The state of things?  We're working on getting to where you are.  I've been spending my days this month (or two) with coffee, my computer, and a phone, and I'm wearing my booking agent hat.  Figuratively.  Kenny is in fact wearing his railroad engineer hat.  Literally.

A favorite Annie Dillard passage that applies lately, as I sit in our Eastside Portland Brew here in the neighborhood for may more hours than the things I'm buying allow for:

"To crank myself up I stood on a jack and ran myself up.  I tightened myself like a bolt.  I inserted myself in a vice-like clamp and wound the handle till the pressure built.  I drank coffee in titrated doses.  It was a tricky business, requiring the finely tuned judgment of a skilled anesthesiologist.  There was a tiny range within which coffee was effective, short of which it was useless, and beyound which, fatal".

Amen, Annie.  As I decided to write again, I wondered if I really ought to pull back the curtain in the great room of the emerald city and let them see that Oz is often...me.  And then I thought "yes, dangitall, I will". 

I want you to know that we really, really love to make music for you.  We love to tell you stories.  I love to sing my heart out, and Kenny absolutely loves making the unbelievable things that he makes at every show on every last instrument.(You'll never hear it just like that again.) We adore your smiles, and we love it when you enjoy.  We love giving you a good gift, and want to do it more. That's why we do this- we want you to be delighted in all kinds of ways.

Being at the Americana Folk Festival and doing it, going to WDVX and doing it, playing a house concert, playing at the Farmer's markets- remembering kids dancing at festivals and people having a beer with friends and enjoying the time is why I do this.  It's not altogether on our own- we have a number of talented friends who throw in and do things that I could never do, but we'll keep them nameless right now so they don't feel pressure.  But so they will feel our gratitude for their hours, ideas, and every breath they blow in our sails, to bring us to you.

So here we come.