Regrooving the Dream Part 2

I'm writing you from Bowling Green, Kentucky, that's right not Pennsyltucky. I'm a graduate student in the Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology at Western Kentucky University, I'm engaged to be married, I play the mountain dulcimer, me and my future Mrs. rent a cute little bungalow on quiet street. We ride our bikes; play old-time music on Saturdays and -being grad students- read and read and read.

This email to you in fact is me putting off studying for a mid-term.

I was all set to write you all a big maudlin email about how you can check off this list if you want to, how it's been a long loooong time since you heard from me, or of me even. And it's all about momentum, which would appear to be seriously lacking here. But I'm feeling a little energized about an IM conversation I just had with my ex-roommate Adam Brodsky. We were comparing crappy gigs of our past, and the times we've "quit". Well actually, I quit -a couple of times- while he's been prudently plugging away. He has a world record; I'm in grad school. I've played the more humiliating gigs, but he's traveled an entire continent to play his crappiest. Who wins depends on where you stand in the room.

So how did I get here?

Let's backtrack a couple of years, back to perhaps the last time I wrote plugging a gig. I was playing a gig in Philly. It was a good venue: fair to the performers (fed 'em, paid 'em off the bar), built-in crowd, I had people coming too. In short, anything you could really want out of a workaday gig. And as I was parking the car it occurred to me this is ALL WRONG. I decided that night to change the way I things were run at Butch Ross, Inc.

Of course the girl had a lot to do with it too. Some of you already know what I mean by this, but when you meet the person you want to share your life with, you need to have a life to share. Semi-professional folksinger with cluttered apartment in a once-hip part of town and no real equity just wasn't good enough anymore. I needed to find a new way of doing business
NOW! Christie, for the record, loved my life as it was, and was happy to be a part of it. Still is thank God.

So the first thing that happened, I came up with the idea for a one-man show. It was modestly successful. There was some stuff that happened in the middle that kinda knocked the wind out of me, and I sadly regret never properly documenting it, but I am very happy with how it turned out. I built it. You came. But in the middle of all this, in Ireland, comes Robert Force. Robert is a dulcimer player; he wrote a book about dulcimers in the 70¹s it sold thousands of copies. He owns a label. He plays standing up his one half-nutty professor and one half "Freedom Rock" hippy still. He saw me playing the dulcimer all upside down and backwards as I do and said, "if you record a dulcimer album, I'll produce it and put it out on my label". Of course I was all in the middle of constructing "Gas:Food:Longing", 3,000 miles from home and learning about grown-up heartbreak for the first time. Besides, I had my burgeoning folk career to think about. That said, sometimes a sign is a robin on your front lawn; sometimes it's a big green billboard that says, "TURN HERE!"

And what about the dulcimer? I recognized the potential in that thing from the get go, especially in terms of standing out from the endless pool of Singer/Songwriters that seem to ooze from every pore of the northeast. Like stand-up comedians in the 80's, in the 90's "urban folkies" were ubiquitous, most looking for a backdoor to pop stardom, and many with little or nothing to say (including me from time to time) manila folders against and eggshell backdrop, the only ones who stood out were different, who had a gimmick. I didn't want to do the dulcimer as my gimmick. I really wanted to stand my music, and what I had to say (and what the hell was I trying to say then anyway?) But playing the dulcimer was a joyous experience, the enjoyment of music that I really hadn't felt since I first started to play guitar years and years ago. And I was good, or even if I wasn't good, the instrument made people excited, and that more than anything else is what matters. And then Robert came along, and the river turned.

I did not do this immediately (of course not). I waited, finished the show, did a Christmas CD to get my feet wet, and then last April headed out to Port Townsend, Washington to record what will become "the Moonshiner's Atlas". I didn't have a lot of original material for the dulcimer, so I did what I did when I was learning to play guitar. I took traditional tunes that spoke to me, and played 'em like Peter Mulvey would. Or I took contemporary tunes that sound like they'd work on the dulcimer and I figured it out. I made a bunch of mp3s and sent them to Robert, who yea'd or nay'd 'em based on what he thought was My Brave Face. And then out there in the middle of a stunning nowhere, separated in what were basically two glorified outhouses, that guy managed to coax great performances out of me. The end result is a mellower, more somber album than the last one (or the other two unreleased attempts) But with an uplift to it, a walk through a long dark tunnel to the sunlight. Okay that's the kind of stuff that Robert says "Dark Ray of Sunshine" stuff like that. Told you mad scientist, old hippie. The point is that this record is closer to what I¹m trying to say than anything I've done before.

So where is this new CD?

Well it's been (as my friend Dan Landrum so elegantly puts it) like a flea giving birth to an elephant. It didn't help that I was overseas for most of the summer, or that I was flat broke, it didn't help that I'm grad school. Finally land on my feet here in KY and get the ball rolling again, and everybody else's world goes to hell. I don't and I can't blame anyone for the delays in putting this out, everyone has been waylaid by serious real-life crap. I am grateful for all the efforts they've put into this so far. Chris Martin, Ed McKenna and Kelly Becerra have been responding to my gentle tugs of 'um "you know when you can get to it" by coming through for me in the midst of their own personal dramas (and mostly for free). These things, they happen for a reason, always, always, always. I never know why, but in the end it's for the best.

I have jinxed this CD several times already by saying "tomorrow" or later this week. So if you are reading this its because somewhere, your future coaster is being pressed in a plant somewhere in Canada and being printed on recycled cardboard with environmentally safe inks in Portland, OR all to eventually be assembled by me probably hours before the next show.

I was serious about signing off the list too. Some of you have been here forever. Some of you like what I do, what I write, what I sing, that's why you stuck around. Others were you know, polite. And since then it's been delete-without-opening. I know. I do it too. But your not gonna hurt my feelings if you go, you just add value to those who stay on. Go, you may
unsubscribe with impunity.

There is a new web site to look at. And shows, oh
I got shows. I am working on T-shirts and all that business too, but I am also in grad schools as a "non-traditional" student, which means I'm getting my ass handed to me on a weekly basis.

Got a midterm tomorrow, wish me luck.

See you out there.

-Br