Hi, everyone-

I've set up a new blog at http://ryanmontbleau.wordpress.com and just posted a new one.

Sorry for the move, but very happy for the move, actually. Thank you MySpace, for the good times and the magic...

Hope to see you all over there! I will check the comments on this MySpace page periodically, and if there's enough of a clamor to keep it on here, I can see about pasting the new blogs here. But check the new one out, I think you'll like it. And tell me what you think, here or there, either way.

Thank you all so much for reading!

I have a new desk.

Yay,

Ryan.

I almost cried on the night that he died.

Not right when I found out, but later on in the night, driving home from the gig, blasting his tunes right off the radio. He was all over the dial. I heard that voice and I thought about the life that he was (and now wasn't) and I got very sad.

What a tragedy. What an American tragedy, the life of Michael Jackson.

I was in second grade when the Michael mania hit in the 80's. Seemingly overnight, everybody came to school with some kind of white, fake-jewel-encrusted, glove on one hand. And the crazy lucky kids had that weird red and black jacket.

And everybody had Thriller.

My brother and I had only a small case of cassette tapes at that time. And being the future mathematician that he was, Bill would only allow us to listen to all of the tapes in their entirety, in order. No repeats until we came back through all 12 tapes. I remember pleading with him not to make us play the Kenny Rogers tape again before we listened to Thriller. I couldn't get enough! No one could. And many people still can't, all over the world.

As a musician, it's crazy to go back to those tracks now and begin to pick apart just why they were so magical. The drum tracks are fat and perfect, the horn lines are laser beams, the arrangements are the perfect pop formula, but the underlying parts are gospel soul that stand on their own.

But that's the music. We all know about Michael Jackson's music.

The tragedy is what happened to the man. How did all of the humanity get sucked out of this?

In a sense, he was too good. Arguably the best overall entertainer the world has ever known. Pushed as a child with his brothers and churning out classics, then dropping a dance-floor epic seemingly out of nowhere years later with Off the Wall. This all paved the way for Thriller, which just took everything way over the top. A combination of crazy talents and timing, however you want to slice it, it ended up bigger than big.

Michael Jackson was not just famous. His fame was ubiquitous. There are many famous people in the world who have trouble walking down the street without getting stopped. But what would it be like to never be able to walk down most streets in the world without causing a near-riot? Can you imagine what people say to you? How they treat you in general if they ever do get close enough? And I don't just mean the millions in the streets. I mean everyone, the business execs, the industry people, your so-called colleagues, hell even your family!

I haven't watched much TV since Micheal's death, but in ten minutes I saw about all I needed to see. It was his father Joe, getting interviewed by CNN on the red carpet of the BET Awards. Here's the clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCc3NHRrTOc

"Have the last few days been really hard for you and your family?"

"Yes, it has, remember we just lost the biggest star in the world."

We lost the biggest star. Not my son. Not Micheal, my youngest son, but a star. Then his own father brings some other guy on to start plugging their new record label. Amazing. And sickening.

When this is your family, who is there for you as a human? You've had to build the big house and buy the seclusion, because your life in the normal world is the farthest thing from normal. You run and hide because you have to. But who's there when you retreat to the corners of the your Neverland monstrosity?

Certainly not Joe. Maybe some expensive toys. Maybe a famous friend here and there. Hell, maybe a chimp. Maybe children. Who the fuck knows?

The bottom line is, you're on top of the world and that is a scary and lonely place to be. Especially if you started towards there as a child with no real childhood. Now you're a freakshow with riches beyond riches to open any door. Except the doors into which money cannot buy you an entrance.

I'm not excusing the man for the life he led or anything he did or didn't do. I'm just saying look at this life as a whole. It's an American tragedy. It's rags to riches and riches to a golden cage. We want you to succeed and when you succeed too much, we no longer see a person there.

Look at what happened to this person:








Fortunately, the music will live on long past any of this. Rest in peace, Michael Jackson. And thank you for the songs.

I played solo acoustic shows in five cities last week. We recorded them for the upcoming "Stages: Volume II" album. All in all, I think they went really well. I worked really hard on the tunes in the weeks prior and was even able to make my banjo debut! Amber Rubarth was amazing as always in her opening sets and we sang some stuff together too.

Northampton ended up good, but it was sort of a weird night. For some reason, they cleared out all the tables and left the dance floor. This was a solo-acoustic show! Dancing is optional and fine by me, but listening is absolutely essential for a solo show to really connect. The 90% of people who wanted to sit and listen that night were all at tables around the outskirts of the room. And the 30 or 40 who wanted to drink and make noise were all right in front of me. It ended up being fine, the show wasn't ruined or anything like that (although, one guy did get kicked out, who the staff said was "something other than drunk.") But it did make for a funny dichotomy of the different kinds of shows that we play, the different scenes.

I don't blame those people for coming out and drinking any more than I blame the people who sat quietly and listened. (Admittedly, though, I do prefer the latter). If they came out before to a full-band throwdown and got a little tipsy, why would they expect something different? It's funny. I just want everyone to go home happy, and it's more challenging than others some nights. Club Passim in Cambridge closed out the solo run, and that place was pin-drop quiet (with the possible exception of some possible buddies of mine who were possibly really hammered in the back.) Solo run—done. Stages: Volume II—in the can. Bring on the band.

The very next night began the “Band Tour.” It seems almost funny calling them tours now. That would imply a beginning and an end. There’s only so much of that.

16 hours after playing an historic folk room, I was loading into Tammany Hall with the band. This is a battered old club and hippie-haven in Worcester, MA we used to play several years back. It was filled to the gills and rocking! We played about two-and-a-half hours straight and hung out for a while before we packed it up for Maine. Felt way different, but good to be with the guys again. Like riding a bike after power-walking a marathon.

The next night in Unity, ME, was a beautiful little performing arts center “in the middle of nowhere,” to quote the promoter. There were plush gold-velvety seats and wooden beams throughout. At first, the dance party that started in the front sort of threw me off, but then it was just great and I think we managed to entertain everyone. I know we had some fun. Great night! The venue was equipped with lodging and we passed out watching old VHS tapes of the Three Stooges.

Matty (bass) has given up sweets for this tour, which officially started this past week. He wants to cut down on sugar. In Maine we were served some wonderful catering, which included a container of fresh-baked delicious cookies for us to enjoy. He was bummed he couldn’t eat any as we remarked about how good they were and ate the whole bin.

The next night we went back to the Warehouse in Hartford, CT, home of our 2009 New Year’s Ball. Another great night all around, the crowd was amazing and we felt good about the show. Our friend Sara gave us several boxes of homemade cookies to take with us. They didn’t even make it out of the venue, we ate them so fast. God, they were delicious. Sara’s one of the best bakers we know, usually famous for her mini-muffins. Poor Matty.

We crashed in a hotel and drove on to Sellersville, PA, where another beautiful little theater awaited us. It’s a converted old movie theater and sounds and feels great.






Our good friend Zach Deputy opened, and the guys got to jam as his band for the night. I can’t tell you how much I enjoy hearing the guys play and not being on stage. So proud to be a part of what they’re cooking.

Speaking of cooking, the green room was stocked with everything we could ever want: a delicious meal, water, beer, juice, coffee, tea, bourbon, you name it. There was a basket filled with candy bars and Twizzlers. Sorry, Matty. Someone had left us a box with a nice card attached to it too. Inside the box were two large freezer bags filled to the brim with delicious m&m filled cookies. So good. And so nice of these kind folks! Sorry, Matty.

Then, I kid you not, Yahuba’s friend Eric showed up. This guy is a professional baker and brought us a veritable stack of boxes of fresh-baked, no preservative goodies baked just that day. There were some kind of half-moon pies, muffins, cupcakes, a whole lemon meringue pie. Matty’s head almost exploded on the way home. But he’s staying strong.

A woman named Catherine also left a note addressed to me. Inside it, she explained that her uncashed stimulus check from last year was still sitting on her desk. She decided to donate it, partly to us partly and to Zach Deputy. That was how she wanted to “stimulate the economy.” There were two money orders along with the note. Unbelievable. The generosity of people continues to astound me. We’d better make some good tunes!

We leave tomorrow for a month that will take us to the west coast and back. And the rollercoaster continues…

P.S- The first thing I heard when I took the stage at the Tin Angel was a woman in the second row saying, “Ryan, I don’t miss the straight hair.” I was wearing a hat, and I guess it pleased her that she didn’t have to see my hair underneath. It made me think about showing up at the workplace of a stranger and commenting on how you don’t like the way they look. It’s a glorious life I lead, and a strange one. This was not for her sake, but for mine:

I meant to type this up last week, but better late than never...

 
So last Wednesday, the 11th, we had a meeting with the band, our good friend Trader Dan, and our new managers.  We put some tables together at a restaurant/pub in Cambridge and talked about our musical past, present, and future for a good two hours.  It's important to do this from time to time.  Painful as it is, the music business is a business and, record deal or not, you have to keep your house in order.  We covered everything from the plan to put out our next record to the little minutiae like protocol for email exchanges and what cut of T-shirts to get next (which is actually an important thing).

From that meeting it was on to another meeting at Dan's house, where he and I spent a few more hours going over some more specifics and I finally archived all of my old email blasts.  Fun stuff!  Yay, music business, music as a job, everything other than pouring your heart with tunes.

Then I went back to my old neighborhood to get  a burrito before I would head back to my uncle's house in New Hampshire for the night (that dog still wants to kill me, but it's my home, for now.)  U2, of all bands, was playing at the Somerville Theatre that night.  Some kind of mini-publicity tour.  There were cops patrolling street corners and squad cars blocking off whole streets.  U2 at the Somerville Theatre.  Crazy.  We played there for an album release in '06.  Nice room.

After my burrito, I went over to Johnny D's and saw some mutual road-friends Enter the Haggis.  These are Celtic-Rock road-warriors who share the same booking agent as us.  A couple of years back, we played a show together in Eau Claire, Wisconsin for a good eight people or so.  Really nice guys.  It's interesting being at home and seeing another band rolling through, doing exactly what you're usually doing out there, God-knows-where.

As I walked back to the van, I heard people screaming behind the theatre.  U2!  I've never been a big fan, but hell, there were rock stars in the neighborhood.  I ducked behind a few buildings and made my way to the steel barricades.  People were vying for space, cameras and cell phones ready.  There were bright lights and people everywhere.  Two guys held a banner that read, "9-11 Was an Inside Job."  A man passed by and called them "pathetic."  Then Larry walked by.  He's in U2.  I recognized him.  Then The Edge walked by, goatee and all, slapping the hands of people behind the barricade.  People were flipping out and there was a rush to be close to him.

Then the cavalcade started to leave and there was a procession of black vehicles--some town cars, some SUVs.  An SUV rolled by with the back window down.  And there was Bono.  Smile on his face, sunglasses on, reaching his hands out like the Pope to touch the people lucky enough to get in close.  In a few seconds, he was gone, along with the whole procession.  Grown women screamed in the aftermath, literally just yelled out loud uncontrollably.  They just touched a rock star.  I was ten feet away.

I get a fair amount of emails from people.  Some I know, many I don't.  A few weeks back, I got one from a friend of a friend, and a fan of the music--a woman who works at Berklee School of Music.  She had an extra ticket to Paul Simon's Q&A at the Berklee Performance Center for the following day, March 12th.  She emailed me out of the blue and asked if I wanted it.  It was miracle enough that I wasn't on the road for this.  Um...yes, please.  Yes, please, and thank you very much.  I would like to go see Paul Simon.

The morning after the U2 sighting, I drove back into Boston to play live on WERS.  Beautiful station, maybe the finest college radio set-up in the world--pristine studio, state-of-the-art, right on Boston Common.  Three songs and an interview to promote their 60th Anniversary Concert.  I parked illegally but got away with it because the van looks like a "commercial vehicle."  Off to Berklee...

I took my place in line behind a few hundred Berklee kids.  I swear, I learn just by being in this neighborhood.  Quite often I wish I had gone to music school.  There is so much I need to learn about this language of music...
It was a students only event, but I pretended that I forgot my ID, and in the end, a Berklee envelope that I had in my pocket convinced the girl taking tickets that I was legit!

Third row for Paul Simon.

I talked to some of the kids around me and was inspired by the environment.  All these people studying music.  Then the man himself came out and well, the inspiration took on a whole new level.  The man is a legend, love him or not.  He definitely shot the shit at his own pace and pretty quickly opened up the floor to questions.  Second question: "Would you play a song for us?"  He played a song he had just written.  Unbelievable.  Great song.  He talked more.  I took notes.  More questions.  More notes.  More songs.  Amazing.  An hour-and-a-half with the man.  How could you ever forget such an experience?  You couldn't.

I won't.  I was ten feet away.

I walked back to my van on air.  This time, the illegal parking trick didn't work out so well, but it didn't matter.  I had a better understanding of Paul Simon, and more importantly, a different outlook on songwriting altogether.  What a wonderful art-form.

Three days later I was back in Boston to play that Anniversary Concert.  The theatre was pristine.  That's all I'll say.  After the show I went back to the Burren, my old watering-hole and stomping ground.  It had been way too long.  Played a big-old jam session with a bunch of my friends and had an absolute ball.  There on that little back-room stage, a place I had played hundreds of times, with a Guiness in my belly and friends by my side--that was by far and away the highlight of my week.

I think about that pristine theatre in downtown Boston, about Bono in the back of the SUV in Somerville, about those kids taking notes at Berklee and chatting about the bands they were in and the songs they were writing.  I think about my friends Enter the Haggis, touring their faces off and still wondering why they haven't blown up in Boston (they should).  I think about Paul Simon's hat and the way he took his time with his words and how dedicated and un-rushed he still is with his craft.  I think about how lucky he made me feel to be a writer.

I think about that back-room stage and how much fun we had, and I know that that's where the heart of the matter is.  Bono, and Paul Simon, and those kids from Berklee, and Enter the Haggis, and the engineers from the radio station and my new managers from the meeting would all tell you the same thing.  Creating is the best part.  The moment of creation is the crux of it all.  And it's pretty amazing what springs up around that moment.  U2 needs barricades.  Those kids from Berklee need opportunities.

And we all just need to play.

Today I signed up for Twitter and am planning on doing that, whatever that is, in the future.  I also fixed up my FaceBook profile, linked my band profile to my personal one a little better, updated my ReverbNation profile, which links to Facebook.  I'm thinking about finally switching my email from Hotmail to Gmail and I'm pretty sure I'm going to start blogging on WordPress instead of MySpace.  I still don't know anything about imeem, ilike, or Bebo so I'm not sure ilike it at all.  Thinking of making a video of my bewildered face and putting it up on YouTube.

Then I blogged about it all on MySpace.

Hope you're having a pleasant day.

And so the road finds me weeks later, months later, days later, I can't remember quite as well any more, the road finds me three glasses of wine deep and mellowing out at a friend's house in Asheville, NC with the rest of the band.

It's been a good tour.  Even the nights that were 20 people, 25 people, 12, 8 people, they were very positive.  Some of those were the most positive.  I'll say it again and again and it sounds cliche, but it's true:  an audience can be measured by number, but it is most truly measured by enthusiasm.  You get 8 people in a room who give a shit, you've got yourself a show!  Thank you Chattanooga, thank you Oklahoma City, thank you Knoxville, and Nashville and Memphis.  Gotta start somewhere...

But is that what we're doing?  Are we just starting?  It feels like I've been on the road 20 years.  It's only been five.  Five solid of 200 shows (give or take) a year.  And it's not all 8-person audiences.  Tonight was 94 in Asheville.  We've been playing here for years, and like elsewhere, nothing pops overnight.  But it grows.

And we grow as a band.  Lately there's been a lot of emphasis on space, on sparseness.  Every good musician knows that it's about the notes you don't play.  Now it's time to become good musicians.

Always so much to work on, thank God.  Having a house to stay in and a day off yesterday seemed like heaven.


I wrote a song yesterday about people having too many choices these days.  I think I'll call it "More and More and More."  It's about 90% done.  It feels good to get something done in all this whirlwind that never seems to stop.  I've basically been straight out since well before the Martin Sexton tour, give or take six months.  I've been starting to lose it.

I left all my clean tee shirts at my friends' house in Arkansas.  Then a few days later I left my sleeping bag and my Scoobie Doo pillow at a hotel in Nashville.  A few days after that, I shut the van door on the tip of my finger and it hurt so bad I nearly fell over.  That was in Atlanta.  And when I woke up there the next day, my finger still throbbing, a package came from Arkansas with my tee shirts in it.  Then we drove to Charlotte, where I realized I left my jacket (with my wallet in it) in Atlanta.

The package with my jacket in it came to Asheville today.  Thanks, Edgel.

Yeah, so I'm losing it a little bit.  I'm tired in a deep way.  Sometimes I can feel my insides getting dizzy.  But we're lucky to be out here and I know that.  We're lucky to be working.  This recession is hitting everyone on all sides all over.  I hear the stories first hand.  Another day we get to play music for a living is another day blessed.

Still,  I cracked open a Rolling Stone the other day and read articles on the Black Keys, M. Ward, and Derek Trucks.  The club owner tonight told stories about Band of Horses touring 2000-seat rooms in Europe before their biggest album came out.  I listened to James Brown on my ipod for the guitar parts the other day.  So many levels of musicianship in addition to the  levels of whatever success is.  Feel like I've been working so hard for so long on the road.  And I keep writing songs.  But how much have I worked on the music?

Last week we started with new management.

My point is this:  I think this is some sort of turning point.  We need to strike a balance between beating the shit out of ourselves on the road and putting ourselves in a good state-of-being in which to make music.  You know what I mean?  We're not going to stop touring.  But it can be smarter.  We can be so much better in so many ways.  And we will.  It's not re-inventing the wheel.  It's doing what it takes to keep it rolling strong.

Five more shows until I get home.  And then I'll see my girlfriend for the first time in a month and roll up into a coocoon.  Maybe I'll get to sort through all of my earthly belongings at my Uncle Bob's house.  We'll see what I have the energy for.



Make that four glasses of wine.

Hello from a hotel somewhere north of Cincinnati.  The start of 2009 has had the feeling of being shot out of a cannon.  Where to begin?


After the New Year's show we started driving south for another three shows.  We sold out Iota in DC, as well as World Cafe Live in Philly the next night.  For the Philly show, we put on the suits again.  When asked why from a member of the crowd, I told him the truth, "Because we wore suits for New Year's and they were still in the van."  Hot or not, it does feel awesome wearing a suit on stage.  Time to go to work!  The next night we played Asbury Park with Zach Deputy and rocked out for a while.  We played "Thriller" again, hopefully for the last time...  =)

We had a few days off at home, and then I played the Oasis Coffeehouse in Waltham, MA.  The day before the show, I realized that it would actually take place in the room of a church.  And when I got there I realized that, no, I was still mistaken.  The show was in the church!


Very cool night.


And then it was off to the big golden tour of all tours:  Our third annual tour of the US Virgin Islands.  This year, there would be not St. Thomas and right to St. John and St. Croix.  16 days and nights of warm air, strong sun, white sandy beaches, crystal blue water, quite a bit of booze, and TONS of bar gigs.  We did 12 shows, which averaged 3-4 hours each night.  Usually there was some heavy drinking afterwards until the wee hours of morning.

But whenever you got up, you were only a slight bit of motivation away from this:


This.  It never seems real until you feel that beautiful sand all over you, until you put your whole body under that water.  And then it still doesn't even seem real.  But it is.  This soothes you in a place beyond your body.  Physical exhaustion doesn't go away.  But physical exhaustion doesn't matter here.  It's something deeper.












Like last year, we sailed from St. John to St. Croix via a 57-foot sailboat called "Rainbow Maker."  I had done a little too much of the above the night before, which didn't help with my seasickness.  I was queasy for about the first four or five hours.  After that, it was smooth sailing.  Captain Yahuba guided us in to port:



We gigged every night on St. Croix.


This was what I sang out to at Rainbow Beach, the second to last day of the tour:



We were asked to play at a local public middle school one day for the kids in music class.  What an experience that was!  I was pretty nervous, even given my substitute-teacher experience.  Felt out of place.  But the power of music soothes all.  It was Yahuba, Matty, Larry, and I.  First we played some songs and talked a bit.  Then the kids played for us.  Man, they could PLAY!  Then we did some playing together, and that was something I'll never forget.  At one point, the school principal came into the room and started dancing.  The kids erupted.  The music was right on.  And their teacher, Mr. Brown, was the biggest rock star of all.







All tours must come to an end.  Although, if it wasn't for the sudden severe weather change, we might never have noticed where one tour ended and another one began.  We had scheduled ONE DAY at home in between the islands and another 5-weeks out on the road.  One precious day, which was to be our only day at home in two months.

The plot thickens.

So, three days before I get home from the islands, I find out via text message that I have to MOVE OUT OF MY CURRENT HOME ON THE DAY I GET BACK.  You may remember my story of having three days to move from last April (Read the blog here).  Man, how hectic I thought that was!  Long story short, the couple that I've been living with since then is now splitting up, selling the house asap, and can't wait for me to get back in March before they paint my room.  Just an ounce of communication in all of this would have saved me quite a bit of strife, but so it goes.  Lame.  ONE DAY TO MOVE everything I own.  After 16 days and nights of hardcore gigging on the islands, I had about a thirty-hour window to pull it off.  Then it's back on the road for five weeks.

I have an incredible amount of stuff.  It could be the fact that every move has been so hectic and I've never made the time to go through all my crap.  But after a couple dozen hours of insanity, my stuff now sits in a heap in the garage of my Uncle Bob in Pelham, New Hampshire.  Thanks Uncle Bob!

And on to the road.  I had no time to sleep before we left, it was straight up move, move, moving.  The guys drove the 9 hours to Pittsburgh for the first gig while I slept in the back.  We just barely made it in time, had a hectic load-in and then a fun show.  After the gig, we drove another four hours to crash with good old road angel Josh Cooper in Toledo.

Woke up five hours later and drove to Ann Arbor, where we had an early soundcheck for the folk festival.  Played that night in front of 3,000 people or so.  My guitar didn't work when I got out there, so I had to provide some amusing banter for a couple of minutes.  No pressure.




Our twenty-minute set got cut short as a result.  But we made the most of what we had.  Jeff Tweedy headlined, blew our minds, along with the Carolina Chocolate Drops and other great acts.  Inspiration to the fullest.  Especially Tweedy.  Pete Seeger sat by the stage while he played.  How the hell did we get here?

Whoa.

My brain is toast right now, so it's a bit difficult for me to organize this.  I had all these worried thoughts about the "New Year's Ball" that I was going to put in here.  But the several days since have turned those thoughts into soup.  And the comments I just read and the little feedback I've had on the night put a little salt and pepper on that soup.  So now I feel OK about it.  People had a good time!

I say it and say it, but truly that means so much to me.  I just want people to have a good time, whatever that may mean.  I want people to come away from a show a little better than when they went in.

As for me...I got really drunk after the New Year's show, among other things.  And then actually got more messed up the next night.  Not my ideal way to start the year, but I know I'm better than that.  It's just all been such a blur.  These last few months, the Martin Sexton Tour, right into gig, gig, gig, with the band band band.  I felt good about a lot of the shows, terrible about others.  Just the way it goes.  Maybe I shouldn't post about that kind of self-doubt, because that's for me to figure out.  But I don't post it here looking for encouragement.  I just want to be honest and leave it at that.

It means so much that people had a good time on New Year's.  From a logistical standpoint:  what a shitshow!  Oh my god, it was a mess.  It was a lack of communication (mostly on our part) between our people, the venue, and the promoter, that really just crunched the whole night into this sort of a frenzy.  It's hard to describe without listing the 50 things that were messed up (production issues, song preparation, hospitality, shuttle service, blah, blah, blah).  And it's not that big a deal, I know.  It's just the expectation.  When you have this grand vision of a "New Year's Ball," you have it all mapped out to the finest detail.  This was the opposite of that.  We pulled this off by the skin of our teeth.  Hey, at least we had suits...





The line I keep thinking of is:  We almost dropped The Ball.  But we didn't.

In the end we had no soundcheck and only made our setlist moments before we went on.  But everyone at the venue, everyone in the band, the promoters, everyone came through in the end.

During the first set I had moments when I could feel tears in my eyes and this really raw wave of emotion passing over me.  This is 100% attributable to the crowd.  Looking out over all of these people, some of whom I knew, most of whom I didn't and just feeling this palpable wave of energy pouring onto the stage...   I tell you, it's real.  You always hear about that kind of thing, but to feel it is something else.  We're all in it together.  And it's very real.








All these photos by RYAN LAUREY



I managed to get a few hours sleep after the after after party, which was after the after party, which was after the show.  We had miles to make towards DC.  I brushed my teeth at a rest stop in Jersey and spit out blood.  We pushed on and got to a dirty hotel in Laurel, MD, our home for the next two nights.

Sold out shows at Iota Cafe in Arlington, VA, and World Cafe Live, in Philadelphia, where we wore the suits again.  The next night we played The Saint in Asbury Park, NJ, where we got to rock out with Zach Deputy for another night.  Yahuba drove though the night after the gig as I rode shotgun.  Matty finished the drive through morning rush-hour Boston traffic as I slept some cracked-out sleep in the back.  Got home around 10am yesterday and have been sleeping a bunch when I'm not on the phone working towards a better future.  Lots to do this week.

As for the New Year's Ball, all I can say is:  Wait 'til next year!  Upward and onward, as always, people.

I have a coffeehouse gig on Friday in Waltham, MA, which I'm psyched about.  And then our next show is on St. John.  And then another one on St. John.  And then three more on St. John.  And then a day off on St. John.  Then we sail to St. Croix.  And then five shows on St. Croix.  Time for me to stay just as crazy but recharge the batteries at a deeper level.

Bear these times with a smile, folks, for the future is now and the future is bright.

2009:  The Year We Got Our Shit Together

Shoot: