country e.p. w/ rachel ries comes out september sixth! Tue, Aug. 19 2008 I wanted to tell you all that my friend rachel ries and I are releasing a little recording in just a couple weeks, it is called ‘country e.p.’, it’s five songs, two of mine, two of rachel’s, and we cover one song by our good friend louis ledford! rachel is from chicago. she is one of the greatest singers, songwriters, and people I have ever known. I think she is classically trained and she learned to sing harmonies in church and she’s so good, she makes you want to weep. she has had a good deal of influence on my songwriting. there’s this one song on the recording, “o my star!” when I wrote it I thought to myself, “I am writing a rachel ries song”. we’ve done some tours together. one time we were in milwaukee at this pub. there was some mix-up or maybe the soundman was late because I remember we didn’t go on till hours after we were scheduled. instead we hung out in the girls’ room and sang songs. I have always loved singing in bathrooms. that’s when we learned “bartender blues” it’s a james taylor song that goes, “I’m just a bartender, I don’t like my work, but I don’t mind the money at all…” we sang that every night of the tour. I think that song had something to do with the “country” idea. also louis ledford’s song, which is a perfect country song. so we made this recording and the fun thing is if you buy it, you have to buy a little 7” vinyl record with three of the songs on it, but you also get a cd with all five songs. and we are excited that RBR is putting it out for us. you can get it at these shows we’re doing on the east coast, which by the way we are doing with a killer band. hope we see you!

mystery Mon, Jul. 21 2008 n. is often quiet, and then he’ll say something very eloquent in an off-handed way. for example when I asked if he preferred john or paul as a songwriter he said, all in one breath, “I’d say I identify more with john’s abstract emotionalism and political fervor; however, as a bass player, I can’t help admiring paul’s sense of harmony, and his quirky gentlemanliness.” then the other day we were thinking back on a show I played with n. & his band, PARIS BATHTUB, and he said, “I love music, I love playing it, I love to be in a sweaty café, something lusty and imperfect in the air…” we were talking about “the mystery”. I said I thought of my songs a co-write between me and the mystery and he said, “but even that is once removed, the more accurate thought is, you ARE the mystery, the mystery is YOU,” and I knew he was right, whatever that means, it’s like what l. cohen said in I’M YOUR MAN about he used to think of himself as the hero of his own melodrama, then he “sank into the masterpiece”. the other night I was at Charlie-O’s, our local dive and there was a jazz band playing, guys we all know quite well, they were really rocking, it sounded great, I was watching their faces and suddenly I felt quite sure I could see a dual striving, on the one hand it was ego and pride and the rush of the stage, on the other hand it was selflessness, zen, spiritual service, and the interesting thing was I could see them both at the same time and they were not a contradiction

prairie dog town Sun, Jun. 22 2008 nuther one down, I’m at the bouldin creek coffeehouse on south 1st in austin waiting for my flight this afternoon. this was a very fun trip with antje duvekot www.antjeduvekot.com and austin nevins. texas, new mexico, colorado & oklahoma. there was carslbad caverns, with its snack bar deep in the earth, roadrunners were a bit of a theme, also margaritas, I think I have decided I like cointreau in a margarita, the weirdest stop on the trip was “prairie dog town” somewhere off interstate 70 near the co/ks border, kind of a low-budget prairie zoo which housed, besides prairie dogs: raccoons, foxes, coyotes, pigeons, badgers, buffalo, many rattlesnakes, and then, believe it or not, two mutant steers, one with five legs, and one with six legs and two assholes both of which are functional. antje is a beautiful woman and a beautiful songwriter. she has really infectious melodies. sometimes touring with another artist I start to get the other artist’s songs in my head like crazy. it can be annoying for the other artist I imagine when it’s like nine in the morning and I’m tunelessly humming their songs. touring with rachel in the past we had a rule, no singing of songs before noon. just before my first set at kerrville the mc gets on the mic to announce that the democrats have settled on a presidential candidate and it is: OBAMA! that was very exhilarating. to those who say it doesn’t matter, that he’ll be fed to the dogs, or that he’ll be elected and then rendered ineffectual, to those who say they don’t want to get their hopes up just to be crushed as they have in the past, I say, well what do I say? I say, we ought not underestimate the power of inspiration, inspiration goes a long way, I believe in it way more than I believe in american democracy. I wrote a brief poem for the man nothing special but I thought I might share it anyhow, yours, anais. Prayer for Senator Obama Lord, let him not be like the others Let him not be proud And bright-feathered Let him not be a fruit Rotted at the core Let him not be a fish In a school of fish, Lord Let him not fall prey to the spiteful Lord, let him not be slandered or worse Let him not fall prey to sycophants Lord, let him not learn conceit Steady his hand. What he holds in it Is precious and ugly, Lord, like a rat With a diamond in its belly Let him set it free

cosmic geography Sun, May. 25 2008 before anything else I have to say, thao nguyen is a real and true rockstar, they don’t make them like her anymore, everyone should go see that show. I just opened a little run of dates for her and the get down stay down in europe and there were dance parties, card games, absinthe, peanuts, long hours looking out the window of the van at green fields and shocks of yellow rapeseed and intervals of self-cleaning toilets on the autobahn and vending machine cappuccino. it was fun—did it happen? it’s a shame to move so quick. now I’m in turner’s hill, a small town in sussex, uk. it’s a magical place for me as my very first overseas gig was in this town—a wonderful promoter happened to hear a song of mine on the radio and sent me an email—did I want to play his acoustic series in sussex? there is a cosmic geography thing that happens when you book your own gigs, a message comes out of nowhere, a herald angel, then maybe a second one confirms the idea, suddenly you’re on the west coast, or across the sea, it’s the closest thing I can imagine to what a young man used to do in the olden days when he went to “seek his fortune,” a matter of picking up clues and interpreting signs, and this pleasure is somewhat diminished with an agent, not that it isn’t a hundred times more humane having an agent, it’s just a thing I notice. I wonder if agents have these cosmic feelings? I bet some of them do. but then again the agent never gets to strike out on the trail, she is more like the lady with the crystal ball...

in those days Fri, May. 2 2008 I just posted this photo, an old one from the very first time I went to Buffalo, NY. I was at a bar called something like “Sportsman’s Tavern” where I actually had a gig despite the big screen TV overhead. In those days I was not fazed by that kind of gig, I was so happy to have a gig in the first place. Once in those days I drove from Charlotte, NC to Somerville, MA in one day because it seemed of great importance that I get to a gig there, something like a half-hour slot in a songwriter night at a bar with fifteen people who passed the hat. Thinking back now it seems that I was very happy, thumbing through the atlas was a sheer pleasure, there was free wine, I could sleep in my clothes in the car in the parking lot of a big hotel. But everything looks better in the rear-view. Here’s a poem I wrote one time. My Single Days I miss my single days. I painted my face in parking lots and public bathrooms. I wore my clothes like feathers. I swung like a dagger in a sheath. I liked liquor then, and I danced crazy, and for the sake of a man I could shout all night over the music about things I didn’t care for or understand. There were others more beautiful, but I had a whole trump suit of my own. It took years to collect and now I don’t need it anymore. Come close and I’ll tell you how, for example, when he spoke, instead of my gaze holding steady his eye, I might let it follow the motion of his mouth. A slight thing, but always effective, I learned it from a friend. And then, when his hand met mine, I might grasp two fingers instead of the palm. Just two fingers, the fore and the middle. I discovered that one myself and it never failed. I ran upstream like the salmon run I clung to the back of a silver bullet And spun out onto the blacktop singing I tell you, in the rear-view mirror everything is suddenly cinematic. Anyway at the Sportsman’s Tavern this old guy came up to me, I think his name was “Bob”, he was wearing a cowboy hat and he had a t-shirt that said, “you wouldn’t understand, it’s a black thing”. And someone snapped this shot. It’s one of my favorites from those days.

spring cleaning & stockpiling Mon, Apr. 14 2008 just now I started cleaning the kitchen and couldn’t stop, you know how that happens? way leads on to way. there was a steel grease pan hidden under the side of the Vulcan that apparently hadn’t been emptied in decades and I burned my forearms with a weird cleaning product. there was a snow squall in the afternoon but the sun shone thru the whole time, it was cold and bright, n. and two friends were pruning the apple trees, they came in the house brushing snow from their clothes, the yard was strewn with boughs and branches. the trees have grown wild the last few years so their fruit is small and tart, one tree miraculously held onto its apples all winter long, they just froze there in red little bunches, and they are still there now. deer like to stand under that tree. I remember my grandparents used to store apples through the winter by wrapping them in newspaper and keeping them in the closet under the stairs. they stored acorn squash on a high shelf and potatoes in the cellar. there were also many fruits and vegetables in the freezer in square plastic containers marked “strawberries, july ’85” and so on. that depression generation is full of homesteading tricks. I’ve fantasized a little about things we might stockpile in case of the next great depression, for example I’ve thought of wine, but the fact is if we had a stockpile of wine we might just drink it, wine is hard to ration. I know it will probably never come to it but don’t you agree there’s something fun about the idea of stockpiling? here are some things off the top of my head we might all want to stockpile: coffee if i smoked, I’d stockpile cigarettes sugar chocolate frozen concentrated orange juice rice flour (but would it become rancid after a few months? I don’t know) aspirin tampons contact lenses birth control firewood batteries lightbulbs candles film blank cds & dvds guitar strings paper pens I could go on but I’m going to bed, please add to the list if you are inspired to.

love pome Sun, Mar. 16 2008 Love Poem I. Before we met I lived alone And purified myself with books And curled tight inside the bud Of my perfect childhood But blossoms fell out in the street Blossoms fell around my feet The night he brought me home with him The night he brought me home II. The place was a nightmare, stacks and stacks of Books and papers, warped with age Record jackets, cans of beer, mattress feathers everywhere And he stood in the midst of it Bare chest, slow smile We’ll sleep out on the roof he said I said okay O and the loving stung me some O and the loving rubbed me raw O and I watched him all night long And we were young and young and young We’ll sleep out on the roof he said I said okay III. His mother and I at the hardware store For things that go around the house She wants to buy chrysanthemums for us In different colors She says, "when he was little we would drive out to the farm And buy the biggest pumpkin he could put his arms around" I see his tiny hands He staggers to the van His mother looking after him and emptying her wallet IV. I hope I die before him I hope he holds me just like this A snail shell, a warm fist I crawl inside forever

"mutual envy" Mon, Feb. 18 2008 cabin fever is on man, i am kind of freaking out up here. i started surfing the net looking at the websites of my friends and comrades, then on to the websites of famous people, suddenly hours had flown by and i felt inexpressibly empty and wished i had spent those hours reading or writing a letter or staring at the ceiling instead. (i will say one thing, i like the medium of a real website, as great as myspace is, it is not the same thing. also i think there is a bit of a sweet spot in an artist's career during which they are able to maintain a really great website. too little or too much success spoils it. the really cheap d.i.y. ones are annoying to look at and navigate and the really swish ones never have enough intrigue, they're all publicity soundbytes.) the internet can be dangerous just like women's magazines are dangerous. they masquerade as intimately informative, but they are really elaborate vanity games in the spirit of commerce and self-loathing. the phrase from brothers k. was: "mutual envy". that about sums up myspace don't ya think? do i exaggerate? love anais.

the dirty old moon Mon, Feb. 4 2008 news: the “groundhog” “saw” his “shadow” we “might” be “headed” for a “recession” ani difranco is a conduit of great power and light p.s. I really hope obama wins this thing. I liked him a lot at the beginning, then came round to thinking every single candidate was beautiful each in a different way, specifically identifying with clinton’s struggle as a female candidate, how she is damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t act feminine and how unfair that is, and seeing edwards get his hair tousled by letterman on late night tv in such a charming way, but now I have to say I am firmly in the obama camp and it has to do with: a. simple aesthetics, what it looks like to our friends abroad to have a photogenic well-spoken black son of immigrants with an arab name and diplomatic manners leading this country and b. the fact that he might just be able to sweep the citizenry off its feet, that is, perhaps he won’t do anything sweeping himself as president, but rather inspire us, the people, to do some sweeping ourselves. I fear that certain people will vote for clinton because she is so wonky and smart, but that those people are thinking small because they are dreamers who have got crushed by their grown-up lives and are taking it out on the young and naïve every chance they get. and I fear that all that wonkiness might add up to not much legislatively speaking, not to mention the citizenry kicking back thinking we’re safe now that the democrats are in office. if they do get in office (surely nothing is sure). p.p.s. on tour with mc I watched a good deal of late night television. I saw my friend austin nevins playing guitar on letterman with josh ritter for example, that was very exciting, I could not believe my eyes. i once wrote a song that was too dorky to sing in public, though I did sing it a few times, but I thought I would share the lyrics here that they not disappear in the quicksand of the cutting room floor. the important thing about this thought, to me, was that the kind of tv show where the audience has to be prompted to LAUGH is the most depressing thing in the universe. laughter is such a spontaneous human muscle of delight. if we don’t know what we find funny, we don’t know ourselves in the least. late night television people making fun of michael jackson some things never change they flash the sign and everyone starts laughing seems to me it’s strange it isn’t even funny late night television flickers from the corner of the bar fortune and fame wearing dark sunglasses and stepping into cars always stepping into cars they’re wearing dark sunglasses it isn’t even sunny i’ve been drinking all night I been thinking bout you all night too I wish that you were here I’m going in the girl’s room and blinking at this blur in the mirror all my walls are caving I’m flashing in the pan I see michael jackson waving semen on his hands midnight glistening blue lights flashing nobody listening everybody laughing oh there was later a chorus to this song, I THINK it’s the same song, that went like this: here’s to the man behind the mask here’s to the boys in the back room here’s to the dirty old man in the dirty old moon!

games Wed, Jan. 2 2008 today (i wrote this some days ago) is the last day of many many many days of Christmas for n. & I, who have been to four fambly gatherings in three states. we played a lot of games, the grease in the gears, time-honored trick by which families spend time together without driving each other crazy. in my immediate family the traditional game is pinochle. we used to play four-man when I was a kid (you can play w/ 3 or 4), I was always partnered with my dad and my brother was partnered with my mom, it is a very serious awesome strategic card game and I’m proud to have been taught it as a kid so I wasn’t stuck playing “go fish” and “bullshit”. apparently one of our ancestors was shot on a riverboat near cairo, Illinois for cheating at pinochle, he had a crazy biblical name like Ezekiel. this year we indoctrinated n. who picked up the game very quickly. I thought: “I married well.” the other game from my dad’s side of the family is called, “who, sir, me, sir?” my grandpa, the patriarch who usually leads this game, was not in attendance this year but I did teach the game to some friends about four a.m. at a party in vermont. everyone sits in a circle around the leader and the one to his right is the “head” and the one to his left is the “foot”. everyone is numbered right to left 1 2 3 4 5 etc. the leader begins the game saying, “THE prince of paris lost his hat, who stole it, number five, number five (it could be any number here)…” at which point number five jumps in, “who, sir, me, sir?” “yes, sir, you, sir” “no, sir, not I, sir” “who, sir, then, sir?” “number two, sir…” “number two, number two, number two…” and if number two happens not to be listening, or not to remember her number, etc., then the leader continues, “number two to the foot” and number two has to move to the foot position, thus forcing number three into the number two position, and so forth down the line. apparently in my grandpa’s college days this was a drinking game so I suppose there might have been a bottle of something at the foot I dunno. this is a great game I recommend it. but at some point if you play it a lot, as is the case with my family, everyone gets so quick that the game loses some of its lustre. we also played pictionary. but the real game of the year for us is “apples to apples”. apparently we’re not the only ones because n. went to the toy store to buy it as a gift and they said they can barely keep it in stock it is so popular. it is a very simple word game, no board, no dice, just cards, kind of like taboo but more subjective and interesting. I played it first at a party in Virginia, also at four in the morning. I haven’t got it in me to describe the game itself but I have to say, if your fambly is looking for a way to talk without talking, this is one way. and in this moment I feel I can say: games with boards and game-pieces and dice are boring. they are a ruse on the part of game companies to codify a game so that it can’t be reproduced. monopoly could be an exception BUT monopoly is depressing. who disagrees with me? everyone loses, except one person, who feels like an asshole.

lonesome wolf, holiday inn Sun, Oct. 14 2007 late nite hotel topeka ks. wolf hungry and it's too late for foraging. today i took a long walk in lawrence, who knew it was such a happening town? it had: -music venues -vintage shops -good espresso -student-types -hobo-types, at least types who look like they have nothing to do, which i think is important for a town to have -pizza by the slice (i wish i could have one now) -the new york times (hey i was thinking, if anyone else wanted to post THEIR ideas of how you know a town is happening, they could do it here.) it's been raining like crazy and as i drive i'm listening a lot to this british version of brecht's threepenny opera- 'the british army will make salami..." f-ing brilliant, i have never heard a translation like that, well i suppose i have never heard any translation at all, but i just read the play and the lyrics were not near as evocative. "salami" is quite a word, because it's phallic as well as calling to mind the meat process, so it's sex, death, and tasty fat little sandwiches altogether. is anyone following. i have a little theory about english/german, which i will now summarize quick-like as i seem to be falling asleep in my chair. anyway our english language has germanic origins first and latin influences second. seems like a lot of our words that relate to primary drives, basic needs, visceral things, come from the german like "ich, mutter, vater, will, liebe, hasse, haus, feuer, etc. i just love german, i actually find it more beautiful than the romance languages except maybe portuguese, because it makes you FEEL things not just glide along in perfect ballet-form, and in any case, i find that the poems and songs that make me feel most alive are ones with a lot of german vibe to them, for example think of the english word "love" which in german is "liebe" or some such as opposed to the more romantic "amor(e)". and the german word for hate is "hasse" i think, doesn't that sound awesomely snakey, whereas the romantic would be "odio" or i dunno in french, italian etc. but think how our english word "odious" compares to "hateful". it sounds pretty snobbish and i suppose it evokes one thing, but the german, the german brings your very innards to tingly wakefulness. actually have i talked about this before? that would be embarassing. oh, oh yes back to the threepenny opera SO i guess a lot of translators kind of romancified brecht in translation, whereas this translation is very dirty and german and wham, i highly recommend it, i don't know who it is though, my friend gave me a burned copy. more thoughts on nashville pop country. as there is a lot of that round here. i think what a lot of these nashville guys are doing, and what the radio is looking for, is the song-version of these tiny little books people keep by their toilets. one whole sub-genre is based on "you might be a redneck if..." and a whole other one is based on "life's little instruction book" or "chicken soup for whatever". these little books are kitsch in the purest sense and yet of course they can be very funny and moving. for example my grandma the other day over breakfast read aloud a passage from "all i ever need to know i learned in kindergarten" and the water sprang to my eyes. there's also some connection here with the reader's digest, what a weird institution that is, i used to enjoy it as a kid though. if i were writing one of those little books you keep by the toilet i would include this advice which i thought up today for myself. because i can sometimes get into a very judgmental mood especially around other judgmental-types. the idea is that when you notice yourself judging someone or something, first let yourself silently make the judgment, then think if maybe the situation is funny, i mean if there's humor to be found there, and let yourself laugh about it, and then see if you haven't got a bit of compassion in you for that person or thing, perhaps this is convoluted, but i think that laughter, from the right kind of humor, opens a door in the heart, and compassion slips in. hot off the presses. god, listen to me. well now i have spilled all my secrets. i had a lot of other things i had planned to write about but i must lie down. man i'm hungry. talk to you soon! deine anais

barack obama & hillary rodham Fri, Sep. 7 2007 at the airport in newark i bought a copy of barack obama’s book THE AUDACITY OF HOPE. i was in the mood; i remember feeling so surprised to learn after the fact that al gore had written an environmental treatise years before his campaign, and wondering why nobody had read it. of course barack’s book is a best seller and there he is on the cover in every airport bookstore looking so handsome, compassionate, smart, kind of birdlike in his immaculate suit. i have only read a couple chapters of the book but i’m impressed with his writing. he can definitely construct sentences. he tracks the devolution of partisan politics from a more cooperative, dignified state of affairs to the current either/or platform which doesn’t reflect people’s needs or values. he surely comes from the left and he writes about his anti-authority ideas getting out of hand before college, but he also describes how by the time he got to college: “i began silently registering the point in dorm-room conversations when my college friends and i stopped thinking and slipped into cant: the point at which the denunciations of capitalism or american imperialism came too easily, and the freedom from the constraints of monogamy or religion was proclaimed without fully understanding the value of such constraints, and the role of victim was too readily embraced as a means of shedding responsibility, or asserting entitlement, or claiming moral superiority over those not so victimized.” that rang pretty true for me, I had that same dorm-room conversation. then yesterday the times had an article about hillary rodham clinton which i found totally delightful. i kept wondering if she is an aries like myself, does anyone know? i had not realized she was actually a model young republican when she arrived at college but the events of the sixties swung her in the other direction. she became very active in the anti-war and civil rights movements but was always interested in change at the institutional level, by way of the system, that is, she wasn’t a take-it-to-the-streets kind of gal. i imagine that having come over from the republican side she had to deal with a deep sense of rift from her family and the values of her upbringing and perhaps being furiously by-the-book with her politics was her way of spinning out, but only so far, from the world she came from. so that when she went home for thanksgiving she might have to duke it out with her father intellectually, but not personally, like he couldn’t say that she needed a shower, or that she should stop smoking pot, since she didn’t. this is all just speculation of course but there’s something in it that i recognize in myself, not that i was raised republican, but that my own rebellions have also been kind of “managed”, and i tend to look at out-and-out rebels who have completely disowned the values of their fathers with a. a certain admiration but b. a certain disdain and c. a sad sense that these rebels, having orphaned themselves completely, will never really be happy no matter how they proclaim their happiness from the rooftops, they remain chained by rebellion just as most of us are chained by submission. i get the sense that neither of these guys is very radical, but that they are both very admirable. and actually i don’t believe there’s room in the united states presidency for a radical as we understand the term. if i’d heard myself say that seven years ago i’d have disowned mySELF, and i DID vote for nader and it DOES make my heart crumble to think that my own father was right when he said that there was no room for a third party president and that all i would do was hand over the presidency to the republicans. in fact i think he even said i’d understand when i was older. i said dad, i’m young, it is my duty to vote for ralph nader because YOU OLD PEOPLE will never do it. and that was true. but i suppose the last seven years have shown us how low it can get, and plus, there is so much room for radicalism in schools, co-ops, town meetings, businesses, art, airwaves, we in vermont even have a pretty radical US senator, and these things are all MORE important than the presidency, because what we need in a president is someone to stand there, look concerned, speak intelligently, and NOT MAKE THINGS WORSE while people do the real work at the local level. but then again i get a weird sense that maybe i’m not as radical as i used to be either. i have a homeowner’s policy now and i’ve started enjoying npr.

california Mon, Aug. 27 2007 i’m writing from the town of tehachapi, ca, the trains roll through it dozens of times a day, I’m lookin at one now out the window of a diner. on the radio they’re playing “friends in low places”, i’m remembering watching that guy on the grammies when i was a little kid, it’s actually a pretty great song, with a rhyme like “places” “oasis” and “chases” that doesn’t seem forced, yah, maybe pop country has deteriorated in the last ten years. i listen to a lot of pop country on the radio when i’m driving, i can’t quite explain it, but it keeps me awake, i appreciate the craftsmanship, and once in a while it makes me to dissolve in a puddle in the driver’s seat, which is powerful, because it is so transparent, that is, one KNOWS one is being manipulated, but the power of a story well told is undeniable, no matter how kitschy the story is. milan kundera said something in UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS about kitsch, that what kitsch was was not just children playing in the sunshine, but also the one watching it and shedding a tear saying, “isn’t this great, and isn’t this right and good that I should be moved by these children playing in the sunshine.” it was deeper than that though when he said it. there was also something about kitsch being “the denial of shit.” i have gotta read more books. one thing i did this week was watch a lot of television. it was all because my friend aj roach (visit his website he’s brilliant) got in the car with me in LA and didn’t get out until santa cruz and he was into this series FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS which we ended up watching many, many episodes of in two different cities. so funny! “they’re turning kids into slaves so they can make cheaper sneakers, but tell me what’s the cost, cause the sneakers don’t seem that much cheaper, your sneakers are made by slave kids, what are your overheads?” another train going by. this town has a lot of far out hippies in it, but it is in the most conservative county in california: kern. there are definitely two worlds at work. i’m looking across the counter at the pies, i used to work at a diner, our pies looked just like that, so puffy. the waitress just asked a guy did he want more? and he said ‘no i’m on a diet, got to watch my figure’ and she said ‘yeah i’m on that seafood diet, i see food and i eat it’, and she did not skip a beat, i was never good at that kind of thing as a waitress. there are some things you say in service jobs you’d never say otherwise, for example, “bye now”, “have a good one,” and i learned to call people “honey” which i almost never do now, it only comes out sometimes, for example if i pass a guy on the street and he asks me for change and i don’t have it or don’t want to give it, i say, “sorry honey” because there’s something about the use of it that humanizes the exchange, as well as making me feel in control, in a maternal sort of a way. well i got to get going. thank you california it’s been a pleasure, california, your brow is smoother than the brow of the east, california, you have so many hybrid vehicles, you are a good cook, you sing to yourself, i love you, love anais.

song women Mon, Aug. 13 2007 i met some beautiful ones recently. peggy seeger. helped me & mc with the saturday crossword over breakfast at a hotel in bethlehem, pa this weekend. then she told the story of how she met her late husband who i think was a famous english song collector. she is a very bewitching woman and mc and i fell under her spell pretty quick. she would just start singing ballads right there at the breakfast table when they came into her head. last weekend: emmylou harris. she stood onstage in a black dress, sparkling black tights (so pretty), cowgirl boots, and an especially great red western shirt with white fringe coming off of it. and of course, her hair. she sang a james taylor song that made me cry (the one about the mill worker, who works the rest of the morning, the rest of the afternoon, the rest of her life). and before that: ani difranco. who is beautiful and tiny and has a beautiful and tiny baby. i was afraid to hold the baby for most of the little tour because i have this feeling that if a baby doesn't like you, and begins to cry while you're holding it, it signifies some secret dark energy within you that only the baby is capable of picking up on. but at the end of the tour i tried my luck and it was fine. in fact i loved it. anyway ani rocks so hard. she rocks so hard and she thinks so clearly. isn't that a rare combination? what else? n. and i bought a house, and then the housing market crashed like the next day. i don't think it was our fault though. at home on the farm, they're making hay, i'm gonna help out, for all the city slickers, that means riding around on the back of a truck, stacking up hay bales, then unloading them in the hay barn. we know a joke about a vermont farmer and a texas racher. the texan says, "sometimes i wake up at sunrise, get in my truck, ride it around the whole perimeter of the ranch checking fences, and when i get back home the sun's going down." the vermonter says, "yup, i know what you mean, i had a truck like that once."

amelie-les-crayons (and the end of an era) Mon, Jun. 11 2007 at the very last minute, like a couple weeks before the tour, we (me and my "people"- ho! ho!) got an email from b., a french music manager from lyon, offering two support slots for his artist "amelie-les-crayons". we had not heard of b. or amelie but b. seemed to be a kindred spirit and i was going to be in france anyway with not a lot to do, we said "oui!" and after a big night in paris with the purest comrade of my heart, aj roach, and his fantastic band, i got on a train to lyon. the first show was a sort of private concert for friends and family of amelie and her gang, they were just pulling the drapes off all their new songs (i guess their record comes out in the fall) and the second was a more formal show, part of a festival that took place in a factory in the tiny town of perouge. the reason i'm writing this is that this woman, amelie-les-crayons, turns out to be an absolute goddess like you cannot imagine. she sings what they call "chansonnes francaise" (i'm sure i spelled that wrong but anyway that's like the old school edith piaf style stuff, very dramatic and delightful and the audience claps in time) and for this show there was a whole theatrical set, costumes, a lighting designer, and amelie-les-crayons, serene, crazy, gorgeous, sat atop a tall tall stool and played a piano also raised up up high with the pedals basically suspended in mid-air, and my mind was fucking BLOWN, may i say, i could hardly play my sets, i felt something like a toad that has somehow got itself invited to the most beautiful tea-party and sits in a saucer blinking at everyone with "gold-rimmed eyes" (if that's not a fairytale it should be). anyway please find this woman. here is the url of her label's website, where you can find out about her and b. who turned out to be every bit as kindred as we'd imagined. http://www.neomme.com riding back to lyon with the handsome young band, we talked about the french government and its support of artists. i guess as a musician if you can prove you play eighty gigs every ten months, the government will cover whatever living expenses you haven't been able to raise yourself (kind of a wild thought!). i have really no idea whether this system is effective or totally exploited, but just the concept that the state would recognize that the material support of artists (not just "the arts") is in the best interest of society... is radical and great. also in lyon, the time had come, in fact was overdue, to re-blonde my blonde hair (which if you are an unnatural blonde you will know has to be done like every month and a half) and for various reasons i decided, instead of continuing down that expensive route, to go back as nearly as i could to my natural color which is... brunette! i share this with you because what i dread most of all is having to TALK to people about it, about my hair, as that is one of the most ridiculous dead-end conversations in the whole small-talk canon, and i had after a year and a half only JUST got to the point where people had stopped commenting on my blondeness, so... if you catch my meaning... all best from the lanes in brighton! -anais

the brothers k Sat, Jun. 2 2007 can you believe dostoyevsky wrote this in 1880? i love this man. this is part of alyosha's collected remembrances of father zossima's conversations. when i read it i felt a shock of recognition! see... "We are assured that the world is getting more and more united and growing into a brotherly community by the reduction of distances and the transmission of ideas through the air. Alas, put no faith in such a union of peoples. BY INTERPRETING FREEDOM AS THE MULTIPLICATION AND THE RAPID SATISFACTION OF NEEDS, they do violence to their own nature, for such an interpretation merely gives rise to many senseless and foolish desires, habits and most absurd inventions. They live only for mutual envy, for the satisfaction of their carnal desires and for showing off."

hove Fri, Jun. 1 2007 when i was eight my whole fambly including grandparents and some aunts and uncles took a trip to england. it would probably have been 1989. in hindsight i was too young to appreciate it but perhaps as a child one does some other, deeper thing with the world than "appreciate" it. some memories of that trip: reading king arthur books & epic poems with my brother; my dad cursing as we drove round and round picadilly circus; canterbury hill, which was covered in stinging nettles-- my mom likes to recount this story as she finds it illustrative of the difference between my brother's and my personality-- my brother cleverly found a stick to push the nettles aside as he carefully and slowly made his way up the hill unscathed while i charged ahead, bare legs covered in welts, shouting "I HATE THIS I HATE THIS I HATE THIS." there are others but the most vivid memory i have is of a water park we discovered on the coast near brighton... it had three big fiberglass tubes, yellow red and blue, snakish, the water rushed through them and you went down on your butt or if you were brave, frontwards and headfirst, and it WAS the most exhilarating thing that had ever happened to you thus far! well i speak for myself. i'm staying now in the town of hove just west of brighton and yesterday in an effort to stay awake/beat the jetlag i took a walk down to the seaside and behold! THE WATERPARK! it seemed to be closed, perhaps for the season, but it was unmistakably the same one that set my eight-year old heart to a joyful pound. i saw that it had a ridiculous name like 'duke ferdinand leisure centre' (not that exactly but something very british like that). i must also relate that it was a depressing scene, the fiberglass, the concrete, the candy kiosk nearby, all of it seemed poverty-stricken, faded and murky, the seawater met the stones, sketchy young guys tried to make conversation, the place had an asbury park feel to it, which made me wonder, is that a recent development or was it there all along and i, as a child, just didn't notice? still it was way more beautiful than the wealthier streets with the many shiny real estate brokerages and salons and the grocery stores with the japanese-style plastic-wrapped fruit. if you know what i mean. i live my life cradled in nostalgia, i like it that way. if i recall correctly the waterslides were lined up from least to most crazy-scary, the yellow would have been the simplest one, the red was intermediate, and the blue deposited you hoarse and wet with your heart in your mouth! i also remember that back then there was graffiti on the sidewalk nearby that read, "oh do shut up you are all so boring" which in my family we all got a big kick out of. "oh do shut up you are all so boring." with love, anais.

autotranslation Sun, Apr. 22 2007 many thanks to g for pointing the way to what i can honestly say is the greatest review i have ever received, autotranslated from god knows what language: 'The Smartness' showcases the faithful interpreter of Anais Mitchell Anais Mitchell is a even vocalist/ birdcall author from Green mountain state, with a natural endowment for storytelling. Her sheet music is Family line, until now every bit a peddle of modern solid. Mitchell's cushy syrupy spokesperson compatible with deltoid melodies allows the medicine to exist a calming receive. Her newest record album The Light is a ingathering of short-range stories featuring lovemaking, loneliness, redemption, and go for, told with smother escaped lyrics and euphony.

the toad Sat, Apr. 14 2007 thanks to nellie for sending along the mary oliver poem i was talking about. here it is- Toad By Mary Oliver I was walking by. He was sitting there. It was full morning, so the heat was heavy on his sand-colored head and his webbed feet. I squatted beside him, at the edge of the path. He didn't move. I began to talk. I talked about summer, and about time. The pleasures of eating, the terrors of the night. About this cup we call life. About happiness. And how good it feels, the heat of the sun between the shoulder blades. He looked neither up nor down, which didn't necessarily mean he was either afraid or asleep. I felt his energy, stored under his tongue perhaps, and behind his bulging eyes. I talked about how the world seems to me, five feet tall, the blue sky all around my head. I said, I wondered how it seemed to him, down there, intimate with the dust. He might have been Buddha- did not move, blink or frown, not a tear fell from those gold rimmed eyes as the refined anguish of language passed over him.

the mouse Fri, Apr. 13 2007 mid-april and we’re still buried under snow. I’m watching thomas-the-mouse sprawl in the golden armchair. a miracle. his fur is soft as a rabbit’s. his yellow-green eyes, smiling and crass like a lizards. the pads of his feet are pink and black, like a kind of candy I can’t remember the name of. he squeaks at seven in the morning. he likes to join people us the bathroom sink when we’re brushing our teeth and he especially likes to be present during a bath, he perches on the edge of the tub with his paws in the water as though fishing. we got the mouse from the humane society. it was an arduous process. the very first time we arrived he was there, in a little cage with his longhair sister, who we fell in love with immediately, but unfortunately she had yet to be spayed so if we wanted her we’d have to wait. I had a soft spot for the mouse even then and I said to n., well, what about this one?, and n. looked at the mouse and the mouse turned round in the cage exposing his tiny ass and shat right in front of our eyes at that exact moment, which we took to be a sign of some kind, and after all, we were in love with the sister. so we got a “hold” on the sister, we described her to friends, we even gave her a name: “edie”. then there was a series of frustrating visits where we thought the spaying had been done and went back to pick up the kitten but she wasn’t ready for various reasons, and then on the FINAL day when we were just bursting to have a kitten, the humane society made a mistake and forgot she was on hold at all and gave her away to another family. we were devastated and the humane society women felt so bad that they offered us any other kitten for free. so we took the mouse, who was still there waiting for adoption. we gave them twenty bucks as a goodwill gesture (usually a young kitten costs like a hundred). it’s funny for us to imagine that we “bought” the mouse for twenty bucks because he is like our favorite person. last night at dinner someone said, people like to hang out with their pets because it’s the same thing as being alone and people like being alone whether they realize it or not. I wonder if this is true. when I was a girl I had a horse, a big beautiful round brown horse, three quarters morgan and one quarter quarter horse. I used to spend a long time talking with this horse about the dramas and difficulties of my pre-adolescence, while he stood in his stall munching grain, his big wet brown eyes watching me, mute but not entirely indifferent. it was cathartic in a way I don’t know writing in a journal could ever be. it’s nice to hear the sound of your own voice washing over animal ears. there’s a great mary oliver poem about that. “the toad”. I’d post it if I could find it. the mouse knows when I’m about to go on tour. he begins acting up when he sees me packing. now… I’m outta here!

sxsw Mon, Mar. 19 2007 there's a guy craig bonell he has a great blog called songs:illinois check it out: http://songsillinoismp3.blogspot.com/ he asked a bunch of peeeeeeople to send "postcards" from sxsw so i sent him one. then i thought hey i might as well post it on MY blog so here it is! still you should go to his site because he includes lots of sound clips of everyone i am talking about. sunday morning comin down impressions from sxsw. thursday my official set at momo's and i was so excited about the rest of the bands on the bill that i spent the night there, a luxury really not to have to elbow around on sixth or anything. ana egge played after me with tony and jason-- so rockin-- i have got this real thing about ana's voice like i'm always thirsty for it, for it and her songs, thirstythirstythirsty. also on the bill, stars of track and field and the winterpills, they both sounded so good, the room was full of sound. then sean hayes, i had never heard him but he came highly recommended and in fact he blew my fucking mind. we all sat on the dirty floor of the club looking up at his little haunted face under his little hat. his acoustic guitar sounded, i could not think of another word, GLAZED. his voice too was glazed but with a different sweeter rougher glaze. i can't remember a word he sang or what any one song was about but his poetry made perfect abstract sense and a couple of times i think i even pumped my fist for a killer line. it was like a trance, what he created. me i was charmed, my snake was charmed. finally i met matt the electrician. friday the caritas soup kitchen. props to laura thomas and that great organization. flatstock convention, some really beautiful stark work, i was very taken by small stakes among other companies, i got to say though there is an emotional coldness to a lot of rock poster art, i dunno if it's always been that way or if it's a trend, but i don't like it. saw bill kirchen at the continental club with ana and tony. i really came round to it and felt like dancing and did dance. i noticed tony is an exquisite human being. smell of meat out the back. dinner with southpaw jones and his lady friend, also exquisite. later my comrade danny schmidt at the hotel. i tried to nap on the floor before his set but the guard waked me and got me on my feet. danny is brilliant i hate for him to play in a hotel. then we rushed over to sixth for ron sexmith. i could watch and listen to him all night. he had a three-piece band behind him including jason mercer on bass. he sweated in a suit jacket. outside on sixth the people flowed like spawning fish. we went up on a balcony for a drink looking down on it all. a south austin party. ambitious to go to a party at that hour and soon i was cold and tired. saturday a long day for me of little engagements. finally the house show at jon and vanessa's-- such a delightful cast of comrades including DANNY SCHMIDT, NELS ANDREWS, AJ ROACH, KRIS DELMHORST, and SAM BAKER. my heart was bursting. i cannot say enough. the workers in song! we rode in the back of a pickup with a silver flask. people waved from the side of the highway. to waterloo to see the band of heathens, band of my dear old friend colin brooks, who just won a big award. they are five men all very handsome singing man harmonies. i danced with an italian guy. in my enthusiasm i sang him a part of bella ciao, an italian political folksong. "this is a song against ze fascists" he said. "FUCK THE FASCISTS!" i cried and he echoed me "FUCK ZE FASCISTS." i drank lone star. the night devolved a bit after that. though i will say aj roach and nels andrews are exquisite human beings. and colin too. maybe it's the people i was hanging with, like for example the righteous babe people, and a few others i met and got to know, but i will say overall i found many people who genuinely love music for all the right reasons and are in the industry as a means of getting the music to the people, and this was beautiful. i expected a much higher degree of sleaze and happily didn't find it and i'm grateful for that, also inspired, what a lot of bright lights there are out there. thanks for reading, xo, anais.

dan rather Thu, Mar. 8 2007 hello. a chelsea apartment! "and the sun poured in like butterscotch and stuck to all my senses; won't you stay? we'll put on the day, and we'll talk in present tenses." at the house of norman salant who is a wonderful songwriter. he is singing over by the window and his two little finch-like birds are chirping in the cage. well it has been quite a week. the universe had its way with me last week. i was very disappointed to have to cancel my little run of dates in the uk at the last minute. there's more... an obstacle course of sorts... i won't go into it... on the bright side, i find i keep bumping into these bright bright songwriting lights everywhere i go. the "workers in song". they are everywhere. i am going to name some names which i usually don't do in my zeal for anonymity, names i might not have named before nathan moore & the slip (surprise me mr. davis). you can hear me & brad barr of the slip singing some of nathan's tunes at the following site: http://www.percyboyd.com/pickin.html ana egge, aj roach. WOW MAN. both of them i associate with texas for whatever reason but i also crossed paths with both in memphis and again in new york where i am now. here are their sites http://www.anaegge.net http://www.roachmusic.com also i was honored to open up for peter mulvey last night in manhattan. peter mulvey is on my short list of ideal men. like watching dan rather as a child. watching peter one feels that all is right in the world and good will prevail. speaking of dan rather i remember watching full of emotion as he narrated the play-by-play presidential election of 2004. it was the end of his career, i don't even understand all the ins and outs of why he had to resign when he did, but during that broadcast there was definitely something funny going on, there was a boyishness and almost a senility, he kept saying exuberant old-fashioned things like "if a frog had side-pockets, he'd carry a handgun!" which i couldn't make sense of but i felt a love for that man like he was my grandpa or my crazy uncle. i felt that like the rest of us he wanted the dems to win though of course he strove to maintain his professional neutrality. i don't have a television but whenever i stumble upon some slick-headed or perk-breasted young anchorperson discussing the news like it was a gossip column i think, i miss dan rather. the era is over whether it ever existed or not. the idea that you could trust a man on tv to tell you what was going on in the world. anyhow. love. anais.

more on cells Mon, Feb. 19 2007 the thing about having a telephone on your body at all times is, there is no true solitude (and it's not as easy as turning the phone off, because owning a cell phone is a state of mind, a real addiction, not at all easy to re-program) and as someone i admire said, "greatness comes from a lonely mind," and this is one reason why these noisy little toys destroy our (one?) chance to live inspired, romantic lives. even as i write this i see that it sounds hackneyed and reactionary in the boring way that old people can get about new technology. but i am being perfectly honest here and only just realizing the extent to which my whole mind has been hijacked by various insidious technological developments. the simple life looks better and better. just before the tour n. and i got trapped for 36 hours in our little house by a nor'easter that drifted over our driveway among other places. at the same time we ran out of propane and so we had no hot water and could not use the gas range. we ended up cooking all-day soups on the woodstove and even discovered that one can fry eggs on the woodstove; it's slow going, but the eggs come out REALLY GOOD. and what of the big wide world? there's something about experiencing it alone in silence, something of beauty or ugliness, craziness, loveliness, and NOT rushing off to share it right away, those things crystallize in the soul, they are another angle in the secret prism of the soul, refractive, illuminating. with the telephone we spill the sap before it turns sugar. in any case i better begin to practice this little sermon now by warning anyone who calls me that i'm planning to keep my phone off as much as possible until i am finally able to give it up forever... with love, anais.

cells Sun, Feb. 18 2007 very. sleepy. in this moment in Pennsylvania. tomorrow I will write a real missive. funny thing my cell phone is broken and I am enjoying it SO much, driving the snowy highways, listening to albums, not knowing what time it is and not caring, writing things in the notebook to be reckoned with later. it may well be that cell phones are speeding the devolution of the culture, just thought I’d throw it out there. I could elaborate. too tired though. tell you tomorrow

ironism Thu, Jan. 11 2007 Last night we watched David Byrne’s movie TRUE STORIES. It was really pretty great and it seemed ahead of its time in that it involved themes of corporate consolidation and American consumer culture that became widespread in the nineties, but the movie was made in 1986. N. said that maybe those ideas were there all along and we were just too young in the eighties to understand them, which could be true. Still David Byrne must have been a voice in the wilderness. TRUE STORIES was kind of a cousin film to NASHVILLE in my mind. I was moved more deeply by NASHVILLE, but I love the Talking Heads and have a feeling that David Byrne has/had something very special and un-nameable to teach us. Then we got into a talk about “what is irony?” which has come up before and I have never completely understood. TRUE STORIES is about some of the darker aspects of our society but never do we get a feeling like D. Byrne (the narrator) is judging or finger-pointing or making a simple condemnation. He narrates the whole story in his crazy deadpan optimistic voice, and indeed there is a lot of beauty in the film despite its grotesque elements… the woman who has so much money she never leaves her bed… the malls and housing projects taking over the open fields of rural Texas… On the other hand it is not a sarcastic film, it’s not like D. Byrne is saying, “American consumer culture is so great” and we are all supposed to understand he means the opposite. To my ears there is not an ounce of sarcasm in D. Byrne’s narrative voice. Some would say it is an ironic movie. Last night I maintained it was definitely NOT ironic but I think I may have be confused about that word and what I meant was it was not sarcastic. I understand the classical definition of irony, which can be explained via tiny vignettes (“an old man turned 98…” thank you Alanis). But people are always referring to this or that as ironic and it means something slightly different. And somehow I’ve come to really look down on this idea of “irony” and blame it for a lot of “the problems” of our culture today even though I don’t quite know what it is. Because I associate it with A. sarcasm and B. not saying what one means, not meaning what one says, not wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve and C. an attitude of looking down on the story one tells (or the life one lives) from a critical distance instead of diving in and inhabiting the story to its fullest emotional and spiritual extent. And I associate ironists with like the critics in the arts section of certain big urban newspapers, and more generally those people whose favorite occupation in life is to cut others down to size, to belittle their dreams, and to pin their ART as it lives and breathes to the wall with a tiny placard next to it that explains with condescending brevity how it fits or doesn’t fit into today’s society. BUT you see how I am getting carried away and it is quite possible that this is not irony at all I’m describing, but something else entirely. Whatever it I'm against it. If anyone has any thoughts on this please let me know.

mishmash Sat, Dec. 30 2006 I had a thought about the corporate music industry which I don’t really have evidence for but it was kind of begun in another post in a very confused way and then I had some other ideas about it and I thought I’d write them. It has to do with androgyny and the fact that a lot of rock stars of the past had an androgynous thing going… to me I could almost see it going back to like the castrati that used to sing opera… but then for sure a lot of classic rock guys, while they were very masculine energetically, also had long hair, were at the forefront of the long hair thing, and the tight pants, there was Mick Jagger, and then later of course Michael Jackson, Prince, and a bunch of eighties bands, Patti Smith representing the women’s side (there must be more right…?), okay, are you feeling me? There’s also something thrilling about a vocalist you can’t quite tell the gender of, like MJ, or certain Motown guys, or Tracy Chapman, or my friend Jesse Aycock who lives in Tulsa (check him out) has another of these rare post-gender voices that cut right through the noise and straight to the heart. So anyway I’ve always had this feeling like the corporate music stars used to be WEIRD, totally bizarre freak-out kind of people, and that society understood that a musician was something different than a supermodel or a Hollywood celebrity, but that nowadays that distinction is less respected and we get these people that look as beautiful and generic as they sound, and they don’t freak anyone out in the least. And so then it hit me that maybe the problem is that the corporate world has become a bit afraid of androgyny, that their girls are too girly and their boys are too boyish and there is not enough overlap to make for a compelling cultural icon (let alone compelling art). I know so little about the corporate scene that I’m not really qualified to make this statement but someplace in myself I believe it to be true and it seems insidious and dangerous for kids to grow up thinking women are like this and men are like that. I have to add though that the modern folk world is kind of an interesting case as well… I would say in some ways that the modern folk world is also a bit straight-laced as far as gender goes… these are sweeping statements but there ya go… in some ways, where the pop world has in the past embraced androgyny in MEN but not so much in women, the folk world has done the opposite, there are TONS of butch women in folk but not a lot of men bending it… anyway I’ll think more on this. There’s a good reason for androgyny and creativity going together and Virginia Woolf said it in A Room of One’s Own. SO Holidays wow. The new year is yet to come and already I’m socially exhausted. We had four family dinners plus one tea in three different states. What happened… it snowed finally… Thomas The Mouse systematically caught and killed nearly all of our glass tree ornaments… N. & I finished reading Anna Karenina which we’ve been reading for like a year and a half, always aloud and mostly on driving trips. A really beautiful book, full of casual moments of blinding insight into human experience. Russia becomes more and more curious and exciting all the time. If I ever complain again about the trials of writing a three-and-a-half minute song you can hit me over the head with a big fat Russian novel. The next thing… as a gift to myself and with a kind of crazy optimism… I picked up Pity the Nation by Fisk, which I’ve been meaning to read for years, but it is another of these eight hundred pagers or what have you and my track record for these books is not good. But on beginning it I am completely swept away. It’s good to read about the real world, as tragic and incomprehensible as it is, as this book is about Lebanon in the 1980s, full of all kinds of figures and ideas I used to study in school and then conveniently forgot about in the happy vacuum of Vermont. In sad news, two of our chickens were eaten up while we were away. We thought it was three until N. discovered a live chicken hiding in some kind of discarded stovepipe. Thankfully there were no remains, just a lot of feathers, so I hope it was swift and painless and whoever got them enjoyed a full holiday meal. Also I hope it was a fox because I’ve seen some red foxes lately and admired them, and I’ve always been fond of “The Fox Went Out On A Chilly Night” in which the fox, who is usually vilified, is the protagonist, “and the little ones chewed on the bones-o.” A worse thing happened to my brother’s ducks, who we think were killed by a fisher-cat. In his case it was five out of six ducks and in more than one instance the fisher-cat decapitated the duck and left only the headless body of the duck with stiff little feet—that is to say, the fisher-cat killed for vicious glee and not for food. Chickens and ducks are so intrinsically funny and Far-Side-esque that it’s hard to talk even about their death with the right kind of seriousness, but the truth is it was very sad, we cried (well I did) and we felt guilty for not having protecting them more vigilantly. In any case, life is short, art is long, if you’d like to see the chickens I’m talking about, skip over to the links section of the website, and you will find links to two videos of the chickens on YouTube, both very artfully made. In music, etc. I am suddenly adrift. The opera was so, so fun and I think we did some great shows. We will do more, I’m hoping for fall ’07, once we figure out the next move creatively. Sputnik scrambled together a brave new set with many new songs, some of my favorites being “Money Changes Everything”, “Diggin’ in the Dirt”, “Train in Vain,” and “Once in a Lifetime”. Tomorrow we are going to play in my old hometown of Bristol, VT, as part of the Five Town Massive arts festival that happens every year there, run by these guys I went to high school with, who are doing a beautiful and honorable thing with the Massive. But as for Anais Mitchell shows, I have not played one in a while, so I think I have some work to do before I can go on tour again. Feliz 2007.

rbr & hadestown Mon, Dec. 11 2006 well since it is now in the news section... and since it is up on their website... i suppose it is safe to announce here that righteous babe records is putting out THE BRIGHTNESS in february! HOLY F***ING S**T! is the only way i can think to express the honor and excitement i feel about this. i could say all kinds of things about it and perhaps i will do that later. but for now i'll just say HOLY F***ING S**T! because it's one of these things like if you had told thirteen-year-old me, stumbling over the chords of "both hands" with little uncalloused fingers, or fifteen-year-old me learning to drive a car and listening compulsively to NOT A PRETTY GIRL, or seventeen-year-old me with my very first devastating heartbreak sobbing over "untouchable face", and on and on, that this brilliant woman with her finger on the political and emotional pulse of a generation would someday put out a record of mine, i'd have... i dunno what... something drastic. so that is all i have to say about that at this point. much respect and gratitude. HADESTOWN. i don't want to deconstruct it or get nervous or proud or anything about it until the end of the run (we are still playing in vergennes next weekend and you should all come). i only want to say that i have had more fun putting this show together than i've had in a long, long time, because everyone involved is so wonderful and brilliant, that goes for my collaborators m. chorney and matchstick as well as the whole entire unbelievable cast. i feel like i'm in the middle of a passionate love affair and i can't eat or sleep right and i simultaneously want it to go on forever and know that it will be over soon aaaaaaaaaarrrrrr! that's all. happy holy-days. love anais

In Virginia Towns Sun, Nov. 12 2006 Jesus hangs around In Virginia towns In Virginia towns Jesus hangs around He hangs with the ladies in dust-smelling shops He hangs with the workmen wasting their time He hangs with the kids on the banks of the river All chilly and shining and flat as a dime In Virginia towns Jesus hangs around Jesus hangs around In Virginia towns He hangs around where the white clouds shift And the blue ridge beckons by cleft and by thrust He hangs around at the foot of the mountain In wainscoted houses gathering dust Jesus hangs around In Virginia towns In Virginia towns Jesus hangs around Lord have mercy on the lonesome traveler Lord have mercy on the lonesome sound Of the highway calling her sons back home To the lonesome towns where Jesus hangs around In Virginia towns Jesus hangs around Jesus hangs around In Virginia towns Jesus hangs around Jesus hangs around Jesus hangs around In Virginia towns

twitch Mon, Nov. 6 2006 I’ve just got through a manic cleaning of the house. wanting to leave it nice when I go on tour wednesday. honest work felt good after many long hours of opera writing and planning. this morning I wrote quite possibly the worst song I’ve written in years but didn’t realize it until I had recorded it and distributed it to members of the cast on the “finished” version of HADESTOWN. then when the long day was over n. and I sat down and listened to the opera start to finish twice and laughed hilariously during the new song both times. it was really terrible. but I may recycle that melody if I ever write songs for sputnik, our eighties cover band. I wonder if the song was influenced by “rent” which I watched the other night. I am a complete sucker for musicals and I was in a puddle at the end of “rent” even though there was much in the writing that I couldn’t abide, I mean “rent” is to like “Sweeney todd” what a hallmark greeting card poem is to Dylan Thomas, but no matter- “there’s only yes, there’s only this”- a puddle I tell you! also then I watched the whole bonus dvd about the poor man who wrote “rent” toiling away in obscurity in new york city for years and then, the night before the show opened, his heart just burst and he died. my kitten is sleeping on my lap (there’s room for him and the laptop) and his tail is twitching all over the place. WHAT DOES HE DREAM ABOUT? I’m crazy to know. tomorrow is election day. hopefully you all go vote. hopefully we take back the power mon and we can at least put the brakes on the freak machine. it will be my first time voting in our new town. hopefully I can find the place. and after that I will be on tour with my great friend rachel ries. she is from chicago, a beautiful woman, a beautiful writersingerplayer and especially exciting for me, a beautiful harmonist. she can cook a good meal and be counted on to drive through the night if one is sleepy. she can introduce one to hip young bands one would never hear of otherwise. we are going to pass through some great towns and play with some wonderful admirable people like birdie busch and devon sproule. who also cook better and know more bands than me. www.rachelries.com www.birdiebusch.com www.devonsproule.com what else to report? as greg brown says “the moon is as round as a banjo.” I had the great honor of opening for the master himself the other night in lexington mass. it was great to meet him face-to-face without his shades or visor. I learned various backstage secrets about him which I shan’t divulge on the internet. I used to listen to that song about his grandma and weep. everyone needs a song about their grandma. there is some powerful poetry in his new songs... an abstractness almost… go out and get his latest record “the evening call.” salud amigitos.

sputnik & hadestown Mon, Oct. 23 2006 hello friends! this weekend SPUTNIK is going to open for MAD DUB at the masquerade ball at Langdon street cafe. sputnik is our eighties cover band; me, n., sara grace & jay ekis are in it for this show (the band shifts personnel a bit, well just the guitar player really, but I really like j. and I hope he stays with us, though he is involved with a lot of bands including this iron maiden cover band, anyway he is awful sweet and has a great ear and at our first rehearsal he jumped right in singing vocals on little red corvette, it was really something). speaking of which. there is nothing like the lyrics of the eighties. much of the time they make no sense (ex. “you look so fancy I can tell!” “killer… diller… chiller… thriller!” “color me your color baby color me your car!”) and then at times they are so vivid you can’t bear to listen to them for EXAMPLE: “I guess I must be dumb cuz u had a pocket full of horses, Trojans, & some of them used”. not only a bad pun, but can somebody tell me WHY this woman is going around with a pocket half-full of used condoms? is she saving them for something? not that I’m knocking it I mean that is a great f-ing song. it just makes you wonder. man it is so fun playing synthesizer. I barely know how to do it but each time we have a show (which is not very often) I learn something new and interesting. anyway come to the show! all of you. we open at 9. show is on 10/28 and a costume party. also a lot of other news. hadestown. it is all happening man and I am now going to copy paste the press release which is a little dorky as press releases are but it has all the info and I want you all to know. and with that I’ll leave you until next time, xo, anais. For Immediate Release October 20, 2006 ANAIS MITCHELL, MICHAEL CHORNEY, MAGIC CITY AND BEN T. MATCHSTICK TEAM UP TO PRESENT NEW FOLK OPERA HADESTOWN, BASED ON THE TRAGIC GREEK MYTH OF ORPHEUS & EURYDICE HADESTOWN TO DEBUT IN VERMONT THIS DECEMBER THE PERSONNEL: written and produced by Anais Mitchell (Hymns for the Exiled, The Brightness) arranged by Michael Chorney (viperHouse, Orchid, Seven Deadly Sins) for Magic City directed by Ben T. Matchstick (Bread & Puppet Theatre, Insurrection Landscapers, Cardboard Teck Instantute) THE PERFORMANCES: Old Labor Hall in Barre, VT Friday, December 8th at 8pm Saturday, December 9th at 2pm & 8pm tickets $10 in advance / $15 at the door available from the Barre Opera House box office- 802-476-8188- www.barreoperahouse.org and the Langdon St. Café in Montpelier Vergennes Opera House in Vergennes, VT Friday, December 15th at 8pm Saturday, December 16th at 2pm & 8pm tickets $10 in advance / $15 at the door available from the Vergennes Opera House box office- 802-877-6737- www.vergennesoperahouse.org THE PRODUCTION: For centuries, the tragic Greek myth of Orpheus & Eurydice, in which the lyre-playing Orpheus descends into the underworld and attempts to win back his fallen bride Eurydice through the power of music, has been mined by artists from all corners of the world – a testament to its depth and universal appeal. Anais Mitchell’s Hadestown, created in collaboration with composer Michael Chorney and director Ben T. Matchstick and supported by the Vermont Community Foundation, brings this timeless story into a contemporary context that is poetically, musically and visually fresh. Debuting in Mitchell’s native Vermont, the folk opera takes its inspiration from Depression-era America: the underworld is not the land of the dead but an exploitative company town; Hades is a sadistic wall-building boss-king whose wife Persephone moonlights as the proprietress of a speakeasy; and Orpheus wields not a lyre but a banjo. But the opera is not so much a history lesson as it is a rich patchwork of artistic vision, social commentary and raw human emotion. Old-fashioned symbols of poverty and exploitation are fused with a kind of futurism — albeit a clunky, analog, “vintage” futurism (think post-apocalyptic Jeunet/Caro films City of the Lost Children and Delicatessen) — which prompts reflection on just how much we’ve evolved (or devolved) as a society since the 1930s. Above all, Hadestown is a love story – a love story exploring what becomes of the human condition under the most tragic and trying of circumstances.

phil collins Thu, Sep. 28 2006 i really love phil collins. i wouldn't even call it a guilty pleasure because i'm not ashamed. just felt like putting that out there.

austin Thu, Sep. 28 2006 what a beautiful trip with d.! chicago to austin in eight shows. d. is really a genius i am going to quote you some of his lines here: "o clearwater tick tock tickyticky tock the gift of life in a plastic bottle... a little bitter but i ain't bothered filled my glass from the tap like the asked and it tastes just fine safe for now now is just a matter of... time" and "people pitched me pennies and they pounded on the glass then they left to see the painted man and i left to pack my ass good goddamn another empty town goddamn another shell goddamn cuz when i ride back home i'm a stranger there as well" anyway i could go on but you should just buy the record: www.dannyschmidt.com. unlike other trips i feel MORE energized than when i began and like a big kick in the ass to write. i'll tell you some beautiful towns in the country. fairfield iowa. lupus missouri. tulsa oklahoma. don't go writing conde naste or nothin but dayamn there are people in these towns who know how to live right and get things done without acting like they're trying to get things done. austin goes without sayin. after the cactus last night we rolled down to momo's to see my friend c. in his band "the heathens". they were great with like five part MAN harmonies and everything. it was me and d. and my old friend g. from the republic of georgia. a beautiful man, kooky and smart with thick glasses and a spring in his step. me and g. used to deejay at our college radio station back in the day, o latenight leonard cohen, electronic adagios, the night all chilly and pretty and the cafeteria coffees, the piles of unreviewed albums, both of us underage, beer being more fun then than ever again, g. and i used to write poems, his gothic and epic, mine youthful and brief. i never have enough time with anyone but maybe it's most beautiful that way. soon i'll be home with n. and our kitten: "mouse". apparently i missed his formative weeks and he is an adolescent now. cheers-- anais.

like the best artists are androgynous at heart Tue, Aug. 29 2006 last week was a great week. session americana came to the cafe thursday and rocked really REALLY hard! then friday was rose polenzani and fdr- brilliant. i made a giant pot of borscht so no one could say i was not a good wife. late friday night after the show f. had his heart set on recording a song with everyone at the party. i dug out my neglected mbox and microphone and f. set about recording in multi-multi-tracks what was in fact a collective and creative effort. my turn came though to lay down something and i suddenly became cross with f. and his big plan because i always seem to freeze up when called on to improvise. but finally i did sing something. i used to have a whole theory about how men and women's creative processes were related to their biological apparatus, that men cast many seeds in a great bukowskian splooge, most of them missing the mark but some of them bullseyeing and blossoming, while women were more likely to incubate one idea for months and only bring it to the light of day with a fair amount of struggle. in fact i think it is not true but it makes a certain amount of sense for me. that's why i don't always trust my brethren who are big bukowski men. and like the best artists are androgynous at heart as virginia woolf said in that book of hers, so what does that mean? the dark is falling outside this terrible restaurant. i come here because the wireless is good and the food is bad so none of my friends come in and i can work uninterrupted. boy it is me me me all the time in this blog. meanwhile in the middle east... goodnight and good luck. p.s. i am attaching below an essay i wrote about fdr. i was going to revise it to be a bit less starry-eyed but to hellwithit, why not have stars in there. FDR FDR is the new incarnation of NYC songwriter Felix Mcteigue. He was incarnated when Felix embarked on what he called “a self-imposed, all bets are off, drive everyone in my life crazy, just for the hell of it” project to write and record fifty songs in the span of fifty days. When the smoke cleared, what emerged from his Herculean creative effort was a record called (of course) The New Deal, a thoroughly original d.i.y. masterpiece comprised of thirty-two songs on three separate discs. FDR engineered the record on his home equipment in addition to laying down all the instruments and harmony parts himself. I once heard him say, describing his role in producing a friend’s record, that he thought of arranging each song like rolling a tight little cigarette in order to get the nicotine (song) to the smoker (listener) as quickly and enjoyably as possible. This is a good way of thinking about FDR’s own album: it’s a pack of songs that are straightforward, joyful, and powerfully addictive. The songs are brief and refreshingly direct. Their economy (to use a cold word) must have come as result of the creative duress of the 50/50 project; there just wasn’t time to cloak the naked, beating heart of these songs in cleverness and sophistication. Musically, this means no-holds-barred melodies that seem to be all hook. The instrumental parts (and there are many instruments: drums, bass, guitars, piano, organ) range from the catchy to the sublime, and the hasty, lively way they’re recorded gives the whole record an exuberant, human, off-the-cuff sound. This is an especially beautiful and in fact novel thing when it comes to FDR’s use of electronic voicings and drum loops because he uses these digital tools as though they were lovable, fallible old acoustic instruments-- again, no time for the compulsive perfectionism and tranciness that are so easy to fall into with digital recording. Lyrically, the songs have an earnestness you’d be hard pressed to find in any genre today: “I can hear you breathing clear across town. I have learned to forget I have been let down.” Or: “Best time I ever had! Never felt more alive! Than driving with you darling on the FDR Drive!” When they venture toward the abstract, FDR’s lyrics take on the simple striking imagery of haiku: “Snowflake on the asphalt… Ice cube on the boardwalk…” Out of all of this FDR emerges as a sort of protagonist figure; a man who wears his heart on his sleeve without coming across as even vaguely emo; a manly, vulnerable, admirable character who knows who he is and what he wants and expresses it the best way he knows how. Here I’m reminded of something I read in an acting textbook by the Russian method actor Stanislavski years ago. The essence of it was that, contrary to the notions of many young actors, one can’t bring an audience to tears simply by acting sad. Only when an audience comes to identify with a character’s desire and that desire is unattained or thwarted does the audience come into the ecstasies of sorrow and rage the actor aims to inspire. FDR is above all, desirous. Also, he is optimistic, never giving way to the petulance and melodrama (“acting” sad) that bogs so much music down. He never succumbs to irony, that most supreme and fashionable form of cowardice. As his audience we don’t know whether FDR is a winner or a loser, whether he gets the girl, whether he is as free in reality as he is in his songs… but we want him to be! We want it badly because we see in his naked desire our own submerged ones! Their subterranean striving for the sun. “Spring can’t be stopped!” FDR’s contagious optimism is inspirational; it is also revolutionary. The process by which the album was made makes d.i.y. look good again-- like the liberating, empowering concept that it is and not like an excuse for bad cover art— Who says you have to be a drummer to play the drums? Who says you need a recording engineer? There is a joyful innocence in the way FDR mixes live instruments with digital ones that hearkens back to the early eighties, when digital recording technology was still new and delightful and hadn’t yet come, as it somehow did come, to represent the dark forces of modernity (are you with me?). Visa-vis the political realm, FDR did mention during one late-night conversation his feelings about the potential of the Democratic Party and what his namesake and the old New Deal represented to him. All shades of the left will appreciate the vital importance of breaking out of a reactionary political cycle in which we define our values only in contradistinction to those of the right. We must have a positive, rather than a negative platform—in politics as in life—and we must have balls! And we must have plenty of instruments we don’t quite know how to play, and play them anyway. FDR has all of these. Anais Mitchell Montpelier, VT Summer 2006

festivals Sun, Aug. 6 2006 i promised when the new site was launched i would be a better correspondent and here i go. reflections on a cool dark tweeting august night. played two festivals this weekend, one the champlain festival just twenty minutes from the place i grew up, which was as sweet as can be, the kind of wholesome i felt at the clearwater revival where a song is a song and it doesn't matter what kind of voice you've got or whether you play an instrument. the other was the third NEKMF festival in the kingdom. gogol bordello headlined and i saw part of their set which blew my mind and also made me tired. the bare-chested, mustachioed lead singer whacking the microphone, hopping around the stage, the two hot babes with bowler hats, stockings, washboards, the crazy-eye gray-hair fiddler. in the audience dozens of painted cardboard skulls were tossed around by a giant cardboard skeleton. wow wow. someone said something about NEKMF filling the void left when bread & puppet and reggae fest stopped putting on their big vermont shows. i see it. the kingdom is like no other place. i almost felt at home. n. and i took the first of many naps in the westphalia. a guy came up after one of the champlain shows to tell me he doesn't like when songwriters draw out one word or syllable over multiple notes (i do this i guess). at first i was indignant but there may be something to it and i've been conscious of it since, listening to other songs. it has to be done right i suppose like anything. festivals are tiring because of the sheer volume of human wakefulness. so many people so present so ready to talk. but they are beautiful for that exact reason. i think this weekend i may have gotten over my attitude about them (i used to call them track meets because of the heat, the short attention-spans, and the performance anxiety). viva summertime, xoa.

beautiful, thump-thump Tue, May. 16 2006 in bellingham, wa i did a surprise opening set for this wonderful environmentalist man named dana lyons. he had a big, big hit called "cows with guns" that was made into a children's book and published by penguin. it is a brilliant funny song that turned me back into a vegetarian for one night. r. and i walked to his truck in the dark. "i'm having a political reawakening!" i declared. "me too man!" said he and so we went to the casa de pasa where his beautiful dancing girlfriend awaited with her other friend drinking a hot toddy (my mother used to make these virgin for me as a kid in winter) and we ordered vegetarian and later dana lyons came by and told me i must absolutely pass through the redwoods on my way to california and hug them, and i said i would and now i am and this is why i am at the econo lodge of crescent city at the very northmost tip of 101. there they were, the redwoods, taller than anything, wider than anything, red and green and the ferny forest floor, it looked primieval (sp?), i expected to see dinosaurs at any second, possibly because i watched king kong en route to seattle, it was very moving the first time i saw it, but not the second time, though the first time i thought it summed up everything wrong with civilization and show biz and manhood, not to mention how as a woman sometimes you want a sensitive playwright to woo you with words, and sometimes you want a bellowing ape to break a predator's jaws apart to save your life and then to hold you gently in his (opposable) fingers as the sun sets over the crags. as i say the redwoods are beautiful. oh space of the west. oh people of the west who use their bandanas for napkins and recoil in the face of styrofoam. forgive me for i have joined the bitter ranks of the great disillusionment. pry me from the jaws of the busy cynical monstrosity of the northeast, hold me in your massive palm as night falls on california. "beautiful". thump-thump. in between i went through portland. portland! memories flooded back, hawthorne, the red & black, mississippi studios, mississippi pizza, my heart ached with nameless nostalgia, i saw the attic room where i stayed once, the child's chair, the desk that had the typewriter, i drank a glass of wine and watched a children's film called "nanny mcphee" in the baghdad theater, just to do it, i remembered forgotten lonesome scenes in bars, one bar with a shuffleboard and a sign that said "shrimp scampi: $2.50" which amused me and i asked about it just to see what kind of shrimp scampi could be had for $2.50, but they had stopped serving. i was alive then as ever. in portland i played an in-the-round show with two geniuses and tried not to envy their genius but only take it in like through my little gills. there is genius enough for everyone. cheers all.

good night and good luck Sun, Apr. 9 2006 n. asks me to bring vinyl home from every tour. i was only away a few days this time but i did get to stereo jack's across from the cambridge common and found an original copy of highway 61 revisited which i don't think we've got. listening now on a sunday night in the attic room, digging the off-the-cuffness of it, at least it sounds off-the-cuff, one never knows. this was quite a weekend, scenes shifting one to the other rapidly, little windows on the worlds of old friends, i mean it is just staggering what is HAPPENING all at the same time, the attic rooms, the undisclosed locations, the infinite underground bars and revelations forgot, all the captives and fugitives in this vertiginous world. "she speaks good english and invites you up into her room" OH! i watched "good night and good luck" late in the night. r. mckee might not have been impressed with the story but it was beautiful anyway and i ate it up, the black and the white, the journalists who love the truth at all costs, suspenders, swivel chairs, mccarthy looking like a charismatic psychopath with his receding hairline and spittle, the corruption that never has and never will go out of fashion. well, journalism is the most honorable profession i know. "everybody is making love or else expecting rain" OH! one day i too will wear suspenders and chain smoke. i knew a writer once who wrote songs while watching movies out of the corner of his eye. i wrote a song about it like "i knew you when i saw you watching movies in the dark." it's all i remember of the song. there was a rhyme with "the maker made his mark" i remember that. a little trouble focusing here. the record wants flipping. going to leave you with that- cheers- anais

the north end Thu, Mar. 23 2006 i don't know why i never write this goddamn blog. i guess in my heart of hearts i am waiting for my brand new very compelling website to be finished before i commit to the blog. but i was reading rose polenzani's blog which she keeps regularly with all manner of poetic and intellectual essays and i got jealous of her blog, i'd say i got inspired but it was more like jealousy. tanks rose. i'm in boston. the friends i'm staying with have these real jobs where they really do have to wake up early and so they've gone to sleep. i'm wide awake on the couch, it may have something to do with the leftover treats i had just now from mike's pastries in the north end, full of cream and sugar they were and chocolate crumblies on the outside. it was a beautiful cold day to walk through the north end. we were forcibly dragged into a restaurant which was low on ambiance but high on food quality. "come in, come on, yes, follow me, i remind me of you, into the dining room, here, these are my cousins" said the friendly proprietor as we were drug inside. i remembered the first time i realized that national geographic was weird. all my childhood i'd read articles about namibia and sri lanka and okay, i didn't REALLY read the articles, but enough to get a sense, and looked at the pictures. i always thought it was a perfectly objective magazine, but then they ran this article about the north end, where i had actually been, and i saw how those guys had melodramatized it up and down, and i can only assume it was the same with namibia and sri lanka but that i was none the wiser. i've been re-reading robert mckee's book "story" which is a screenwriting textbook i got in college. it starts off brilliantly all about the story as a veryvery old, pre-aristotelian form of cultural catharsis, but then it gets very specific and a little compulsive for me. but i'd recommend it to any writer. look at this passage: "a culture cannot evolve without honest, powerful storytelling. when society repeatedly experiences glossy, hollowed-out, pseudo-stories, it degenerates. we need true satires and tragedies, dramas and comedies that shine a clean light into the dingy corners of the human psyche and society. if not, as yeats warned, 'the centre can not hold'." well now i've made myself sleepy. catch you on the flip.

jingle jangle Fri, Nov. 25 2005 it’s the day after thanksgiving, day of consumption, and in the north country lots of us celebrate “buy nothing day”. so none of my friends was buying anything, nope, they was busy making beautiful things out of papier-mache and recycled fabric and heating up leftovers and conspiring all kinds of fun and radical ideas and going outside for another log to put on the fire. but me I went to the mall. I didn’t even mean to do it, I found myself at the mall under the practical guise of a trip to lenscrafters and then as often happens, I found myself buying expensive corporate underwear right there at the mall on buy nothing day. santa claus was at the mall and this time he had a bald elf with him. little kids were getting on his knee and telling him what they wanted and then click went the digicam. there was a huge, very conical tree covered in blue lights. and young girls in tight jeans and sweatshirts, highlights in their hair, naked-faced, with boyfriends not as attractive as them, walking uncomfortably, brashly, arm-in-arm. tired-looking women in the food court where I used to get hot dogs from A&W but now there is no A&W. and a smell in the mall like the smell of my adolescence. experimentations with hair-removal cream and sample perfumes, something to make the blonde parts blonder and the tan parts tanner. a plastic pallet of eye-shadow that crumbled into nothingness on the bathroom shelf. je ne regrete PAS. but when I came home the huge caterpillar puppet was nearly assembled. I snuck in with my contact lenses and corporate underwear. I must admit I left the pink corporate bag in the passenger seat of my car because I was shy. i'm glad this is my world. now what do you think of that bruce springsteen version of “santa claus is coming to town”? I was scoffing at it, having just watched this dvd about the making of “born to run”, it suddenly seemed so lame and easy, until n. said, “well, there’s no better version of that song!” which is true. put a candle in the window people. soon enough, -a.

richmond Tue, Nov. 15 2005 i'm in richmond at the tiny beautiful house of dear louis. the appliances are pea-green. the liquor cabinet is dark red-black. rosie is mostly white and she is my favorite dog in the world; our hearts beat as one. i like richmond, the billboards, the clocktower, the bridge where louis pointed out belle isle. once i thought of moving to richmond. once my feelings were hurt on a back porch in richmond. the sun breaks over richmond like an egg. i'm on tour with my three friends, the tin pan caravan. each night is different and more fun than the last. i'm humbled and awe-struck by the songs of these friends, they are true artists, they take care and are brave with the language, they break free of the moorings, they work hard and they do it for love. a breath of fresh air! last night was our one night off. we went to a brilliant restaurant called mama zu’s. a semi-famous writer once said that sex was a unique human activity because “you just want to get it OVER with, as slowly as possible.” fine dinners are the same way. the pleasure of lingering is cut with the desire to cram the mouth. we made a lot of toasts. when it was finally over we went to the Laundromat. and when that was over we went to a couple of bars and finally ended up singing karaoke, which of course looks easy but is actually hard. you don’t get to pick your key. there is not much room for subtlety. after we had all sung once we felt we needed another chance. I had my heart set on a supremes song, but the dj spurned us, saying he already had too many submissions and it was getting late. have you seen the drawings of woody Guthrie? I went to a panel about them this weekend. it was the saving grace of a difficult music conference. on top of everything woody Guthrie was a brilliant visual artist. and he wrote erotic letters to women who didn’t even want them. admirable!

chicagoooooo Sun, May. 1 2005 hi people. problems with the blog, problems with the blog, hope this goes through. so much has passed through my rearview lately, it's hard to extract one blogworthy scene. there was a ukrainian bar in east buffalo full of left-leaning conspiratorial types and perogies and borscht and russian beer. i sang there and spoke my two or three phrases of russian (language of the oppressor) which are like, "please, i want to drink wine", "where is red square?" and my favorite- "maybe later..." there was a bar in pittsburg with beer in aluminum bottles and a midget who worked every saturday night. he had answered an ad in the window saying "midget wanted". my darling friend said in his excitement to the bartender "people in pittsburg don't give a f***!" and the bartender said, "exactly!" cool bars exist in a certain constellation. in pittsburg we drove the winding raised highways, the grinding semis and rusting iron railings and urban water beneath us, i burned candles on my dashboard. there was also vermont, lambs dropping on green grass, shivering and slimed. and i am in love, but i shan't talk about it on my blog as it is too dear to me to talk about. next, i tour with darling rachel ries to texas. she has a new record and she's gonna be huge. texas waits with gaping open maw. hot stinking texas where you can buy an individual chilled can of beer at a gas station (not that anyone drinks and drives) and where men still call me "sweetheart" without a trace of irony. where the rivers are wide and brown and just the right temperature for swimming. today i am thinking the country is too large and diverse to make any generalizations about. i used to love generalizing back in college, it made sense to think of the culture as heading unhinged, desenfrenado, down one greasy hellbound track, but it just ain't true. old men in tollbooths are kindly. christians keep putting up weird pithy signs like "got jesus?" and sometimes it is funny. people work hard and drink a lot. the leftists congratulate each other and swap buzzwords. the machine rumbles on day after day. some people beg for their livelihood, some work for corporations and go to the gym. everyone feels guilty about something or other. i am mostly quite happy. i'm working on being direct with people, honesty as the best policy. part of that means going ahead and weirding people out if i am in a weird mood. who are you readers, out there in the ether? come to my shows. hello anonymoses and all you weird bloggers out there. hello mama and papa, hello frogs. life is beautiful, gas is expensive! tonight the tin pan takes the stage in chicago... chicago is as windy as they say... WHOOSH! love anais.

archives Sun, Dec. 12 2004 March 21, 2005 first day of spring hello brotherly and sisterly lovers. somebody told me that the tourism industry was trying change the city motto from "the city of brotherly love" to something less "gay-sounding". i don't think it worked, but i was searching about it online and i found this funny thing about how virginia, based on some of its ridiculous anti-gay legislation, ought to change its motto from "virginia is for lovers" to... "virginia is for procreative sex between married heterosexuals in the missionary position with the lights off" or "virginia... this ain't massachusetts" or "virginia... thanks for not being gay"... mwa! anyway. i'm in philly this morning, i'll be in virginia tonight. it's overcast but it is now officially spring and i'm driving down into the heart of it, where the bubbly springs bubble and the smokies are smokin' and i can clean my poor darling car who has had cold little feet all winter. i went on gene shay's radio show last night (wxpn) which i've been wanting to do for a long time. the man is an angel, also he has a bunch of adorable interns. also while in this fair city i got to do a philadelphia folksong society house concert, which was really something. as SOON as my set was finished the society broke out their instruments and began several different campfires in different rooms of the house, without the fires, of course. in any case folksingin' is alive and well in philadelphia. and now... and now... it's monday morning, i go to play my gracious host's incredibly beautiful martin guitars, and then to push off. until soon, anais. march 12th, 2005 the pursewarden affair hello people. greetings from the turnpike motel in southern maine. i NEVER stay in motels because i really canât afford it, but i was driving along, wondering how to get in touch with a friend who could put me up, thinking how the new england winter really messes with the great american dream of *living in oneâs car*, when it called to me from the side of the highway in vacant neon tones. i took a room for two nights- a gift to myself- my birthdayâs coming up! itâs beautiful here, clean and warm and silent except for the neutral sound of traffic, like wind or surf. motel owners are so darling. if the music career doesnât pan out youâll know where to find me. and itâs so GOOD to have a room of oneâs own, itâs got me writing, itâs got me wishing i could stay forever! i am quite happy today. i have these peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. i have this harmonica. i have this bottle of wine and no corkscrew and i may in fact have to push the cork in... gram parsons has a line: ãspend all day at the holiday inn, trying to get out of bed...ä o, pursewarden have mercy on my heart! maybe i donât want to call it ãartä just because you nailed it to the wall maybe iâm a critic after all! what news? i spent a good deal of time at home in vermont last month. there were some auspicious goings-on, for example, the buddha-lamb was born. there was one very old ewe ãmarked for deletionä (i mean that lovingly, not disrespectfully) that escaped from my dad whilst he was trying to put her in the truck along with ten old ewes bound for the slaughterhouse. she was wily enough that my dad gave up and let her stay on another year. somehow this ewe got pregnant much earlier than the others, and gave birth last week to a single ram lamb in the freezing dark of night. my brother, who happened to be walking up the drive-way at night, heard the lambâs cry and went up to the field to see, and there was this lamb, alive against all odds, with his old mother who had no milk. so my fambly took him into the house and fed him by bottle until they found some young unsuspecting 4-H person to take him on. the whole thing smacks of good omen-ness. springtime, faith, etc. but here in maine thereâs a blizzard on. itâs dark in the middle of the day. and i am a wintry tumbleweed. this is a weird time of my life in which every few days i resolve that i must absolutely move to some big metropolis immediately. and i announce these intentions to everyone i meet, but havenât made it happen. um... what else... all youse in the south, i am coming for you, check the calendar. my big jolliest wishes to all. January 29, 2005 vermont, the independent republic of oooooooo, vermont is cold, cold, cold as can be, "cold as a witch's tit," as my godmother always says. i come home and all is as i left it. o little green subaru of my heart! o tights and sweaters long neglected! my parents dancing barefoot to bluegrass at the american legion hall. my brother and susannah working stealthily away at various radical and studious pursuits. grandpa at dinner in his bathrobe and the bright red tarbush i brought from cairo, grandma delivering plate upon plate to the table, recipes gleaned from far and wide. and outside the glitter of sunlight and icicles, the sheep and the sheepdog indistinguishable, the drive plowed, the evergreens ever-optimistically nodding their branches "yep, mmm-hmm, ayuh." egypt recedes in the memory like a falling watermark. i haven't been thinking about w. very often. the initial shock of his re-election made me turn to other news, other ideas, other public figures, in a fit of disbelief and maybe denial that he was STILL THERE, his face was still all over television and would be there throughout most of my twenties. just before i left cairo i had this angel of a cab driver. he shared his sunflower seeds, we had a sweet and spirited conversation about how the american and egyptian peoples are brothers; we agreed about how "fi farq kabir bain ash-sha'ab wa al-hokuma" (there is a great difference between the people and the government) and etc. he is totally down with the sha'ab al-amriki. happy silence. then he says without a trace of anger but only sorrowful confusion, "but... tell me one thing. the american people VOTED for w. a second time. why did they do that?" oh, why? i mumble something about the problem of business being in bed with government, the problem of the big media. "the big media are owned by..." "jews?" "no, not jews, but... moneyed people, you know." and on and on. his sweet animated face under a woolen cap. mouthful of smoke and sunflower seeds. his question ringing in my ear: WHY did the american people vote for w. a second time? how exhausting it is, having to look like IDIOTS abroad. last year it was all fine and good to say the election was stolen, to commiserate even with europeans re: this analysis. but this time it is front page, bold headlines, no doubt, america votes destructive arrogant idiot into office- A SECOND TIME. why? "moral issues," or, "the influence of the christian right," or "the influence of neo-conservatism," or "the failure of the vote-counting machines..." yada yada. all of the arguments eating their own little tails. most of all, it probably comes down to FEAR voting w. back into office. o america. we will have to be very brave these next years. we will have to figure out how to be brave, because i think there will be plenty of fear- justifiable AND manufactured- to go around. i was planning to wax eloquent on your asses but in fact i am suddenly half-asleep. anything else to report? well... my mom and i are going on a fad diet tomorrow. please don't inform the righteous sisterhood. i am busily booking the spring and summer and if you have any exciting gig ideas, don't hesitate to contact me. today i am listening to early simon & garfunkel, and father simon has a sermon for us all. it is above and beyond the kind of line anyone is allowed to write these days. it goes as follows: "life, i love you. all is groovy." put THAT under your pillow tonight. ~deine anais. Posted by Anais at 05:32 AM January 20, 2005 censorships such a morning like no other morning! get this. so i ended up doing this interview egyptian television, a brief interview on a cultural program set up by a journalist i met at a party. i had to wake up at an unheard of hour to get to the station, it was just getting light, the streets were empty, but outside the mosque near my apartment there was a crowd praying in the street. today was a huge holiday, eid al-adha, when animals are slaughtered according to hilal and everyone eats too much meat. i walked several blocks to find a cab. people were in full, generous holiday spirit, very sweet, an old man offered me a cookie, i offered him a section of tangerine. the interview was in arabic, not really my strong suit, and i'd been trying for the past 24 hours to figure out how to say something in this interview that is "SHWAYA siasia"- a LITTLE political- that could express my own opposition to american foreign policy in the region without sounding like an idiot or reinforcing anyone's knee-jerk anti-americanism. i felt it was an important gesture, no matter how tiny, not only to represent the diversity of american opinion but also be an example of how someone can (ideally) be critical of one's own government on TELEVISION! but it was kind of a balancing act; on the one hand i was thinking i ought not censor myself- "wwafd- what would anne feeney do?" is what was thinking- and on the other i had visions of ending up on the front page of some wierd islamist opposition newspaper. so i ended up with something like "i'm worried about the state of international politics, and the policies of my goverment in this region, i'm worried about the misunderstanding and distance between the american and arab peoples..." and for this reason, cultural exchange is important... yada yada, music as international language, yada yada... also i played a couple verses of the "two kids" song- hadn't planned to, but i was describing the collaboration with the syrian poet who wrote the second verse and the hosts asked me to. all in all it was very lovely and we talked most of the time about simple things, heart-as-opposed-to-head things. THEN it was the ripe old hour of nine a.m. and i was determined to witness some of the eid al-adha goings-on, so i took a cab to the saida zeinab district. there i first watched a huge ram get skinned and gutted completely. he was massive and he lay in a pool of bright red blood on the sidewalk with marbles for eyes. after the throat is cut and bled and the animal dies, a slit is made near one hoof and then a man blows into the slit as though he were inflating a balloon. and the animal DOES inflate- the skin separates from the muscle, then it is punched down like rising dough- and then the skinning commences. the young men doing the butchering wore jeans and rubber boots, no gloves. people were very kind and offered me free tea and cigarettes. i told them about our sheep farm. this was very interesting and pleasant. a few blocks away, at another shop, i watched the slaughter itself: this sheep had all four hooves bound, and he was very much alive when i arrived, i looked right into his eyes, and his nose was wrinkled in the way our ewes' noses wrinkle when they are in labor. the throat was cut, the blood came gushing out onto the sidewalk in front of my feet, but it took longer than i could have imagined for the animal to die- he kept kicking when the men tried to begin the inflation process. this was all fascinating, horrifying, inspiring, by turns. how is that in one instant, a beautiful, sentient, creature becomes MEAT? i marveled at this noble killing process happening right on the SIDEWALK, in broad daylight, little kids and entire families watching. even i, who grew up on