Thomas McGuane has, for years now, been one of my favorite writers. I discovered his work by choosing Nothing But Blue Skies from a small bookstore while on tour because I liked the title (I later lifted that title for a song on our album, Alpenglow). McGuane’s characters remind me of people I’ve known all my life, and admittedly, sometimes myself. Their morality shifting like desert dunes, their dramas played out in rough and exotic locales. Scoundrels abound. He infamously ran with another of my favorite writers, Jim Harrison, both of them carousing around Key West and, later, Montana at the same time. In fact, there are a pair of documentaries about their time in Key West, writing, partying, and fly fishing for the elusive Tarpon, that are worth watching even if you’ve never heard of the guys nor care about fishing. There was a magic little window in the 1970’s on our country’s weirdest southern point when McGuane, Harrison, Jimmy Buffet (beginning his career playing in the bars on the island, from my understanding), Richard Brautigan, Guy De La Valdene, among others, all ended up in the same place at the same time. The first and older film is called Tarpon and is an avant garde work by Guy De La Valdene and Christian Odasso that largely went unseen when it was made. It’s fantastic. The second, and more recent, is called All That Is Sacred and is centered on Tom McGuane, him being the last of these wild characters still alive, and uses some footage from Tarpon. It’s also fantastic.

Last year, TBT had a summer show scheduled in Bozeman. In the spring prior I had read Tom’s book, The Cadence of Grass, and I had the silly idea to try and find McGuane and invite him out to our show. I didn’t assume he’d care about coming to see us or anything like that, I just wanted to tell him I love his work and invite him out, for whatever it was worth. Through a friend of a friend’s friend I got an email address. Ok, now what? I just write an unsolicited message telling him I’m a fan, I stole one of his titles, and does he want to come to a concert? How did I get his email address? Don’t worry about that. I felt like Kevin Costner’s character in Field of Dreams when he tried to get an author to go with him to a baseball game. “Are you kidnapping me?” Would he respond with a restraining order or not at all? I sat on it for a while, not finding any path that didn’t paint me as a little fringe. Finally, I thought screw it, and hit send.

I don’t know what it is that makes us want to find those that inspire us. Maybe you don’t have that urge, but the older I get, the more I’m interested in the person behind the art I love so much. That’s greedy, I know. The art is the only part of the party to which we’re invited. Even so, there is something fulfilling in telling someone you admire their work, or that something they made has made your life better. Maybe it feels like completing a cycle. Maybe we think we’d want to be told.

To my utter amazement, Tom wrote me back. His reply was gracious, humble, and to no one’s surprise, well written. He couldn’t make the show, but he appreciated the offer, forgave the theft of his title, and said next time I was around maybe we could go look for a trout or something. I almost printed it and had it framed. I still might.

This year we were lucky enough to book another show in Montana. We played a festival in Missoula called Zootown. We had some time off after that show, so Chloë, the kids, and I decided to make a family vacation out of it and spend some time in one of our favorite places. I reached out to McGuane and told him we were coming back west, and he invited us out to his ranch. Tom not only possesses a heroic writing career, he also runs a working ranch and happens to be in the Cutting Horse Hall of Fame. Take it easy on the rest of us, Tom.

Tom and his wife Laurie were welcoming and generous with their time. They were absolutely lovely, actually. My family was treated as if we’d known them our whole lives. After a short sit inside, Chloe and the kids went with Laurie to meet the horses while Tom and I took a slow walk around the property, introducing ourselves. I got to see his office, which had a bit of a holy ground feel to it, knowing all the words I’ve read that originated there. We took a peek at the trout stream, flowing too strong to fish at the moment, and I asked him probably too many questions. Tom, at 86, has the energy and curiosity of a person who has never given up the dream of adventure and art and knowledge. He’s been writing for the New Yorker of late, and he told me he’d recently written what he views as maybe the best story he’s ever penned. Now that’s something. I would love to write my best song at 86, I’ll tell you that. After a couple hours visit we made a loose plan to walk a river next time I’m nearby, and the family and I headed back to town.

Why am I telling you about this? Well, besides the simple fact that it was an improbable and impactful life experience, Thomas goddam McGuane agreed to write a little forward to our upcoming record, Good Dogs. Maybe it’s more like a review. In any case, if you get the vinyl, you’ll see a small snippet of his writing on a thin sleeve wrapped around the album cover; an honor so humbling that I am tempted to retire after the record is released. I asked if he’d do it, gave him no direction, and he responded with a chunk of eternal prose that reads just like Tom McGuane and suits the job perfectly. I’m very proud to share it with you this fall.

I am uncomfortable asking people to take their picture with me (I haven’t yet adopted that part of the modern social contract) so I didn’t get any proper posed photos with Tom. Chloë, knowing me better than anyone, predicted this and grabbed a few candid shots of us chatting. This one, very appropriately, contains a good dog. Thanks, darlin.

P.S. Montana! How I love thee! We had such an amazing week playing music, meeting heroes, sitting in Mother Earth’s hot spring waters, looking out of car windows at your sensual landscapes, and fishing. TBT got to sit in with The Chicks at Zootown, which was surreal, and our visit happened to coincide with a salmon fly hatch. Chloë, Lucy, Jack, and Eden all caught their first fish on the fly during this trip. I was in a raft with Jack when he caught his; a beautiful Montana Cutthroat, hoodwinked with a dry fly, and fought with a gentle professionalism that put a frog in my throat. All the gals were in a couple other boats and I heard similar stories from them. Chloë can apparently speak to the fishes because she caught many more than anyone else that day. Huge shoutout to my friend (and another talented Montana writer) Sam Lungren for bringing his friends Jamie White and Zach Starkel and all their boats to float our brood down the Yellowstone. Montana, I can’t wait to see you again.

Good Dogs

To all the dogs we’ve lost
you were good dogs
I imagine you woke on a leafy hillside
staring across a summer-green meadow
grass about tooth high
(Your tooth not mine)
on the other side of the valley lies a high canopied forest 
ancient oaks 
and what’s that?
is the ground moving?
no, my friend, that is ten thousand squirrels oblivious to your arrival
a rowdy grouse behind each tree
when you tire of them, there is a pile of steak, rare
off to the west a bit
and a rug that smells like home
and a giant lake
enjoy, for there is a hole back here that will not fill
and you were worth it very much

The theme has been on my mind for the last year or so: Good Dogs. When I walk into my house I am greeted by two of the best of them. When I walk the fields or forests with friends the dogs make a small pack, quickly finding their place without doubt or guilt. They work happily and love with abandon. We don’t nearly deserve them.

This eventually became part of a song I was writing late last year. The song isn’t about dogs, but they make an appearance as an integral part of my view. I started noticing them in a few of the other songs I was working on as well. Often not literally, but they were present in my mind as I read through the lyrics. The spirit of them. Essence of dog?

All this being so, when my brothers in TBT and I set to mixing our new album, I couldn’t shake the simple title, Good Dogs. I don’t know if the other guys thought it was a good title or not, but the passion with which I made my appeal was apparently enough to get it past the editorial board. My son Jack was fully against it, even though he loves dogs. He’s come around, though.

We made a new record and it’s called Good Dogs. The cover is photos of our dogs and the dogs of friends. The songs came from all over, as songs do, but they are similar in personal ways. As I wrote before, we wanted to make this record sound and feel as human as possible. Imperfect, live, like this particular group of people was playing songs next to each other in a particular space on a particular day. Not eternally level, not seamlessly repaired. The idea seemed simple, and as it turned out, it was.

We recorded the songs in an old way, direct to a 24 track tape machine. We mixed them from the 24 track machine, through a beautiful old API console, to a 2 track tape machine. We pushed the computer up against the wall and left it unplugged. Nick, the amazing engineer at Pachyderm and our dear friend, put the 2 track machine in his car and drove it to our mastering guy, Huntley Miller. What you’ll eventually hear, if you are willing, will come from those reels of tape.

This is not a revolutionary method, most of the records made until about 30 years ago were done this way, but these days it feels almost risky. We, in the music business, have been deeply conditioned to the endless capabilities of digital recording. The quick note fixes, the ability to take one syllable from a different take, from a different day even, to make that word in the chorus just perfect. Maybe you just sing the chorus once and the rest is copy paste. Maybe AI sings the harmonies for you. This is just scratching the surface. Of course you need an engineer with the proper training, but there are plenty of those.

I am not claiming to be better than artists that lean heavily on this technology nor am I above repairing mistakes in recording. I’ve fixed plenty. For this project though, the idea was to avoid all that. The guys and I have played a helluva lot of music together. That relationship is unique and unlikely and probably our greatest asset. I think we sound our best when left alone, mic’d simply, when everyone is playing at the same time, and when we can see each other. Most modern songs are recorded very separately, in sterile little spaces that have no life of their own, each “instrument” (sometimes they are just ones and zeros) recorded in its own universe, each singer there at a different time. All of this is put together later in the loudest, cleanest, most compressed way possible, to catch our weak little attention spans for at least enough time to get through the reel.

Jaded? Hell no. There is an entire landscape of gooey delicious analog recording through which to wade. Watching and smelling the tape machine and hearing its repetitive beating heart while we were at Pachyderm making this record was a revelation. Think of the little tape inside a cassette, but instead it’s two inches wide. Heavy, hearty. On its mud brown depths is magnetically, and maybe magically, held the physical representation of our music. The tape machine is a fertile field, not a gloved laboratory. It is an early morning trout stream, not a rectangular subdivision. It is physical, fragile. It also sounds really cool. If you turn up this album you’ll hear the tape hissing its gentle prayer. Its low end sounds round and earthy, and the high frequencies are mellow yet clear as a bell.

In the spirit of all this romance, we are going to release Good Dogs exclusively on vinyl for a while. We thought, if even for a little bit of time, that the way we’d love for you to hear this music initially is physically. Maybe intentionally? Not on a phone speaker while frying eggs or in ear buds while at the gym. Every artist hopes you’ll put their record on and simply listen to the whole thing straight through. So much work goes into them. Of course not many of us listen to music like that anymore, gathering the family around the Gramophone, but we are dealing with art and ideas here, not reality. We all get to pick where we walk. You may even think such an approach arrogant. But, in the end, it’s our album and we can do whatever we want with it. Good Dogs will eventually be available on all the little services that fight for your attention. It will eventually disappear into the churning mass of endless new releases and drown meekly into the abyss of social media. It will be streamed, alright. When it is released however, I invite you to take a trip out into the actual world to your favorite local record store (if you’re lucky enough to still have one where you live), take a few slow passes around the aisles, make small talk with the clerk, take the record home, and have a listen. As Kurt Vonnegut famously said, “We are here on earth to fart around, and don’t let anyone tell you any different.”

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Good Dogs is just an album. There are thousands made every day, probably. For me though, each one I make is a part of my life’s work. I know the other guys in the band feel the same. I think of each album as a piece of a whole that won’t be fully apparent until after I'm gone. But, that’s just hubris, most likely. I don’t have any illusions of one particular project becoming somehow more important than any of the others, but at the same time, whenever I make one, it feels all encompassing. This album is the most current version of whatever creative force I’ve been lucky enough to tap, and that, for those of us who subscribe, is a singular feeling. I am very proud of this record. I think it’s one of the best pieces of work our band has ever produced. Of course this is subjective, and of course if I didn’t feel like my newest work wasn’t among my best, what would be the point?

We will officially announce Good Dogs soon. For now, it’ll be released on vinyl sometime this fall. It will be available everywhere maybe a month or two after that. I will put a song here for you paid subscribers before it’s released to everyone. I am really excited to share it with you, thus accomplishing the final step in my creative cycle. The record’s done, but the work will be complete once it is released out into the world. This is the most exciting time for a band, and we can’t wait.

P.S. While developing a kind of vision for this project, I found myself getting really into American folk music. Old and new. Throughout the years that music has been captured live and in person, raw and some may even say honest (though I don’t use that word to describe music). Nowadays recording live to tape is a stylistic choice, but for a long time it was simply the only way to capture a song for later enjoyment. I thought I’d drop a few recommendations here from the mountain of available folk music out there. Some of these are people making music today, some from the distant past, but all in the sprit of a recording as a snapshot, more than a sculpture. The links go to Bandcamp where possible, as they at least offer you the option of buying the art that people create.

1. Alan Lomax’s giant archive of field recordings

2. Jake Xerxes Fussel

3. Nora Brown

4. Woody Guthrie

5. Music for a Revolution Vol 1: Guinea’s Syliphone Recording Label (1967-1973)

6. Charlie Parr (I picked this album because he recorded it on a portable reel to reel, mainly in friends’ houses. Also, Ryan Young and I got to play and sing on a song)

7. Beau Cheval

8. Connie Converse

9. Original Folkways Recordings of Doc Watson and Clarence Ashley, 1960-1962

Good luck out there. Thanks for reading,

-Dave

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A four burner propane stove, manually lit, anchored the kitchen, and a small black and white television the living room. It was only to be turned on if it was raining. The tv only got a couple fuzzy channels anyway, so most often it was cards on a rainy day. My grandparents loved to play Hearts and 500. I can still smell the musty canvas of the old cot on which I’d often sleep. The water tasted like iron. It is difficult for me to stay out of the quicksand of nostalgia and outright romantic love for this time before mobile phones. If I think about it too much I get angry.

When it wasn’t raining, we were outside. From the last wipe of the breakfast dishes to the bell my grandmother rang as a call for supper, my sister, my cousins, and I were off exploring. There was a beach, a rudimentary playground consisting of a merry-go-round, a teeter-totter fashioned from a 2x8, and a metal slide that would sear your buns crispy if it was high noon. There was a multitude of trails through acres of deciduous forest. We would fish, catch frogs, play intricately-ruled and spontaneously created games, and come back to the table dirty, sunburnt, and happy.

My grandparents were the leaders of all this rabble. My grandpa would take us fishing, tubing, or waterskiing in his boat, drive us into town once in a while for ice cream, and my grandma would keep us fed and sometimes bandaged. I remember the board with a little metal clip that my grandfather employed to clean fish, wondering out loud why he let us keep so many sunnies.

I’ve come to realize that the time I spent at that cabin was the early foundation of my outdoor life. I think any of us who enjoy the outdoors have a place or a time like that in their memory, somewhere that started it all. Even now, 40 years later, the smell of the spring woods takes me right back to Lake Koronis. It was there I caught my first fish, spent my first unsupervised moments exploring the woods, got my first poison ivy and, I think it was where I truly learned to love the world and the incredible luck of being born into it.

Time marches forth and that cabin is now in the hands of a different family. My sister, cousins, and I all have kids older than we were back then, and so on and so on. At once the past can seem so far away and then the smell of a thunderstorm or the sound of a two-stroke outboard can make it feel like yesterday.

My grandfather, Roland (Rolly) Utzinger, passed away on May 6, 2026, two months to the day shy of his 97th birthday. My grandmother, Zada Utzinger, is 96 as well and, as of this writing, healthy as a horse. Rolly’s funeral was a bit of a family reunion as we’re all spread out now. A funeral for a 96 year old is, of course, not a tragedy. This one did bring its share of tears, however, because the man was so universally loved. He was probably my clearest example of graciousness, humility, generosity, and a very gentle version of morality. Rolly treated everyone he met with the same respect and attention, and I never heard a negative word uttered against him. He cherished his wife (of 75 years!) and his impressive brood of kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids more than anything on earth. He found great joy in an aluminum fishing boat. This man spent his years with the woman he loved, had a beautiful family, enjoyed deep meaning in his work, traveled the world, lived for 96 years, and died peacefully next to his daughter (my mother) and his wife. That is oversimplifying his long life of course, but if there is a better way to go about this crazy ride, I haven’t heard of it.

I know I can’t go around expecting a man to live longer than 96 years, but I will miss my grandpa. It feels strange knowing he is no longer in the world. The death of someone close always makes us take stock of our lives, how we’re living them, etc. Of course this generally wears off until the next funeral, but we are idiots after all.

When my kids are grown I wonder what will come to their minds when they smell the first signs of spring or see the sky full of stars. They will no doubt look back on their youth as a simpler time, like every generation before them. I know my deep connection to that cabin and its woods was not set upon me intentionally, but what a gift. A free roaming life outdoors and a loving home to spend the nights and rainy days. That was the summertime childhood my grandparents provided, and it’s something for which I will always be thankful.

The last time I saw Rolly was Christmas Eve. I drove to Mankato to join my mom in taking my grandparents to church. It had been a long time since I had been inside a church on Christmas, and I think he appreciated me joining. We went back to my grandparents’ place after the service for some coffee and snacks, and, as I got my coat and prepared to drive home, my grandpa gave me a hug and told me he loved me and he was proud of me. I of course didn’t know that this would be our last interaction, but I think about it a lot. He wrapped up our time together perfectly.

Here’s to the old folks, for heaven’s sake.

This is the liminal zone. Warm days, cold days, rain, snow, the great urging forth of the new season out of the old. In Minnesota the skin of winter is tough to shed, as if each year that dark season is surprised by its own demise. It’ll never learn. Its death throes often echo through April here, and when I lived farther north, a good ways into May. A blizzard when the ground has already started to green can be a depressing setback after a long winter, but I respect it.

On our deck the other day, Chloe noticed a disturbing scene. As she looked through our windows facing our back yard she saw they were filled with what looked like bloody scratches. We walked outside and the deck was covered in bird poop and splattered blood. Some kind of avian horror film. No dead bodies to be found, though. I took some footage of what we saw and sent it over to my friend Rob Drieslein, who is the managing editor of Outdoor News and very knowledgable about all matters outdoors. He told me that, in his opinion, it was most likely a male American Robin noticing his reflection in the mirror and thinking it an intruder and an enemy against his ability to mate. He, theoretically, would fight himself until he was bloody and then perch on our chair and defecate in sheer exhaustion. Yesterday morning I witnessed the event first hand and sure enough it was a Robin and sure enough he was bashing his little head against the window, believing he had finally met his martial match. An impossible enemy. This behavior, and about every other behavior we can see, smell, or hear this time of year, is reflective (pun intended) of each species’ maddening desire to replicate themselves. Love is in the air.

What a time for creation! This spring we in TBT are working on a new record. I’ve made up a fresh batch of songs and we’ve been woodshedding them for weeks now. I can’t remember us ever working so hard on material before heading into the studio, and I’m really excited about it. We had a rehearsal/demo recording hang at our house yesterday at which we recorded the new songs onto that cool cassette recorder I told you about earlier (AKAI MG614). The music sounds so cool with four mics onto four tracks of cassette tape. Left to my own devices I would seriously consider releasing this as the record. But, we’ve got some recording time scheduled and I suppose we should see it through and see what else we come up with.

My vision for this album came from a recent listening binge on old and new American folk music. I don’t know if it’s my psyche’s rebellion against the modern world and its stale and perfect recording methods, or a pendulum swing away from automated cars and automated umpires, but lately I’ve been taking a lot of comfort in the lo-fi. Real, imperfect human music almost seems quaint now, but I sincerely hope it isn’t.

This in mind, I suggested we record our upcoming album fully analog. We are going to go through a console to a tape machine, and then mix back on the console to another tape machine. The music will get digitized at the end so people can hear it, but I wanted the process to be physical. I like the creative limitations this poses, namely the smaller amount of corrections available to us while recording close together in a room and direct to tape. This has encouraged us to put a lot of work in ahead of time learning the songs and figuring out what we want to do with them. To its credit, digital recording has come a very long way since its early days as a brittle sounding substitute for tape. Not only does it sound comparatively good, the software is so powerful that really almost anything you can imagine can be accomplished. Hit that snare .001 seconds too early? We can fix that. Singer has a hard time with pitch? No need to get a day job we can make you sound like Frank Sinatra. Just don’t smoke in the studio like he did. Don’t want human interaction? We can create an entire virtual band to back you up that sounds just like the real thing but PERFECT. There is, however, no rock n roll in this. There is no blood in this. There is a lot of social media in it, though.

Analog recording is not revolutionary. It was the only option for most of recording’s history. It’s a novelty now because the gear needed is huge, expensive, heavy, and in constant need of maintenance. In addition, the performance captured needs to be pretty good without corrective assistance. The performers need to be able to accept some vagaries and even some (hold your breath) imperfection in the final product. One could argue that these very qualities often make the recording better, that the existence of mic bleed and live performance describe an actual event at an actual place and time, which makes it unique. I argue that, anyway.

We decided to start this analog project in way so many songs have been captured in bedrooms and hobby studios throughout the 20th century: the multitrack cassette recorder. I’ve professed my love of cassettes here before, so I’ll skip the kissy-face, but I thought there no better way to begin this analog album process than to first capture these songs on cassette. We sat in a circle in my living room and played new songs surrounded by a host of friends, family, and dogs. It was extremely wholesome and I can’t imagine a better way to make music. There’s mistakes, background noise, laughter, barking, baby crying, wind, and some really cool takes on those cassettes.

I am crazy excited to continue making this album. This process still feels new somehow, even after all these years. I have a batch of songs that I’m really loving and I feel like our band is playing with a renewed sense of joy and adventure. I’ll keep you updated as we go along.

Enjoy your spring. I know the dogs are muddy and all the garbage just appeared from under the melted snow, but nature’s full force is in action everywhere you look. My advice is catch a trout, shoot a turkey, pick a couple ramps and rejoice in being alive.

“Water, water, water....There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount , a perfect ratio of water to rock, water to sand, insuring that wide free open, generous spacing among plants and animals, homes and towns and cities, which makes the arid West so different from any other part of the nation. There is no lack of water here unless you try to establish a city where no city should be.”

I just spent a few days in a small window of the American Southwest and I have fallen deeper in love with her. I know it could well be that the desert is the near opposite of where I come from in Minnesota (I would put a rainforest as the polar opposite of a desert). At home life is loud, the air is humid, the land full of lakes and rivers. Mud, mosquitos, thunderstorms. The color of home is green in the summer and white in the winter. In the desert there is an altogether different palette and one that still seems mysterious to me. It’s hot and poisonous and its minions rattle or sting, its sunsets are nearly unbelievable and its noon sun is most likely two suns disguised as one, combining their power. There are owls there too.

Often exoticism is mistaken for love. But I think it’s more than that. As with most parts of my life, I find myself wishing I could buy an extra hundred years or so to really dive in. Alas.

So far the tour is going well. We played two shows in Southern California. The first in a classic auditorium at Pomona College, the second upon a tiny outdoor stage at the legendary Pappy and Harriet’s. The venues were almost as different as the desert and the forest. Both were rewarding in their own ways, and though I felt plenty rusty, I think we did alright. Pappy and Harriet’s is in Pioneertown, which is still an active movie set where they film westerns. That setting gives the place an extra unique vibe.

From California we headed east to Arizona for two more shows. The first in Scottsdale, which I kept calling Phoenix (apparently that’s like being in Wayzata and calling it Minneapolis), the second in Tucson. Though I really enjoyed the two cities, being in Arizona and being confined to its metropolotan areas is really a pity. Just driving between the two shows made me want to come back and explore as far away from the 10 as I can get. There’s adventure to be had out there, I’m sure of it. Anyone want to take me quail hunting out there this winter?

After our Arizona shows we had a few days off leading me here on my way to Texas. Sadly, our mandolin player Erik’s dad passed away recently so for me that time off meant getting my sunburnt buns up to Verona, WI for his funeral. Robert (Bob) Berry was a wonderful man and I was honored to be in the audience for his celebration. He was a master of several languages, a teacher, and from all accounts a wonderful father and husband. Bob passed at 89 so he had a good run, but he is going to be dearly missed. In our early days as a band, if we were within a reasonable drive of Erik’s childhood home of Verona (kind of a suburb of Madison) we would crash at Bob and Kay’s place. The Berrys are some of the kindest people any of us could ever hope to meet and I had many a late night conversation with Bob, whose brain was always solving, learning, and teaching. Tell em you love em, folks. Rest in peace.

Today begins the second leg of the tour with a performance at Willie Nelson’s Luck Family Reunion, a little outside of Austin, Texas. We are humbled to be on the bill and I’m excited to see this place about which I’ve heard lots. Willie Nelson is an inspiration and anytime we get to be on the same stage as that guy I count as a damn good day. Back to the warm weather, though a bit east of our desert. For the band, Austin has historically been filled with good food, good friends, Lone Star Beer, and music. I don’t predict tomorrow will be any different.

Before I go, an observation:

I’ve been at the airport a lot the last few days. Home from Phoenix, home to Madison, Madison to home (same day), Home to Austin. In my time there, I have noticed an inordinate amount of men scrolling on their phones while actively using the urinal. Folks, I’m worried we have fully stopped giving a shit. I really hope I’m wrong, as I feel we could really use some people who give a shit. People, respect begins within.

That’s all for now. I am compiling a little list of music, books, and cool places I’ve found lately, and maybe soon I’ll work on that here. Also, I’ve got another demo to share soon. As always, our tour dates can be found at trampledbyturtles.com - if you have any recommendations for me to check out in any of those towns, let me know!

Sometimes I change things simply to change them. Know thyself. I don’t know if this new/old way of touring will feel better than weekend-warrioring or not. It’s entirely possible that after a couple weeks on the bus I’ll have a proper freakout and once again threaten to quit the band. Our manager doesn’t know either and he keeps qualifying future touring opportunities with, “Well, let’s just see how March goes…” It’s a bit like buying on credit: I just enjoyed the most continuous time with my family I’ve had since Covid shut down my line of work, but now it’s time to pay the piper (and the bills).

Like a lot of touring musicians, I battle with tour. On one hand, it’s my dream job that I’ve struggled toward since I was a teenager. It’s doing what I love. On the other, it’s constant travel, a brain chemical roller coaster, and there’s plenty of examples of it ending poorly for even the most well-traveled gypsies. I’ve never been able to sleep on a tour bus, which is a silly problem to have coming from over a decade in a van, but it’s one that adds up fairly quickly when each night is capped with a serotonin spiking show. Up and down, up and down. Alternatively, I really enjoy the simple routines of tour and the space it affords me to write, read, and play guitar, explore new places, things I sometimes fail to squeeze into busy days at home. I love being able to show my kids the art of travel and the circus of traveling with a band. I miss morning tea with my wife and my daily hikes with my dogs.

Nothing is free. I tell my kids that all the time and I’m not talking about money. What I’m talking about is that for each choice in life there is a sacrifice. Even the good ones. The most successful musicians I know, the ones who can tour whenever they want and take years off at a time whenever they want, they face their own set of challenges and demons. So do the guys on my old roofing crew. Where we often get stuck is in the muck of wanting it all. I want to get paid to write songs and play them (insane!) but I also want to be at every baseball game, show choir competition, school play, etc. My reality is, of course, I cannot have both. Would I be a better father if I still worked 12 hours a day pounding nails? How much does personal fulfillment affect my relationships? I’m dramatic by nature so I often dream of hanging it up and leading a more traditional life, only to eventually realize that’s not what I want at all. I enjoy showing my kids that having a weird job is possible. A lot of the world around them seems to discourage such thinking.

Chloë tells me I need to slow down. Often. I admire her ability to think through a decision and wait for her intuition to guide her. I’ve seen it work well. I usually jump the gun and smash into my decisions with little or no research, bouncing back and forth through life like a pinball. I think the space between our methods is one reason we get along so well, actually. As I get older, though, I am putting a lot more conscious energy into loving what I do. I’ve become better at structuring my home life in a way that feels creative, and structuring my tour life in a way that feels sane. I don’t think I’ll ever fully get there, but firm structure has never been a goal of mine, anyway.

Before I head to my gate, I want to say thank you to all of you who, throughout the decades, have listened to my songs and come out to our shows. It’s the dumbest thing in the world that we get to do this for a living. Thanks for coming over here, too, and reading whatever the hell this is. It feels good to write. Wish me luck out there and I’ll do the same for you.

No matter how deep your spiritual experience roaming a remote mountain, how multi-generational the hunting story, or the enormity of the gleam in your child’s eye as they behold their first fish, some jackass is going to try and sell it. Each hidden grouse spot, each brookie honey hole, each pollinator paradise is worth an exact and ever increasing amount of money to someone else, for our planet is finite, and for every suburban housing development approved there is exactly that much less wild space on it. Such a decline in resource can only result in its exponential rise in monetary value. The battle between money and art is nothing new.

I don’t know how many times I’ve written about the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Many. I’ve probably begged for it to be left alone more times than I've explored its depths. In our sprawled-out, anti-nature excuse for a civilization, we have precious few spaces left like the Boundary Waters. Little remnants of a continent that once seemed impassible. Wild places built of clean water and the natural rhythms of life set in place at the beginning and continuing, by some miracle, even through our time. Why do some of us think these places holy and some think them exploitable? There are so many approaches to the human experience that these differences shouldn’t surprise any of us, but each time the battle over mining the watershed of the Boundary Waters bubbles forth I am bewildered by the callousness of the argument.

I’m typing this article on a computer that operates using materials found deep within our Mother Earth’s guts. We mine, I get that. But of all the mines, of all the places, why the hell this thing keeps coming back to the Rainy River baffles me. Why a Chilean mining company with a disastrous environmental record keeps coming back time and time again as some kind of salvation of the working class of northern Minnesota is a bill of goods so translucent and fraudulent that the fact anyone will take it in exchange for one of their most beautiful wildernesses simply does not compute for me. Side note: the copper coming out of that mine would be headed for China, not the US. Are we so gullible now, are our individual realities so algorithm-based that these simple facts no longer count for anything against the will of politicians? Does the fact that Pete Stauber keeps bringing this same company to the table year after year not raise any red flags with anyone else in Congress? If the mine is owned by Chile and the bounty is owned by China and the jobs provided are temporary at best, doesn’t that logically lead us to ol’ Pete getting some kind of cut out of this deal? I sure as hell can’t see what the rest of us are getting (besides yellow sludge flowing through the BWCA).

A lot of us have had it right now. I’ve had it, I’ll tell you that. I live in Minneapolis and in my city federal ‘troops’ (the quotes are because I feel using the word troops to describe ICE is insulting to all the actual troops out there) are marauding around in their new power without any hope of consequence, weak-minded little bullies that failed out of basic, and the same bastards that armed them are now coming for my church, which is made of wild land. Wild land cannot fight ill-placed mines and fascists alone. Wild land plays the long game: she hopes her enemies will vanish from the Earth before too much damage is done. She needs our help.

Get on an airplane sometime and get yourself a window seat. As you fly over our amazing country, especially over its eastern half, make note of its woods and fields. The Wisconsin or Indiana forest in which you hunt whitetail each fall may feel immense as you touch its roots on a frosty November sunrise, but from your seat on this plane you will see it as a small and finely carved out rectangle, surrounded by farm or suburb, barely clinching to its wheezing breath and only existing at all because enough people have made a stink against selling it off. From the air the parcels of holy land we have left approach the pathetic in their cruel geometry. Nature does not make perfect rectangles. Thankfully we are so small that the chunks of wilderness we retain can still seem large when we’re immersed in them. Now, say your flight gets diverted to the north because of a storm. Suddenly you find yourself approaching the northern border of Minnesota and far below unfolds a jagged and marvelous million-plus acre patch of woods and water. What on Earth?

All the arguments, all the politics, all the lies and manipulation are all countered by the simple fact that there just isn’t much left. We have it well in our power to destroy it all. There are plenty of countries in the world with no remaining wilderness. To me, the saddest part is that so many people don’t care at all. So many Americans, living in the land of the North American Model of Conservation and all its glory, have no love for wild space. Be it greed, fear, or simple ignorance, so many of us do not have a deep connection with the wilderness and those who do not love it cannot understand why the rest of us fight so dearly for its survival. They cannot understand why that rugged mess of swamps and mosquitos that is the Boundary Waters isn’t used for something “constructive.” So many lakes absent of summer homes is an affront to many a developer’s sense of capitalism.

Maybe this will never change. Maybe the farther we go, the fewer of us will feel the call of the wild. Maybe the more we settle into climate controlled cars and AI-written emails and comfort comfort comfort, the thought of busting hump through heat and cold and rain and bugs to find a level campsite will appeal to fewer and fewer of us. What gives me Hope is that, for me, these symptoms of modernity have the opposite effect. The more I have to deal with the indoors, the more fiercely I desire the outdoors. Maybe you’re the same way? Maybe there are actually more of us than we assume? We have to hope, because our hope that our deepest human connection, which tethers us to our Mother Earth, is still to be found in the majority of us, even if it has to be dug out through layers and years of dormancy, that hope is what can save our wild places. Have you watched your children play in the woods? That is the lighthouse on the stormiest of seas.

My friend and, in my humble opinion, one of the greatest voices today defending the wild and untamed, Hal Herring, recently told me that this is Our Time. Right now we get to decide what kind of country we are. And I believe him. Americans have so many examples of bringing our natural spaces to the brink of extinction. So many. Yet, often, and often in the very nick of time, the people who care about them, the people that fairly need their existence to justify their short time here, the people that worship the unknown in their depths, have come to their defense. This is another one of those examples. We have the choice, and the privilege, right now, to defend the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness against forces that do not give a damn if it continues to exist at all.

In my opinion, there is no amount of money or temporary employment opportunity that is worth endangering the Boundary Waters. Money is worthless in the wilderness, anyways. When you are five lakes in from your entry point and a ferocious summer thunderstorm decides to visit your campsite, you might offer the gods a million dollars each and none of them would be able to get you to the nearest hotel faster than your own little canoe paddle. This is exactly why so many of us love it in there. Self-reliance, freedom to choose your own path, the pace of Nature, cooperation, hard work, deep connection to the land, indescribable rewards, generational knowledge, these are qualities of a life in the wilderness and they are the enemies of fascism and greed, and I am on their side.

Call your representatives and let them know! Capitol switchboard: (202) 224-3121 . Leave a message with your rep’s office and they will listen to it.

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Nothing can rally a populace as urgently as a scapegoat. Sure, you might be a poor sharecropper sewing together rags for your kids’ winter coat and will die in debt to your employer, but at least you aren’t a black man. Wouldn’t want your daughter to marry one of those! Sure, you’ve just killed the last stringy cow on your ranch and are staring down a winter of hunger but it’s still better than being an Indian! Might as well hate them! Sure, you might be a poor Pacific fisherman who wreaks of scales and guts 20 hours a day, but you’d be a rich man if those Chinese stopped taking all your jobs! And these are just a few relatively recent examples from my own country. I bet you couldn’t find a country in the world that hasn’t dozens of its own.

A good con does a quick job harnessing whatever resentment the populace may feel at its current position on the ladder and then steadily focuses the gaze of that resentment downward. The upper class’s public relations team, pop culture, continues its unyielding worship of wealth and fame, making directing that resentment upward feel somehow Anti-American or contrary to the goals that we are all supposed to cherish. Now those people did it right! The people who take the lion’s share of the blame for everyone else’s misfortune are frequently and inexplicably those on welfare, the homeless, the unemployed, and the most common scapegoat in all of history, the immigrant. We are all fighting over a pie and these are the people with the least pie, yet we are told to blame them for taking too much pie.

We are a tribal species, there’s no getting around it. Nationalism and its extreme cousin Fascism have come and gone in waves as far back as you’d care to look. The last tsunami of this ugly fervor was put to rest by the dropping of the worst invention we have ever come up with: the atomic bomb. That terror was enough to push the world back into a more cooperative spirit for a while but because we are as inept at learning from history as we are at remaining peaceful, the idea that Fascism is some kind of acceptable platform has slowly crept back into fashion. People who lean that way rarely use the word Fascist to describe themselves these days, as was once common, but after two world wars and countless smaller ones dedicated to eradicating the practice, that would’t be very smart, would it?

Websters defines Fascism like so:

Fascism: a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition

Like any other political appellation, Socialism, Democracy, Communism, etc, the word Fascism is often pandered about willy-nilly by people with all sorts of blurry motives. Whisper-yelling “fascist! (lower case !)” at a cop as he ambles back into his rig after writing you a speeding ticket might serve the passion of the moment, but it is generally inaccurate. Calling someone a Communist simply because they wish access to health care for everyone is also a misuse. I am not educated enough on the subject to be fully sure what Donald Trump and his crew are up to qualifies as a bonafide shift into my least favorite form of governance (not to mention one that millions of people died trying to defeat just a few generations ago) but I will say that it feels that way to me. My gut tells me that if all obstacles were removed, we would be there almost overnight. Fascism is the governmental preference of the bully, and though I’ve never met the man, Donald Trump’s public track record pretty easily puts him into that category.

I live in Minneapolis, a place often called a Sanctuary City. Most of the people I know here use that term endearingly, while many people who don’t live here use it as slander. The way I understand it, the designation means this city is more willing than most to take in the refugees of political oppression and war from around the world. Sanctuary. Seems almost Christian, doesn’t it?

The current presidential administration doesn’t seem to believe in the words ol’ Frederic-Aguste Bartholdi etched into the Statue of Liberty before sending it across the Atlantic, even though the statue resides in the President’s very own hometown. Those words:

“Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, / I lift my lamp beside the golden door”

(but Trump LOVES golden doors!)

I don’t know the horrors that must be visited upon a family in order to make fleeing their homes penniless and destitute, spending years in refugee camps, and then finally somehow surviving long enough to land in freezing-ass Minnesota where barely anyone speaks a familiar language or has familiar customs or even familiar traffic laws a better option. That is a very simplistic summary of the experiences of many of our African and, more specifically, Somali neighbors here in Minneapolis. I know this because I’ve spoken to several of them about it throughout my time here. I’ve spoken to several of them about it throughout my time here because these people, in record time if you think about it, have not only survived their ordeals, but have remade themselves into citizens of an entirely new landscape and have generally thrived in doing so. They are community members who hold a myriad of occupations and public service positions, whose kids go to school with mine, and, because of their trials, often own a strength of conviction that I am unsure of in myself.

Are there criminals among the Somali population in Minneapolis? That is a ridiculous question. There are criminals in every race, nationality, city, and town and county. There’s a good chance there’s a criminal sitting next to you right now. If we were to start evacuating criminals simply for being criminals we would be without a federal government in a matter of days. There’d be a lot fewer bands out there too, I’ll tell you that. Throw the first stone. I’d bet all the cows in Texas that most of the people being torn from their families, jobs, and homes and stuck on nameless airplanes to disappear via ICE have been charged with fewer felonies than Donald Trump. Trump sending his costumed ICE agents into our city and so many others to harass and terrorize has nothing to do with crime. (Side note, masked law enforcement enacting warrant-less searches is not usually equated with democratic values. More of a Fascist thing, really) It has to do with distraction and the fact that when nothing else seems to be going his way, he can always count on a large amount of us to be scared of immigrants. Stock market sucks? Immigrants! Epstein files? Immigrants! He can always point our gaze down the ladder a rung and say “See? If these people weren’t here you’d have more money in your bank account and feel safer at night! You may be poor but at least you’re an AMERICAN! If we got them all outta here you’d be able to tear down your home’s east wall and add your very own golden shitter!” It’s the same lie that has been perpetrated for generations. My fellow Americans, Nobody has any control over where they are born. It was neither some mystical talent nor some spiritual value judgement that allowed you to squeeze out of your mother’s holy place here in the US. It was dumb luck. To lord that over others who have actually had to work unbelievably hard to get here makes about as much sense as a rolling down the windows in a submarine, as a skyscraper made of cooked pasta, as a two-party political system.

As I sit and write this, there are many families here that are scared to leave their homes. My wife, Chloe, who works in labor and delivery, has had numerous accounts of patients, expecting mothers mind you, avoiding the hospital in fear that they might be targets of a raid. These are women about to go into labor. In following their distinctly bully values, ICE does not seem to bat an eye at breaking up a family or hurting a small business. They’ll take a parent right in front of a kid or take a worker right in the middle of a shift. In fact, the reputation these actions have gained them has only seemed to make the agents more brazen. I cannot for the life of me understand how the hell this behavior is supposed to feel like an improvement in our country. I must be missing the great again part.

Every city in our country is filled with people from all over the damn place. That’s what makes visiting them worth all the smog and traffic and noise. When you put a bunch of people from all over in the same city, you inevitably get culture. Nothing scares a Fascist more than culture. Art, music, fashion, menus in a different language, HOLD YOUR HORSES COMMIE! In a major city you get a big ol’ blended margherita of beliefs, foods, traditions, influences, and somehow, of course not always, it seems to just work out on its own. Take New York for example. Home of the Statue of Liberty and Donald Trump. New York is an immense tapestry of cultural neighborhoods that have, of course, had their disagreements (it would be almost inhuman if they had not) but, over the long run, the cultures there, ever changing and fluid, have more than simply co-existed. They have given the rest of us ungrateful slobs some of the best music, poetry, art, food, technology etc the world has known. As a rural-leaning person myself (though I love a trip once in a while to our world’s bigger cities, but I have had the advantage of touring in a band most of my life to show me that) I can understand the fear of such places. The thing is, you don’t have to like them. You don’t have to like New York or LA or Chicago or Minneapolis. Nobody is shoving a plane ticket up your nose and making you go visit. Our country is way too big and diverse to expect it all to jive with any one person’s taste. It is your right to live how you want to live but it is not your right to mess with everyone else. Live out the rest of your days in the woods and fields if you want. Our country still has lots of those too, thank the stars. All I’m saying is that cities are simply going to be cities. They will continue to be diverse and home to crime and homelessness and liberal politics and wealth beyond measure and every religion and every language and every beauty and every brutality and, unquestionably, immigrants. You can follow that all the way back to Constantinople if you wish. Our country is plenty big with room for everyone to find their community and for every community to find a home. There is no need nor use in trying to make the whole country one bland place where everyone believes the same stuff about everything and we all sing the same four government-approved songs. We are not all supposed to be the same! So please, Federal Government of the United States of America, and I’m saying this as a gun-owning, politically independent, straight white man who would rather be hunting or fishing than taking the subway, please just let our cities be cities.

Enter any country in the world illegally and you can expect to be shown the exit. I know that. What I don’t understand is in a case where someone has developed a life and a family in a place, works a job and pays taxes, basically proven to be a decent citizen, why aren’t they allowed a chance to make their status legal? They could pay a fine or do some kind of community service for giving the border agents the slip. They could sweep up peanut shells at Yankee stadium for a month. Congrats now you’re an American. If someone’s sole mission is to sneak into Iowa and dump a pile of fentanyl on a middle school, I’d still prefer they get arrested. But sweeping statements about everyone from so and so country is a criminal or everyone working at so and so is illegal are not only ignorant, but they are dangerous. As has happened so many times in the past, an overzealous group of supporters is likely to take matters into their own hands if they don’t feel the evil is being properly eradicated. If ICE is looking into a parent with suspicious immigration status, why is the move to kick down the door, rip this guy from dinner with his child, put a hood on his head, and shove him into an unmarked van? Isn’t there a middle ground here? Also, according to many local reports, ICE isn’t just grabbing known criminals or people known to be in the country illegally. They are just grabbing brown people and figuring it out later. We get to decide what kind of country we want to be.

We have never fully lived up to the inscription on that giant copper woman standing in New York Harbor, at least not without treating newcomers with suspicion and prejudice (even if the ones doing the prejudicing are only a couple generations removed from being newcomers themselves). But, all in all, we have done a fair job at taking in the world’s lost and country-less. Immigration is not a static event. At any given time there are people who just got here, there are those who are the kids of who got here a little while ago, the grandkids of an earlier migration, and so on. Where in the generational timeline the immigrant becomes a local is a matter of great debate all the way from Ellis Island to Bozeman, Montana to the Golden Gate Bridge. Since this country became a country, this wild and unruly blend has been its population. Throughout long term growth there will always be setbacks and in any civilization that has wealth over which to fight, there will always be those willing to distract others with petty fears while they fill their own coffers.

In closing, I would like to draw attention to this picture from a Minneapolis newspaper, the Minnesota Star Tribune. It depicts an ICE agent conducting a raid at a construction site (where people are WORKING for a living). His face is cowardly covered with an American Flag emblazoned kidnapper mask and he’s wearing a hat that looks to me like it contains two old-school nails in the shape of a cross. To my feeble mind, he is apparently suggesting that these days his work is the Christian thing to do; a hypocrisy so wide I cannot even find an edge at which to enter nor muster up the energy to attempt to understand. This is what our country looks like to a large segment of its population and to many observers from abroad. I would like to see that change.

I recently wrote an Op-Ed for the Star Tribune in conjunction with Sportsmen For the Boundary Waters (upon whose board I sit). Below is the piece as it was published (I believe it was gently caressed by an editor). This was my first stab at the format so go easy on me:

Wilderness is endangered. The wild and untamed landscapes that once seemed endless and opaque to our ancestors are now barely visible to most of us. As our population grows, as we stumble toward technology and away from our hunter/gatherer roots, many now question the validity of retaining these blocs of wild land and water at all. However, to those of us who find immense value in these places, the modernity in which we steep is exactly what makes them so precious. To those of us who can’t imagine life without the ability to dive into some wild place and live with the rhythms of the natural world for a time, and who believe every human has a right to do the same, a right to wilderness, now is a crucial time.

We in the U.S. are undoubtedly some of the luckiest knuckleheads in the world. Clean drinking water and a decent average life span aside, one glaring reason I say this is the 640 million acres of public land managed by the federal government that we all collectively own. Throughout our tenure we have decided to keep some of the most exciting places in our country free from development and open to anyone who feels like rambling around in them. Sometimes I forget how incredible that is. These lands may also be used for grazing, timber and other needs of a needy society. These lands unceremoniously protect our drinking water, mitigate flooding, provide habitat to countless critters and remind us that we are simply a part of the natural cycle of the universe.

My nearest chunk of wild is the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. For most of my life I have paddled, camped, fished, hunted, struggled, prayed, bled and grown in that place. The BWCA is where I, and many others, go to leave the modern world behind. It’s where we go to get up with the sun, eat when we’re hungry, sleep like logs, work our tails off and enjoy a peace that can only come from being far away from clocks and the internet. Ask anyone who values this, and none of them would sell it.

But, of course, not everyone sees wilderness in this way. There are plenty of people who think of land as simply a commodity to be sold or mined into oblivion or developed into mediocrity and think nothing of its spiritual value. They also ignore its value in protecting our planet and food systems, or its role in the $1.2-billion-per-year outdoor recreation industry (if you need a financial hit). Some people in political power this very moment are working to find ways to take these lands we all own and use them for their own personal gain. As any kindergarten student would tell you, this is unacceptable.

The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is the largest wilderness area east of the Mississippi River, the gem of the Midwest and under constant threat of ruin or sale at the hands of shortsighted politicians. At this very moment there is a nefarious plan to open a copper-sulfide mine within its watershed by Twin Metals, owned by a Chilean mining company with a history of polluting its sites into rust-colored poisonous wastelands.

In addition, there is a bill that was introduced in October by U.S. Sen. Mike Lee of Utah that is, unironically mind you, called the “Borderlands Conservation Act.” This bill would open all federal lands within 100 miles of the U.S. border to the construction of roads and “tactical infrastructure.” Furthermore, any federal unit (National Park, Wilderness Area, National Forest, etc.) that brushes up against the border is included in its entirety no matter how far from said border it extends. That includes the whole BWCA, not to mention Glacier National Park, Joshua Tree National Park and several other irreplaceable examples of American outback.

Our country needs to mine and be conscious of its borders; I am not debating that. But the way in which we do these things is important. What kind of country do we want to be? The people proposing permanent damage to our few remaining areas of wilderness for such unimaginative reasons as profit and fear have no doubt never heard a loon wail toward a full moon nor eaten a meal of freshly caught walleye on the shore of a nameless lake. They do not know the healing powers of a simple life in the outdoors nor the deep purpose in sharing them with the next generation. They have lost their romance with nature, and I feel sorry for them.

My compassion does not extend toward passivity, however, and I have joined my friends in Sportsmen for the Boundary Waters in passionately opposing any operation that would endanger the Boundary Waters, one of the last remaining jewels of American wilderness. If you treasure our nation’s wild spaces, I’m asking you to please make your voice heard. Join up with one of the many available conservation organizations that do the work. There is undoubtedly one that aligns with your vision. We here at Sportsmen for the Boundary Waters will be fighting for these spaces that create our most powerful memories and the traditions we pass along to future generations, and we would be happy to have you. The time is now, and I am hopeful.

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We in TBT are out here in the Steel City herself opening for our friends the Turnpike Troubadours. More on that later, but I feel like the context of tour is appropriate here because the logistics involved usually don’t allow for a deep dive into any particular locale. In fact, I would bet that in most of the cities I’ve played, I’ve probably only seen about a square mile of each. If I keep that up for a while, the old stereotype that suggests all places feel the same on tour becomes my reality. Sometimes I’m into that. Sometimes I like to shut myself up in greenrooms and hotels and write or just try and get through the trip and get home. But, more often than not these days I like to get out and explore a little. I mean I get to travel all over the damn place for my “job” and though it’s real easy to take that for granted, in my experience losing the romance of travel is lame and unattractive.

I am writing this from my hotel room in what I now know is called the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh. It’s pretty much on the campus of Pitt, so the neighborhood feels lively and young. I am about four blocks from the Carnegie Museums (of Art and Natural history, respectively) which is a total score as far as hitting the pavement on tour goes. I don’t like riding around in the backseat of cars if I can avoid it, so finding interesting places within a walk is my favorite way to explore. I walked over to the museums and spent most of my time in the art side visiting works by Van Gogh, Rothko, Joan Mitchell and so many others. There was a fascinating exhibit on Black Photojournalism as well. The Natural History museum looked really great too, but I only did a brief spin through there. I was missing the sunshine. I did get to see some dinosaurs and learn a few mind blowers about how old everything is, which is always good perspective.

Leaving the museums, I headed toward S. Craig St which was bustling and smelled like a fair. I soon came across a used bookstore called Caliban Book Shop. While walking a city I consider a used bookstore about the most important place I could visit (with a dimly lit, small wine bar a close second). This one was really great. The books were stacked high and wide and with almost surprising order. The hardcovers all had extra plastic sleeves on them which suggested to me that this shop catered to collectors as well as wandering musicians. The aisles started wide and then got skinnier as I walked down them in a triangle or trapezoid shape. It was psychedelic… kind of an Alice in Wonderland feeling. Were the aisles shrinking or was I growing? Impossible to say. I spent a good amount of time in there and came out with three books, though I could’ve come out with a hundred. I got The Summer He Didn’t Die by Jim Harrison, The Shipping News by Annie Proulx, and Digging for Indians, a book of poems by Gary Gildner. I hadn’t heard of Mr Gildner before, but the cover art was cool and got me to peruse the little collection. Never underestimate the power of graphic design.

I wandered back to my hotel in probably the most crooked way possible. You see, at the moment I don’t have a smartphone. I don’t want to make a big deal about that decision, but suffice to say the damn things were getting under my skin and I wanted a dose of life without the constant madness of notifications, social media, news, and 24 hour-a-day accessibility. I bring it up here because for the last two thirds of my touring life, I have had a little computer with me at all times that would tell me where all the cool spots in a town are and how to get there. It could also holler up a ride for me if I needed one. For my walks these days I do a bit of research on my computer before I head out and just use that as a rough outline for the day. Too many plans can kill a good wander, anyway. Finding a surprise amazing bookstore feels like the fates smiling down upon me, whereas running into a light pole while looking at Google Maps has the opposite effect. I am still getting my old confidences back and there were a few times today when I took a turn because the street looked interesting and then found myself grabbing for my iPhone to map my way outta there. No dice, pal. Figure it out. Turns out you can survive just fine if you want to. The phone i’m using at the moment is called a Light Phone III. So far I’m really digging it.

I avoided the two guitar shops that I know about in Pittsburgh: Acoustic Music Works and Pittsburgh Guitars. I wasn’t anywhere near them which is probably a good thing as I am a genuine sucker for old guitars and I am absolutely not in the market (if you know of anywhere that has any 60’s Martin small-bodies gimme a ring).

Turnpike Troubadours. What a great band. We have had so much fun opening for those guys several times in the last couple years. I have fallen in love with their music and am honored to be on the bill. I really dig Evan Felker’s songwriting and had a great time co-writing a song with him on their latest record. The song is called Leaving Town (Woodie Guthrie Festival). Here it is if you’d like to check it out:

Playing before us is a fella named Leon Majcen. I will be listening to some of his music here after I'm done typing this and I’m excited to check him out for the next three nights.

I hope you’re all doing well and digging Fall (or Spring for any readers on that side of the globe). The next few days I’ll be in DC, Cleveland, and Charlottesville. If you have any good bookstore, museum, record store, or even guitar store recommendations, please send them over!

Wow it’s been a helluva long time since I wrote anything here. Thanks to those of you who have held on and a gentle farewell to those of you who finally gave up paying for this rag and bailed. I cannot blame you. I will reiterate though that I have not made nor will I ever make any promises of consistency or reliability when it comes to producing, ahem, content. So, what’s new you ask?

A bit. I’ve been writing songs for chrissake. During this most recent songwriting cycle (creative buildup, writing euphorically, recording, basking, denying, feeling like i’ll never write again) the last phase got really bleak. I hit a real creative wall and though I’ve been there countless times before, I will say I started considering other careers much more frequently than in past dry spells. Freaky. But, as cycles go, the writing spirit eventually came back. I have to stop trying to make the muse work within mortal concerns such as a calendar. These are eternal forces we’re dealing with here.

I’ve been really into cassette recording lately, and this week I’ll be making a few demos on a really cool old Akai MG-614 that I recently found. I haven’t recorded anything on it yet, but it just got back from the shop with a clean bill of health so I am very excited to get started. I had it in my head that I was going to turn these songs into a solo record recorded exclusively on the Akai, but my plans for the songs have changed a bit. I still want to get versions of them down on cassette to have as bonus material or maybe even as alternatives to the shinier studio takes that are bound to come. I’ve been missing recording with my TBT brethren so hopefully those guys will be into these tunes and we’ll see what happens. In any event, as a peace offering for the space between Substack posts, I’ll put a demo of a new song on the next one if I get anything worth sharing.

I have some Midwestern solo shows coming up in November and December. They are thus:

11/29 Grand Rapids, MN Reif Performing Arts Center

12/3 Eau Claire, WI JAMF Theater at Pablo Center

12/4 Green Lake, WI Thrasher Opera House (I have high hopes for a place with this name)

12/5 Mineral Point, WI Mineral Point Opera House

Yes, it appears I am in the Opera House phase of my career, for which I am very grateful. These rooms look beautiful and sound beautiful and are packed with the ghosts of those who have performed before. Come to think of it, I usually end up playing solo shows this time of year. I think the weather is conducive to the venues and, hopefully, the music.

Outside of music I’ve been traveling a little. Chloe and I went to Italy for kind of a belated honeymoon. We stayed in one of those picturesque Italian coastal towns with the colorful buildings right up against the ocean. We ate pasta, drank wine, and said “prego” a lot. It was lovely.

I’m writing this from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. TBT just played our very first show here in a cool rock club called Revolution Live. I’m not sure what revolution they’re referencing, but maybe it’s more of a state of mind. I’ve always thought of Florida as our weirdest state. I hope any Floridians reading this will take that as the compliment it’s meant to be.

Several years ago we got a last minute offer to play a festival on Key West. A band had canceled and they asked us to fill in. None of us had ever been to Key West and all I knew about that island was that several of my favorite authors used to hang out there and fish for tarpon. Hemingway, Jim Harrison, Tom McGuane, Richard Brautigan, and probably many others that I’ve never read. Jimmy Buffet was there. I had envisioned it as a bohemian paradise far from the reach of the problems and governments of the mainland. And I’m sure it was. Nowadays, of course, Key West, along with many of our other once ragged and beautiful artistic communities, has been found out and touristed to near strangulation. Picture bachelorette parties with blue drinks on pedal pubs (shoutout to Nashville). One can, I found, still find pockets of the old wild Key West of lore, but those are now the exception, rather than the rule. Still, when you’re on that island, you’re out there, man. The farthest tiny speck of the continental US in the middle of the ocean. When we were there we all stayed at a modest motel with a wonderful outdoor bar. The bartender’s name was Mike. I assume there were other bartenders that worked there, but every day and every night, we saw Mike. Chloe and I were sitting at that bar one afternoon and a gentleman walked up and sat on the stool to my left. Mid fifties, balding, slightly overweight. He pulled a comedically large cigar out of his sport coat pocket and looked around suspiciously. He looked at me, he looked at the ashtray on the bar. He finally leaned across the bar to Mike and said,

“Uh, excuse me, is it ok if I smoke out here?” Mike looked over the Margherita he was shaking and replied, “Man, this is Key West. Do whatever the fuck you want.” Now that’s what I’m talking about! Do whatever the fuck you want. In our buttoned-down helmeted-up seat-belted non-smoking gluten free climate controlled inoffensive safety first sanitized automatic transmissioned society, it’s wonderful to know that there are still some pockets of insanity out there. You don’t have to live in them full time, but I do think it’s important to know they are waiting for you if you should need them. We all probably need them now and again.

We have a couple more shows down here in the Sunshine state before heading home and back to fall. I’m excited to get out looking for grouse and pheasants in the next few weeks and to spend some real quality time in our amazing public lands. I hope you’ve got some outdoor time coming up as well. Maybe I’ll see you out there. Till then, take care of yourselves and each other. Remember that the world has always been full of tragedy and beauty at the same time. Peace and love.

Here’s some recent scenes from my point of view:

As the trip neared, I got a phone call from Alan Sparhawk. Alan, if you are unfamiliar, is 1/3 of the band Low. When we were starting out, Low was easily the most well known band from Duluth. They were the only people I knew that had actually been on tour and they made the coolest, darkest, most beautiful music. In fact, their 2002 or 2003 show (my memory is fuzzy) in Duluth celebrating the release of their album, Trust, still remains one of the pivotal musical experiences of my life. They were international indie rock royalty who had even been on tour with Radiohead. Legends! All this is to say, though we were in the same town, we didn’t cross musical paths all that often back then. Back to the telephone: Alan told me he had heard through the small Duluth music scene grapevine that we were heading west and that we didn’t have a lot of shows to fill our time out there. He said Low was also going to be on the West Coast over the very same dates doing some co-bill shows with Pedro the Lion. He asked if we’d be interested in hopping on a couple of those shows in the space we had between ours. We, of course, said yes. I want to note here that Alan had nothing in the whole wide music business to gain from inviting us to play these shows. If anything he was probably risking something. We had zero fans on the west coast and were (and still are) a press nightmare. He only knew that another Duluth band was giving it a go on the road and that fact alone was enough for him to extend his hospitality. Alan is a good egg.

If TBT and Low seem like an odd pairing now, you should’ve seen us in 2005. We looked like we came right off the Grateful Dead’s tour bus when we pulled up to the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. We were used to setting up our own minimal PA system and playing on the floors of bars and we had never seen anything like that beautiful venue (at least not from the stage). We were slated to play a short set as first of the three acts on the bill. Trampled by Turtles was not listed on the poster and I honestly don’t know if Alan had even told Pedro the Lion that we were going to be there. There wasn't really any social media back then either, so imagine the crowd’s surprise when the lights went down and we waddled on stage instead of the expected Pedro the Lion. Accustomed to hippy bluegrass festivals and drunken bars, we were suddenly in front of the quietest, most stoic group of humans I had ever seen. Crickets.

The funny thing is…it worked. Mostly. I think we were just weird enough in that space to draw more curiosity than ire. We had several people after the set ask us what our instruments were called. We were like world music. We had a great time and I had people in California for years after tell me that they first heard of us specifically, and string bands in general, at that show. We also played two nights with the tour at Neumo’s in Seattle.

The main lesson I took from this experience was that Alan Sparhawk doesn’t give a fuck. That isn’t to say he doesn’t care about what he’s doing. He cares deeply about his work. What I mean is that he does, artistically, exactly what he wants to do when he wants to do it. From knowing him now for 25 years or so, I don’t think I’ve met anyone as artistically courageous as Al. He has always followed his muse exactly as he interprets it and that is an incredibly difficult thing to do. In music there are plenty of people who will tell you what they think you should do, who they imagine you should be. He’ll have none of it. Alan has shown me, through watching him work and through working alongside him, that the dream is still out there and it is worth chasing. He has shown me that sometimes challenging your audience is the greatest way to show them your respect.

Almost three years ago, Alan’s wife and the other half of Low, Mimi Parker, passed away. I know I said thirds earlier, but just trust me. She was a beautiful human, a matriarch of the Duluth music scene, and a friend. Her voice was paramount. Low is family to us and her death was the loss of family. Al and Mim were husband and wife, parents, and musical partners for most of their lives. I can’t imagine the space left behind for Alan when she made her journey. I don’t want to imagine it.

In the months after Mim’s passing, our banjo player, Dave Carroll, asked the rest of the band if we’d be cool inviting Alan to come out on the road with us that summer. Not to open for us or anything, just to come along for the ride. We had recently played a show at the Armory in Minneapolis celebrating the release of our record, Alpenglow, and Alan joined us on stage. It was his first time on stage since Mimi passed and together we played the Low classic, When I Go Deaf. Our whole band was crying. In inviting him on tour, we thought we’d get him out of town and just spend some time together in a swirl of music and travel. Change of venue. He accepted and ended up performing with us every night, blessing us with vocals and electric guitar. We played one of my favorite Low songs, Days Like These, and he added beautiful textures to our songs, Wild Animals and Alone. We all loved having Al on the road and on stage and I feel like what began as us thinking we were helping him out a little turned into him injecting a new artistic energy into our tour. A poignant memory from that run was when we had the honor of being on Willie Nelson’s Outlaw Tour. On those shows we played early and short, full daylight. We were at Alpine Valley in Wisconsin and Alan joined us on stage. We rolled into the opening of Days Like These and I noticed the enormous crowd slowly take notice of Alan’s voice and before long you could’ve heard a pin drop. I don’t know the size of the crossover between Low fans and Willie Nelson fans, but that didn’t matter. Alan’s force onstage is undeniable and with it he showed that crowd, and all the other crowds that trip, something unique and special. Through many late night chats on the bus, we decided we should record something together someday.

Click here to see a video of Alan sitting in with us at The Armory

A little bit down the line and without much further discussion, we received some demos from Alan. We all listened and learned these songs he recorded on his phone. He introduced each song by listing the chord changes and form. We decided to add an extra day to a recording session we already had booked at Pachyderm, and try the songs as a group. The band set up in a circle in the live room and played through the songs together with Alan strumming his guitar and singing with us in the same room. As we began to dive into these songs, the full weight of the material began to finally sink in. As you might expect, a lot of the lyrics explore the grief he experienced after Mim’s passing. Real heavy stuff. I remember one particular moment during the tracking of Screaming Song, where Al was singing about how he thought he’d never stop screaming, and I had tears rolling down my cheeks like salty boulders. I looked over at Banjo and he was in the same state. I have never been so moved while recording a song. I can’t speak about whether or not recording this material was cathartic for Alan, but I can say that I was surprised at how cathartic it was for me. We had no expectations of what we were making. An album? A single? No one knew or cared. Throughout the experience even the faintest hints of the music business fell away for me; the session was more resonant than that. Group therapy.

Some months after the tracking, Alan and mixing engineer Nat Harvie set to unpacking the pile of music we recorded. They mixed, overdubbed, and fine tuned the songs into the music you’ll hear tomorrow when this record is released (if you are inclined to listen). The album is called, appropriately, With Trampled by Turtles. Recording this project is and will always be one of the highlights of my life, musical or otherwise. We explored a perhaps unlikely creative bond that has existed for 20 years now. I am honored to have been there.

I can’t thank Alan enough for the years of guidance and friendship he has given me and our band. From that first invite 20 years ago to the advice I get from him to this very day. He has been mentor, friend, bandmate, producer, and a reminder that the joy of art is in its creation. We are proud of this new record and I can’t wait for it to be released unto the world tomorrow (May 30). As a special thank you to those of you who pay for this rag, below is a sneak peak at the aforementioned Screaming Song.

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Baseball has always marked the coming of summer for me. I know I am not unique in this, but as someone who doesn’t generally care about sports, I do find my romance with this one a little peculiar. The game was pretty much my religion as a kid. I knew all the teams and players and could rattle off stats from the back of baseball cards to annoying accuracy. Even now, at my advanced age, the mention of a ball player from the 80s or 90s can sometimes bring to mind a vivid image of his rookie card or his role in a memorable game. I am neither numbers driven nor meticulous, nor would I claim to have a good memory, but for some reason several of these factoids have stuck with me. As kids we have the space and time to be fully obsessed with something. When we get older and have jobs and kids of our own, so much of the day is spent getting to the next responsibility that our bandwidth almost disappears for learning such romantic verses as Kent Hrbek’s rookie year batting average or how fast Bo Jackson could throw a ball to home plate from left field (rumored to be near 109mph). This is probably an arc, as I’ve seen retirees get right back into the goo of infatuation once their calendar opens up a bit.

I think the pace of baseball lends itself to spirituality or even love. Probably in danger of becoming a relic in today’s attention-deprived modernity, baseball is slow. A lot of people find it painfully slow. The major leagues have tried to modernize a little by adding a clock which hurries the pitchers (who used to have almost unlimited time to imagine and execute their work) and a few other minor changes in hopes of quickening the pace of the game. I’ve heard sports talk radio hosts and some ticket holders cheer these decisions. I disagree with them, but then again nobody asked my opinion. Even with the recent rule changes, baseball is still, by modern standards, painfully slow. Joke’s on them, I guess. I would argue that slow is exactly what we need more of, and if there’s anyone out there who doesn’t think we could all use a little dose of slow now and again, I’d love to hear their argument. I imagine the suits at the top of baseball’s corporate ladder see the violence of football and the superstardom of basketball and drool with jealousy. Splash! Celebrity! Baseball’s ethos has always demanded humility and teamwork. It demands bunts and sacrifice flies. Its’ stars are supposed to give their team all the credit and even the grownup players making millions are expected to hustle out to their positions when it’s time to take the field. Players who jog lazily to first after hitting a fly ball are benched, and managers frequently get ejected from games in defense of their players. In fact, baseball is the only major sport in which the manager wears the same uniform as the player. All for one. A sport this large and old, of course, has its exceptions, but these generalities seem to hold up even now (generally). My only real beef with the major leagues is that the players no longer shake the other teams’ hands after the game. All through youth baseball the handshake line is law, and I think if the league is going to go through the trouble of changing the rules of a 200 year old game, they should start with that.

I was surprised when my son wanted to try baseball a couple years ago. He had never been interested in sports before and he was already ten years old. Most of the kids he started playing with had already been at it for five or six years. I admired his courage and enthusiasm and, though I know how nervous he was at that first practice (not to mention the first game), he has shown a lot of grit and willingness to learn in these last three seasons. He has become a ballplayer. When he leaves the dugout he hustles to his position. He is always willing to chatter his pitcher or holler how many outs there are and where the play should be. He has made improbable plays in the infield and has had easy rollers go right through his legs. He has beat out grounders and struck out looking. All of these appear to me as valuable lessons. As a father that has never pushed sports nor cared if my kids chose them, I am finding a lot of value in my son’s participation in this one. I’m also personally enjoying my participation in it with him. For his two first seasons I was somewhat of a secondary assistant coach. This year there are a few other parents who were excited to fill such roles so I am watching from the seats, but being around the game so often makes me feel lovey-dovey. I see my son on the bench goofing with his teammates and in the field or at bat acting more focused than I’ve seen him otherwise. I see a young man growing up. At the last game when it was his turn to take the field, he and a buddy were lost in conversation, slowly walking to their positions on the diamond. Out of habit and years of conditioning I hollered from my folding chair, “Hustle out!” He has since told me that he appreciates me coming to the games, but asks that I please not yell anything at him going forward. I told him I was once in middle school and I will keep my mouth shut.

Baseball is back, and with it comes the American summer. My kids have started counting down the pale and skinny days left of school, and Trampled is about to get very busy. We have a lot of really cool stuff to do this summer, and, as always, I’m thankful for each opportunity. In my adult years summer has become marked by a myriad of happenings, but the beginning of the baseball season is still probably the most steady. Even now, 25 years or so since I played my last competitive baseball game, I cannot step onto the dirt of an infield without flowing into a trot, and I cannot watch the entirety of Field of Dreams without shedding a tear. Bring on the green filth of summer, I am ready.

Thanks for checking in. I hope you’re doing what you want today.

-Dave

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Thanks for checking in. Trampled gets busy here again in April after a month off, and I’m excited to play some shows with the guys. I’ve been sneaking in a little songwriting lately. When I get some time to sit and flesh something out, I’ll give you a sneak peak. Till next time, take care.

-Dave

I wanted to drop a little note to you let you know that my band Dead Man Winter is playing two shows in March. On the 19th we’ll be at the Mineral Point Opera House in Mineral Point, WI. Mineral point is in what’s known as the Driftless Area. All those years ago when the mighty glaciers made their way south, grinding our continent into roughly the shape we see today, this area somehow escaped being covered by the ice. It holds no glacial drift. That has nothing to do with our show, but it’s fun to know. The Driftless is a hidden world right in the middle of the States. It feels remote. Steep bluffs, innumerable trout streams, Amish wagons, and the like. I’m told the Mineral Point Opera House is an old school gem and a beautiful place to take in a show. I can’t wait to see it.

The very next day, March 20, we hustle our buns up to Minneapolis to play the best rock club in the land, First Avenue. TBT’s cello player Eamonn McClain plays bass in the Little Fevers, who are opening this show. If you live in the area, this place needs no introduction, but if you’re not familiar, First Ave is downtown Minneapolis’ legendary black box room in which all of the world’s legends have played. The outside of the club is painted black as well, but it’s peppered with white stars in which the names of so many of its performers are enshrined. TBT was honored with our very own star on the wall years ago and at the time I could’ve retired.

The first time Trampled got to play a headlining show at First Avenue, we were nervous. I mean NERVOUS. We all grew up in Minnesota and Wisconsin and First Ave is the place you went to see everyone. I never thought it was realistic we would have a show there. I don’t think any of us did. Before our set we were pacing around like chickens in the yard when the long-time stage manager, Conrad (who also has a star on the outside wall), wrangled us up and walked us through the little hallway behind the stage. When we had all gathered he lifted to our eyes a gigantic tray of whiskey shots. We each picked one up and he gave a little toast: “Guys, I can tell you are anxious for this show. Just remember, you deserve this. Everyone here is here to see you. You’re gonna do great. And, finally, when you’re done, get your shit off the fucking stage!” Nobody can say Conrad doesn’t say it like it is.

We in Dead Man Winter are very excited to return to this rock n roll church in a couple weeks. As of this writing there are some tickets available.

To find tickets to either of these shows or any solo shows I have coming up as well, head over here: Dead Man Winter

For those of us who pray to the god of wandering, the perfect day job is hard to find. Back then I was often gone two or three weeks at a time, so flexibility was paramount. I had lived this way for a couple years by this point so it wasn’t a new situation, but back in Duluth I knew a lot of people. I had friends in restaurants and on construction crews so a piecemeal source of income was easy to come by. Like a lot of my grungy musician compatriots, I lack a college degree. The School of Hard Knocks, I often dad-joke to my kids.

A musician pal of mine in Minneapolis had mentioned to me in the past that he and his dad owned a small roofing company so when things eventually got dire I gave him a ring. My first roofing job was a three story beige suburban castle and, as was the case in every other construction job i’d done, the learning was by doing. The pitch was 7/12, which means for every foot the roof extends outward, it rises seven inches. It’s a way to describe how steep a roof is. A 12/12 is a 45 degree angle and about the steepest I ever saw. 7/12 is steep enough, but experienced roofers can walk around on it without any kind of support. I, however, was not an experienced roofer. As I tore off the old shingles with a pitchfork, my knees shook and I was slipping all over the place like the sheathing was made of ice. “Just put your feet flat on the roof and walk with confidence,” was the advice my boss gave. And it helped, actually. When I got down to the bottom of the roof, standing three stories above a perfectly manicured yard of Kentucky Bluegrass, my shoe caught on a nail. My feet went up and my head went back and I hit the roof hard and slid. Another nail, thankfully not yet removed, caught a pouch on my tool belt and saved my ass. My left foot hanging over the abyss, I crawled back up and lit a smoke.

I ended up roofing off and on for six years. Once I got the hang of it, I grew to really enjoy it. There were hot days in the summer and cold days in the winter in which I had no fun, but I liked the crew and I got pretty good at the work. It made me feel strong and tired and that’s not a bad way to come home at the end of the day.

I am of the mind that everyone could benefit from a little manual labor. I never had too many other options, but a lot of people avoid the experience all together. I’m not usually a fan of anything being mandatory, but if there was a version of the draft that put our young in a tool belt for a year of their lives, I’d probably vote for it. There is a lesson in mental strength that is learned only when your body is truly exhausted. The little petty bullshit that might normally ruin a day falls off your back like rain off a duck. When I'd switch from roofing back to my life on tour, a lot of the music business seemed extra whiny and I’d miss sweating and bleeding with the guys on the roof. The grass is always greener.

If I have a rough show, my usual response now is “beats roofing.” It’s a valuable perspective to have, even if it’s not always true. Though at my age, I don’t know if I'd survive a week on the roof.

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I’m with TBT in Madison, WI right now in the middle of a short three show run in this state. We haven’t played together for a little bit and we’re having a great time. Wild Horses is opening for us on this run and they’re really great. Check em out! -

https://www.wildhorsesmn.com

As far as entertainment goes, I’m reading Jim Harrison’s Brown Dog and it’s damn good. Everything he wrote is damn good if you ask me, so I’m biased I guess. A Minneapolis band I like, She’s Green, just released a new single that I was listening to when I started this piece. You can hear that here if you’d like:

I’ve also been spinning Erik Koskinen’s most recent album, Down Street/Love Avenue, quite a bit:

When not listening to music or reading Jim Harrison, I’ve been listening to Steve Rinella’s new audiobook, The Mountain Men 1806-1840. Steve knows his stuff and I’m fascinated with that period of the history of this continent. It’s really good and available wherever you find an audiobook.

Hope you’re all getting through the February slog in good shape. Take care and chat soon.

Dave

A while back we had a Lakota friend running lights for our band. He seemed to feel uncomfortable after each show and one night on the bus I asked him what was up. Our stage design at the time consisted of three massive owl heads, glowing eyes and all, suspended above and behind us. My friend explained to me that in his system of belief the owl was a sign of impending doom. He would not celebrate a walk in the woods that was interrupted by the flight of an owl. That poor guy was looking up at those devil birds every night, building up who knows how much bad mojo. Not only that, but our band has goddam owls on everything! The negative connotation of the owl is as real to that man as the Christian version of heaven is to my 95 year old grandparents. To them it is not a question of if, but only of when. My belief structure has never had that kind of certainty, and I envy it.

What got me thinking about this the other day was a simple sit on some tall grass and snow in the sunshine. There is a lake near my house and upon its winter ice I run my dogs daily when I’m home. Across the lake from where we start is a patch of what we call “city woods.” There’s no way for humans to access these trees except from the lake. I don’t really want to clarify that any further as I’d like this place to remain as secret as it is. Suffice to say, I’ve stumbled upon a little oasis in the sprawl, and I’ve been exploring it since we moved in a year and a half ago.

I had a dream a few nights back in which I was walking through those very woods with my dogs. In this dream I picked up a walking stick and when I carried that stick all sorts of magical things took place. When I set it down the magic ceased. As far as belief goes, I am a believer in listening to a dream. Whether you ascribe the subject matter to the emotional subconscious or a window into previous lives or freakin aliens or whatever, that, to me, doesn’t matter. I do think we get little clues in those scenes and I find it fun to follow them when a similar setting happens to show up in my waking life.

So, the following morning after crossing the frozen lake and landing in our little secret woods, I set about finding a walking stick. It didn’t take long. I whittled a little handle on it out of vanity, and continued up the hill. On top of the biggest hill in the area there is an old campsite. City woods are full of forgotten treasures. I like to walk up to the square fire ring and sit on one of the logs and take a breather after the climb. After this break, the dogs and I often head over to a little clearing in the forest. It’s mostly brome and a few wildflowers, and it’s generally sheltered from the frosty winds that haunt the campsite on top of the hill. On this day, with my new walking stick, I took our familiar path from the fire pit to the grass and I came across the skeleton of a turkey. The bones and skull were all jumbled up and they were surrounded by a handful of mangled feathers. I looked up and in the adjacent oak tree sat an eagle’s nest. There’s several creatures that hunt turkeys around there so who knows what went down, but it was a really cool find on a trail I walk almost every day. I thought about the bones for a minute or two and went to sit on my spot in the grass.

I sat there and was thankful for my dream and the healthy reminder a skeleton in the woods can offer. I wondered if I would have come across those bones if I had not grabbed that walking stick. Of course none of it matters. But, that’s the game of belief, isn’t it? None of it matters. We’re all going to end up like that pile of bones n’ feathers turkey in a bit. To me, that was the whole point of the dream: to remind me of the hilarity of it all. I’d been getting too serious, I think. The game is whatever we make it, and therein lies the true power of the human mind.

As far as I’m concerned, a dream can be a message and, if you’re paying attention, an owl or an eagle at just the right time can change a whole day. Those are little bits of the pile of stuff I choose to believe. Maybe you are a devotee of quantum physics or Jesus. To me we’re all saying the same thing. It’s interesting how much we humans crave mystery and how much energy we spend trying to rid the world of it.

In Trampled news I’m sitting in a dressing room in Birmingham, Alabama. We were supposed to play in New Orleans last night, but a freak blizzard postponed those plans. I have a little time to explore Birmingham today, and I’m excited to play with the guys tonight. Feels like it’s been a minute. We all survived Mexico somehow. I haven’t gotten much songwriting done lately, but I feel like that’s coming soon. My “normal” schedule of a flurry of writing at the outset of winter seems to be morphing into something else and I’m excited to see what comes next. It’s healthy to make some changes every decade or so. Here’s a few images from my point of view recently:

I’ve been off the road a bit and, thus, out of my writing studio (the airport). So, I haven’t been putting pen to paper all that often these past few weeks. December is a busy time on the homefront.

I know everyone experiences what we now call “The Holidays” differently. I try to be careful when talking to people about it this time of year because a lot of us take it very seriously for one reason or another. For some it is religious. For some it is simply a warm and fuzzy time of gathering. For others, this time of year is a stressful reminder of materialism and waste, or of bills and debt. I fall somewhere in the middle of all that, but I generally lean towards the frizzy-haired “Why the hell is everywhere so crowded and why is everything made out of plastic?” variety. Each year I have it in my mind to try and relax, and to remind myself that I can make December into anything I want. But, each year I find my psyche limping into Janus’ icy month feeling not at all like I just enjoyed a holiday.

I’ve tried to examine this over the years. Did I have some kind of bad Christmas as a kid? I can’t think of anything in particular at which to point. All I know is I can be an outright Grinch and I have a hard time seeing through all the buying and the bustle to find any kind of spiritual residue. The kids love it though so I muddle through and try to make it special for them. Chloë, thankfully, does most of the heavy lifting in that department. We’ve also hosted a solstice party for the last two years, which I really enjoy. That way of celebrating is closer to my dirty pagan soul anyway, really.

Now it’s over. January is here, everyone is back to work and the kids are back to school. The gifts are opened, our tree is in the yard waiting to be cut up for the fire pit, and life goes on. I like January in this way. In December there is so much focus on one little day that it can be easy to forget about what comes after. January feels like a great exhalation. Settling back into our routines and daily life. The only place I still feel an echo from the holidays is at the gym, but most of those people will be gone in a few weeks. Hell, I might join them.

In other news, I got in a couple late season pheasant hunts before our Minnesota season closed at the end of the year. One particularly great day was Christmas Eve. Given all three of our kids were with their other parents and Chloë was busy working, I celebrated with a few dear friends and our dogs by trudging through the snow searching for the baddest birds around, which are all that are left on the landscape by the end of December. We found a good pile of them, and Maxon made her first really challenging point and retrieve in our budding hunting relationship. We were on the south side of a long stand of short willows when she locked in on point. I swung to her right to edge into the cover and a rooster flushed. I hit him and I busted into the willows to where I thought he went down. The cover was thick as molasses and Maxon was nowhere to be seen. I was yelling for her, then at her, to get her ass over there and help me find that bird. After making a small fool out of myself cussing out that poor dog for a minute or two, she came running joyfully from about 20 yards away with the bird in her mouth. I thanked the bird, and then looked Max in the eyes and told her I trusted her and I won’t doubt her in that way again. I think I found a Christmas tradition I can get behind.

In the TBT world we’ve been quiet for a few weeks. I know that’s not too long for a lot of bands but for us it’s a genuine break. This week we head to Cancún to play a bunch of Old And In The Way songs at the Grateful Dead-themed Dead Ahead Festival. We are all excited to stick our pale northern toes in the sand for a few days. Kind of a work retreat. Trust exercises and team building and whatnot. After that our lives go back to whatever approximation of normal we approach. Back on the road, back playing songs together. Cue the Willie Nelson. I have a few side project shows coming up as well which are always a nice change of pace. Banjo and I are playing a duo set at a sweet little room in Aitkin, MN in February, and Dead Man Winter is going to play a couple shows in March. I’m looking forward to finally playing the DMW versions of the songs from Always Here/Always Now.

I hope you and yours have found some time of reflection and peace in the darkest days of the year (for us northern hemisphere folks, anyway). There’s something very old inside us that still recognizes a solstice, and even if a lot of us now call it Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or Festivus or whatever, our biggest northern hemisphere celebrations still fall on the time of year when our sun’s light has begun its return. The Sun does not give a damn about any of the stresses we’ve invented as Christmas gifts to ourselves, we just begin facing it again and the light creeps back into our lives like a forgiving god. That is something worth celebrating.

I’ve started on a few new tunes and I look forward to sharing them with you when they become a little less dream and a little more song. Take care of each other out there.

A few scenes from my point of few lately:

I’m writing you from the airport, once again. It’s become a reliable part of my travel routine: get to the airport early, grab a glass of awful wine, and write.

A couple years ago I took my dog Hrbek to the vet for his annual checkup. Hrbek is, among other things, very food motivated. In his youth, his time on the streets no doubt created in him a worry that a meal is something to be devoured before any competition might find it, and that it is always wise to eat as much as possible as one never knows when the next feeding may occur. Whatever the case, he had very visibly gained some weight before this appointment. Our vet came into the room, and in his no bullshit way, said, “We need to talk about the elephant in the room…which is him.”

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