Take Solace in the Blogosphere

I’m thinking.  About writing a song.  About an overly-done, cliched topic.  Having to do with animals in a cage and how, when I’m at work, I can look out the window and it feels just like that.  Like how the sun will warm my cheeks through the glass but the wind doesn’t hit my face.  Like how there are towers of glass everywhere around me just like towers of steel as bars in a cage.  On how I can see the waves crashing over the breakwater, like anything can perpetually hold off the lake.  On how I can see a bridge with cars riding over it, like anything can perpetually hold up a moving river of steel.  On how that wind I mentioned earlier stays outside and the air inside is stale and smells like my morning bowl of apples and cinnamon oatmeal and 5 hour old tea.  Maybe I’ll mention fingers on bars or majestic lions.  Maybe this is too cliche and I won’t even bother.

We had a great time with Blonde on Blonde last night. They’re really great to work with. Here are some pictures from the show:

We’ll be playing with Blonde on Blonde at the Riverwest Commons on Thursday, November 13th around 8:30pm.  I have a dentist appointment at 4 so you’ll get to see my sparkling-clean teeth.  More details to follow.

This is the first song off our new CD that we recorded in Watertown before the end of summer. It’s fresh off the press. Literally. I just finished it 5 minutes ago just for you.  Think of it as an early Halloween present.

 

 Woke Up From The Dead: Play Now | Downloads 60

If you like this, then you’ll like our other songs.  Check out our audio section for more.

Also, please leave us a comment below so we know someone out there cares.

The stain left in northern Wisconsin this year, not by a bodily fluid but by a clever acronym (namely B.A.R.F or Bluegrass and Roots Festival) is not unlike the damage done to a stylish taupe vest after one’s humors are balanced on it after a night of saturnalian excess. One is not sure of what has just happened, and not knowing what has happened we are less sure of what will happen. But take comfort in the lingering acrid smell that still faintly appears on your clothes and on the sacred grounds of the Algoma Hunting and Fishing Club. No amount of laundering and no amount of rain can wash away the trodden-in excrement of good times gone past, because said good times only ripen with temporal distance. Memory is a revisionist, and as such, events gets repeated with the same glossed over abandon as the scrolling news floats by while a disinterested newscaster yawns through the same tired advice from the station’s resident nutritionalist. So why should we give a damn about counting your precious calories? The very things we seek to live for are floating away right beneath our feet. But don’t fret too much about our collectively imperfect recollections. Truth and clarity are ugly things. The word for this softening of memory is nostalgia. Deep down, all modern bluegrass fans share this same nostalgia, this same anachronistic fetish for what we ourselves have never experienced. Yet, that’s not entirely true because even though our minds and bodies are tyrants, music transcends all, and for a few blissful moments a connection is made to this nonexistent past haven gestating like a bucolic womb in all of our minds. This year’s Festival was no exception. It is the quality of the people and the quality of the music that make it such. Our sickened psyches will tie the loose ends. Let the breath of this coming winter be a cathartic for whatever discomforts might have been suffered. The passage of time can only make Old Crow whiskey taste more like ambrosia. And it goes without saying that, in the future, rain will seem like a necessary backdrop to facilitate the appreciation of early morning banjar playing. One can only hope that next year, only those with a healthy dollop of dog shit ground into the soles of their shoes will be allowed through the gates. In this capacity, I think I can say with confidence that this year’s festival was undoubtedly the best yet. And if reality is the whore I really think she is, let’s strive to paint her the bluegrass way. And no this doesn’t mean in some apple-cheeked Rockwell fashion. Let’s tell the truth this time. But try to make the truth timeless and a little more universal. More like a Brueghel. Not appealing but trancendant. Nothing less that a culmination of the human experience.