I’m happy to announce that our show at the Climate on March 4 is sold out. And it is completely sold out. Meaning that even if we’ve been good friends for 20+ years I cannot get you in. I got phone calls, emails and text messages from over a dozen people yesterday asking if I could help them out. I can’t. Sorry.

We will be moving into larger rooms now. I’m looking for a theater that seats 150-200. I’m also going to look into playing at Yoshi’s. Its a great listening room. I’ll also look into the Swedish American Hall above Cafe duNord.

I’m home from the retreat. As much as I love the country, San Francisco is my home and I love it here. Plus it was nice to crawl into my big and firm king size bed last night.

We culminated our rehearsal retreat with a concert at The Orchard Spotlight on Saturday night. The Orchard Spotlight is an old church building that is now a theater. Last summer I was the artist in residence there. The sanctuary, with its big beautiful stained glass windows and thick reverb, was my bedroom. It was the perfect place for me to develop this material that is going on the album. It was nice to bring the material back with an ensemble.

The show went incredibly well. The ensemble was subtle and nuanced. The theater was sold out and the crowd was so warm and receptive. We received two standing ovations. I was thrilled to be able to show my Sonoma County crowd what I’ve been up to. Most of them had never seen me with an ensemble.

This morning I woke up with butterflies. This will be my first studio album of songs in 8 years. I’ve released two live albums and I’ve recorded two film scores since then, but this is different. There’s a different feeling when recording songs in a studio. I think I put more weight on it.

I get nervous about my voice. I don’t want to get sick this week. But worrying about it does me no good. My job now is to relax and take good care of myself, warm my voice up every day, and stay in the moment.

I’m sitting alone in the rehearsal space. OAEC calls this the meeting room. We call it the rehearsal space.

I just built a fire in the wood stove and brewed some tea. I already brushed my teeth, read a little bit form an inspiring book, and prayed on my knees at the side of my bed. I pray every morning. I pray to life itself. My basic prayer is “Take me and use me as a servant of love, compassion, and transformation. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.”
Sometimes I’ll list all the people, things and situations I’m grateful for. Today I listed each member of my ensemble, Alex Kelly, Seth Ford-Young, Jenya Chernoff, Chris Grady and Myles Boisen. They are such wonderful people and I am so grateful to be working with them. I’m also grateful to our executive producer Murray Jason who put the money up for us to come on this rehearsal intensive/retreat. This has been an incredible experience and I know that our intimacy with the material and each other will come through in the recording.

I hope that this album touches people in a deep way. I hope it inspires. I think it will. The material certainly moves me. That’s why I feel so called to make it. This work isn’t about my ambitions but about my calling. I have to make this work and get it out to the world. And everything I’ve needed to make it happen has been provided. That’s a good sign. I believe in what we’re doing.

I mentioned transformation early. That’s a word that has been used quite a lot in new age circles so it has some woo woo connotations. But transformation doesn’t look like unicorns and rainbows. Transformation hurts and is deep, dark and dirty. That is one of the primary themes of this work.

I’m sitting in the rehearsal room with our percussionist Jenya as we both check our email and such. There’s a rooster crowing in the valley behind us and the sun is casting long morning shadows.

The sky is perfectly clear.

I’m going to load the ensemble into Jenya’s van and we’re going to drive over Coleman Valley Road to the Ocean. This road is my favorite. Instead of following a creek or river to the ocean like most roads, it goes right over the hills. The view as you descend on the Western side is incredible. And along the way there are lots of beautiful spots, especially Coleman Valley. When I was focused on cycling I used to ride over Coleman Valley Road to the ocean on a regular basis. I also helped landscape a property out here 2 summers ago. I hope to buy a little piece of land with a cabin on it out here someday.

Today we will be going through all the material again, this time taking in all the notes and working through sections over and over if we need to.

We’ve decided that we don’t want to rehearse some of the material like “Been in the Storm So Long” and “Take Me to the Water” because we want them to be loose and raw.

Other songs like “Delilah” and “The Gates” call for refinement so we’ll spend a lot of time on those today.

We’ll work through the material til dinner with breaks for lunch and the Coleman Valley Rd. field trip. Then after dinner we are going to perform the material for the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center residents and staff. They are great people and I like being able to do this for them and its good for us to see how the music behaves in front of people.

Off to breakfast.

Everyone is here including our engineer and co-producer Oz Fritz.

We’ve been running the material, stopping after each song to share and
write down notes and ideas.

So Satisfying.

So far we’ve run Coyote, Saint Judas and Delilah.