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I took today off and ended up giving a good, long concert to my best friend and her infant daughter. Said baby girl was rapt as I played guitar, whistled, and sang. It was wonderful to be the recipient of so much joyful, unbiased attention. She’s generally a happy kid, and I know that she’s been listening to music since before she was out of the womb. Still, I’m feeling pretty special after the experience. It’s amazing to be playing a song for a little one, to notice that her eyes are glued to your hand as it forms chords on the guitar, to watch her watching you and trying to figure it all out, and clearly thinking that you’re the coolest thing she’s ever seen, even though she’s yet too young to be able to use words to tell you what she thinks. I had to share. Hope this makes you smile. 🙂

Next smiley face dedicated to the fact that Heather Dale’s Celtic Avalon project is now 100% funded and then some!   If you want to get in on the rewards she’s offering for backers, you’ve still got three days to jump in, and to help her hit a pretty awesome stretch goal.  🙂 🙂

Speaking of stretch goals:

Wanna see me threaten Ben Deschamps (briefly) with a (scabbarded) sword?  Heh.

CELTIC AVALON is almost at its funding goal!  Less than $5k left to raise, 5 days to go!  PIE!  PIRATES!  PIE-rates..?

Once the project hits $40k, I may have to write a Pie Pirate song in celebration. 😀

This weekend, I have TWO concerts in Cape Girardeau, MO!  I’ve never played there before, so we planned a double whammy.  🙂

Friday night I’ll be giving a FREE preview concert and Q&A at Game Knights Books & Collectibles.  Thanks to Cheech for hosting!

Saturday night, I’ll play my big show at Dockside Upper Deck, thanks to Jerry Swan, Jennifer Picker, and their whole team!  The Facebook event is here and the page to get tickets is here.  Hope you can join me if you’re in the area!

Everyone please be safe as you revel today.  Celebrate with your head on straight. <3

I’m home with a sick kitty today, watching the blustery rain from safety.  Hope you’re all safe and warm, too. Minko, our jellicle girl, isn’t feeling well.  She’s having a little bit of water now, with Ryan’s help.  We’re hoping she rallies, as she was bouncing all over the place last night at zoom o’clock.

I felt very, VERY strong during last night’s concert. The occasional mistake was less devastation, more seasoning in the recipe. It’s amazing how tough we can be on ourselves. The trick is to keep going, keep working, keep practicing, keep doing what you do. The trick is to dial down the wicked, nasty, hateful voices who tell you you’re not good enough. I have to work on this constantly as a performer and composer.

I received a host of requests for this show from fans via Facebook, and most of those requests were for songs I hadn’t had a chance to perform in a long while.  I’m grateful to have had a chance to brush the cobwebs away from those dear friends; we made a fine showing, indeed.  I’m also grateful to find that they still thrive in my heart, voice, mind, and fingers, that they had not forsaken me from long neglect.  I was worried, a little, but again, the trick is to practice. 😉  Highlights included performing “Follow Me Down”, “Eulogy Song”, “City of Marrow”, and “Were-Owl” with Ben and Heather for the very first time, with just a smidge of rehearsal backstage before we got going.  Sheer magic, I’m telling you.  Magic and synergy and trust.

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Last day to get tickets for my Little Rock concert tomorrow with Heather Dale!  We have about ten seats left.  The nice thing about playing in such a small space is that there are no bad seats. 😉

Heather has undertaken a spectacular project to get more Arthurian legend awesomeness out in the world, and she’s asking for your help.  Check out the project’s page here, please tell your friends, and become a backer if you can.  Personally I’d love nothing more than to see Celtic Avalon spread its wings in the near future.  The fundraiser has eight days to go.  Oh, hey- it’s Pi Day!  Happy Pi Day! Did I mention that Heather frequently includes pie in her campaign video updates?  Mmmmm, pie.

I got to spend some time with one of my favorite people this week, and she let me know that she has a poetry event scheduled for next month, in the same space where Heather and I will be singing tomorrow!  Check out the info below, and if you wanna come down to the Gallery and get wordy, I highly recommend this event and this poet.  I’ll be there.

I’ll stop crowing about my Little Rock show with Heather Dale on Saturday for just a minute. 🙂 Next weekend I get to sing in Cape Girardeau, MO for the Very First Time, and I’m pretty excited. This’ll also be my First solo concert of 2014: no bandmates, no special guests, just me. I’m saying EXCITED instead of nervous. 😉  That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.

I’ve got a little show and a big show- Friday March 21 and Saturday March 22 respectively, a freebie and a ticketed concert.

In my heart, the weekend in Cape is known as The Little Concert That Could. The team who helped me put it all together, captained by Jennifer Picker, has got brass balls made of tenacity and win. We had to change locations THREE TIMES, but they still didn’t give up. We’ll be helping out the Women’s Safe House in town with this show, and this venue has no age limit while the first one was 18+ . Everything’s turned out beautifully. So I hope you can be there, if Cape is close to home for you. Or even if it isn’t. People have already been driving some pretty impressive distances for my shows this year, weather or no weather. 🙂

Here’s the info about the free show, and here’s the info and the ticket link for the big Saturday show.

I get to sing with Heather Dale one more time this month.  Check out the BIG Arthurian legend touring show project she’s working on! It includes silly pie antics. 🙂

Performing with Heather and Ben is always a treat.  We frequently mix up our setlists so that no one has to wait to hear anything- we back each other up and switch off taking the lead, and it works beautifully!  I wish everyone could experience that kind of mutual support while performing.  It’s really magical.

SO.  Gallery 360 is our venue this Saturday night!  If you’re in the area and you want to see our show, make sure you get your ticket in advance!  There are only 40 seats available at the Gallery, and we don’t want anyone left out (literally) in the rain.  Grab your tickets here.

I’ve opened up song requests on the Facebook event page for the concert!  If you’d like to request a song, please do so here.  And if you’re not on Facebook, just contact me directly to request a song. 🙂

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, Requiem of Pandora Celtica has herded a host of musicians, including yours truly, together for a FREE digital St. Patrick’s Day compilation, including more than fifty tunes!  You have our blessing to download it here right now, and then spread it to as many friends as you can.  Let’s viralize this beautiful thing!

Yes.  Really.  No, no strings attached.  We’re giving you over fifty free tunes because we can, because we wanna, because you’re awesome.  Please download the songs and share the link!  Burn CDs for friends and coworkers if you like!

Yesterday afternoon, I was lucky enough to participate in some unscripted music with my friends Leela, Alex, and Ryan.  It was a harp-drum-guitar jam, the likes of which I always try to say yes to.  Here’s a snippet of that jam session, captured by the divine Elizabeth R. McClellan.  Hope you enjoy it.

Special Gratitude Linkage tonight goes to Hippie Momma’s Hemp Works for being the newest sponsor to sign on for my Youngstown, OH concert, two months from tonight.  Thank you, Hippie Momma!

I’ve been horrible about getting songbooks and chord charts for my songs and albums out there where you can all use them.  An email from a fan prompted me to think about starting a regular blog series, sharing chords for my songs.  Hopefully I can stick with it!  Here’s a set of chord clues for “Rootless”.  Good luck!

Those of you who enjoy it when I go to the blues place, you’ll appreciate this.

The new song is “Black Swan Blues”, a collaboration with Satyros Phil Brucato, whose current Kickstarter project is making quite the splash – quarter mil in 2 days?! Yep.  Appropriately, every White Wolf gamer on the surface of the earth seems to be throwing money at it. 🙂

The winter weather has given me plenty encouragement to stay home and work on new songs.  I’ve been wanting to make a little preview video for this for several weeks.  Finally sat down and did it yesterday!

The electric hollow body guitar there is my new girl, Stella (so named because her black and blue finish reminds me of a Stellar’s Jay.  Also, Tennessee Williams).  Her recording debut was on Wonders; she features prominently on “Sailing Song” and “Not the Villain”.  On this piece, she gets to shine even more.  The bass is my trusty Sheba, whom I’ve been playing for over ten years now.

I’ve always wanted an electric hollow body guitar for jazzy, bluesy things.  🙂

More on the song itself in my previous blog post here.

Some of you may remember my blog post about signing the autograph of my life – a ’68 VW bus.

Here she is again.

…with my autograph and lyrics on the back, custom paint by my friend Makara.

Her new owners have had to put her up on Craigslist.  They are some of my favorite people.  I’m boosting the signal for them.

The bus is in Seattle.  Here is the Craigslist ad.  We’d love for her to stay in the fan family, if at all possible, which is why I had to repost this here!