I should have toured after my first album, Quiet Cave, but why leave the house? Does the world really need another sensitive singer-songwriter out going about from town to town creating a huge carbon footprint in order to fullfill the ego-driven romantic dream of being a troubadour? I spent my 20s bumming around and summers backpacking through France and Europe~ which i don't know very well, but which i actually know way better than the US. When i started really playing music "professionally", gigging 4-5 times a week, and then got married, I was happy to just be a working musician in my little town and create a home. ... but the plumbing breaks and the water rises and wells up from everywhere and then you somehow get pushed out of your nest, or maybe you need to just go.... anyway, the muse is a bitch sometimes. And now, here, All Fall Down is my fifth album, so I'm traveling door to door selling this record and these songs. And had i not left ("Get your compass and your sharpest knife," --and, it's true: "people.love you, when they know you're leaving soon...." ~John Gorka) i would not have had these great experiences in Hays, Kansas (seeing my beautiful cousin there) or in Boulder, Colorado (with Starletta and Heath who so graciously harboured me and my travelling mates) or in Denver (where we had a cool pizza party with many sweet surprise guests in their crossroads of traveling) or in Portland (where, thanks to Amanda, i had the great good fortune of having pedal-steel player, Dan Tyack, sit-in with me) or in Manzanita, Oregon (where i saw my friend Matt for the first time after 25 years, and it was incredible, and the wine flowed generously...) or in Seattle (staying with dear Nancy Dillon, and again playing with Dan, and then hearing some great music by Lijie and Zach Fleury, with whom i shared the bill).... and just all the wonderful encounters with good people along the way, and the incredible sights and sounds. and now here am i. somewhere in Oregon. alone and lonely. (but, oh yeah,..."the road goes on forever and the party never ends..." :-) ...and, "there's still so much adventure at home," --and i can't wait to get there.
The road is lonely and it's hard. ("living on the road, my friend, is gonna keep you clean and free, now you wear your skin like iron, your breath is hard as keroseen"...) And today i sat in Portland traffic for two hours. Who are all these people and where are they going? What on earth is so very important outside the home that we all must get out and go?