Spook News – Concert Jan 20 + Album Announcement

Hi Friends,

THANKS !!!

First and foremost, I want to thank you all again for the support you’ve all given me over the past many years. I really can’t do what I am doing without you folks. So, what am I doing? Well, I am sharing the stories I hear in my travels around this amazing country we live in. These are not just interesting stories. Through my own imperfect and particular perspective, I am triangulating, perspicating and distilling the large collection of stories I hear from YOU – the hundreds, if not thousands of friends I meet along my way – into one cohesive story – America’s Story.

NEW ALBUM

I hope someday I find the time to put together a blog – or even a book – of the amazing ideas, philosophies, dreams, visions and ideals people share with me. Heck, I wish I had the time to sit down to share a meal with each of you folks who have given me so much support and who’s company I so much enjoy. But first, after extensively touring in 2018, when I wrapped up the season just before Thanksgiving, I asked myself, What next? In less time than it takes an incandescent light bulb to reach full strength, the answer smacked me in the head. I need to create a new album of songs to share at least the next little fraction of these stories. I decided that I would make this record in conjunction with the 100 year anniversary of Pete Seeger’s birth (May 3, 1919).

PETE, WOODY & ME, Volume II

Since the day after Thanksgiving I have written two new songs, finished writing two others and wrote sixteen new verses to Pete and Woody songs. This Monday I went into the Ampersand Studios where I recorded my four most recent albums and began work on 15 songs: one by Woody Guthrie, eight by or associated with Pete Seeger and six originals that I have written since Election Day 2016. The thread woven through all of these songs is this story – America’s Story – that I have learned from YOU – the people I have met in my travels. Many of the dreams and visions you have shared with me are already expressed in the songs of Pete and Woody. ON some songs I changed a word here or there to keep the songs up to date or, as I said, wrote new verses about the particularly challenging times we live in today. Other times I have composed new songs to express other aspects of the Story in my own words.

I’ve booked 21 eight hour sessions between Jan 14 and Feb 15 to get this album done in time for an April 2019 release. It’s an amazing experience to wake up, eat breakfast, walk into a recording booth and sit or stand in front of a microphone for eight hours deciding what words, chords, keys, instruments, melodies, positions, embellishments, rhythms, playing style, tempos, etc. best convey the story I am attempting to share, then eat a salad, go to bed, wake up the next day and pick up where we left off. In the time in between I have one or two gigs and three funerals to attend. And time for almost nothing else. But I did want to sit did and write this short letter to my friends. It’s a pretty amazing experience. I’ll tell you more later, but for now, THANK YOU.

Here are a few concer I have coming up: