Everything is temporary

live session + six recs to beat the winter SADs

I’m Januarying. I’m as dry as ever. We finally got snow in Santa Fe after months of what felt like June-uary.

Back in October, I stopped by WFHB in Bloomington, Indiana. I really love going on the radio - it’s a thrill that doesn’t get old. I love meeting the DJs, the folks who are responsible for introducing my music to their listeners. I dunno, it’s a big deal! They are the original taste-makers and they care a LOT about music and culture. I also really like doing sessions - getting to play and sing with headphones is a treat. One click away from being in a recording studio, which is my favorite place on earth.

Listen to my interview and live session with host Abby Noroozi. We chatted about collaboration, the first CD I ever bought, and sobriety-type things. I performed three songs in a rather delicate way; listen to tailspin, New Bad and Want unplugged.

photos by Anna Powell Denton

In the first weeks of the new year, I planted the seeds of what I want to flourish: creative freedom, adaptability, communication, service, and wonder. I went to Taos on a solo writing retreat and synced up with the Wolf Supermoon! Attended my first improv class! Started couples counseling with my guy! Went to an Al-Anon meeting! Became a supporting member of NPR!

All this to try to maintain some grounded feeling amidst the dystopian reality unfolding. How to stay engaged/hopeful when everything is upside down? Picking up a good book usually helps. And remembering that everything is temporary. Here are six recs that promote hopefulness.

• 1. Drive All Night by Thomas Dollbaum, a New Orleans-based songwriter. The EP creates its own little world you can step into: the arrangements are heavy, and the writing is masterful. Thomas is going to support our West Coast tour dates in March + this super fun and rowdy Saturn Bar show we just announced. I truly can’t wait to hear his songs live. Tickets are going fast, as they say, so make your move :)

• 2. I inhaled these essays/stories from comedian Jenny Slate. Just a really playful, unique approach to aliveness through storytelling.

• 3. When I’m off the road, I luxuriate in stand-up specials and Jordan Jensen’s whip smart debut, Take Me With You, is a knockout.

• 4. Patti Smith on Patti Smith, a collection of interviews from her decades-long, still thriving career. Patti’s debut album Horses turned fifty and I’m studying the legend. She wasn’t a direct musical inspiration for me, but now I realize the bands I loved, such as The Clash, might not exist had she not paved the way. They call her The Godmother of Punk. I love that Rosalía name-checks Patti Smith, Kendrick Lamar & Charli XCX as the top people she wants to collaborate with in this fascinating interview with The New York Times.

A NYC icon, Patti Smith settled in Detroit in the 80s, when she married MC5 member Fred “Sonic” Smith (sorry if you know all this). It’s cool to learn that Detroit pulled her in. I didn’t go to school in Detroit, so I don’t feel like I was “raised” there. But I was born there and spent the first six years of my life in a 2-block radius in Brightmore. Core memory stuff like first friendships and learning to walk. When my family moved an hour and a half north of the city to a small farming town, I felt like a misfit. We were always the transplant liberal hippy farmers in the middle of a conservative republican generational farm town. I was bullied all through public school. As soon as I could drive, I escaped to Flint and Detroit to find like-minded freaks like me.

I am yearning for a vibe check from Detroit, so I text my friend Vanessa (aka Nancy Friday), who grew up in the same dirt-bag scene as me but stuck around.

• 5. I’ve been listening to the new Luke Bell album, The King is Back. Luke was a songwriter who passed away three years ago at age thirty-two in a mental illness-related drug overdose. Luke spent a lot of time in New Orleans hanging around Deslonde Street, and although we lived there at different times, I felt like I knew him because he was so close to my favorite people. His passing sent a shockwave through my community. Now, his legacy is kept alive by his mother, Carol Bell, who is doing the press for this new album. Mike Vanata from Western AF made this incredible music video from old footage.

• 6. This interview Carol did with Anna Sale for Death, Sex, and Money had me crying in the kitchen. After losing her son, Carol became a therapist and is on a mission to raise awareness about mental illness. She’s accomplishing this by sharing her personal story and directing the royalties from the album to fund affordable mental health care in her home state of Wyoming. She is honoring her son Luke’s legacy in such a beautiful way, and even changing the narrative of how we may all think about overdose-related deaths by bringing mental illness into the picture: it can be so difficult for families and close friends to identify mental illness in our people.

  

  (Anna Sale is my favorite interviewer, period, and I’ve been listening to her podcast since it launched 9 years ago!!)

Temporarily yours,

ER

<3