Round Mountain

For the Solstice

roundmountain — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 04:09:32 +0000

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.

The Path of 60%

roundmountain — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 21:43:54 +0000

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 follow that path through the woods and come out in the place where people are.
You know, another great tidbit from the tour I’d be remiss not to tell you about came from Tom, the neurologist gentleman on the flight out. When we asked him for advice on maintaining a limber mind, he relayed the magic success rate for real success: 60%. If you find yourself consistently mastering a higher percentage, say 75 or 80%, you’re not trying enough new stuff or taking enough risks. Let’s just say I was happy to hear that. On now, into more risks and more growing!

A New North

roundmountain — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 21:32:16 +0000

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 amazing Brooklyn community eccentric musos’ hang – Roots and Ruckus, we drove North into VT. In Rutland we caught a jaw-dropping concert by Village Harmony, an organization that has been important to some of our favorite musicians ever. So inspired by that, we lit on today into Shelburne’s Bread and Butter farm to play for those guys during their wonderful Burger Night event. There was a beautiful big crowd there in the gorgeous long light of late summer afternoon. The burgers were fantastic, the place was too. Here it is…

What then followed…

roundmountain — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 06:14:02 +0000

…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 the craic was again mighty – loved the Farthest Forest, and Mike and Allan’s awesome music. Tristan and the listening folk took tremendous care of us, and then today we came all the way down to New York in the rain. What a lovely night at the living room- Carrie Elkin and Anna Egge were both bright with beautiful, quality songs and great backup. People really seemed to love RM – and the sound was absolutely pristine. Afterward, the city was alive and awake… it felt so good to come into our own in New York.

The Luther Bonny Button

roundmountain — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 05:57:56 +0000

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? The Luther Bonny Button had been pressed, which apparently funneled the sound off into some other building or dimension or some such. Once they figured that out and deactivated the switch, things got easier! It was good to know about Luther Bonny Buttons as they apply to the rest of our lives – they explain so many things!

In fact, the radio slot was itself kind of a talismanic Luther Bonny Button for the show tonight at One Longfellow Square. A nice big house of new friends and family, some relations we’d never met, a lovely pairing with the awesome Boreal Tordu whose fiddle wizardry and Acadian harmonies lifted the room several notches off the ground. It was another reminder of how good it it feels to share spirit with folks, and a great kickoff to the tour. We should get a Luther Bonny button of our own and send off radio transmissions into the void every time we set out.

And so begins…

roundmountain — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 05:44:54 +0000

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?

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Prayers for rain

roundmountain — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 22:01:42 +0000

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 to keep setting in gently and easing this land, without washing us all away in the process, please! The song invokes the New Mexico saint San Ysidro (ask an elder if you haven’t heard his story), and incorporates the traditional Gambian kora kumbengo Kuruntu Kelefa. Ideas from The House at Otowi Bridge found their way into the words, along with our recent post “California Night Bird“. This demo version, complete with crickets, came out quickly because it had to – we give it to you to put with your own prayers, and to help keep hope in your heart. Even as we write this it is thundering.

Audio MP3

Right-click (or control-click) to download San Ysidro

Some of the grass is withering and some has grown too tall, one water sustains us all

If the balance is destroyed then all of us will fall, one water for us all

I still will sing the glory of the Earth, joining with the wind’s whistling cry

With the clouds of burning ashes and the fires raging high

San Ysidro, bring the rain, Vishnu sustain these living things

For the bird is singing still, and so I still will sing

The people who created this, they knew what it could do. Their hearts were broken too

One water to sustain us, there’s no guilt, there is no blame, only prayers for rain

chorus

Storefronts and Views – Thanks, Iarla!

roundmountain — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 05:16:09 +0000

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 traditions – from the street, they can start to all seem like storefronts, just boxes, each trying to catch your eye, ultimately sad and unfulfilling. But once you sit down and listen to the singing or playing of a master, you go through and beyond that doorway into an authorless space where, far from boxed in, an entire view of the world is invoked. There the healing of that truth may be absorbed.

Okay, you (I) say, so how does Round Mountain fit into that model? Are we just a little multiplex serving variety? No. I guess we fit because that kind of reaching through different currents is really what we’re about and a worldview we strive for, beyond authorship. That’s the story we are. Thanks, Iarla, for the cairn you left us under the imperceptible snowpack of this time!
As for the holy mountains of Jemez, may they regenerate themselves in time without anyone generating any extra limbs!

California Night Bird

roundmountain — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 09:34:37 +0000

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. In Dickinson’s words, “Hope is the thing with feathers. That perches in the soul.”

It’s been a wildly eventful tour in Round Mountain’s little cosmos. Shows in the upward-yawning redwoods and up to the bay, down through the central coast of rocks and golden hills and estuaries, through the beginning of palm trees and on into the valley Mt. Baldy broods over. All in the company of good friends, amongst and across our demons, emptying out into this good night (without going gentle)! I haven’t written a thing about it because, dear world, I haven’t felt like it. I finally made the connection – if we don’t write about all the gigs, then you’ll have to go and see for yourselves.

It’s been a huge dose of inspiration seeing Inga, Moira, and April at work. There’s been some serious calling to answer to in the realm of raising our game, and after/ through a string of six nights, we’ve had a tremendous renewal in bringing our own spirit to the table. We’ve been learning. Some shows have been restorative, some tough internally, but it was a glorious one tonight with VOCO at the Coffee Gallery Backstage. We were elated, and felt the healing of the past times we’d tried to fill the place. And coming outside into this full moon night, whom should we hear but our bird friend, still carrying on boldly. We stand in gratitude.

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Sudden Sea Weather

roundmountain — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 18:44:48 +0000

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 noticing it (think bagpipes, accordion, and cajon), mercifully engendered no response. Our first show’s tonight with Inga and Amanda! It’s good to get on the road and feel its rhythms wash over you, although the leaving from home was especially poignant this time. I felt completely off kilter until all of a sudden the right song and thought slipped in and I was instantly sobbing. Char said gently, “did you catch some sudden sea weather?” How funny it is that even though we plan our travels ourselves, in so many ways we never see them coming.