January Newsletter

Hi folks,

Thanks for making 2013 a great year! It's been a tough one, having left behind everything I knew in Albany, and moving to Northern Vermont, where I didn't know too many people, and not too many people knew me. It's been very gratifying to get to meet so many great pickers and writers up here. Folks who come to mind are Derek, Matt, Pappy, Brett, Josh, Dan, Matt, Kari, Brent, Tim, Ed, and Natalie.

The folks at Seven Days were nice enough to mention me a few times, which made me feel very welcome. Here's a link to a review of the latest recording.

"Bound for Abiquiu" Review by Dan Bolles

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Speaking of "Bound for Abiquiu," I sure hope you will give it a listen If you haven't yet. I actually took a risk and created a Kickstarter for the project, which was a great experience for me. Thanks very much to all the folks who helped out with getting that album recorded and released, especially Pete, Brian, Roger, Carl, Dan, and all the Kickstarter backers. 

We released the album at Valentine's with Driftwood (who currently has a new album that is red hot) and fifty of our closest friends. It was great to see so many friends show up to hear us, and we had a blast. We've come a long way since our first show there back in 2010. Thanks to Ryan, Chris, Brad, Ben, Howe, Mike, Kim, Dave.

And here's a couple more reviews of that album:

David Malachowski at The Times Union
Pete Mason at Upstate Live

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So now I'm living up here in Jericho, VT, a small town known mostly as the place where "Snowflake" Bentley took his pictures of, you guessed it, snowflakes. The story is an interesting one, and bears summarizing as a lead-in to the rest of this entry. 

Wilson Bentley was just a kid when he started taking pictures. He started trying to take pictures of snowflakes, probably because there were a lot of them around in northern Vermont. He followed this fascination through a process of trial and error, perfecting his methods until he was able to produce photographs of ice crystals that revealed the unique beauty of each one. And so, while the rest of the scientific community looked for grander subjects, an untrained but dogged photographer set the standard for meteorological photo-documentation through diligent and patient perseverance.

So here we are nestled on the western slopes of the Green Mountains, between the great battered shoulders of Mt. Mansfield and the proud precipice of Camel's Hump. And here I write these songs and these poems, documenting these falling thoughts and images as they come to me before they melt into the mundane world, before they freeze into the icy past. Before they are lost, as they certainly will be, I give them an extended life in digital imperfection. Give a listen here...

They're rough but sometimes I think I'll just leave them as they are. Other times I think I'll go into the studio with a huge band and record them live. Other times I think I'll go into a studio by myself and record them with a guitar. Who knows - it's the art of the fun. Thanks for listening.