(Truth be told I’m writing this because I hate the idea of that last post being the first thing people see when they happen upon this blog…it really wasn’t very inspired, and it’s been sitting there for months now.  That being said, I don’t really have a whole lot to say, but I figure anything is better than a list of things I’ve eaten recently or bought at Goodwill).

************************************************************************************************

We had previously decided that we’d record an EP for our next release, but now we’re thinking it’s going to be a full length album.  But it’s going to be a little schizophrenic, or maybe bi-polar is a better mental illness metaphor in this instance.

Since receiving my banjo for Christmas it’s become my instrument of choice for writing…and I have some very fun and folky songs in development.  Then there are other songs which were originally intended for a concept album – but I really can’t be bothered to sit on them much longer, or try to come up with a whole album’s worth of  material which fits into the constraints of this concept – it seems a little tiresome, although I have great respect for anyone who has the focus and can commit to such an endeavor.  Anyway, these concept album songs are much darker, and might end up having quite a bit of synth/electronic elements in them.  Then there are some in-between songs we want to record like “Where Have You Gone,” “No Love,” “Better Off,” and our cover of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

So I guess we could put out two separate EPs, but that would mean doubling the duplication and promotional expenses, and quite frankly, I’d rather backpack around south east Asia…yeah, it costs that much.

Plus, I think good music is good music, whether it’s folk or indie rock.  The songs probably aren’t as different as I think they are, they all came from the same place, so how different can they be?

I am trying not to get frustrated with how slow this process is at the moment.  Although I am a lazy pot head I’m actually very results oriented – or maybe I’ve just learned from living in this world that the only things that matter are “results.”  But now that I just wrote that down, I realize how completely untrue that is, thank you WordPress!  These songs are awesome, writing them is awesome, playing them by myself, to myself, is mind-blowingly awesome – and is really the only thing that matters.  But I would love  you to hear them also.

Alright, guess I did have stuff to say!

I got a mass email from someone recommending that I go through this past year and acknowledge every accomplishment, usually I would be annoyed at being added to a mailing list without my permission, but I actually really like the idea.  This will probably make for a really dull blog entry, but if you watch “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” before reading this, it will seem like the most invigorating and exciting thing ever. (Seriously, I dare you to watch that movie).

So here goes –  2011: the good, the great and the awesome:

*Booked and embarked on a tour to Chicago and had an awesome time.

*Bought an Airstream.

*Played Falcon Ridge Folk Festival Emerging Artist Showcase, discovered a supportive and vibrant community of folk musicians and folk music lovers.

*Booked our longest tour to date and spent five weeks on the road playing shows in Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Ohio.

*Sold our furniture and left our apartment (hey, it’s an accomplishment!)

*Met John Platt from WFUV, got airplay and played in the studio.

*Played a Quad showcase at our first NERFA, met more awesome folk folks.

*Got a scholarship to attend out first Folk Alliance Conference in Memphis.

*Improved as a duo and gained confidence as a performer.

*Started designing websites (has nothing to do with music, but I’m adding it anyway).

*Got File Maker Pro (I told you this would be boring).

*Formed a jazz trio (Sadly, not called The Whispering Trio – we’re leaning towards “The Un Deux Trio”).

*Found some awesome pants at Goodwill last week.

*Decided I wanted to learn the banjo.

*Got a banjo!

*Discovered that you can order a vegan pizza from any pizza place – you just have to ask for no cheese…seems obvious now.

*Made a music video (I guess this should be closer to the top of the list, you can see where my priorities lie).

*Got a Kindle.

*Discovered that milk is not an ingredient in Green & Blacks 85% dark chocolate, even though its listed as an ingredient – it’s just processed on shared equipment!

*Watched 15 minutes of “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” and got my money back.

So, pretty great year!  I wholeheartedly recommend this exercise

I may have spoken too soon.

We’ve spent the past month formulating a Plan B.  When I say formulating, I mean swinging wildly back and forth between different options, then becoming dizzy and disheartened with all the swinging and deciding not to make any decision at all – hence the dead silence on the blog lately.

The short story is that despite our best efforts we just don’t really like living in a trailer.  If there weren’t several set backs in rapid succession we probably would have kept at it a little longer, but with the endless repairs and Elie being allergic to the trailer, the idea of continuing with this plan seems a little masochistic.  It was actually really comical the way in which everything went so terribly wrong – from the near truck collision on our first day and the broken lap top, to driving back to NY during a fluke October snow storm without a furnace, and our electrical plug (only source of heat) falling out while we were driving and being dragged along the road behind us until the prongs we’re all scraped up and bent.  We spent most of our time scrambling around trying to find our way out of one mess when another one would hit.

On top of all the mishaps, it also turns out that touring in a trailer is actually not cheaper than living in an apartment.  It would be cheap if we got a seasonal spot somewhere and didn’t move around too much, but then what’s the point?  We can’t even comfortably fit the keyboard in there – and even if we could, spending the winter at a trailer park, cramped inside a trailer  with our instruments at odd angles and Elie’s nose running uncontrollably doesn’t sound too inspiring to me right now.

On the bright side, we know what we don’t want – and we figured it out REALLY quickly  We also know what we DO want – but we’re just indecisive about the particulars (where, when, how).

Being the people we are,  we whole-heartedly committed to the No Plan B-ness of this whole situation and therefore have no furniture and no place to live at the moment.  Lucky for us we have generous friends and family to stay with for the time being.  I am REALLY looking forward to having a home again, at  the moment we’re leaning towards renting a place in the Hudson Valley…but I’m open to suggestions

Just got back from our first North East Regional Folk Alliance conference in upstate New York, and it was a truly inspiring and life affirming experience.  So many extraordinarily talented folk artists in one place – with performances throughout the day and into the wee hours of the morning – in big theatres and tiny hotel rooms.  Every morning I would wake up after four hours of sleep, and not because of my alarm, but because I had folk songs writing themselves in my head, and not Whispering Tree – style folk, but straight-up FOLK.  Very interesting, and very cool.  Thinking about songwriting in this style seems to have opened up a whole lot of new possibilities as far as subject matter and lyrics go.  I still haven’t taken the plunge and followed the many song trails to completion, but I feel like it’s still all working itself out in my head.

One of these folky songs which seems to be writing itself is about a story my aunt told me a few years ago, which I had never considered writing a song about before.  She was on a cruise ship with my grandfather, a Polish Jew who fled Poland during the war and joined the Royal Air Force when he was 17.  Anyway, they’re on this cruise ship eating dinner with a group of people they’d just met.  Somehow in conversation it comes out that one of the women at the table was from Germany and was in Dresden when the bombs were dropped, and my grandfather says something to the effect of, “I dropped the bombs on Dresden.”

My aunt said everyone else at the table was kind of stunned, but my grandfather and this woman were all very matter-of-fact about the whole thing…and there’s something so poignant about that scene for me.  Can’t quite wrap my mind around it, but hopefully I will be able to communicate it in song-form far more eloquently than I can with words alone.

Something about how the past really means nothing, no matter how traumatic, wide-spread or life altering it was.  Something about people of that generation reaching the end of their lives and how beautiful it is that they can look back without hatred or sadness.  Something about how so much falls under the blanket of “war,” about how no one is held responsible for what they do – because it’s WAR…and how, in a way, they really aren’t responsible for what they do, because THEY aren’t really  there.

I’m not sure if I’m conveying exactly what I’m trying to – let’s hope the song turns out better!

Another side effect of NERFA is that I’m dying to get into the studio again and put out some new(er) material.  We’ve got enough finished songs for an amazing EP – so I’m not sure of the logistics just yet, but I’m going to make that happen ASAP.

It’s been just over a month since we took to the road.  Still on the fence about the whole thing, but that’s really just because of all the unexpected repairs.  We’re coming up on the last leg of the first leg of our tour (meaning the point at which I got really bored with booking and stopped doing it).  Next week we’re heading back in the eastern direction with a radio show outside of Pittsburgh and a nice little run in upstate New York culminating in our showcase at The Northeast Regional Folk Alliance and a gig at Bar 4 in Brooklyn on 11/18…which brings me to our latest trailer drama:

Looks like we’ve got to replace the furnace.  We haven’t used it since the alarm went off, but luckily our brand new air conditioner has a “heat strip” in it which can keep you somewhat warm down to 38 degrees.  This wouldn’t be an issue if we weren ‘t going to be gigging in upstate New York and NYC through Thanksgiving – but if the temperatures drop too low our pipes might burst…and if that happens I might just turn on our furnace and fall asleep forever.

So the only option is to winterize the trailer until we can afford a new furnace and/or head back down south.  This entails flushing all the water systems out and filling them up with anti-freeze (or something like that)- which means that we won’t have any running water  BUT it would probably be too cold to shower anyway

Still, I’d rather be living in a broke down trailer than stuck in an apartment in NYC – not sure if that’s a reflection of how awesome trailer life is, or how terrible it is to live in the city… probably the latter.  There really is no better way to lower your expectations than spending a few years in New York City

So, Northeastern friends and family, we’ll be boondocking in your neighborhood soon!  See ya then!

To the three people who read this blog: I’m sorry to leave you hanging!

North Carolina was great.  I have another crazy story but I’m not sure if I’m allowed to share this publicly.  It involves a young man joining the armed forces straight out of high school after being assured that he was non-deployable, then realizing that there is no such thing as “non-deployable,” and the resulting ordeal involved in trying to get out of the army before being sent off to war.  Suffice it to say, it wasn’t easy but did make a very entertaining story.

After North Carolina we headed to Knoxville, TN…side note, did you know you could rent a two bedroom house in Knoxville for $500 a month? With a garden and a porch?  And Knoxville is a pretty awesome place – really small, but a TON of musicians there and music happening all over the place…and yes, vegan treats.

We played two great shows on WDVX, East-Tennessee’s public radio station based out of the visitor’s center in downtown Knoxville.  First, how cool is that?  Free, live music every day broadcast live from the visitor’s center!  I don’t know why more cities don’t adopt something like this; it’s great for tourism, great for local artists and great for attracting touring acts.  WDVX is so supportive of independent music AND they started out years ago in a travel trailer! You can check ‘em out here.

After four days in Knoxville we headed up to Ohio to visit our best friend, Ryan…and play a few shows.  Friday we were in Cincinnati and next Friday we’ll be heading to Athens for a show at one of our all time favorite venues, Donkey Coffee.

In trailer news, we got some new tires and our trailer started smelling like urine…probably unrelated.  I could really get used to this – not the urine part – but the living in a trailer.  Being on the road has a timeless quality to it, and I’ve lost all concept of time, which I actually really enjoy.

The other night our carbon monoxide alarm went off – we didn’t buy it, the previous owner just left it in there (pretty handy it turns out).  I wasn’t sure if it worked at all..usually there’s just a little green light that flashes sometimes – but the other night an alarm went off and the friendly green light switched to a red light.  This morning I realized that below the red light it says “move to fresh air.”  We didn’t move to fresh air, but we did open the roof vent and turn on the extractor fan and the air conditioner – to be honest, I was too tired to really care much about dying.  My only concern was that I would wake up next to Elie’s lifeless corpse, which I’m not sure I could deal with – but the thought didn’t keep me awake for too long…maybe it was the carbon monoxide.  So just in case we both die of carbon monoxide poisoning (because Elie will NOT be dying without me) take comfort in the fact that we died free and happy, and we do really enjoy our rest!

Well, week 2 has seen some drastic improvements.

We found a great airstream service place in Greensboro, NC and dropped our trailer there for a few days.  Good thing we found the leak, because it turns out the shocks were thirty years old and basically useless.  So they replaced the rotten flooring, the shocks, plugged up the leaks and holes in the frame, changed the leaky pipes AND we splurged and had an air conditioner installed.  So now we’re super fancy and can go to Florida and Texas without the risk of heat stroke associated with living in a large aluminum oven.  We burnt through most of our money way ahead of schedule, but it was money well spent.

Right now we’re parked at an RV/trailer park near the Carborro/Chapel Hill area in North Carolina.  We had a chance to chat with the trailer park owner, and it was really fascinating.  First, I had never heard an Asian immigrant with a mix of an Asian and Southern US accent – and it’s really awesome.  He’s from Vietnam, used to tour around the US with a band.  He fought in the Vietnam war against the US, his entire family was killed, they wanted to cut off his head but he managed to escape and spent three weeks on a boat without food or water.  In order to survive he ate dogs, cats, insects and eventually humans.  He says this all very casually and without a trace of self pity.  Sometimes I really wish I had a video camera strapped to my forehead, I’m sorry you missed it.

Right now we’re in a coffee shop in Carrboro waiting for our show tonight at Open Eye Cafe.  Really good coffee and vegan goodies.

In other news, we’ve got some new full-band live videos up.  One of our newer songs, “Better off” and our minor, gypsy-jazz take on “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”  Check ‘em out!

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Better Off

Apologies for the dead silence this past week…its been crazy.  Living in a 30 year old trailer has its challenges, as we’ve been discovering.  I was envisioning a relaxed, care-free lifestyle – lazily meandering down the highways and byways (what are those anyway?) of this crazy, beautiful country.  Needless to say, it’s been a kind of rude awakening.  It’s neither relaxing nor care-free…and we have a closer relationship with our sewage than I ever cared to imagine.

There’s a patch of rotten wood, a few pipe leaks and no power inverter (which means boondocking would be tough).  Oh yes, and Elie’s allergic to the trailer.  I’ve suddenly become aware of just how many things can go terribly wrong when you’re carrying your house on your back at 65 miles an hour.  Who knew this would all be so complicated?

So after our show today in Norfolk, VA we’re driving to Winston-Salem, NC to bring our trailer to an Airstream repair place.  We’ve got four shows in North Carolina and then on October 10th we head to Knoxville…so hopefully the trailer will be fixed by that time (at minimal cost!)  Until then, we’ll be homeless in North Carolina.

All in all, I can’t say yet whether I like this new lifestyle or not.  I don’t regret it, which is a good sign.  But I’m trying to withhold judgement for another few weeks.  We’re still adjusting.

On the upside, we got to spend some time in Richmond, VA, which is a place I would actually consider moving to.  It’s a really nice city; small enough and green enough to not feel overwhelming, but with tons of culture and arts.  Of course my main criteria for loving a place mostly depends on how vegan-friendly they are and how good the coffee is…and Richmond went above and beyond.  We played a show at a coffee shop called Globehopper-  BEST COFFEE EVER! I mean subtle, perfectly roasted, perfectly brewed, PERFECTION!  The only down side is that I had managed to lower my coffee expectations to the point that any old Starbucks could be, not good, but at least semi-palatable…well Globehopper has ruined all that.  The owner, Kimmy, is super nice and gave us these massive vegan chocolate cookie-concoctions stuffed full of peanut butter.  Oh Richmond, how I love you.  If you’re ever in the area, do yourself a favor and get a cappuccino at Globehopper and thank me later.

After shows in Charlottesville and Williamsburg, we’re now chilling at a Starbucks (damn you, Globehopper!) in Norfolk, awaiting our show tonight.

Then we’ve got to high tail it back to our campsite, dump (really not fun), and start driving to North Carolina.  We’ll probably spend our first night in a Walmart parking lot tonight – is it weird that I’m kind of excited about that?

——————-

Next stop: Norfolk, VA

Gigs so far: 5

Miles so far: 1319

We made it! We finally left our apartment 3 days ago and moved into our argosy trailer. The last 4 days have been absolutely crazy! I wanted to blog earlier but I couldn’t find any time to do so.

So here I am, sitting on the couch while Eleanor ‘s still sleeping, enjoying the quiet of the morning in a Pennsylvania campground in East Stroudsburg. We survived a crazy car crash on our first day driving (a truck rammed into a car and blew it to pieces because of a tree that had fallen on the road – right in front of me!); the holding tanks of our trailer started overflowing and dirty water came out of the shower hole; the trailer makes my allergies go on red alert and I must have used 3 packs of tissues a day for the last three days; we had forgotten some of our clothes and had to backtrack 200 miles to go get them; and we managed to play the first 2 gigs of our ‘No Plan B Tour’!

This has been the most adventure I’ve had in this last year, and i’m loving it! We’re still getting used to our change of quarters and I’m sure it’ll take us a while longer to get comfortable with our new lifestyle, but so far, even though it’s been hectic, we’re having a fun time (though Eleanor might disagree with my use of ‘fun’ )

——————-

Next stop: Philapdelphia

Gigs so far: 2

Miles so far: 531

Fourteen days to go until we’ll be living full time in a  trailer!!! So I wanted to take this time to write down our mission statement of sorts, to explain why we’re taking this drastic action (besides the obvious “because its awesome” reason) and what we hope to get out of it.

Short version:  Life is far too short to spend it doing anything other than what you love to do.

Long version:

We’ve been living in and around New York City for four and a half years now, and I’ve been here the majority of my life.  Maybe it’s just that we’ve been stationary for so long, but those four and a half years have all kind of blended into a big mushy ball…they really just flew by in a blur of relative same-ness, and I’d like the rest of my years on earth to be punctuated by more diversity and memorable experiences.

Now New York City might appear to be a really happening place in which to be an artist, and maybe it is for some…but not for me.  It’s taken me awhile to admit that I’m more of a tree/grass/river/mountain person than a concrete/traffic/rat person.  Living in the city, I would literally go outside my apartment building for a walk, get to the end of the block and turn back around (I swear concrete leeches energy from me), so I ended up spending  most of my free time holed up inside my apartment.   I find that the city tends to make me ultra self conscious… maybe its all the people.  People, people everywhere.  I do enjoy dipping my toes into the human pond, but on the whole I prefer a little more species diversity.  The city makes me feel like I’m living in a large insect colony of some kind (I’m not talking about the cockroaches) – like there’s a whole forest out there and I’m hanging out in the termite mound.

Then there’s the whole having to work a day job to pay your rent thing, it seems like it would make more sense to pursue an artistic career in a less expensive city.  The one and only underpriced thing in NYC is talent; no where else in the western world can you find such talented people willing to work for so little, if anything at all.  If I were a public policy maker I would come up with some kind of program to make life a little easier for artists here, and I would do it quickly before they all leave for greener pastures…because without artists New York City would just be a concrete wasteland full of hipsters, tourist attractions and Broadway adaptations of Disney movies.

Also, New Yorkers are a jaded bunch on the whole…its not our fault, it’s just that there is SO much happening everywhere, all the time, that you really start to tune it all out…that goes for everything; art, music, people you pass in the street.

When we went on tour, we would feel so free, happy and inspired.  The thought of returning to the city would leave us both with this heavy, uncomfortable feeling.  It was tangible; as soon as we’d enter New Jersey our moods would take a turn for the worse (insert New Jersey joke).  I think most people would agree that when the thought of returning home makes you bitchy, depressed and anxious, its a pretty clear indication that you’re not in the right place!

We’d talked about the idea of living some sort of mobile existence, but never very seriously .  Then during one of our annual camping trips in Montauk, these two gorgeous airstreams pulled up to the spot next to ours, and we spent the night gazing longingly at them.  I think that’s when the seed was planted.  We love travelling, we feel most alive when we’re exploring new places, and we hate feeling weighed down with belongings, jobs, rent, etc.  so I’m really surprised that it took us this long to go the nomadic route.

We started to realize that we didn’t want to “pursue” a career anymore…we didn’t want to spend our day-to- day lives working jobs that didn’t satisfy us,  in the hopes that one day we’d “make it” and be able to make a living off of our music.  So, what?  So, we cut our expenses as much as possible, make touring as economic as possible, and play as much as we can…basically, like the best slogan in the world says, we JUST DO IT!  I have no idea whether this will be a viable solution (not that there’s really anything to solve), or where it will take us…but I do know that at the very least it will be an adventure – and it feels like a life style which is far more in alignment with who we are and what we want our lives to look like!