Wheeeeeeeew! Finally, a blog post.

I’ve been pondering a post or 3 for months, but here we are, nearing 2019 and I am finally getting to it. I thought I’d try to parse together this year and explain what’s been happening…once I figure out what’s been happening.

January 2018: Look, I won’t sugarcoat this. I felt BAD. I felt down. I felt a real sense of wasted time in the wrong place with the wrong timing and poor decisions. That’s vague because the feeling felt vague. This was probably in part to the new year vibe and all that brings, partially to being in Texas for a decade, which is a Milestone, and maybe your brain starts thinking You Should Have Something to Show For a Milestone. I thought about moving (I still think about moving), I thought about Getting A Real Job (oh please I have real jobs!), I thought about writing an EFF YOU Manifest to…who? Me. The world. I don’t know.

I went to New York City to see friends instead. It helped a little.

February 2018: I went to Folk Alliance. This could either sink or swim a mood like that, going to a big professional networking event as an introvert who is having a mild art and career grump-isode. Folk Alliance was lovely, mostly due to the tribe I traveled with – Mandy Rowden and I had a blast going there and back, I met my musical tourist buddy Heidi there, and Mary Chapin Carpenter gave a keynote that was perfect and delivered at just the right time. Also there were old friends and new musicians to see and late night hallway roaming. It was good. I still felt weird. I put Kansas City on the list of places to move based on their downtown brick building ratio alone. I made one vlog all year: this is it.

March 2018: Over in Social Thinkery land, which in part with gigging and teaching guitar is how I pay my rent and try to be of service to people in the world, something big happened. I joined the team to assist Eliza Gilkyson with her Kickstarter campaign. Eliza, if you do not know (AND YOU SHOULD) is an incredible artist, human, writer, musician, all of it. I first saw her play the Lensic in Santa Fe when I was in college, and she’s continued to be amazing in all things. We did the planning, the video, the launch, the campaign, the finish…and it was intense but it was a joy. We raised $55,000+ and Eliza made her beautiful album “Secularia” and it came out to rave reviews. Being a part of something like that was…transformative.

April 2018: I got a Spark Tattoo from Zulu. This was less of a life-changing moment and more of a “I knew that was supposed to be there and now it’s finally there.”

All the while in here I had the total joy and relief of recording at Aerie Studio with Mark Addison. We made a name for our project – onetwothreescream – and I kept bringing Mark songs and he kept making them into angry-glossy-fun-joyful folk pop tracks. We found a thing! We decided to make a record. Things were…good!

WHAT IS THIS, A REDEMPTION ARC? Maybe. There’s more coming in the next update…