I take off driving, past places been tainted
“I put on a good show for you.”
A few months ago, I sat by myself in the middle of Death Valley sand dunes, shivering and trying not to think too much about snakes while waiting for the sun to start slipping above the horizon. I sat and I shivered and I wondered what the hell I was doing and eventually, when I was pretty sure the person two dunes over wasn’t paying me any mind, I cried.
I cried because the world felt big and I thought I’d feel strong and it turned out I just felt very very small. I was about halfway through a trip I thought might prove I was still a person who could do alone well, but in the sand and with the very probable snakes, I realized how hard it is to accurately describe a sunrise. To report back after the fact about the way the light shifts and changes slowly and then all too suddenly and how you can try and try but it still may fall flat because sometimes you just need someone else there to see it with you.
On “Lilacs”, from the new Waxahatchee album, Katie Crutchfield sings - in one verse, and almost in one breath - two lines that sum up that sand dune sunrise feeling - I’ll fill myself up like I used to do and yet, I won’t end up anywhere good without you.
In the press cycle around the album, a lot’s been said about Crutchfield’s admiration for Lucinda Williams and how that sound is all over Saint Cloud and I think it’s less about the sound and more about the character of the person making it. I admire Lucinda, and Patti, and now Waxahatchee, too, for so well articulating the fact that there is a particular kind of strength in being able to stand alone, to fill yourself up again and again and again, but that there’s a different and maybe greater strength in being willing to admit when you need someone else.
Right now, it feels like the world is getting forced to be a little better at owning up to that need. I think I might be, too.
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recent playlists:
I assume I don’t have to tell you that 2020’s been a weird year. We’re through January and February and even though it felt like a million years, we’re also through March.
Townes Van Zandt has a birthday recently, the world might be ending so here’s a comfort blanket playlist - TVZ for times like these
This started because I couldn’t get The Byrds’ “You Ain’t Going Nowhere'“ dislodged from my brain and then spiraled out of control. Here are some Things You Ain’t.
Take a weird Elton John song for inspiration, fall down a well and into the Ringo Starr country album and you get a strange helping of Country Comfort.
Crowd-sourced a solo-dance party playlist. Thanks, Instagram. Dancing Alone, Together.
albums:
If it wasn’t clear from above - I think the new Waxahatchee album is spectacular. It’s about settling in without settling, about coming clean with your emotions and getting sober along the way, about the way beautiful things sometimes shine so brightly it aches. Listen to it daily and the world almost feels right-side-up again.
I was obsessed with the Dead Man Winter album Furnace when it came out in 2017, and am equally so with Dave Simonett’s new album Red Tail. He dropped the DMW moniker, but kept everything I loved about that project. It’s a good album for an evening walk, and I’m taking a lot of evening walks these days.
There’s a new El Buho album. Dance around. Freak out your neighbors.
My house feels a little less confining when I listen to Full Moon Fever every day. Tom Petty heals everything. Dance around. Freak out your neighbors some more.
misc.:
I recently finished reading Holly George-Warren’s new biography of Janis Joplin - Janis: Her Life and Music. Honest without too much embellishment, George-Warren does a good job highlighting the person beneath the hype and the triumph that’s been so buried in the tragedy. (Support your local booksellers- the link above directs you to a site that benefits mine.)
Pre-shut down, I was spending most of my evenings at the movie theater pretending popcorn was a meal. One of the last films I saw was the Once Were Brothers, the new Scorsese-helmed documentary about The Band. As the film’s subtitle (“Robbie Robertson and The Band”) implies, this is a very one-sided depiction and a pretty pointed example of the way the last man standing in front of the microphone gets to decide how a story gets told…. but I will always be a sucker for a music documentary, especially one with musicians being goofy and domestic and hanging out with giant dogs. You can watch the film online now. I recommend having popcorn for dinner.
and as always, listen to ted hawkins