berliner conzert haus. i walked in at the intermission of a musik school recital. so i sat down and was treated to a fine fine performance of beethoven's first symphony.

i guess the weather was getting to me, or maybe it was just to keep the theme of a heavy day, but i decided to end my day with a trip to the jewish museum. of course, the holocaust is one small part of the history of jews in germany. it just happens to be horrific and defining. i give credit to the museum for giving the whole history its just due. the upper floors are a more traditional museum setting, though still fascinating and interactive. the basement of the building is like a summation in architechture of the entire upstairs. it consists of 3 overlapping and intersecting hallways. the axis of exile, continuity and holocaust. each hallway has a few objects displayed in them, and each ends in a different type of tower. a garden, a completely empty void, and an installation of thousands of iron masks you walk on, producing an incredible clanking sound. i felt disoriented, i felt overwhelmed, i felt more than walls should make you feel by simply being walls.

i walked a long way after that, trying to find a lesbian cafe that i had read about online, only to find that it was more of a women's center and turkish bath, which it being sunday was shuttered. i'm not really sure i could have switched gears like that anyhow.

history is irrefutable. we carry it with us whether we want to or not. some of us choose to acknowledge it as best we can by writing or tatooing or in the way we live our lives. but what if your history is so heavy and so well-known it threatens to overwhelm the casual or ignorant observer? i hope tomorrow to find myself somewhere lighter in berlin and myself.

day four and five. frankfurt and berlin.

2008-03-01T23:05:00.000-05:00

it is such a curious feeling to play music under these circumstances. one minute you are on the ground. hunched over in your corner of the car, scrapping for some decent food and worrying. literally three minutes later, after throwing on some other clothes, you are suddenly expansive, standing onstage, bright eyed, smiling (whether you feel it or not) and digging out your soul for a room full of people. it always stuns me with its incongruity. you are alone all day and suddenly, you are the life of the party. not just the life, you are the party. lets dance.

our original plan was to spend the time between frankfurt and south africa traveling in europe together. a great adventure, if you can dream it, we'll do it, said michelle. in reality what happened was that we couldnt agree on a plan that worked with money and what we both wanted to do. so i am on my own for 3 days, paying for myself and traveling alone to berlin. why berlin? i have no idea, it just seemed like, the Place to land.

so now i am on a train somewhere in germany, listening to some old tortoise, munching on japanese crackers that my new york girlfriend packed in my backpack. the world is just a jumble of influences, and we are each repositories for our personal collections. how do we curate ourselves? make sense of all that is housed within our own museum of experience? what guide can we offer for visitors to our interior life?

i just reading an article today about carl nielsen, the danish composer, a firebrand it sounds like. he had several mottos including "music is life and life is inextuinguishable". not inexhaustable, incoherent, inarticulate or in order. no, he said INEXTUINGUISHABLE. so it goes on, and you cant wet it or tamp it out, move it or save it for later. here it is. here we are. i am being carried by something, i dont know what yet or where to, but the sense i have of approaching something i am meant to be doing- and doing it purely and to the exclusion of everything else-is growing stronger. what will be the object of this singular focus?

day three. vienna.

2008-02-27T23:05:00.000-05:00

i spent my day off today alone. just getting my feet under me and working through my jet lag. which hasnt been all that bad, considering... vienna reminds me of alot of other european cities i have been to. copenhagen, zurich, brussels, and amsterdam. this is a good thing. it all works so well together. the subway was easy, the walks were short, the maps were right on. this morning i went over to the arnold shoenberg center. our favorite 12tone composer! the place is small but fantastic. a real working library and research organization with a little exhibit. and lots of hands on displays. shoenberg was such a physical composer. building his own pens and pencils, tape dispensers, painting many self portraits, binding his own scores. it reminded me to keep my hands busy, to connect my songs with objects, to get them out of my head. not just the words on paper, but the feelings behind them. i have always felt like my songs are little home-made brownpaper and glue beings. why not make them actual? i also had to laugh, they had a display of some home recordings shoenberg made, and to play them they had an old radio... an old radio with a tape deck on the side. hmm, where have i seen that before?

next, i went over to the natural history museum, it was created by one of the franz emperors several hundred years ago. so it was lots of big glass cabinets with stuffed animals in a hapsburg era palace. i loved it. there are obviously moral and scientific tensions with shooting animals, posing them in threatening positions and then displaying them absent of context. but there is a certain lesson in awe to be learned. you are standing next to a 3700pound sea elephant, now benignly splayed on a fake rock, but you are still aware of how huge and powerful this animal was, and its current muted state seems only to underscore the vastness of its power and beauty when it was whole and alive.

after an afternoon session of yoga, i decided to go to the opera. when in rome, or rather when in vienna... i couldnt get a ticket for a seat, but i was able to get a standingroom ticket, and therefore was innaugurated into a whole culture of opera watching. the standing room sections are a curious mix of the devoted aficionado and the dutiful tourist. i hope i fell somewhere in between.

i waited for over an hour, then found myself in the hall. it was so quiet! i had bought the closest ticket i could then had a little bite in the cafe, not knowing that the cattle call wasnt over! there is a lovely tradition of rushing to the standing areas- rows of steps with velvet railings and LCD monitors for the lyrics- and claiming your area with a scarf. so even though the hall was empty, the standing room steps were already populated by a colorful and proprietary mix of scarves. who knew? so i squeezed myself in a corner and hoped for some leeway from my fellow patrons. i ended up meeting two lovely ladies who truly adore opera. they gave me the lowdown on the do's and dont's of vienna opera standing. do stake your claim and stick to it. don't ever sit down, no matter how tired you get. 3 hours is a long time to stand wedged in a tiny corner, but i did it for madama butterfly and it was worth it. "m.butterfly" is one of my favorite plays and movies, so i was excited to see the opera its based on. i have to admit i was sad to find there was no trans-lady singer element, but the staging was beautiful. for my first opera, you cant complain about seeing puccini in the vienna staatsoper haus.

day two. zurich to vienna.

2008-02-26T23:04:00.000-05:00

8 hours of sleep. miraculous! and a few mountains in between as we head to vienna. i took german in highschool and college, but somehow never made it here before. i understand about a quarter of what people are saying to me. which is a unique feeling. to get the gist but not the specfics... something else to pay attention to on this trip?

day one. new york to zurich. a day without a bed is no day at all.

2008-02-25T23:01:00.000-05:00

our trip begins with the sound of breaking glass. our car service driver in brooklyn has locked himself out of our car. the engine is running, our flight is waiting, but michelle's purse and jacket are in the backseat and we cant leave until we can figure out how to get them out. after about 15 minutes of pretending there is another solution, we get down to it and break the car window, rescue michelles stuff and head to the airport.

where they make the majik (or why i hate TV but being on it is fun)

2005-08-11T21:27:00.000-04:00

i am still high! i am still reeling! someone sent me a clip of my recent appearance on the conan o'brien show, and i cant stop watching it. usually, it is torture to see my animated self on the screen. a special kind of pain we reserve for our innermost insecurities. however, i am hooked, watching myself superimposed onto a set and next to people i have seen only on TV but seen hundreds of times. like i went into one of those booths at an amusement park and they put me in front of a green screen with my guitar and said, "which late night program would you like to be on?" and i said, "well, i hate TV and believe it to be an obsolete piece of technology, what with the internet and all. but if you twist my arm, ow, i suppose i would want to be on conan, because he is wierd and smart, although he's so tall i dont want him to come shake my hand." then you stop pretending, step out of the booth and get the video to take home. but wait, it really happened. yes, it really happened...

conan is filmed in the NBC builing at rockefeller center (or as i like to say ROCK-AH-FELL-AH CENT-AH) in NYC... my band went over at 10.30am to set up, i didnt have to go til 2pm because i am a "star", but in actuality, i just wasnt needed... arriving at 2, we got ushered into a nice dressing room with way too many sandwiches. but my name was definitely on the door! not just printed on paper, but on plastic attached to the door. and not just with tape or sticky tack, because we tried and tried to pry it off... around 2.15 we went into the studio for a sound check and a camera run-through. everything they say about TV studios is true. they are always very very small, very cold, and painted wierd colors that somehow look better on camera. i think this is why real people often look so bad on TV, its because everything is set up to make gross colors look good. you could be the picture of health, but if your face isnt covered in wierd orange makeup you look like death warmed over.

why i hate TV reason no.1: nothing real looks good, only unreal things. this is bewildering and sad.

we had been expecting to have to play the song at least 8 times, which we had prepared for by coming up with all kinds of extra musical bits to keep us amused and sane. however, these guys were tops! only 4 times- by the end of which, you still think you have written a good song, and you still know what it is about! the sound in the studio was great, better than any TV sound i have had... very loud, and very real, although what you see when you are playing can be a bit strange at first. conan has audience seats, about 200 or so, but they are up high. right in front of you is a very shallow area where the cameras (which are HUGE) are all on wheels and buzz and spin around. at conan, the band is tucked below the seats, so they are actually facing you on the music stage. there are a few monitors around, for play back, but in my experience, watching them while you play is a bad idea. a) you just get depressed by how you look and b) it makes your eyes go at a funny angle, so all the camera sees is the whites of them. SCARY!

after soundcheck, we were free for a couple hours, but i think everybody was too nervous to leave the dressing room. instead we picked at the sandwiches and watched conan do his run-though on the TV in our room. he sat at his desk with his acoustic guitar and proceeded to noodle while he improved jokes, organised skits, and generally gave shape to the show. let me say this, this man is the real thing. actively engaged in his program, very very smart, and very efficient at figuring out what was funny and what wasnt. it was easy to see why he's as successful as he has been.

why i hate TV reason no.2: things have to fit in specific time slots, leaving no room for spontineity. the handcuffs of commercial breaks! the prison of strict schedules!

around 4.30, someone came in and gave us the final show shedule, a complicated mix of numbers and letters on a pleasant pink piece of paper. i was able to decipher it to see that our segment would last exactly 3minutes... oh no, said someone, the song is only 2.38 seconds! could we add another section? extend one of the musical breaks? use up more of the precious time alotted? unfortunately this kind of thinking has no place in TV. while we played "to the stars" 4 times, the director was scripting the camera moves and lighting down to the word and second. literally. so if we decided to take our full 3minutes, well, all hell would break loose. and they would use one of the run throughs from earlier in the day- where we all looked like death warmed over (see above).

the other guests on the show were donnie, oops i mean, mark wahlberg and bob saget. strange to say the least. no one got a glimpse of them or conan backstage before the show. they keep the musicians sequestered in a far corner of the backstage hallway, i think to keep us from bothering the other guests. although i swear i saw bob sagets elbow for second when i went around the corner to investigate the giant 3 foot nose parked in the middle of the hallway. the show tapes at 5.30, and works live until 6.30. occasionally they insert something pre-taped, but really, the pink sheet is law. marky mark didnt show up until the minute before he was due on and he left the minute he was done. i suppose this is all boring to him. but we werent going to let his bad attitude ruin our day. around 5.45, they took each of us into make-up. sam and neil just got some powder, i needed more. i have done enough TV and photo shoots to navigate safely through the world of professional make-up artists. "very natural, very light, a little gloss and i'll do my own eyes." is my mantra. i have learned to say it sweetly but with the force of a cruise ship.

why i hate TV reason no.3 (but really the most important): just good enough is good enough.

at about 6.20 we got taken into the studio, the show was on a commercial break, and the band was playing. let me tell you, that band is LOUD. they told us 4 times, dont play along with them. i suppose thats a real problem. not for us, because we dont know how to play TV show swing. only rock and roll, motherfucker. on TV it is important to be over-confident because the camera sucks away your self-esteem. so we all warmed up by telling eachother how fabulous we looked. before i knew it, i looked over and there was conan, holding up a vinyl copy of BIRDS and bob saget looking over pleasantly. and then...

we were on! i cant really describe how much fun it is to play knowing that so many people are watching. its a real head-trip. and when you look back at the tape, and see me smile gooffily during the song, thats what i am thinking. also, before the first chorus you can see me steal a glimpse off to my right. i wanted to see what max weinberg was doing. was he watching? no, he was standing up, like a wax museum version of himself. perfectly still, looking down. i thought that was very very funny... but as we swung into the first chorus, i saw him come to life. we made wax meinberg move! after that it all became a blur. let me also say one thing, i think we played pretty well, but i wouldnt have known that until we watched it back, and then it didnt matter anyway. i think playing on TV is the hardest environment to be musical in. its ridiculously hard to blow your own mind musically in that situation. people that do hold my eternal admiration. and like i said it doesnt matter. on TV, if you dont mess up, thats good enough. sad but true.

after we played, conan came over to shake my hand, which was surreal. but he was incredibly nice. as soon as they went to commercial, he came back over and we talked about my guitar. he has a similar one, a gretsch and we mooned over how amazing gretsches are to play... then to my surprise, he said, he come over to the couch... so i took the guitar back from him, put it down and ran over and plopped down between conan and bob saget. conan and i continued our discussions of gretsches and rockabilly (his favorite) until suddenly we were back on the air... he was so complementary about my music, and i couldnt believe i was sitting there, that all i could do was grin. after he said good bye, i asked him about the show, about which parts got cut and why. bob saget joined in and we all talked about how hard it must be to make a new show everyday. "its as if i told you to write a song everyday," was how conan put it... and then we were done. i talked for a second to bob saget, who was very very nice and real, and told me it was HIS pleasure to meet ME, which couldnt have been true. i mean, full house, anyone? i love that he is proud of that show and that he has also moved on. later i gave him a CD and we promised to stay in touch...

you mustnt think that my dry wit means i am not grateful for the opportunity to go on TV, and i know it is rare and there are plenty of others who really really want to do this too. however, i do think we all watch too much TV and, yes, i do think we are capable of re-drawing what TV can be. TV is still thematically no different than what it was when it started. advertising and more advertising with some content squeezed in. the difference now is we have more channels. but, here's my point, once a tv camera gets turned on you and the lights come up, something happens to you. you want to connect with america, you want them to like you. you smile bigger, you laugh louder, it's incredibly fun and then it's done. you go back to being your little, small, drab normal colored self. and you know what, THATS me and i am happy with that.

thanks for tuning in and goodnight, everybody... bah dah dum dah dum! bah dah dum dah dum! swee bop bop fiddledy do wah! do wah!

from the cradle to the seat of power

2005-08-05T21:28:00.000-04:00

last night the TRiO played in chapel hill NC and now we're on our way to greenville SC. i am in the van, as usual. it seems right now that i am truly on tour, and what i mean by that is that i have reduced my life down to the barest essentials: sleep, a little work, no friends, and a lot of driving and playing music. this usually happens about 6 weeks in, and this summer is no different than the past 8 (!) in that regard. and yet, something new is forming, something i have barely had time to notice. everyday is so completely new that it's hard to have time to look past the newness to see its deeper effect on yourself.

in the last month, i have played with my band, in a duo, and solo to audiences ranging from 3 people (really!) to 5 thousand. i have opened for my heros and had openers i just met that day. i have introduced new songs and re-vived some that are more than 10 years old. yet all these extremes seem to make more sense to me than at any other point in my career. this is just what i do and how it happens. i am letting things roll off my back that in the past would have sent me in a spiral, and i am fighting for things i never cared about before. is this what growing up is?

i think part of my new-found peace of mind has come from some extra-musical experiences i have had lately. in mid july, i had been on tour opening for ani difranco (an unbelievable experience in its own right- another day another blog). i left that tour for a couple of my own shows in canada and in philadelphia. at the show in philly, an outdoor festival, i was watching the indigo girls play from the side of the stage when amy ray invited me to come out and sing "closer to fine" with them. i actually looked behind me, because i was sure she was motioning to someone else. by the time i realized it was me, the first verse had gone by, and i raced up for the chorus. the roar from the audience was something i will never forget. the ladies asked me to sing the third verse, and even though i have been singing that song forever, i couldnt remember it. i had to ask emily how it started... once i got going it was easy, but for a second, i truly thought i was done... here's a picture of emily leaning over to tell me how the verse begins. you would NEVER know i am terrified, would you?

photo by alex lowy

the next day, ani, the indigo girls, actor james cromwell, and several nuclear and native american rights activists were descending on capitol hill for a lobby day. ani's tour manager, susan alzner, had organized the whole thing, and she invited me to come along and participate as much as i felt comfortable. rep. dennis kucinich was our host for the day. and as he led us around capital hill, i was struck by the rarity of the occasion- and also the irony. shouldnt it be easier to come to the seat of power and participate in YOUR government? and yet for many of us that day, as well as most people, it was the first and perhaps only time we would get this close to where decisions affecting our lives would be made. we began with a briefing in a room on the hill called HC-5. usually this room is controlled by the speaker of the house, right now dennis hastert, a republican not sympathetic to our side of many things. the briefing was causing so much interest, however, that the sheer size of it demanded we use HC-5. a coup! ani, the indigo girls, james, and several others all gave two minute statements on the causes for the day: our opposition to the coming energy bill and a proposal to dump 44K tons of nuclear waste on native land in skull valley UT.

as i sat in the back of the room, taking it all in, i looked around and realized that 80percent of the people in the room were my age. late 20's interns and aides to the more wellknown movers and shakers. it is people just like myself, the kids i grew up with, that are filtering information that comes into the senators' and representatives' offices. it was actually inspiring because it made the walls seem less impenetrable, although i also recognized that peculiar brand of late 20's arrogance which can often keep you from admitting you dont know something or are wrong. cough. cough.

after the briefing, we split up into 2 teams and went to meetings with individual senate staffs. the office buildings were generally pretty swank- two are even connected by a little railway, but it was interesting to see each senator's individual tastes come through. hillary clinton's office looked like a movie set of what a senator's office should be, while harry reid's looked like it got a lot more use and bought a lot more office supplies. dick durbin's was claustrophobic, yet we had our most spirited meeting there. most of the time the staff would listen to our specific requests, taking notes (what were they writing down?) and then suggest that they couldnt speak for the senator. both the energy bill and the waste dump were politically hot issues, which made the staffers extra polite and extra evasive. i understand their game, the system is set up in such a way that only at the very last minute will anyone take a stand or take responsibility for an issue... this last minute was approaching fast for the upcoming energy bill vote. we were on the hill on monday and the vote was to be pushed through before friday. so we heard a lot about back room deals, extra provisions, riders coming and going by the hour, literally. unbelievably, no one had read the full text of the bill and probably wouldnt before it got voted on. still in the midst of this frustration, i was blown away by the positivity of everyone in our group. people stood their ground, asked pointed questions, stated glaring omissions and falsehoods.

after an extrememly long day (briefing at 11am and meetings til 7pm) we all went out to dinner together. dennis joined us again and ralph nader showed up too, but i camped out at the end of the very long table with emily from the indigo girls, tyler littman (ani's lighting tech), rebecca lichtenfeld (who works with the organization Witness) and todd sickafoose (ani's bass player). the 5 of us drank a lot of wine and tried to put into perspective all the things we'd seen and heard that day. emily and rebecca have a lot of experience in these situations, and they felt like the day was a sucess on many levels. meanwhile, i was still trying to unstick my tongue.

while i was invited to speak as much as i wanted, i spent alot of the day listening. and listening hard. i wanted those most educated on these issues to take center stage, and i felt truly like an apprentice, watching how artists i admire carried themselves in a politcal situation. i was given a gift that day, a chance to see how to talk in a politcally useful fashion about radical issues. how to present your passions in an articulate and open manner. musicians and celebrities are often criticized for taking stances on issues outside their chosen fields. i have always thought that an unfair and dangerous line of thought. who better than an artist (whose job it is to communicate) to take the lead on issues affecting all of us, to speak for those who dont often have the opportunity or the agency.

as a coda, we went 1 for 2 with our lobbying efforts. the state of UT is now on the side of the skull valley native americans, hiring a top end washington lobby firm to take up the cause of stopping this dumping. however, this monday W will sign the energy bill we were fighting against. many of the senators we visited (including clinton, mccain, and reid) voted against the bill, yet some of the most promising visits (durbin, dorgan) voted for it. still, the simple act of getting to capital hill and shaking things up with our presence was progress in itself. everyone is now turning their efforts to the congressional elections of 2006, a chance to shift the balance of power in congress.

playlists

2005-07-12T21:31:00.000-04:00

dear diary. it seems like FOREVER since i last wrote to you. i am still waiting for a pony, and i am still on steroids for my poison ivy.

hmmm.

the past 14 days have been so full of radio, TV, shows, swimming whenever possible and van riding the rest of the time that my head is... ...swimming? we finally had a day off yesterday (went swimming, drove to NYC), but this morning it was bright and early back to work. we went down to philadelphia to do a live radio session on WXPN, and then i taped another session for a radio series that has artists talk about a record that is important to them. contenders for me were U2 Achtung Baby, Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, DJ Shadow Entroducing, Will You Find Me by Ida, or perhaps Ani DiFranco's Living in Clip... but i ultimately chose liz phair "whipsmart" because i heard it when i was 16 or so, it inspired a lot of my early four-tracking, and i bought it on white vinyl. the interview was incredibly fun and kicked my frazzled brain back into shape. i believe it airs in october along with sessions by joseph arthur, richard thompson, and liz phair herself.

just as i was trying to pick a record to talk about, i also made a little house-mix CD to play before shows. someone wrote in here to myspace asking to know the tracklisting for the mix. i was hoping people might tune into what was being played in the club... which also reminds me of something else i wanted to share. before iTunes put the clamp-down on semi-famous celebrity playlists, i had one all written up and ready to debut when my record came out (a version of it did make it up on canadian iTunes)(those canucks). i'll post that here too, maybe you'll find it interesting...

i love reading all the comments here, keep them coming!
see below for your homework!
x mckeown

MCKEOWN HOUSE MIX
[artist] / [song] / [album]

andrew bird / sovay / mysterious production of eggs
ida / 599 /heart like a river
shooby taylor / stour-hearted men / songs in the key of Z
tribe called quest / midnite / midnite marauders
andy stochansky / shine / 100
DJ shadow / changeling / entroducing
fionn regan / abacus / hotel room EP
coldplay / white shadows / x&y
patience and prudence / a smile and a ribbon / the 45s
lauryn hill / every ghetto / the miseducation of....
modest mouse / ocean breathes salty / good news for...
congress-woman melinda jackson / cousin mosquito #1 / songs in the key of Z
elvis costello / less than zero / live at el mocambo
weeping tile / south of me / valentino
regina spektor / us / soviet kitsch
gillian welch and david rawlings / blackstar / live
M.I.A. / galang / M.I.A.
sleater-kinney / jumpers / the woods

ERIN MCKEOWN
ITUNES PLAYLIST "we will become like birds" edition

I live for my ipod! It changed my life and made me (a professional musician) love music all over again. Like a teenager! There are so many playlists I want to make for you, but I thought for my first one, I would organize it around my latest record. Here are some of the songs that influenced the writing and production of "Birds" as well as some material by people who played or sang on the record.

Workaholic, Mylab, Mylab- I made "birds" with Tucker Martine, a drummer and producer from Seattle. Mylab is his collaboration with pianist Wayne Horowitz

The Cloud Room, Laura Veirs, Carbon Glacier- It was through meeting Laura a few years ago that I found Steve Moore, who played all the keyboards on "birds", and Tucker Martine. This is the song that made me want to work with Tucker.

Equus, Blonde Redhead, Misery is a Butterfly- Tucker introduced me to this band. I love the bassline that holds the whole thing together. So dirty.

This Place is a Prison, Postal Service, Give Up- This album came along right when I was formulating the plan for my own record. Everytime the beat kicks in it kills me. Everytime.

Cload, Four Tet, Osmosis - A large portion of the music I listen to has no vocals. Four Tet is one of my absolute favorites and for some reason, always reminds me of driving around the UK.

Disseminated, Soul Coughing, Irresistable Bliss- I first heard Sebastian Steinberg as the bass player in Soul Coughing, possibly my favorite band ever. He came and played bass on "birds" and was an immaculate human, not mention bad-ass bass player.

Butter, Tribe Called Quest, Low End Theory- Continuing on the low-end tip: I love this album. Every word of every song.

Shirt, Peter Mulvey, Kitchen Radio- Peter sings the duet "Delicate December" on "birds". This is the most delicious track from his latest record.

We Looked Like Giants, Death Cab for Cutie, Transatlanticism- I actually found DCFCutie through the Postal Service. Here they get mean, the way I like them.

Sadie, Joanna Newsom, The Milk Eyed Mender- Tucker played this for me when we met to record together for the first time. She's just off the grid!

Sporting Life, Sea and Cake, The Fawn- Sea and Cake have been a favorite of mine for years. The way they put together their songs, the interplay between all the instruments, has been really influential to me.

YoYeah, Black Star, Black Star- I come back to this album ALL THE TIME...

Flim, The Bad Plus, These are the Vistas- I first saw the Bad Plus at Bonnaroo last summer, where they blew me away. We were recording "Air" and really going nowhere when I had a dream about this song that helped us get back on track.

Sleeping with the Lights On, Teitur, Poetry and Aeroplanes- I like creative uses of loops: things that cut in wierd places or circle back on themselves in unique ways. Teitur is a good friend of mine, but before he was my friend he was making songs that caught my ear.

Joyful Girl [Danger and Uncertainty Mix], Ani DiFranco, More Joy, Less Shame EP- It was my friend Ani that first showed me New Orleans. She made me fall in love with the city, so much so that I had to go back and make my album there.

599, Ida, Heart Like a River- Someday I will make music as beautiful as Ida. Every album I will try my hardest.

Headache, Liz Phair, whitechocolatespaceegg- I have always loved Liz Phair, I always will. The half-sung lyrics in the middle are so hot.

Triumph of the Heart, Bjork, Medulla- I always think it's important to notice what songs artists choose to end their albums with. What will their last statement be? This one ends Bjork's most recent. Of course the Heart Triumphs!

the ladies who rock

2005-06-21T21:30:00.000-04:00

hello. and how are you?
a sincere greeting and sincere question. i was hoping to do this blog-ing thing once a week, but alas i am already off that wagon. perhaps the last entry was so effective we could skip a week? perhaps. also, before i get into this one, i want to say that i have really been enjoying all your comments and friend profiles etc etc. i can't respond to everything, but please do know that your props are well received over here. you make me blush.

i've just come back from a pair of trips: the first was to toronto to play at NXNE. included was much good canadian friend hanging and some groundwork was laid for the shows later in the summer. the second trip was to pittsburgh just this past weekend to tape a session for the world cafe and play a festival for the great local radio station, WYEP.

this was my third time recording a session for the world cafe, and i know how lucky i am to have enjoyed their support for a good 5 years now. it doesnt happen all that often, and i appreciated the opportunity to test the legs of the trio and to start figuring out how to talk about this record. i love david dye, and i never think there is enough time to talk with him about everything i want to... plus i get such a thrill out of interviews, especially live ones, because i always feel like i am juggling 17 things at once, hoping not to drop any of them. for example:

thing no.1: answer the question asked.
thing no.5: try to sound intelligent. try.
thing no.10: answer the question asked in a new way.
thing no.11: don't tell the people where you live or give out your phone number and address. you know you want to.
thing no.17: remember not to cuss.

one of the questions david asked struck me as a particularly good one because it pointed out something very true but that is rarely talked about- or at least i am not asked so often. it was this: david noted that most female performers who write get pigeonholed as "folksingers". he also was cool enough to note that there hasnt been anything remotely folky about what i do for a longtime. so, specifically, he wanted to know, was this annoying? i guess what i liked about the question was that someone noticed that i have been trying to do something besides folk music for awhile now. and that he was maybe giving me an opportunity to vent a little.

i answered this way: that yes, it is annoying. and that i appreciated him pointing out how inappropriate it is in regard to my music (also noted: not implying any judgement whatsoever to folk music or singers. i hope that's obvious). but, my main thought in answering the question was that it doesnt do any good to be annoyed, or negative, or actively complain about whatever tag you get stuck with, being that there are so few things you can control in the music business. you can write your songs and you can make your records, but you cannot make people like them or you. they have to come to it themselves and form their own opinions. on the list of things you can control is your own sense of what is artistically right for you. you can control how your records look and sound and how your show goes. and as the years have gone on, i have become more and more clear about what that means for me. that's the best thing i can do to fight the presumption that female artists (if they aren't on MTV and in spin or rollingstone) are "folky".

but,a few hours later i was sitting at lunch with my band and my manager, still turning over the question in my head. as is often the case with me, i began to wish i had said something different. or rather, more... the music that i make is a direct reflection of the music i love, and i love music that lifts you, that makes you feel invincible and incredible for 3 and a half minutes of roaring guitars and choruses- the highest hopes, the deepest faith expressed in the dynamics of emotion and sound. so many amazing bands make this music and make me feel this way, but why are the "greatest" among them all men? the current and holy triumvirate for most people is U2, radiohead, and coldplay who have grown out of the beatles, the rolling stones, and led zepplin. and while i dont like the latter three at all, i really do live for their contemporary counterparts. i buy the records, i raise my lighter, i aspire to make music of the same size, scope, and reception. each time i get in front of a crowd, each time i make a record, i try to get a little closer to that ideal. when david asked that question, i wish i had affirmed my faith in the power of rock and roll and called out the ladies who are making it and making it well: sleater-kinney, pink, bjork, liz phair and on and on. beyond being annoyed at getting labeled a "folksinger", i think it's a crime that the ladies are not standing shoulder to shoulder with the men of rock. this will change, it is changing, and i aim to be a part of it.

a coda to this: in the last week, i have been fortunate enough to share my music and spend some quality time with two heros of mine, amy ray and michelle shocked. their music came into my life around the same time, age 15 or so, when i was realizing that i liked songs that made my mind turn and my ears burn. over the years, i have learned from their intensity, their daring, their volume as writers and as performers. i try to see them as much as i can, to check in, to ask questions, to see what they are up to, to show them what i am doing. this week they both reminded me, in their own ways, that the path is right there in front of us still, despite distractions and obstacles. they've both released albums in the last several months that show they are still pursuing that goal of rocking out, as only ladies can, but making a sound that everyone can pump their fist to.

they inspire me so much, those damn "folksingers".