Archive for December, 2010

A re-airing of “Old Last Night 2009″ on Tent Show Radio (see “Second Airing” column).  Tent Show Radio is heard on these stations.

Took a quick trip to Colorado with my eldest daughter to visit our family out thataway.  What a joy to travel in her company, this thoughtful, funny conversational young lady of nearly eleven years.  Nearly eight years now since the very first day we met and she told me my teeth looked funny.  She is still correct.

So thank you to our Colorado family.  Lucky us.

And thanks to the pilots who brought that giant aluminum culvert with wings safely down through the whipping wind and weather.  Still not clear on how they do that.

Back on earth, we made it home just before midnight, took me a while to uncurl my fingers from the wheel…

I always circle back to the Waterboys.  Have stacks of their stuff, and Mike Scott‘s solo stuff, and some World Party.

I remember listening to “This is the Sea” while I pounded out poems on the Smith-Corona manual typewriter my parents gave me for graduation.  The poems were fairly awful, but just part of the path.

Man, this one, and also “Pagan Place,” and “Whole of the Moon,” and “Fisherman’s Blues,” and, and, and…

And of course, these evoke memories of Swifty, my dear departed English friend.  The first and only time I saw the Waterboys live it was with Swifty.  Wrote about it in Coop.

Long ways from home, alone writing, deep in headphones listening to iTunes mix, random song after song drawn from a couple thousand (still adding them, CD by CD), and one of my own snuck in (well of course they’re in there!) and here in a place where I don’t know a face, I am swept by the harmony of the last two choruses, because I don’t just hear voices, I hear friends gathered close around a microphone: Billy Krause, Chris Ramey, Justin Vernon.  And when I hear the bass, I think of Chuck, delivering me gently to the next line…

The song (appropriately enough) is about being 842 miles away from home.  There are harmonies throughout, but it’s in the final two choruses that they really come on.  When Chris and Justin soar on the word “song,” I get a chill.

842 Miles – Tiny Pilot

Gratitudes, fellers.  Gratitudes.

Been a busy stretch.  That’s good.  Lucky to be busy.  Still, in moving from thing to thing and place to place, I just know I fail on the thank-yous here and there.  So thanks.

And a special thank you to my wife.  She is the grownup in this relationship.

Howdy.  If you’re just arriving after having heard Mike on “Inside Ag,” here’s a quick guide to the site:

Info about Mike’s background is here.

Info about Mike’s books and other productions here.

Be alerted to Mike’s upcoming appearances and new books/CDs by joining the mailing list here.

And here’s a video of Mike describing the farmer snort.