Dear Friends,

The Wingdale Community Singers (my band) is playing a special afternoon gig at the Philoctetes Center For the Study of the Imagination on May 17 at 2:30 PM. See their website for more information:

http://philoctetes.org/calendar/.

It's a wonderful organization, well worth your investigation, if you are in the greater New York area. We will be singing and talking--god help us--about the songs. In chronological order.

For those who with calendars, the Wingdales are also playing at Barbes, in Brooklyn, NY, on June 28th. I believe the time is 8:00 PM. The lineup that night will not feature our lead guitarist David Grubbs, but we will probably have a few ringers sitting in to fill his spot in the sonic palette.

I'm also reading and singing a few songs with Wesley Stace, a.k.a. John Wesley Harding, on April 23 at Fairleigh Dickinson University. I think the time is 4:30 in the afternoon. Or thereabouts. We will reprise this set (five songs, all of them rather obscure covers) on May 2, during the PEN World Voices Festival, for the BELIEVER evening at same, 6:00 PM, Tishman Auditorium at the New School. More details here:

http://pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/2056/prmID/1584

If that's not enough, I'll be moderating a panel for the World Voices Fest on May 1, at the Brooklyn Public Library. The subject is writing about place, and it will feature the excellent Etgar Keret, as well as Nuriddin Farah, and others. The time in that case is 7:00 PM. You can see the World Voices web page for more details.

Lastly, if you want to hear me read, I'll be reading with Lou Rowan, the editor the quite splendid Seattle literary magazine, GOLDEN HANDCUFFS REVIEW, at Spoonbill & Sugartown, 218 Bedford Ave, W'burg, Brooklyn, 7:00 PM, April 22.

Sorry for the length of this tedious recitation.