Of Spirit and Friends

Sharing sacred words, profound, and insightful, from friends who gave me council and inspiration through phone calls, texts, their songs, their art, their caring; lovers, friends for a moment, friends for my lifetime. They all supported me in ways I never understood - and now they have all all 'gone' somewhere else. Maybe it started with the emails from Rosemary that prompted me to write Everything is on the Table, EIOTT for short. She was really sick but she shared a lot of her process, and her words were so eloquent I had to steal them, with her blessings. Then there are my own dues, paid to myself, and I'm finally cashing them in, like Expecting Rain from the mid 70’s when I didn’t have a prayer, or actually that’s all I had. To realize this song now, in its current form with bass, drums, and all the conviction of a lifetime is victory enough for an old rambler. As I've said: every album is a crucible and this one is no exception. It started in 2019 as a vehicle for the short lived New Old Vermonters, then it was my tributes to those who passed that I had to write about, if only just to ‘say their names’ like Davis & Victoria; then Pappy came on board to put the grass into Open Fields , Breakin’ Trail, not to mention the soul into May It Always Be So. How could I live my life without writing a song for George Lawrence, the man who painted almost every one of my album covers and gave my work an identity. Or how could I forget the simple friendship of the woman of flowers and shrubs, Lorna, who made me realize Route 14 will never be the same. Meeting Jess O’Brien at the end of this project to get her to sing harmony on Open Fields and We Love To Sing and getting the latter over the hump of me never being happy with any recording of it. Finally, the last crucible, Dan Haley in Oregon, my old bandmate from The Thrufters, veteran of many studio dates from albums too numerous to mention, who, with his mandolin out in Oregon, interpreted the depth of my grandfathers sadness and triumphs - the last song to be mixed. And knowing how paranoid I am about the ‘final release’, Bandcamp has offered me its soft release methodology in case anything is amiss, after 6 years of writing, recording and mixing; maybe it gets to Spotify, maybe it doesn’t, but nevertheless, here it is.