Behind The Song: I Drink

(by Mary Gauthier and Crit Harmon) He’d get home at 5:30, fix his drink And sit down in his chair Pick a fight with mama Complain about us kids getting in his hair At night he’d sit alone and smoke I’d see his frown behind his lighter’s flame Now that same frown’s in my mirror I got my daddy’s blood inside my veins

Fish swim birds fly Daddies yell mamas cry Old men sit and think I drink

Chicken TV dinner 6 minutes on defrost, 3 on high A beer to wash it down with Then another, a little whiskey on the side It’s not so bad alone here It don’t bother me that every night’s the same I don’t need another lover Hanging round, trying to make me change

Fish swim birds fly Lovers leave by and by Old men sit and think I drink

I know what I am But I don’t give a damn Fish swim birds fly Daddies yell mamas cry Old men sit and think I drink

I am often asked how I came to write this song. People wonder how in the word I came up with it. Well, as is so much of my work, this song is semi autobiographical. Not totally, in my mind the character in the song is male, but my experiences appear in there, for sure. Here’s a bit of my backstory, to set the context for the creation of this one.

I became an addict early on, and full on. I tend to think I was born this way. I have no memory of ever taking a "social" drink. I went to my first drug and alcohol treatment center when I was 15 years old, and spent my 16th birthday locked inside a place with an onerous name: The Baton Rouge Adolescent Chemical Dependency Unit. Yikes! What a way to spend my Sweet 16. I completed the program and was shipped off to a halfway house in Kansas. I relapsed in the halfway house after about a year, and spent my 18th birthday in jail. (I was caught stealing a bottle of pills and some 8-track tapes out of a car that I drove through the carwash I working at in Salina, Kansas. It was 1977, remember 8 track?) Well, I was sent back to Louisiana, I tried to go back to High School (that didn’t work), and ended up back in the treatment center and back to the halfway house. I couldn’t stay with the program and I ran away when I found a running buddy willing to take off with me. Her name was Kelly, she was a dancer, and I write a song about her called Evangeline. But I digress....

I tried to put it all behind me, the treatment stays, the halfway houses, all those meeting and big blue books....but I was a mess, and I got way worse as I went deeper into relapse. It got very, very dark, and I am simply lucky to have survived those years. In all fairness, I should be dead.

I eventually got sober when I was 27 years old, when I found myself back in jail again, this time for drunk driving. I started writing songs in earnest at around 32 years of age.

Funny thing, this songwriting journey. Looking back through my song catalogue, my songs sing like an autobiography, or a memoir. My guess is that many songwriters could say that, that their songs are their story; no real need for an actual memoir.

For me my songs and stories stories started after I got sober. I looked back- in song- on my crazy years. I found my voice in recovery; I didn’t find much at all when I was out there swirling further and further down. I never wrote a single song under the influence of drugs or alcohol. I couldn’t do it, even though I tried. I simply couldn’t finish anything. My brain was out of focus in the truest, deepest sense. My eyes could see, but I had no vision.

But here’s the beautiful part … I could not have written “I Drink” if I was never addicted. Writing “I Drink” required a perspective that an active alcoholic is not capable of, and a non-alcoholic cannot fully comprehend. I needed to go through what I went thorough to write it, and today I would not change a thing even if I could because for me, inside the curse--- lives the blessing. The wisdom, vision and compassion that comes from taking a stroll to hell and back cannot be obtained any other way. I was lucky enough to find my way through to the other side of addiction and into recovery, and I continue to receive many, many blessings from all that has transpired in my life. Songwriting is one of the greatest blessings of all, and writing “I Drink” stems from recovery. Ain't life interesting?

I wrote this song when I was almost five years clean and sober. There’s no way I could have seen this character’s plight if I had not lived it, I would not have the perspective to understand the dire situation this character is in until I stepped out of my own downward spiral. Just like it was for me, the character in this song is in full-blown denial, can’t see the real problem, and doesn’t know the cause of the tormenting loneliness and isolation that’s driving the compulsion to self-medicate. The character is classic alcoholic, a garden variety drunk, believing that drinking is the solution and not the cause of the suffering. The character has become resigned to living this way, resigned to drinking, mostly alone, till the bitter end.

As I wrote this song, I tried to imagine myself still active in my own addiction, slowly growing old and sinking in an illness that was killing me. I imagined staying blind, asleep, unaware of the nature of the illness, and unable to see my own hand in creating the problem. Essentially, the song is about who I would have been had I not gotten sober. As I wrote, I turned myself into a guy alone in a room in a cheap apartment in Central Square, in Cambridge, MA. (I knew a guy like that, a wonderful country singer and songwriter, who died of alcoholism in just this horrifying, predictable, boring and sad way). I let myself become him, and the song came out of my imagination and experience.

Fast forward 7 years.

“I Drink” became a very big song for me, a door opener. People began to sing along with me to it everywhere I went. Ireland, England, Norway, Holland, Sweden, Italy-you name it, people came to the shows knowing the words to this song. Sometimes I pull back and just let the audience sing the chorus. It's been amazing to stand on stage and watch people sing these words. once again...ain't life something?

I Drink became what they call a career song.  It’s the song that got me a record deal on Universal/Lost Highway, a publishing deal at Harlan Howard Songs, and a spin on Bob Dylan’s radio show, with Bob reading my lyrics on the air  and telling his audience a little bit of my life story. (Episode #3, Drinking)  It’s a song that keeps on giving. As they say in the business, this song’s got legs.

So no, I don’t drink, but I drank. And then I didn't any more. And from that came so much, so very much.

Order a copy of Live at Blue Rock HERE.

Behind The Song: Sugar Cane

(by Mary Gauthier and Catie Curtis) Mama said she don’t give a damn what those people say Cane smoke can’t be good for you day after day Every year at harvest time when the black smoke filled the sky She’d pick me up and take me home and make me stay inside

From Thibodaux to Raceland there’s fire in the fields All the way up the bayou from Lafourche to Iberville Dirty air dirty laundry dirty money dirty rain A dirty dark at daybreak burning the sugar cane

Christmas on the bayou, midnight come and gone Driving past the sugar mill and all the lights are on The parking lot is full of trucks I can see the furnace glow Everybody’s working overtime, it’s a good job, even though

From Thibodaux to Raceland there’s fire in the fields All the way up the bayou from Lafourche to Iberville Dirty air, dirty laundry, dirty money, dirty rain A dirty dark at daybreak burning the sugar cane

First came the sugar cane then came Thibodaux Cane sugar built this town cane sugar paved these roads They burn the leaves to harvest cash, money for the company Money makes the world go round money money money

From Thibodaux to Raceland there’s fire in the fields All the way up the bayou from Lafourche to Iberville Dirty air, dirty laundry, dirty money, dirty rain A dirty dark at daybreak burning, burning

The soot and ash are falling like a dark and deadly snow The air is full of poison to the Gulf of Mexico Dirty air, dirty laundry dirty money dirty rain A dirty deal with the devil, burning the sugar cane

I am a Louisiana kid.

Born in New Orleans, raised in Baton Rouge, and lived for a few years in a little Cajun town of 15,000 souls called Thibodaux. Thibodaux sits next to bayou Lafourche, and it is a hot, humid and slow moving little place. People have a unique accent down there, a Cajun French accent, with plenty French slang thrown in. I went to a couple years of High School there, before I decided High School was not for me.

Down in Thibodaux, sugar cane is a big cash crop, and it’s been that way for a long, long time. 16% of the sugar grown in the U.S. comes from the cane fields of Louisiana. I grew up around the sugar cane fields because both of my parents are from there, and the fields always seemed a little haunted to me. Spooky. Turns out, in Thibodaux, they ARE haunted.

There was a violent labor dispute and racial attack of whites against black workers in Thibodaux, Louisiana in November 1887. The fight was about the money paid to the workers of the cane fields. I'd never been told the story of the Thibodaux massacre, and when I lived there I had no idea that this occurred in my little town, but I felt it in my bones somehow. Something in me knew there was blood in those fields. I don’t know how I knew, but I knew. I guess the ghosts of the Thibodaux Massacre still linger in the humid air, though no one ever talks about it. There’s a conspiracy of silence around things like this in the South. It's not pleasant to talk about unpleasantness, and so for the most part, people don't.

Though the true number of casualties is unknown, at least 35 and as many as three hundred workers were killed, making it one of the most violent labor disputes in American history. All of the victims were African American. I learned about the history of the sugar industry in Thibodaux through reading books,  years after I’d left Louisiana. Like I said, no one talks about this stuff down there.

The sugar game was, and is, about power and money. It always has been. Sugar is an addiction, and addiction always makes for big, big business.

Sugar cane is harvested by burning the field, and then cutting down the cane stalks after the burn. It’s a messy, ancient way of gathering sugar, but it requires less manual labor than any other way of harvesting, and for people living down there the smoke and soot and ash are just part of a way of life. The sugar industry jobs are good jobs, and people need the work.

Sugar cane is harvested around Christmas time in Louisiana, and a lot of folks associate the smell of the burning cane fields with the holidays. In other words, people think it smells good. But the soot and ash get so thick sometimes you can’t hang laundry outside. When I was a kid my mama used to make me and my brother and sister stay inside when the cane smoke filled the air, and I grew up thinking every kid lived like this. My mother used to get all worked up when they burned the fields, she used to say, “The poison in the air is going to kill all of us! No wonder they call it cancer alley down here in South Louisiana!” Most people thought she was dramatic, and a little off. They didn’t think the smoke was a big deal. They thought the sugar jobs were more important than the mess the smoke caused. It was unpleasant to talk about it.

When my grandmother was dying of lung cancer, I remember looking out of her hospital room in the Thibodaux General Hospital, and all I could see for miles around was cane fields. The enormity of that hit me, even though I was just 16 years old. She lived in Thibodaux her whole life, and died in that room, right there in the middle of the cane fields, her lungs giving out. Like I said, cane is a way of life. And Death.

They tell me they’ve found a cheaper way to harvest cane these days—a way that involves less burning, less pollution. I hope that’s true. It would mean a better way of life for the people down on the bayou, and in other places where the annual burns fill the air with smoke and soot and ash. I wrote this song hoping that one day the practice would change.

Order a copy of Live at Blue Rock HERE.

Behind the Song: Wheel Inside The Wheel

(by Mary Gauthier) The parade of souls is marching across the sky Their heat and their light bathed in blue as they march by The All Stars play “When the Saints Go Marching In” A Second Line forms and they wave white hankies in the wind

Satchmo takes a solo, and he flashes his million-dollar smile Marie Laveau promenades with Oscar Wilde Big Funky Stella twirls her little red umbrella to the beat As the soul parade winds its way down Eternity Street

Souls ain’t born, souls don’t die Soul ain’t made of earth, ain’t made of water, ain’t made of sky So, ride the flaming circle, wind the golden reel And roll on brother, in the wheel inside the wheel

Mardi Gras Indians chant in the streets at sundown Spyboy meets Spyboy and Big Chief meets Big Chief uptown They circle and sway in their rainbow colored feathers and beads They prance like peacocks, children of slavery freed

Souls ain’t born, souls don’t die Soul ain’t made of earth, ain’t made’a water, ain’t made of sky Ride the flaming circle wind the golden reel Roll on brother, in the wheel inside the wheel

The Krewe of the Crossbones parades into the midnight sun They march through the fire and come out beating homemade drums While the French Quarter Queens in their high-heeled drag disguise Sing “Over the Rainbow” ‘til Judy Garland quivers and sighs

Souls ain’t born, souls don’t die Soul ain’t made of earth, ain’t made’a water, ain’t made of sky Ride the flaming circle, wind the golden reel And roll on brother, in the wheel inside the wheel

Flambeau dancers light the walkway to Jean Pierre’s There’s a party tonight and all the girls are gonna be there Sipping wormwood concoctions, drinking absinthe and talking trash It’s a red carpet, black tie, all night, celestial bash

Souls ain’t born, souls don’t die Soul ain’t made of earth, ain’t made’a water, ain’t made of sky Ride the flaming circle, wind the golden reel And roll on brother, in the wheel inside the wheel I said, roll on brother, in the wheel inside the wheel Yeah, roll on brother, in the wheel inside the wheel

On the afternoon of July 20, 2002, I rolled into Greenfield, Mass., to perform at the Green River. The colorful beauty of the day had me smiling, and to top it off there were dozens of multi colored hot air balloons in the fields waiting to set sail. The weather was perfect for a music festival, sunny warm, slight breeze, and low humidity. I remember thinking this is going to be a great weekend as I entered the festival’s performer check-in area to get my credentials.  I was particularly looking forward to seeing my friend Dave Carter who was also playing the event.

Dave and I had an amazing run of festivals together (I believe we played 9 or 10 of them) the summer of 1998, and he and his partner—the wildly talented and lovely Tracy Grammer—had been on the road pretty much non-stop after that crazy summer. Yes, the summer of ’98, we were all brand new on the national scene, older than any of the other newcomers, and we were beside ourselves, so excited to be included for the first time on the Folk Festival Circuit, including the prestigious Newport Folk Festival. We bonded as friends that summer, and it was a powerful connection. We got to share the stage at many events, and we swapped songs with each other on workshop stages for the first time. I loved what Dave was up to with his songwriting—I thought (and still think) his writing was tremendous.

We’d spoken on the phone quite a bit after that first summer working together. He’d call from hotel rooms and diners and green rooms, and we’d talk about his travels and how tired he was from the long, long drives they’d have between gigs. I’d call him and tell him to quit complaining. Hell, I was jealous; I wish I had the opportunity to work as much as he was! I was still trying to find an agent, trying to get more work. But all kidding aside, their schedule was grueling, and they both were exhausted. Driving 8, 9,10 hours, then playing, then doing it again and again and again. It’s no way to live. I was really looking forward to seeing him again, and getting caught up on his travels and putting a big hug on him.

I wasn’t there in line waiting for my laminate for 5 minutes when someone, a stranger, came up to me with a somber look on her face and asked, “Have you heard about Dave?” I said nothing, frozen there, afraid of what was coming next. “Dave had a heart attack yesterday, he’s gone. We lost him.” I said, ”Dave Carter? The songwriter? Are you sure?” I had a feeling there was some kind of mistake being made. Someone else came up, and they told me it was true. Dave passed away the day before, after a morning jog, and Tracy was still holed up in the hotel room. I grabbed my phone and called her, then got back in my car and went straight over. It was an awful, awful day. I will never forget it. Dave Carter was one of the true greats, and his timeless songs will live on forever.

Nearly 15 years later, I still have a hard time believing Dave Carter is gone. He was on the brink of international fame, right on the brink of the breakthrough that would have taken care of so many of the financial worries and hard touring woes he was struggling with. But it was not to be. We lost him at the height of his powers.

After the balloon festival, I was scheduled to play in Canada at the Calgary Folk Festival. The title to the song “Wheel Inside The Wheel” came to me in a thought dream I’d had on the flight over to Alberta.  I think it came from an old spiritual folk song I’d heard Johnny Cash sing years before:

Ezekiel saw the wheel Way up in the middle of the air Now Ezekiel saw the wheel in a wheel Way in the middle of the air And the big wheel run by Faith And the little wheel run by the Grace of God In the wheel in the wheel in the wheel good Lord Way in the middle of the air

I stayed in my the hotel room,in between my sets,and  I started working on this song as I grieved the loss of my dear friend. Dave was in my heart and mind as “The Wheel Inside The Wheel” came though me.

In college I’d studied philosophy, and one of the great thinkers I studied in depth was Neitzche. The concept of "eternal recurrence" is central to his writings. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he writes of time circular and cyclical, and not linear. This idea, found in many eastern philosophies as well, made sense to me, and stays with me to this day. That we all just move in eternal circles, spirit moving in and out of realms we cannot understand in this incarnation. This thought is deeply imbedded in the song, and married to poetic images from the Book of Ezekiel.

My New Orleans heritage (I was born there) also found its way into the lyrics, and I couldn’t help myself but put a Second Line parade in there, throw in the famous New Orleans Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau, the legendary Satchmo, some Mardi Gras Indians and Oscar Wilde, just ‘cause I adore him and felt like he belonged in a song inspired by Dave Carter. Once I got going, the images in the song came into my mind quickly—it was like they lined up somewhere in the misty muse world, waiting their turn to be included in this romping procession.

This song is a bit of a Jazz Funeral in and of itself, and it is my greatest hope that the ideas of the eternal nature of the soul are true. That souls truly do move in and out this world without ever being born or dying, that we are all immortal in some form, and that we have nothing to fear from death.

On my good days, I am certain that this is true. Dave, I miss you.

Review by The Morton Report

Mary Gauthier, Live at Blue Rock. If a knockout emotional punch is what you're looking for, start right here. Mary Gauthier, straight out of Louisana, has been decking listeners for a decade with the kind of songs that can sometimes be so strong it takes a heavyweight to go the distance with her. This is her first live album, and it's the kind of stunner that can only come from someone who's absolutely ready to turn on the heat with a sackful of the very best songs from a stellar catalogue. And Gauthier has that in spades. What she really is is a short story writer who can telegraph entire lives in the matter of a few verses and intriguing chords, then deliver them with the kind of voice capable of tearing our insides in two. There is a simple devastation at the woman's core, no doubt charged by a hard childhood that almost took her all the way down. Finding music, after opening a Cajun restaurant in Boston, opened a door to salvation that the singer stepped through and never looked back. Mary Gauthier's background included characters of the highest and lowest order, and most of them walk through songs like "Our Lady of the Shooting Stars," "Your Sister Cried" and "Drag Queens in Limousines" with their heads held high and their eyes down low. These are serious people, and the person who created them is the most serious of all. She may not be a household name—yet—but Ms. Gauthier is well on her way to musical majesty. Hearing how she paints a room in Wimberley, Texas in haunting colors this night is to discover just how majestic she can be.   - By Bill Bentley, Columnist See article HERE.

Americana Gazette reviews "Live At Blue Rock"

American Songwriter: 4 out of 5 stars

American Songwriter gives Live At The Blue Rock 4 out of 5 stars...

This may seem like a counter-intuitive thing to say, but it’s good for Mary Gauthier’s audience that she has real limitations as a singer. Her awareness that her vocal instrument isn’t the most supple one in the world has compelled her to cultivate a rich palette of unconventional vocal shadings, textures and tones, which is part of what makes her such a gripping storyteller.

Despite the fact that Live At Blue Rock contains songs that have already appeared on five of Gauthier’s six studio albums, these renditions feel very different than those she laid down in the studio. This time around, the Louisiana-born, Nashville-based singer-songwriter had people right there in the room with her – the venue is an artists’ ranch in Wimberley, Texas – and their presence makes a palpable difference. You can tell they were on the receiving end of a fiercely focused performance.

Gauthier rejects mainstream entertainment values, the showy mastery, perkiness and polish that aim at providing musical diversion and courting mass popularity. Hers is a confrontational art, especially in a live setting. She directs attention to the unsettling side of contemporary American society, not only by making executed murderers, unrepentant alcoholics and troubled teenage adoptees her lead characters, but by telling their stories in such strenuous, committed fashion.

There’s a penetrating potency to Gauthier’s delivery of these songs, as though she’s daring somebody to challenge her on whether or not the people she chooses to sing about are worthy of attention, and whether she’s really telling the truth about the desperation of their outsider existences. Such a visceral style of performance isn’t typically thought of in terms of virtuosity, but that’s a quality her storytelling often possesses all the same.

Gauthier seems the least invested in introspection about romantic relationships – which is many a modern songwriters’ bread and butter – and when she does go there in her writing, it doesn’t tend to pack quite the punch of her other narrative-unfurling and scene-setting. There are also three Fred Eaglesmith covers in this set, but none of those performances top what she does with her own songs.

Gauthier speaks her lyrics just as often as she sings them, and she uses the contrast between those vocalizations to convey a lot. As she picks up steam during the surging, impressionistic number “Blood Is Blood,” she eventually reaches a point where she intones the song’s title – underscoring how taken-for-granted that three-word statement is – before moaning “Blood don’t wash away” with a high, held-out note, a leap that captures the peculiar pain of being cut off from any and all blood relations. She’s marked off where cozy normalcy ends and isolating idiosyncrasy begins, and the latter standpoint is amplified by Tania Elizabeth’s searingly surreal contributions on fiddle. During the waltz-time number “Karle Faye,” Gauthier sings tenderly of the addict-turned-death row inmate and reserves all her bite for the mercilessness of capital punishment. She performs her snapshot of the alcoholic experience, “I Drink,” with filigreed finger-picking, and sets up the most telling line in the bridge with a pause that plays the speaker’s stubbornness to the hilt; after saying “I don’t,” she waits a full six beats before hissing “give a damn.”

Gauthier’s wry sense of humor is most clearly displayed during “Drag Queens In Limousines” a woozy, explicitly autobiographical waltz that pokes fun at her utter inability to fit in growing up. Musically, she gets the most playful during the album’s funky-folkie final track, “Wheel Inside The Wheel.” She spends the verses colorfully cataloging characters in an otherworldly Mardi Gras scene, but at the chorus she turns into a knowing, nimble blueswoman, moaning here, syncopating there and sounding intensely cool throughout.

Gauthier puts on a show, all right, but it’s not the sort of entertainment that casts the audience in a passive role. Of those who show up – and a devoted bunch they are – she demands engagement, and rewards it.     - American Songwriter: By Jewly Hight

Stage It Show, with Gretchen Peters

I’m really excited to be doing my first StageIt show with my good friend Gretchen Peters. We’ll be trading songs streaming live on the internet at 6PM Central Time on January 23 – this show will NOT be archived! Anyone, anywhere, with and internet connection can come to this live performance. To learn more & buy a ticket, go to StageIt.  

Ciara

I just got this wonderful photo from an 8-year-old fan named Ciara, sporting her new Mercy Now T-Shirt, Dog Tag and Necklace and "Live From Blue Rock" CD that she got in time for the last night of Hannukah. Thank you, Ciara, for your smile. It circled right back to me.

A Texas Thanksgiving

I spent Thanksgiving with friends in Austin and in Wimberley, TX. Great food, great conversations and warm weather were a wonderful way to spend the holiday. The above is the beautiful quiet cabin in the Hill Country where I stayed. And here I am having fun with Sam Baker and Rodney Bursiel.

I was at Blue Rock Artists ranch for the release of the new edition of the Blue Rock Review. I am honored to say they've featured me in it, with lots of pictures and a long interview. It’s a beautiful publication, and ya'll should CHECK IT OUT.

It was a wonderful night of songs, poetry, stories, visual art, cookies, cake, coffee, hot cider, new friends, old friends and big big love of creativity and creative people. I took the stage with Tom Prasada-Rao and Danny Schmidt for the release show.

I hung with my pals Eliza Gilkyson and Tim O'Brien one night after Thanksgiving, and in this shot we kinda look like the potato eaters...

I got to hang with old friends Gurf Morlix and Sam Baker, and against all odds, I got them to start tweeting. I also got Scott Nolan to start tweeting, and I feel like the twitter team captain right now. I'm loving twitter. It's a great way to stay in touch with people everywhere simultaneously. You can join me on twitter at this address: @marygauthier_

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

P.S.—Check out my friend Claudia Corrigan D'Arcy's web site. She is an adoption rights activist and all round bad ass brave human, doing great work in this crazy world we live in. She was kind enough to feature my posting from last weeks song on her site.

CD Baby Success Story

Thank you CD Baby!  I am a proud client of CD Baby, have been for over 12 years.

They have been great to work with, they treat musicians with respect and they always pay on time. Whats not to love? Thanks for featuring me as one of your success stories.

(the rest of the story is HERE)

Back on The Road, Again

Hey ya'll, I am on the road again, but not before breaking bread in Nashville with some of my favorite people in the world. Beth Nielson Chapman, John Prine, Sara Seskind and Bonnie Raitt. Sure is great living in music city....Inspirational to be sitting with so many great artists in a room.

I am touring in the deep South right now. We played in Knoxville, Birmingham Alabama and Jackson Mississippi this week, and this weekend we will be in New Orleans and Lafayette. I am touring with Scott Nolan and Joanna Miller from Winnipeg, Manitoba, and we're have a great time out here. Joanna is a fantastic drummer, and Scott's playing piano and guitar, it's a rocking little combo and I hope to keep it going for a while. Here's a nice stage shot from Knoxville, at The Square Room.

In other news, we've added digital downloads to my web site, so all of my CD's can be purchased digitally here, LOOK OUT I TUNES! I figured we'd offer it as a convenience, since so many of us listen to music in a digital format it just makes sense for me to put downloads up next to the CD's.

Well, American Thanksgiving is nearly here,I've been asked for the recipe for the garlic bread we used to serve at my old restaurant, The Dixie Kitchen. So when I get off the road on Monday, I will dig it up and post it here. Maybe a couple other ones too, we had a way with certain things that people still ask about. Lemme see what I've got in my files, I'll pop some great ones up soon. I found this shot, online, of the front of the place...Sure has been a long time! I used to live there, 12 hours a day most days. Gotta say, I prefer the musical road I am travelling now. But the Dixie Kitchen was a great run, ten years of cooking full on Cajun Cuisine for the good folks of Boston. Glad to have done it, glad it is done!

Cotton and Biscuits in Lower Alabama

Woke up this morning in the deep south, lower Alabama ( LA ), in house the middle of cotton fields. So beautiful and yet such a tortured history. Wasn't long ago down here, Cotton was King. And all that entailed..the plantation culture the exploitation of human beings, the poverty shacks sharecropping and sorrow.  Ahhh, Lincoln, the war, the blood and the glory, such dark, rich history the cotton fields of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. I see so much more than plant when I look at cotton.

Played last night at The Frog Pond on Blue Hill Farm, a very, very cool place indeed!

This morning, our wonderful host Cathe Steele at the Blue Moon Farm House made us biscuits, bacon, eggs and coffee, and it sure felt like home.

Home again, for little while.

I made it home from my Europe/UK tour tired but excited about going back over in April for another long run. It was wonderful to see all the folks that come to the shows, and have the chance to experience so many great cultures and countries in such a short time. Italy, Denmark, Holland, England and Norway, in three weeks time. So many diverse experiences!  It went so well I am going back, for a month or so in the spring. My two big memories?  1---I Played the maximum security psychiatric prison chapel in Trondheim, Norway that houses the most dangerous criminals in the Country. Some of them were there, and I will never forget it. The staff at the place is doing God's work, I gotta tell you, they moved me. Not an easy job, and they do it with grace. 2--- I went out on the town in London for the premier of the Led Zeppelin movie, walked the red carpet and got to meet some rock Royals, Robert Plant and Julian Lennon. WAY cool night! So I am home now, and life is just as amazing here in Nashville. Guess who loves John Prine as much as I do? Bonnie played the last show of a 75 city tour here at The Ryman, and we all got together for dinner to celebrate the sold out shows and major success of her new record. John and Bonnie go back nearly 40 years....so much love there, and mutual respect. It was an honour to join them for an evening of reminiscing. Nashville, what a great city to hang my hat.

Got to meet the great legendary Duane Eddy when Whispering Bob Harris brought him over for dinner, along with his shiny new CMA Award that he was presented with the night before. Finally, a CMA Award at my house! Congrats Bob, well deserved! I was the grateful cook, who had the most fantastic night of all...Duane and Bob and Beth, I will cook for ya'll anytime!

Last night my pal Ralph Murphy called and asked me to come to dinner, and pick up our friend the legendary Cowboy Jack Clement and his lovely partner Aileen. Jack's resume reads like the history of great American Music. He produced Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Pride, and on and on....PLUS, he is a ballroom dancer. Cowboy, we love you!

Right now when I am at home I'm busy working on a series of short stories, hoping to write enough of them to be able to put out a book of shorts soon. That means getting up before the sun comes up, making a strong pot of coffee, and playing with words for 4 hours every morning. It's a challenge, it's a joy, and it's a journey. I have two done, and about 10 started. Slow going, but getting there. Love the Fall, love the work, love my friends, love my life. I hit the road on Tuesday, headed south, more adventures to come. Thanks for joining me n the journey!

Mercy Now (Katrina Version)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2uHsKHrcS8

Last of the Hobo Kings at Townes Tribute

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=u6ULnN0YmJg

Mercy Now at the Opry (with Marty Stuart)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTwBV9yrN4o On stage at Nashville's Grand Old Opry with Marty Stuart

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0isugkC4VAc