going long on song

re-cap of what I've been up to, and some upcoming stuff

Good afternoon, hello. I haven’t written in a while in part because I’ve been unusually busy, even for me, wearing too many hats. Three jobs? Four shows in the last two weeks with four different projects? All of that and other things I’m forgetting or not going to tell you about because this is already going to be too long, probably. Extremely summer energy, saying yes to almost everything, thinking I can take it all on, still lamenting and wailing that maybe I’m not doing enough (absurd thought) and laughing at how it all compares to the pace of my winter, my spring.

I played acoustic guitar in a Dave Matthews Band cover band for this comedy night revue thing. So stupid and sweaty and fun. Just barely well-rehearsed enough to be convincing. If you’re dying to know, this was the setlist:

“Ants Marching” —
“The Space Between” —
“Grey Street” —
“Crash Into Me” —
“So Much To Say / Don’t Drink The Water (medley)”

Then I played banjo and acoustic guitar for Addy, for this show at Abyssinia. First time playing Addy’s great songs, Jacob’s first time playing pedal steel; really beautiful songs and performances from V, Greg, Jackie and Dan. Grateful to have been invited!

Then this perfect long-time-coming show happened. This one begs more context and writing: we celebrated the release of Lindsay Reamer’s debut album Natural Science at JB’s. Third show for me at JB’s this year (others were playing acoustic guitar and banjo and singing with Shannen Moser, opening for Michael Hurley; and playing electric guitar and singing with Another Michael for our headlining show in May).

I have had the immense pleasure of playing music on stage and on record with Lindsay since 2022. Tracked all my parts for the album last year. Lindsay’s songs are funny, sweet, tender, goofy, beautiful, heart-warming, mystifying. When someone writes and sings and plays as well as she does, it’s the easiest and most pleasurable thing in the world to try to squeeze into that zone musically (not to mention how great Lucas, Artie and Juliette are at everything they do). If you haven’t listened to the album yet, please do. I play on most of it, everything but “John’s Song” and “Heavenly Houseboat Blues”. Little contributions I’m most proud of:

• that goofy slide guitar moment in “Spring Song” after she sings about the wasp crawling on her big toe; the guitars in the chorus

• heavy melodic improvising throughout “Sugar” (especially second verse); the slowdowns at the end of the chorus

• “Lucky” third verse dreamscape evoking starlight, Critter & Guitari pocket piano arpeggiator let loose

• so much EBow’d acoustic and electric guitar on “Mushroom House”, Lucas turning the rate knob on the tremolo as I played — fun trippy move

• acoustic layering in “Necessary”, the beat switch for the chorus

• clawhammer banjo and big distorted guitars in “Figs and Peaches”

clearly I had fun

And then I played my songs, again at Abyssinia, with Michael Doherty, Jacob Crofoot and Dash Flach as my band. Third show this year with Field Sleeper (new friend from Ohio) and first time playing with pal Emi (Strawberry Runners) in years, I think?

new music

Good segue for talking about what’s coming up: in case you missed it, I released a new song finally, first new TyTy recording since I started releasing stuff under that name in 2021. Check it out if you haven’t yet. This one was recorded over a handful of sessions starting last December, finished up late spring; I wanted to get “Watching The Cyclones” out before summer ended because it sounds like summer to me, and that’s what it’s really about, too. The next thing you’ll hear from me will sound decidedly different, in the fall. Hopefully just as seasonably appropriate.

Gonna drop a music video I made with some friends for the song next week, that’s a little teaser for it.

I haven’t been writing nearly as many songs as I wanted to this year, and playing last Sunday at Abyssinia made me realize that as much as I love the songs I have out there, I’m dying to have some new stuff to play — or, like, the new stuff I do have is really dramatic (you’ll see what I mean in November), and I want to write and demo some simple, fun stuff. So once I get home from Sinai Vessel tour that’s the top of the music agenda.

SPEAKING OF WHICH:

Here’s those tour dates. I know I don’t actually have that many readers on here and certainly not in these places BUT if you’ve read this far and you know some folks in these places, let them know!

For paid subscribers, rough mix of an in-progress thing I’m hopefully putting out later this year!

Thanks for your interest, as always.