Greetings from the state of Texas!  Today marks my 17th day at the Kerrville Folk Festival in the dusty hill country of my onetime home state. 

I have epic tales to tell, but business first: I'm playing Sat June 13 at the Hillsborough Farmers Market in Hboro NC, and on Thursday June 25 I'm opening for my hero Freedy Johnston at the Berkeley Cafe in Raleigh NC.  Check the Shows page for directions and times.

Also, here's a video of a little ditty I wrote in praise of my web host, which won me a free Flip video camera last month.

Finally, artwork for the new CD is currently being bounced between me and the graphic designer.  It actually exists!  It's happening!  I promise it won't be long.  Heh heh heh [adjusting collar and sweating].

Now, on with the storytelling:

This has been my first year volunteering on recording staff at the Kerrville Folk Festival, and I've spent the last couple weeks camping out, seeing folk shows, attending music workshops, and producing live CDs for the festival from their concerts.

Only a few days remain for me here.  Internet has been spotty, so I missed my usual first-of-the-month newsletter deadline.  Still, it's kinda nuts to have internet at all, plus amazingly perfect cell reception when I'm supposedly roughing it.  By roughing it, I mean sleeping on a small air mattress on top of rocks, way up on a hill above the ranch. 

I've had the opportunity since I've been here to sit on that hill and watch far off lightning at night blow closer and closer until the wind picks up and we have a monsoon.  Good to be on high ground.  Good to have a new tent with a decent rain fly.

It reminds me of Ireland here, but with hippies instead of hipsters.  Everywhere you walk, people of all ages are sitting together playing music in the shade.  At night after the mainstage shows are over, you wander the ranch, find campfires and continue sharing your songs.

So far we've had two or three super mega thunderstorms and at least forty concerts. I've attended a three-day songwriting workshop, a harmonica workshop, a little bit of vocal stuff, and a two hours class on how to write songs with groups of schoolkids.

No scorpions seen as yet.  The eight-hole "octo-john" portopotties are pretty foul, but the staff bathrooms and showers behind the mainstage are nicer.

The other day, I helped a friend from my songwriting class edit one of her songs and it was kind of neat not to have to generate it all myself or have the life-or-death urgency of "it's MY song! it has to be just exactly SO!"

It's a little hippie utopia here, basically.  You hold out your hand to shake hello and they dodge it and give you a hug, regardless of gender.  You just get used to a little patchouli on your collar.

The relationship between hippie and punk is one for another masters thesis, but I submit that they are at least cousins or aunt and niece.  Especially seing as how one drunken night this week a bunch of the crunchiest dreadlocked granola girls here gave themselves mohawks without any noticeable identity crisis the next day.

Jonathan Byrd suggests the creative community here is a modern day equivalent of Greenwich Village in the 60s, and I can see that.  People are supportive and encouraging and I'm constantly surprised by the level of talent and accomplishment of nearly every person I meet.

It's been a good cult to join for a few weeks.  Here are few awesome Austin musicians I've discovered:

The Blue Hit is a trio with quirky, jazzy female vocalist with cello and guitar

Sick is an amazing 20-something vaudevillian, fiddler, guitarist, saw player, and bandleader of several gypsy/punk/swing groups, plus announcer for burlesque revues.

Raina Rose's vocals skitter like skipping stones glancing off the ripples of brilliance on our dark lake of longing and hope.  She's a shit-hot guitar player, too. 

(That's an expression I hear a lot here)

Also, huge congrats to my friend Becca Loebe for her win at the festival's New Folk competition!  It's her second year in the finals and this year she took it all the way, made a touchdown, and did a dance of her own design in the end zone.

That's my update.  Hope it's not too much of a good thing.  Ten feet in front of me, there's a toddler eating bread and salmon and staring at me when I look up. Since I started writing this, the sun has moved into my shade and on to my left arm.  Talk to you again soon.