Found this in my journal from 2007. Char and I are looking at it in terms of a song: Oh, my darkness. Be welcome. You’re in me, aching there. Be welcome. Stir in me shadows of tempest to stream against the blazing light. Foxfire against the dark mirror of a yawning soul.
We are home in Albuquerque, grateful for a great tour and pleased to be back. It’s good to tread on the strange path music demands. At the lovely Valley Stage festival in Huntington, VT, which was heartbreaking to drive away from before sunset yesterday, we saw this sign, which tickled me. It was nice to [...]
Last time we were in NY we saw Laurie Anderson. She was amazing, poetry of challenging beauty, supple and unnerving. One phrase she used was “a new North” , about clocks spinning like compasses trying to find what happened to the magnetic field, or something along those lines. After a lovely time showcasing at the [...]
…was also quite good, delicious in fact. Great show at Passim Sunday – we got to have my teacher from Bamako, Moussa Traore, sit in with us. We had time on our way North to go up to the Byfield cemetery and see our great grandparents’ grave. We had a sweet show in Portsmouth, where [...]
Portland, ME. Our radio slot last night was a good experience – we enjoyed talking with our host, Leah, and playing… The sound crew had their hands full with a mystery – why was the sound not coming out on the airwaves? It was garbled and strange sounding and going in and out… the answer? [...]
Our return trip to the East Coast. Can you believe we got all our gear on the plane? Arriving in Bean Town, our latent director selves were able to put together this great minimalist flick for you about how Round Mountain is really something bigger than ourselves. Or is it? Your browser does not support [...]
Well, dear ones, here is a prayer we wanted to pass along – I guess you might say it’s a prayer in progress. With fires of late in the Jemez and Sangre de Cristo Mountains, where many of our songs were written, it only seems right to offer something up. We’re praying for the rains [...]
Brooding under the smoke from the Jemez Mountains today – the center of the cosmos, in my story anyway, I put on an amazing song by Iarla O’Lionnard, “Caoineadh Na dTrA- Mhuire”. This beautiful Irish lament gave me the gift of taking my mind away from its helpless fire-turning, and got me thinking about musical [...]
This morning we woke up to the singing of a wild California bird – without knowing what in heck it was, I was taken back to moments of the same feeling, while camping out in Joshua Tree back in the ’90′s. The bird has a million different things to say, and they just keep coming. [...]
Here’s a shot from near Tehachapi, CA. After a strangely cool, moist crossing of the Mojave, we arrived in Los Banos yesterday afternoon. We’re starting to know the way – signs like “Shinarump Road” shine their way through the layers of memory. We held a motel room practice which, although I couldn’t imagine anyone not [...]