Monday, September 10, 2007

The Company of Canaan

Settle in, my friend. We've a lot to talk about.

The new house, which I've decided after much deliberation to call Sinclair, is teaching Kat and I a lot about ourselves - about the 'we' and the 'us'. We sat at the table last night simply talking and rediscovering each other. Like a draught of water in a thirsty land comes the meeting of a friend long sought, and we shook the scales off our eyes to see it. We have a dog now, to test us and try us, and to be honest with us. Her name is Killy - because I didn't want to keep spelling 'Ceilidh' for everyone - and she's mostly Canaan Dog, bearing reminder to us of the land that we long for, in which we are no longer strangers.

I've been working on a new project for a little while now, and I've come round the bend again in the cycle of giving up and recommitting to the work. I really want these songs to be heard, because I think they'll whisper to you. I've come up with a tentative name for the album, though that may change. Nathan Head has been a scholar and a gentleman in his appreciation for making good music down at the Garden. We finished another a week ago, a little song taken from a few of Wendell Berry's characters in the town of Port William. Andy Vandergriff loaned his vocal harmonies, and then we all took off for a beer and some good Irish country cookin' up in the back hills of Gatlinburg at the Fox and Parrott.

In the vein of music, I've actually been getting some airplay on Love89 here in town on their Detour program, which is quickly becoming the most popular program that they air. This is great news, considering that it means that folks around town are forming a taste for honest music that doesn't have all the corners at perfect right angles. Maybe this means that we're beginning, as a town, to delve into those improper chambers of the heart, where we store the unknowns and the maybes. That makes two radio stations total that have played songs from Barebones. Friends have been calling, saying they heard the music and liked it, so Kat and I have been really encouraged. Besides, you can't beat hearing Andy Gullahorn over the radio waves.

I've been reading a lot, and writing more. If anyone knows a good publisher personally, let's have a coffee together, shall we? I'll make him an offer he can't refuse.