thank you nice lady with a gun

good morning ~

(click the link / falls to listen)

My Big Breakthank you nice lady with a gun

today’s track is a real abuse of power that is the “glide” function of synthesizers

we out here!

week one of tour down, a really incredible time playing music - well actually by numbers the thing we are doing primarily is driving but who’s counting!! assembled this email for you today in the lobby of a Super 8 in eastern Oregon

heading to the famous Pickathon festival today, here’s our final confirmed time slots:

Friday, 8/1- Refuge 10am-11:30am (ambient set) 
Saturday, 8/2- Windmill Stage 11am-12pm (band set)
Sunday, 8/3- Lucky Barn 4pm-5pm (ambient set)
Sunday, 8/3- Galaxy Barn 11pm-12am (band set)

And then you can still catch me playing solo gigs next week in Santa Fe, Oklahoma City, Nashville, Durham, and Richmond - - the one in Durham is particularly special, playing with legend and personal favorite Elephant Micah:

Eternal dilemma, do you leave the cool city that you're currently in early in order to have more time in the new cool place you've never been before? Or do you savor where you're already at, finding the most optimal six dollar coffee within walking distance of the place you crashed? Or here's another option entirely: do you let the band sleep in another hour, wondering how strict that 6pm load-in an eight hour drive away really is?

In Chicago at least the decision was somewhat made for us: my friend had somewhere important to be at 9am and I refused to let him take the hour+ bus journey when I had a perfectly good rental car parked on the street. He's in the middle of a big life transition and he let us crash on camping pads in his mostly empty apartment, most of the furniture already moved to the new spot. I woke to find him making us pancakes - needed to get rid of it, he said with a smile.

Early on the road and barreling west, still relatively fresh faced only a couple of days into the tour and very excited to go to Minneapolis, a place I've never been before. In Wisconsin we stopped at a gas station to fill up and with our enthusiasm we bought cheese curds and cranberry wine, arguably two of the worst things to consume if you're spending, like, ten hours together in a car. But the Culver's hit hard, their veggie burger surprisingly hefty.

Near the next state line we were to cross I get a strong and unshakeable urge to go swimming. Land of a thousand lakes, right? The inevitable creeping funk of a touring vehicle beginning to cling to our clothes. What does the oracle of Google Maps have to offer us? A public pool, a beautiful looking beach that is somehow chlorinated, no absolutely not. But here is a Wisconsin State Park with the word "river" in its name, just a couple of miles off the highway, a notable set of waterfalls. Add stop.

As we pull up to the booth at the entrance we are greeted by a very nice lady wearing a "game commissioner" name badge, a bulletproof vest, and a handgun. She tells us where we can park and describes the hike down to the falls and I am totally unable to understand why exactly this person is so readily armed. "Thank you nice lady with a gun" we repeat to each other, winding down a dirt road that's kicking up dust behind us. Is this the greatest adventure this Albany-area rental car will ever go on? Almost certainly: when the Rogue gets back to the airport it'll tell all its friends about all the things it's seen.

The parking lot is slammed and there are tons of vehicles crammed in side-by-side on the road as we approach. But it's getting late in the day and the families are leaving, many languages all being utilized for one common goal: get the exhausted kids in the car safely without them getting run over. An ice cream truck sits parked at the entrance to the path and even before we begin the descent the frozen novelties beckon - it's a hot, punishingly sunny day.

Down the remarkably steep path, passing the returning, panting swimmers as they make their way back up the hill. Midwestern friendly, multiple remark unprompted toward us that "it's so great!" and smile in encouragement, well thank you. Only on our third show of the tour and already being among trees and dappled light feels incredibly healing, a jumbo truck stop of the soul. And then as we get closer we start to hear it, the roar of the falls, the first tinkles of the wall of white noise sparkling above the birdsong. And then around a bend Willow Falls emerges, a beautiful, sprawling cascade towering full of beautiful, bathing bodies. There are people everywhere - people taking pictures on the bridge, kids jumping off of rocks and shrieking in delight, moms passing around slices of watermelon, people sunbathing. All around them the current surges, swirling and maneuvering around their limbs, smoothing and wearing down the rocks below.

We walk over the bridge and tentatively pick a spot on a rock to leave our belongings, then slip gingerly into the water, making really intentional effort not to slip on the river rocks. In the shade the water is bracingly cold but as we creep our way into the sun the temperature rises and the current - surprisingly strong - pulls on our bodies. We move slowly and deliberately while all around us insane children tumble and leap, doing things that feel unthinkable to me in my 37-year-old body (I will feel very much 37 often on this tour).

I ask Nico and Léna if they want to go walk up to the falls themselves and we continue our creep along one bank of the river, stepping surely. We notice that the falls create a beautiful little curtain and that if you crawled in from one specific angle, you could sit behind the water as it tumbled over. We make our way and awkwardly sit in the dip of rock, scooting by the other bathers, unable to effectively say "excuse me" because the roar of the water falling was so tremendously loud. And there beneath the falls, awash in terrific noise, we sat contented, looking out at the many bathers as their forms bent and distorted in the wall of the water. There's something here: the effort, the sweating, the careful maneuvering, all in service of a deafening, language-negating noise that bubbles up in joy. That's what we're doing, right? That's the whole point?

Enough reflection lads, we've got a gig to play, and now we are the ones huffing and puffing back up the hill. Later in the night, at the peak of a song, I imagine the racket we're whipping up tumbling off the stage.

But what about you? Where have you driven to this week? What bodies of water are you slipping into? What’s your order at Culver’s?