Bird Songs: "All Over Ohio", "Birds Fly South" & "Scarecrow"

photo by Don McCullough

As I'm one of those lifelong bird people (I considered a bird-related career path in college, studying natural history and working to release peregrine falcons for the Predatory Bird Research Group) I notice the actual and metaphorical birds wherever I am, and birds tend to show up routinely in my own writing. But even music lovers who are the most disinclined to ornithology know many bird-related songs: The Beatles "Blackbird," Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds" and Skynyrd's "Freebird" (like it or not) are pretty much of the modern-day canon. At a concert last summer, I was struck again at how often birds appear in lyrics, even among songwriters that aren't really "birders." The past few months I've started "collecting" contemporary (post-2000) bird-referencing songs, and will be sharing my favorites here. Know of a fairly-recent "bird song" I should hear? Please email me. 
In the meantime, here's a sampling of some of my recent favorites: 
 
"All Over Ohio" by Over the Rhine
I swoon over the sensibilities of Over the Rhine in general, who call an Ohio farm home between their own musical peregrinations,  and whose lyrics bespeak their deep connection to place. They know their land deeply, as well as the creatures who share it. "All Over Ohio," sung in duet, is a long, lovely tour both of place and the birdly need to come and go: 

"And the starlings they were flying
Earlier today
Doing their maneuvers
Clouds of feathers on display
Makes me wanna kneel in prayer but
I’ve forgotten what to say
I’ll just name all the birds in Ohio
...

All I wanna be is a thousand black birds*
Bursting from a tree into the blue
Love – let it be not just a feeling
But the broken beauty
Of what we choose to do"

*Listen to an actual blackbird call HERE.
 

"Birds Fly South" by The Mastersons  
The Mastersons, an Austin-based duo, also evoke bird migration in the title track of their 2012 release, a song about their own need to move, the pull of the heart, the mystery and reasons  of why humans and animals pick up and go when they do. 
Birds fly south, before the cold
all night, I'm going to drive
New York's getting me down
run out of reason to hang around
that's why birds fly south, 
when it all comes down 
All night, I'm going to drive
Will you be, right by my side?


"Scarecrow" by Michael McNevin 
This is one of my all-time favorite songs for a lot of reasons: not only it it a great evocation of the behavior of gulls* (the species of sea bird I've projected upon this song), its a beautiful love song, period. I believe its won some awards, and I've a CD containing the song, but it's hard to find online to easily share.  Fortunately, for these purposes, there's this video (Track McNevin down at one of his shows or hit him up at Muddpuddle Music if you want your own copy.) I heard him sing it the first time I saw him perform and became an insta-fan. 
She's a sea bird I'm a scarecrow
She came to rest upon my elbow
She flys fast I watch the corn grow
Will she come back, well damned if I know
Damned if I know
 ...
She's a sea bird I'm a scarecrow
Will I turn to driftwood in the shallows?
Damned if I know, damned if I know

*Listen to an actual California gull call HERE.

 
(McNevin's also got a song called "Early Bird" worth giving a listen)

On the path, less so on the blog

"I am circling around God, around the ancient tower, / and I have been circling for a thousand years, / and I still don't know if I am a falcon, or a storm, / or a great song." — "The Seeker," a poem by Rilke in his Book of Hours (translated by Robert Bly)

Thank you for reading Bird in the Tree! Though I continue to write, I'm going on a bit of a blogging hiatus. Writing is much on my mind, in my hand and in song, though blogging (as I've been doing it) hasn't felt like the most accurate expression for me at the moment. While I play with other forms, you can find more of what I'm up to that's ready for eyes and ears at my Music Site HERE and on Soundcloud HERE. I'm also a contributor to No Depression which you can find HERE. And finally I'm a big fan of Instagram.  Stay in touch!

Patterns, tracks and a lone #pelican amid the gulls and geese. #Alameda #beach #sfbay

A photo posted by Deborah Crooks (@deborahrcrooks) on Dec 4, 2015 at 12:09pm PST

Read.Eat.Listen: Art & Magic

The pursuit of truth and beauty through plumbing one's own line of particular inquiry is a road I trust, even if it's fairly unmarked. I've been neck deep in a bunch of projects this month, while planning a whole course on getting projects done, so I was pleased to be tagged on Facebook as part of an artist challenge earlier this week. The challenge is to post your work 5 days in a row and tag two other artists while you were at it. Already on day 5, I realized I've a lot more folks I want to tag! Oh my! 

In the meantime, I flew up to Portland for a few days, mainly to spend more time for my sweetie whose been traveling a lot, and also to enjoy that hyper-creative city. It was raining, and cold for most of my visit, but the trip started beautifully, with a view of a rainbow over the Willamette River, and ended sweetly with a big slice of gluten-free berry pie, with a good helping of quality time with my husband, yoga practice, good coffee, writing sessions and catching up with friends who live there. I got back in touch with a dear and brilliant artist, Kitty Wallis, who I knew years ago in Santa Cruz, while in town. She was already a master colorist when I first met her and I'm lucky to own a couple of her pieces. What a delight it was to see her current, just that much more realized work! If you're in Portland, look her up and seek her out. She's also continuing to teach her vivid and inspired approach to painting. 

Read: I've pretty much designed my life to be surrounded by creatives.  So I love coming upon this book:  Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers, by Janet Malcom. 
Eat: I ate out a lot this week, in Portland, at home, for Easter. I'm grateful for all the good food, and happy to see spring is busting out on menus in the form of an abundance of artichoke and asparagus based and laced dishes. Artichoke and asparagus on pizza, artichoke ragout under poached fish, artichoke grilled with x on top, asparagus on goat-cheese ravioli, asparagus lightly with brown butter...you get the idea. Go green I say!
Listen: With a name like,  Sister Sparrow & The Dirty Birds, how can I not want to listen? Love the sass and soul of this group. Check out Mama Knows: 

Read.Eat.Listen: On the Trail

I don't see that many movies in the theater anymore. Nor do I watch TV much. So the effect on my brain of seeing a movie in a theater and watching the Super Bowl during the same week remains to be seen. I do know I came home from the Super Bowl in a bad mood (and not because I was leaning more toward Seattle). All those wacky commercials, and Katy Perry's fun, if dizzying, half-time show were fine (I think?), but the fact of watching a brawl break out...well,  I'm not desensitized enough anymore.

This wasn't the case with Wild, the movie starring Reese Witherspoon, based on Cheryl Strayed's excellent book of the same name. Albeit, I was a little emotionally worked by the end, too.

It's been in theaters a couple months now, but I finally saw Wild last week. I loved Wild, the book, about a woman finding her way up from the bottom by hiking the Pacific Crest Trail solo. As a writer whose found a lot of solace in nature, including some of the wilderness Strayed's route travels, I ate the book up in a few sittings. It's a great story, and Strayed is a great writer and its no wonder the book was a bestseller. So I shied away from seeing the movie when it first was released. But there was nothing for me to worry about in the 'oh, I wished I stayed with the good memory of the book.' Reese and crew captured the story very well as well as its tear jerking affect. 

Read: I was talking to some writer friends about how working on projects — be they stories, short or long, or anything creative, really — involves letting them work on you. So I loved-loved-loved reading this profile of Yitang Zhang, "The Pursuit of Beauty," a genius problem--solving mathematician in the New Yorker. 
A snippet on how Zhang stays on the trail of problems: "A few years ago, Zhang sold his car, because he didn’t really use it. He rents an apartment about four miles from campus and rides to and from his office with students on a school shuttle. He says that he sits on the bus and thinks. Seven days a week, he arrives at his office around eight or nine and stays until six or seven. The longest he has taken off from thinking is two weeks. Sometimes he wakes in the morning thinking of a math problem he had been considering when he fell asleep. Outside his office is a long corridor that he likes to walk up and down. Otherwise, he walks outside."

Eat: Some weeks, I derived most of my protein from Almond Butter. I can't say this is the best thing (I know it could be worse) but almond butter prices have been a bit of a drag. So I've been looking into making my own. Here's the (not-so) skinny on that: HomeMade Raw Almond Butter.

Listen: Bjork has been getting plenty of press for her newest, Vulnicura, CD. And well, heck, its Bjork!!!

Read.Eat.Listen: Warmth & Wonder

READ: "The Impossible Will Take A Little While: A Citizen's Guide To Hope in a Time of Fear." I'm reading this 10 years after it's initial publication but it seems more timely than ever. Fifty fifty stories and essays from activists across the globe.  "Even in a seemingly futile moment or losing cause, one person may unknowingly inspire another, and that person yet a third, who could go on to change the world, or at least a small corner of it." — Paul Loeb

EAT: A couple of weeks ago, playing at Off the Grid, we got re-clued into the wonderful empanadas made by El Porteño (I'm partial to the mushroom variety). Empanadas are really hand-pies, aka goodness in the form of warmth, comfort, nourishment and convenience.  El Porteño empanadas are available at a variety of locations, including its Bay-roaming food truck, a kiosk at The Embarcadero Ferry Building and at several area cafe/bars. We just noticed they're the snack of choice at the recently opened Woods Bar & Brewery in Oakland.

LISTEN: In truth, there's been a lot of listening to oneself going on around here. In the midst of getting ready for the next KCDC live performance on November 22, we're going back into the studio next month to record a new bunch of songs written earlier this year. But there's also been much wonderment, this week, over the news of a spacecraft landing on a comet, and I loved seeing this headline re: the comet's 'song':

Artist Interview: Trouble No More for Corinne West

After more than a decade of touring the globe, California songwriter Corinne West put her guitar down, moved to Austria, and spent more than a year working on visual art. Instead of taking her away from music, the break served to bring her deeper into the creative territory she's mined on four well-received collections of original music. In 2013, she returned to the Bay Area, making a seemingly effortless transition back to where she left off: forming new collaborations with top players, showcasing at the recent FAR-West Conference, and writing a new batch of songs for what will be her fifth recording, TROUBLE NO MORE. Amidst a crowd-funding campaign to support the new work, Corinne discussed her time away from, and joyful return to, a life immersed in making music. 

Q:  After a long run of touring and living abroad, you're back living and creating in the Bay Area. How is it to be back and how is it shaping your current work?

CW: I am quite happy to be back in California, (although I do miss Austria.) My current body of songs have been deeply influenced by the year I spent in the Alpine mountains, and my experiences leading up to that time. Returning to America provided distance and space to reflect on what it meant in my life to be away from home, and what it means to have a true home away from home… which lead to the fertile ground of contemplating the meaning of home in the first place. 

Q: Tell me about your break? Did you plan it consciously or did it just evolve?

CW: In 2011, after 10 years of full-time touring, and on the back-end of a two-year duo project, I took a sabbatical from music completely and lived in a village in the Alpine mountains in Austria for 13 months. I had been moving at such a fast clip that I began to lack a connection to what I was doing and saying and feeling during performances. All the pieces were moving, yet somehow on a soul level, I wasn’t there. It was time to recalibrate and figure out what held meaning for me, and the only way to really address this was to flip the switch, and pull the entire plug out of the wall. When I stepped away from my identity as a musician it got very very quiet. In the middle of that silence I had the powerful and often difficult experience of looking myself in the eye and asking myself what it means to me to create for a living, why am I doing this - and what am I doing. 

Q: You practice multiple art forms (visual media, etc). Is there a typical rhythm to your days creating? 

CW: I am finally at a place in my life where the mediums I work in are all informing one another. If I am working on mono prints, I am infusing the work with the music I am listening to or writing. In making the new record TROUBLE NO MORE, I will be creating the artwork for the CD lending a visual reference for some of the sonic landscapes in the music. It’s all one energy with different outlets or manifestations. So to answer your question, every day holds one facet or another of creation, and the rhythm of the day is a blend of letting it unfold, and keeping in time with the tasks at hand. 

Q How was writing this collection different (or similar) to your past projects? Do you have an idea of what the songs will be about/what rhythms, etc, when you start or are you a fairly organic writer? Why did you choose Redwood Canyon to write this collection?

CW TROUBLE NO MORE has her own character for certain. Some of her songs were written in 2011 as co-writes. Then there was a huge sabbatical from music and a 13-month life in a foreign land. Then a return to music, and a return to songs that have been existing in limbo for a year. In addition, there are pieces that were written very recently, so there is an arc to the record, of time, and change. I would say this is the most intimate and directly autobiographical record I will have offered. At the same time there is a mythic cycle underneath the pieces —  the vulnerability of unity, the pain of leaving familiar ground and love, the loneliness of a desolate heart, and the diamonds gathered (for the sharing) for taking a journey into the unknown. Universal principals through one person’s experiences. It’s everywhere… I just happen to be someone who writes and sings about it. 

The songs were written in the redwoods in Marin county. This California canyon is majestic, and has an abundant history of songwriting and music, a bit like Laurel Canyon. It just seems to be in the air — when one sits to listen and write it out. 

I would have to say, yes, I am a fairly organic writer in that I don’t have a formal process at all. Being quiet and undistracted is vital. I feel the creative process once “in” it, is quite hypnotic and trance-like. I am also a hypnotherapist, and I use self-hypnosis to inform my writing. I like to go deep inside and see what can be brought to the outside. 

Q:Tell us more about what you have planned for the recording. Are dates set, studios booked? Where do you see yourself a year from now?

CW: TROUBLE NO MORE will be recorded in Berkeley. It is my hope that the recording will be wrapped by the end of December. There are some wonderful players lined up for the tunes. This is my 5th studio record, and I have never embarked on crowd-funding, but this time, it’s needed. We have been focused on the campaign so that we can get in the studio and get these songs out into the world. 

Where do I see myself a year from now? Shoot… hopefully smiling at the day with my hands deep in the next batch of fresh music. 
For more information visit http://www.corinnewest.com/

Artist Mari Marks @ 2014 Annual Juried Show at the Piedmont Center for the Arts

A dear friend and one my favorite people, encaustic painter Mari Marks, let me know she has a piece in the Annual Juried Show at the Piedmont Center for the Arts in Piedmont CA. The public is invited to an opening reception this Saturday, November 1, from 5:00 to 8:00. You can also see the work on Saturdays and Sundays in November from 12:00 to 3:00. 
2014 Juried Art Show @ Piedmont Center for the Arts, 801 Magnolia Avenue, Piedmont, CA 94611
2014 guest jurors Carin Adams, Oakland Museum of California, Associate Curator of Art & Material Culture and Caitlin Haskell, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Assistant Curator of Painting and Sculpture selected 39 art works from 23 artists.

Mari also let me know this is the last week to see another show, Materia + Meditation, at Vessel Gallery in Oakland, that also includes her work:

  Material + Meditation, Installation "Taken/Vessel" by Beili Liu , Paintings by Mari Marks, Walter James Mansfield,
Sanjay Vora, and Tim Rice. 11:00 to 6 :00 pm, Tuesday through Saturday  through Nov 1 @ Vessel Gallery, 471 25th Street, Oakland, CA 94612

 More about Mari: http://www.marimarks.com/

Artist Interview: Songwriter Melissa Phillips

East Bay artist Melissa Phillips has steadily attracted new fans since leaving the songwriting gates in 2012 with the release of her debut album "Fits & Starts."  A song from the collection, "Centralia," was selected for the KFOG Local Scene 10 compilation (2013), and she  regularly appears at notable area venues with her stellar backing band The Sincerelys. After a whirlwind fall which included a performance at The Great American Hall and getting married, Phillips reflected on her songwriting process and what's currently feeding her muse.

  

Q: How did you first start singing?  Who are some of your earliest influences?
MP: I remember singing along with the radio pretty early on and being encouraged to "sing louder!" I loved picking out the harmonies. I didn't really start performing until later. Having access to music classes in school was huge for me. I had some great music teachers in junior high and high school who pushed me in a very positive way. I was in chorus, singing ensembles, I did district chorus competitions, musical theater, church choir — all of those things helped me figure out that singing was something I was good at and that I wanted to pursue it in a bigger way.
I grew up on Top 40 radio, that's the soundtrack of my childhood. If it got played on the radio between the 1970s and 1990s, I probably know the words! I loved Whitney Houston and the first tape I ever bought was "I Wanna Dance With Somebody". When I was 11 or 12 she was just it for me. But I grew up in small towns and you don't get a lot of variety on small town radio. I don't think I really had any idea what was out there until I went to college and I was exposed to what my friends were listening to. We used to sit around the dorm rooms with our CDs and a stack of cassettes and we'd make mix tapes. I still have those mixes and they have some really good music on them. It was the first time I heard Paul Simon, Crowded House, Van Morrison, [and] Indigo Girls. I really think that time spent making those tapes was more valuable than some of the music courses I took because it really helped me develop my own opinion about what I liked and ultimately, what I wanted to do.

Q How did you make your way to California from Oregon and have the different places you've lived influenced your work? 
MP: I did move to California from Oregon (I lived there for a few years in my early twenties) but I actually grew up all over the place. I had a sort of unconventional nomadic upbringing, we moved around a lot. I got to see so much of the country from the back seat of a car as a kid. I didn't start writing my own music until I was much older but I do think being able to experience that kind of a life as a young person informed how I see the world. It gave me a good awareness of how other people live, which is definitely something I find important, not just for writing, but also for being a human.

Q  Do you keep to a writing schedule or do you write as inspiration strikes? Words first or do you write to the music? 
MP: I get ideas in bits and pieces. Mostly lyrics first but sometimes they come with a melody. On any given day, my bag is full of post-it notes scribbled with lyric ideas. I carry a notebook to write stuff down and if I come up with a melody I record it into my phone. I don't have a writing schedule but I do sit down frequently with my ideas and see what I can wrestle into shape. Sometimes it comes fast and easy, but more often than not it is a slow process for me. I try not to rush, I'm not in a race. Songs will be done when they're ready. I just finished a song that I started back in 2010! I kept going back to it and I tried for a long time to force it into being done, but it wasn't ever quite right. I stepped away for a while and came back with fresh eyes and finally knew when I'd figured it out.

Q  Any current listening or reading obsessions feeding your muse? 
MP: I am in the middle of a lot of books right now, my goal is to read 38 over the next year! Here is what I currently have a bookmark in: "Where I Was From" by Joan Didion, she's a favorite, especially her non-fiction. I'm reading a book of short stories by Alice Munro, a memoir by Mary Karr, and a biography of Dorthea Lang. As for music, I have these in heavy rotation right now in my car: Rosanne Cash - The River and the Thread; John Hiatt - Dirty Jeans & Mudslide Hymns; Holly Williams - The Highway. I also really like the newest Tom Petty and Ryan Adams albums. As far as other obsessions, I am pretty addicted to Instagram. It's a nice community of supportive, creative people sharing interesting images of their daily lives — crafters, photographers, musicians, writers. Sometimes looking at beautiful stuff is what I need to simultaneously calm and stimulate my brain after a work day. Just seeing someone else do something creative can motivate me to do the same.

Q What can listeners expect in the next six months? Any big shows or new recordings?
 MP: I'm on a little hiatus from performing right now so I'm focusing on writing. I hope to go back into the studio next year with a batch of new songs. I'd also like to do some regional touring again and definitely get back on stage with the full band.

Read.Eat.Listen: Hunkering Down

Summer is over. I know that's a ridiculous statement in late October, but this past week I really felt it. In part, because I was in the mountains, in Truckee, for a gig and a night, at elevation. There, at close to the 6,000 ft, the temperature dips to freezing and below most nights, and the aspen trees have long since changed color, and I remembered, duh,  seasons. "The shoulder season" our host, a long-time resident called this weekend, between the bright summer when mountain bikes and hikers head for the trails and the snow-filled, skier-drawing winter. Still the bars were full, and while the thin air called for slightly different singing strategies (mainly a lot more water),  I felt the history of mountain living in my skin, camping in the Sierra, waking up to icicles dripping from the eaves in Boulder, and felt placed. I don't know I'll ever call a mountain town home long-term again, but there is nothing like the clear signifier of weather on lifestyle that comes with high elevation and its atmospheric changeability.
Fortunately, for my personal need for a sense of seasons and place, and more importantly for the California water-table, it rained twice, at home, at sea level, over the course of five days. We saw fit to relight the pilot light and I've made like a bear for a couple days of long naps, extended sleep, and actual book reading.

Read: Tracks, by Robyn Davidson. When I was a kid, I lived for the arrival of certain periodicals, especially the pink section of the SF Chronicle and the monthly delivery of National Geographic magazine. It's hard to imagine one news source having such an impact in this day of everything-at-your-fingertips, but National Geographic was formative for me: articles on Egypt and bird migration and native peoples of countries whose names I couldn't pronounce. One issue included an article about a woman who crossed the Australian desert, alone save for several camels. I was mesmerized by the pictures of her riding the animals, encrusted with flies, drinking out of streams and finally, reaching and wading into the Indian ocean. I think I read that article again and again, and then...forgot about it. Last week, a fellow-hawk watcher told me the story had been made into a movie. Instead of going to the theater, I bought the book and have been feeling like that National Geo-reading kid again.
Eat: Chances are I was eating a grilled cheese sandwich made with white bread, cheddar and lots of butter while I was reading those National Geographics. This many years later, I rarely east dairy or bread, but that doesn't mean the charms and comfort of grilled cheese have been lost to me. I ordered such a sandwich after a gig recently and nearly swooned from pleasure.  It wasn't vegan or gluten free but this one is: Basil Butternut Grilled Cheese. OMG!

Listen: Really enjoying what I'm hearing from Frazey Ford's latest "Indian Ocean." Recorded in Memphis with Al Green’s band, The Hi Rhythm Section, at her back, its makes for another sumptuous, if aural, feast.

Al Green’s band, The Hi Rhythm Section

Artist Interview: Annie Bacon's Pounding Corps

When I think of artists who exemplify The Bay Area's creative culture, I think of people like Annie Bacon. Highly original, filled with integrity and continually questing, the SF-dwelling singer/songwriter/composer/bandleader and mother has several EPs and a full-length CD with annie bacon and her oshen, as well as a highly acclaimed musical suite, The Folk Opera, to her name.  She's also sung and played on a slew of other artist's recordings and projects (Corinne West, Savannah Jo Lack), and just received an Arts Incubator award from Intersection for the Arts for her next creation. I recently caught up with her as she prepared for a benefit performance she's doing for The Liberation Institute Urban Retreat Center, Sunday, October 26, in San Francisco.

Q When did you first embrace songwriting? Who was a big early influence on your becoming an artist and who or what is fueling your muse currently?

AB: Before December of 2007, I'd definitely written songs, but I never considered myself a songwriter. I was content to play other people's music. That was the month, however, when I got Garageband, which changed everything. Suddenly I could sketch out concepts of songs across multiple tracks, and it was like a floodgate had been opened. Within a few weeks I knew that this was what I was supposed to be when I grew up. Pink Floyd and whatever was playing on the soft rock station in the late 80s ... those were my early influences. Music that was emotional. Right now I'm dealing with an Alt-J infatuation, a British art-band that does everything I love: harmonies, highly literate lyrics, dirty-grimy bass drops, ear-worming melodies, and arrangements that keep you on your toes. A few songs of theirs I love: "Fitzpleasure"and "Ripe &Ruin."

Q Tell us about the new EP and the 'community effort' it's entailed? 

AB: The new EP, which I haven't yet named, is a collection of ukulele songs that I've written across five or six years, but which never quite fit on any other release.  2012-13 were hard years for me and my family. Without going into it, I'll say that I was creatively paralyzed coming out of it and having trouble getting re-started. A kind friend set me in motion with a gentle nudge, another friend stepped forward to engineer it, and others threw down their massive talent as the OSHEN. And still other friends have offered ears, insights, and hours of talking them through. It's one of those projects that has happened for me, not because of me, which is a sweet and humbling relief. I feel really blessed by my community.

Q You just were just awarded an Arts Incubator by Intersection for the Arts. What does that mean for your work and will you build upon The Folk Opera or drum up something else altogether?

AB: Yes! This is really exciting for me. There's another project altogether that inspired me reaching out to them for support. It's a project that needs to happen within a certain framework, and to be honest I don't even know what exactly it is going to be yet, only that I'm supposed to set out to do it. I'm being necessarily vague, you'll forgive that I hope. But I do also see the potential for the IFTA sponsorship as a platform for finding the Folk Opera's next life, which is on stage. Maybe I'll find funding to get the incredible Alphabet Arts puppet production of the piece out here from Brooklyn.

Q You're doing a benefit performance for The Liberation Institute. Tell us about their work in the Bay Area (and any more details about the show) and how it's important to you.

AB: The Liberation Institute is an organization dear to my heart. I sit on their Board of Directors and am consistently amazed and impressed by how much they do with so little. Their community-mental-health model means that absolutely anyone can access their services. As an artist, I know how often I and other artists need support, but feel limited by finances, so this accessibility is a key part of what I love about them.

The show is to raise funds for their services for children, teens and families. As a mama myself now, I also have deep empathy for how necessary therapy can be in the process of both being and raising a child! Holy moly. The show will be kid-friendly, with those under 12 free to enter and the show happening from 3-5p. (After nap before dinner!) It's going to be an intimate show with only about 30 tickets available for purchase. Since it's a fundraiser we're asking $25-50/ticket, fully tax-deductible since Libi is a 501(c)3 non-profit. I'll play the Folk Opera, followed by a set of ukulele songs from the EP.  

Details: Music Is Love: An afternoon with Annie Bacon, Sunday October 26th, 3pm-5pm at the Liberation Institute's Urban Retreat Center, 1227-A Folsom Street at 8th, San Francisco. $25-50 tax-deductible donation suggested, kids 12 and under are free! Tickets available via www.anniebacon.me

ULUV Music Day June 21, 2014 in San Francisco

ULUV Music Day is a connected set of free, public music events which takes place each year in parklets, parks, Bart Stations and other public spaces on the 21st of June to celebrate music and the people who create it! San Francisco will be bursting with live music performance all day, on Saturday, June 21, starting at noon.
As part of the celebration, I'm delighted to play Trouble Coffee and Coconut Club, out in the Avenues (this is the place to get a coffee before hitting Ocean Beach IMHO). I'll be leading off the line-up at Trouble. While there's all sorts of greatness happening during  ULUV,  you can't go wrong parking it here for the afternoon if you're in SF (and not in Alameda later in the day for my 3pm Sailstice* set!)
ULUV Music Day @ Trouble Coffee - 4033 Judah St, SF
12-1pm Deborah Crooks
1-2pm Y Axes
2-3pm Elsie White
3-4pm Quinn Deveaux
4-5pm VeJah aka MicChecka and Anthony featuring Maya Songbird
 The full schedule for performances at venues all over the city is HERE.

ULUV Music is a charitable organization whose goal is to increase revenue streams for the Bay Area’s music industry by producing community driven music events that showcase local artists, businesses and charities. Through creating more opportunities for the local music community, ULUV Music will help sustain, grow and preserve the San Francisco Bay Area’s rich music culture.

Two Bay Area visionaries, Starita and Robin Applewood, founded ULUV Music and both have dedicated their careers to uplifting the Bay Area music community.  They have united their visions to create this event-based movement so that musicians and industry professionals can thrive and sustain their careers in music.  http://uluvmusic.com/

Throwback Thursday: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl

Deep in storage, I found the box containing the kindergarden paintings my mom had saved. Tempura scenes of children holding hands, birds shaped like upside-down Ws flying in clear sky. Tempura on butcher paper holds up, pretty well: after all these decades tucked away, the painting colors are still vivid, the writing (from first and second grade) legible. Do they still used that cheap lined paper in schools today, the one with the dotted line in the middle of the height of a capital letter? 

Going through the boxes is part of a plot to clear more space in our basement, but the activity became one of those unplanned life reviews, as I sorted through old photographs, childhood artwork saved by my mother long ago, old clips and too many journals and notebooks that I don't yet have the heart to toss. What's striking from the early writing and painting is how well I knew myself; no questions there, just being in the moment, painting and writing it as it was. Also notable is a lack of post-creative judgement. How much of my adult life creative time can be wrapped up with getting myself back to a state of such in-the-momentness!

Read.Eat.Listen: Time and Distance

I've been spending more time in SF proper more the past week than I have in a while so I'm really getting how quickly the place is changing.  New multi-story apartments, new restaurants, harder-than ever-to-find parking, but nonetheless beautiful as ever... When I moved 5+ years ago it was 'just across the bay' but driving across SF today I felt like I really moved a lot further away, like a stranger in a strange town. Plus it was super sunny. No fog in sight. Weird, but kind of cool, too. 
Read:  Waking the Buddha, by Clark Strand. After reading an interview with Strand on how he made his way from Zen to Nichiren's Buddhism, I had to get this book. Strand, a former Zen Monk and contributing editor to Tricycle, applies his scholarship to cover the SGI's remarkable and rapid growth with both rigor and heart. Good stuff ‘What the SGI has discovered isn’t just a new form of Buddhism. It’s a new way of being.' —Clark Strand in Waking the Buddha. Good stuff.
Eat: It's broiling hot. Who can think of food? Well, I usually don't forget for long. I had a simple satisfying smoothie @ Jane the other day composed of "organic kale, spinach, green apple, cucumber and lemon blended together with a drop of agave."  You can make it at home super quick. Yes. 
Listen: Conor Oberst - Time Forgot (Upside Down Mountain) I was taking advantage of NPR's First Listen to give Oberst's latest a listen... and this lyric caught my hear and kind of stopped me:
"They say everyone has a choice to make/To be loved or to be free/I told you once I felt invisible/And I guess by now you see/That what I meant is I’m not all there until I finally leave."

Read.Eat.Listen: Edgy

After using the word 'edgy' to describe work I liked at last week's house concert (which was great, thank you Self & Soul Center), someone asked me what I was implying. By edgy I didn't mean irritable rather than innovative. I meant someone who knew the less shiny parts of living — the contradictions, the uncomfortable truths, the heartbreak, cravings, nameless itches and all-too-blatant injustices — and didn't turn away, but felt it, and made art of it, maybe, rather than medicating or sugar-coating or otherwise denying the real.

There's a lot of uncomfortable truth going on right now and I appreciate those willing to go to the edges more than ever. Perhaps I should take a break from reading the news, so full of more of the failings of humans (Everest, South Korea, the bigot in Nevada), rather than the triumphs, but I don't want to deny it either. Challenging and painful as forging something new can often be, creativity lives and breathes by the truth, not ignorance.

Read:  I've taken a couple of workshops with wisdom teacher and writer Deena Metzger and always felt empowered at the possibility of effecting change and transformation through story afterward. To fix my current trip-up, I'm turning to her Entering the Ghost River: Meditations on the Theory and Practice of Healing and From Grief Into Vision: A Council  today.

 "There is a silence that is the heart of God. And there is another kind of silence that kills. We were shattered when we came home from Africa, but also we had been restored. We had been broken down, we had been reconstituted. Story can do this; it can take the sharp slivers and the shards and organize them into a light. This is a book or it is letter or it is a long conversation. A memoir, a series of stories, a meditation on despair and beauty and hope. A book of healing...."

Eat: Gluten-free and living in the Bay Area and missing the satisfaction that a good piece of bread can give? A lot of GF bread is not good--gummy, bland, not-all-that-easy-to-digest for its poorly proportioned mix of GF flours. Then a friend turned me onto Bread Srsly, a SF-based company that delivers most of its wares by bike! Very cool people behind this operation and their GF sourdough bread rocks. Plus they now ship. 

Listen: Hurray for the Riff Raff, née Alynda Lee Segarra, a New Orleans based artist, has the edge and the soul going on:

Read.Eat.Listen: Regeneration

I was dismayed, heartened, inspired and confused by the latest report by the UN on Climate Change. Dismayed that things are as bad as they are; heartened that experts are not shying away from the truth; inspired by the possibilities for taking action and confused at how and where to start on the individual level. The upshot is, of course, there's no more time to waste when it comes to taking action to slow climate change and no more excuses to be made: climate change is a man-made problem. We've a couple more decades, if that, to halt or slow the crisis. This lifetime. Right now. Where to begin when the problems — from fossil fuel use, to fracking, to plastics in the ocean, to rampant development —  have such momentum? Fortunately, there are many people on it. Now it's our turn to listen and believe that what we do today affects tomorrow and  that the affect can be beneficial. Toward that end, I've been so encouraged to see all the footage of hatching Peregrines from the 'nest-cams' set up around the Bay Area. By the 1970s, the Peregrine was an Endangered Species, a victim of rampant pesticide use, but with diligent efforts by biologists and a ban on DDT use, the falcon population recovered. Thirty years of combined legislation and action works. Now look at them go: 

Read: Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behavior, a takes on climate change in novel form. "Flight Behavior is a brilliant and suspenseful novel set in present day Appalachia; a breathtaking parable of catastrophe and denial that explores how the complexities we inevitably encounter in life lead us to believe in our particular chosen truths." 
Plus, this article: UN Climate Report Charts Ways to Halt Global Warming

Eat: An afternoon snack at Piccino in Dogpatch the other day entailed a spring soup made with butter beans. Butter Beans, or Fava Beans, are those large, lovely kidney shaped beans that look engineered for presentation possibilities. They're also yummy. I've got my eye on this easy breezy spring salad of Fava Beans with Red Onion and Mint.

Listen: I've been on an Over the Rhine jag most of the year, I admire The Lone Bellow and I've been a fan of eTown since the 90s when I lived in Boulder and watched many a live taping. So I was delighted to see this Over the Rhine/Lone Bellow/eTones rendition of Slip Sliding Away. Beauty. Yes.

At the Roots: Music, Matthiessen & Earth Day Marin

©Dave Perkes photo, http://www.peaceofangkorphoto.com/

The weekend was punctuated by hearing a bunch of great music, attending and playing a tune at the Earth Day Marin Celebration and learning of the passing of writer and naturalist Peter Matthiessen.
Friday, we waved goodbye to a songwriter-friend who is moving across the country and then got ourselves to Lafayette's Lamorinda Music Store for "3 Voices in Song," an evening with songwriters Wendy Beckerman, Louise Taylor and Karen Almquist. Wendy is the ringleader of a 'songwriter's exchange' we've been participating in for years. I've written about 'song group' before — a regular, grassroots gathering of diverse songwriters who come together to share a meal, their latest work and feedback — as it powerfully and stealthily became a trusted sounding board for many of my songs.

The trio's show at Lamorinda displayed the long-time friends' musical mastery. This wasn't flashy or trendy music, it was real and heart-filled music by dedicated artists. Three-part harmonies, blues riffs, delicate finger-picking... a great expanse of musical range and heart. Everyone had a firm command of their instruments and the joy they were taking in playing together was palpable. Wendy has a finely tuned sensibility for melody and meaning. When she isn't writing songs, she's teaching mindfulness classes: her songs are exacting, excellent and poetic. Karen, a kick-ass guitar player and self-proclaimed song 'interpreter', covered Jesse Winchester and early James Taylor, offered up several beautiful originals and added some cooking harmonica to the mix. Louise Taylor, also new to me, is a longtime troubadour who calls Hawaii home and wields a hollow-body Duesenburg guitar with the confident swagger of a gunslinger. Only it's her voice which is the real weapon. When she's not writing and performing, she's a voice teacher so...think Bonnie Raitt's long-lost sister. It was a truly nourishing night of authentic and highly skilled music. 

You think that would have been enough but ...we had tickets to Gurf Morlix house concert presented by KC Turner on Saturday night.  As a longtime devotee of Lucinda Williams and lover of Austin music, I'd heard Gurf's name a long while: he accompanied Williams for 11 years, and produced her first two albums (also co-writing one of my favorite Williams' tunes ,'Big Red Sun Blues'), but that's just a note in a long and storied career. As well as being a sought-after producer, he's a master guitar player and to-the-bone honest songwriter in the tradition of Townes Van Zandt, Nebraska-era Bruce Springsteen and Blaze Foley (to whom he pays homage to live and in multiple recordings). Sitting back in a living room and hearing him sing and play a small-body guitar accompanied by singer-songwriter Amilia Spicer on vocals, I was musically transported to South Austin, and lyrically transported to the back roads of Texas where the living is hard and choices life or death. Again, a night of real-deal music.

Right before we left the house for the Gurf show, I learned that writer and naturalist Peter Matthiessen had passed. Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard was required reading for any self-respecting Environmental Studies major at UCSC. As a nature loving,  aspiring writer undergrad, I ate up that landmark book, as well as, in subsequent years,  his many New Yorker essays and writings on Buddhism and nature through the years. His words are steeped in integrity. When I had the privilege of meeting him in person after hearing him speak in SF a while back, I was struck by his immense heart and exacting presence. Reading his obituary and the many, recently penned tributes  (he has a new book that's set to be released tomorrow),  I'm struck again by his dedication to truth and activism: "it’s our duty [as writers] to speak for those who can’t speak for themselves."
Mostly, I'm reminded it's a privilege to read and to write, period.
On that note, while a contest is somewhat antithetical to the spirit of the artists mentioned above, I was nonetheless honored to have a song co-written with Kwame Copeland, "Your Own Reaction," chosen as a finalist in the Earth Day Marin Song Contest. And despite my cold-compromised voice, we ventured to Larkspur for a full day in the sun, listening to many speakers and musicians who are actively working on behalf of the environment and sustainable living, and performing our song. Marin residents are truly leaders on this front, and I was impressed with the effort made by producer Hannah Doress to pull the various organization and events together to share their knowledge and activism.  Kudos, Hannah!
Alas, our song did not win the grand prize (and a recording of it is just getting mixed so I can't post it) but I hope its message will add to the effort to make the world a better place:  

"Start your own reaction/See what you can do"