Greetings from Challis, ID. We are up here for the 37th Braun Brothers Reunion. Incredible spot for a music festival. As the name suggests, there is a wonderful family atmosphere. Everybody is very down-home and generous. Honored to be here with some of the best in Red Dirt Music (Turnpike Troubadors, Reckless Kelly, Wade Bowen, Chris Hillman & Herb Pederson, and more).
We’ve been on the road 7 out of the last 9 weeks. Some incredible experiences to share. We did a co-bill with Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams a few weeks back in Raleigh. Such beautiful people and incredible musicians. We were very fortunate to have them sit in on a few tunes (When I Paint My Masterpiece, Ain’t No More Cane, and Got Me A Woman). Also played the Redwood Ramble, a festival in Navarro, CA (near Mendocino). The setting was something out of a hippie utopian dream…sunshine, Redwood groves, children running around, music and dancing. It was awesome and inspiring. Our set followed Scott Law and Tony Furtado, who are both complete masters.
All this time on the road has lead to a lot of burly drives. On our three-week July run, we did the following drives:
Austin-Denver: 18 hours
Denver-Park City/Park City Denver (back to back): 8.5 hours
Denver-Telluride: 10 hours
Telluride-Boise: 13 hours
Boise-Tacoma: 9 hours
Tacoma-Navarro: 14 hours
Bakersfield-Chattanooga: 31 hours
Chattanooga-Raleigh: 7 hours
Charlotte-Austin: 19 hours
And (after a week off) to start this tour, we drove from Austin to Challis, by way of Denver and Salt Lake. A solid 30 hour plus haul. Not for the faint of heart! At least most of the driving has been done out West, where majestic scenery abounds.
One nice thing about all the driving is that it has afforded me lots of reading time. My journey through the Tom Robbins catalog continues. Since the last post, I have finished Another Roadside Attraction, Tibetan Peach Pie, Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates, and have 40 pages to go on Even Cowgirls Get The Blues. I’ve enjoyed every single one of them immensely. That leaves one novel (Villa Incognito), a novella (B Is For Beer), and a collection of short stories (Wild Ducks Flying Backward). Found time to read Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf last month as well (needed to take a break). Also reading an interesting book called Piano Playing With Piano Questions Answered by Josef Hofmann (1876-1957), a Polish-American virtuoso who is widely considered to have possessed the finest piano technique of all the greats from the 19th and early 20th century. His motto? “An aristocrat never hurries”. Dig that!
Here are some records I’ve been digging a lot lately:
-Bonnie Raitt, Nick of Time
-Jimmy Smith and Kenny Burrell, Keep On Comin’
-Miles Davis, Files De Kilimanjaro
-Paul Simon, Hearts & Bones
-Sam Lewis, Waiting On You
-Mike Henderson, If You Think It’s Hot Here
-Herbie Hancock, Crossings
Thanks for checking in,
Trevor
“I love music passionately. And because I love it I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it. It is free art gushing forth, an open-air art boundless as the elements, the wind, the sky, the sea…Music is the expression of the movement of the waters, the play of curves described by changing breezes. There is nothing more musical than a sunset. He who feels what he sees will find no more beautiful example of development than in the book of Nature.” -Claude Debussy