well, hi!

Super Exciting Trip to Atlanta!

I’m super excited because next week I’m taking a super exciting trip to Atlanta.

I’ll explain the trip in a minute but first, let me ask you this:  are you into podcasts? 

See, when I’m driving around on tour, podcasts basically save my life and keep me from becoming a crazy, lonely, driving robot who cannot remember what real humans are like and who has a melting brain.   A good podcast is like having an interesting, free road buddy with you who you can make talk on command and make be quiet on command AND who does not have to stop to pee!  Amazing.

So anyway, I listen to lots of podcasts.  One of them is called Stuff You Should Know.  Have you guys heard or heard OF it?   It’s great.   In case you are not familiar, here is the wikipedia page that will tell you all about it: SYSK.    Stuff You Should Know is brought to the world from the fair city of Atlanta.   This is just another reason why the Atlanta area is one of my favorites.    Other reasons include:

Grocery on Home
 DeKalb Farmer’s Market
Eddie’s Atticmy friend Stacey runs Girls Rock Camp there!
my friends who make up Girlyman live there!  
Laurel Snyder, who I first met in Iowa City, IA and who has since written several fantastic books including Bigger Than A Bread Box  and Baxter, The Pig Who Wanted to Be Kosher, lives there now! 
Such good FOOD there!

and on and on and on and on and on.

Basically, it’s awesome in Atlanta. 

AND, it’s about to get even more awesome in Atlanta because …Stuff You Should Know is being made into a TV show - AND next week they are shooting the pilot AND I’m going to be a part of it!

You can see some tiny clips of SYSK hosts Josh Clark and Charles W. “Chuck” Bryant being their totally appealing selves HERE .

I’m really excited to get to be a part of this project.  So far, every single person who is involved has been incredibly kind and fun and great.  I warned them all that I’m really NOT an actor in any way.  In fact, in highschool I took and acting class and I was supposed to perform a scene from The Importance Of Being Earnest and at the last minute I totally froze and hid in the bathroom during class instead of going through with it.   Shortly after that my teacher wrote on my report card “Rome was not built in a day” , which I don’t think was a super positive piece of feedback.

That being said, I really want to do a good job for the fantastic folks at Stuff You Should Know and I’m very much looking forward to getting to work next week in Atlanta!

happy new year!

Whoops!  I got so distracted by the beginning of 2012 that I forgot to blog!   I’ve been lucky enough to get to spend January at home in NYC.  I haven’t pack a suitcase or gotten on a plane or taken a long drive since 2011 and it’s been a real treat to be off the road for a little bit.   In addition to cooking, visiting friends, babysitting various babies I have the pleasure of knowing and enjoying New York,  I’ve also spent the beginning of the year booking shows for the spring and summer.   I’ll be announcing a bunch of tour dates soon.  It’s going to be a busy year!  

But, before we jump full force into 2012, here are some things that happened to me at the end of 2011:

-I got to perform alongside my brother and one of my sisters and many other excellent people in two “A Not So Silent Night” shows in Montreal and New York.  My sister pushed me to branch out and do a Joni Mitchell song which I was totally afraid to do but which turned out to be a great challenge.  

-I turned 30 at the Highline Ballroom surrounded by my friends and family.  It was really, really fun and I got to play with an incredible band that was made up of lovely and talented people.

- I played in Cincinnati for the first time ever at Over The Rhine’s annual winter show at the Taft Theater.   The audience was incredibly kind and welcoming and Over the Rhine, as always, rocked the house and blew my mind.

- I got arrested on christmas day. Um… I  don’t have a photo for that… there was no mug shot involved.  But I DID actually get arrested on 12/25/11 for what turned out to be a clerical error on the part of the DMV.   Aren’t you impressed ?  Yep.  Arrested in front of my family in my 89 year old grandmother’s driveway… on Christmas.    I cried. 

Don’t worry, it’s all cleared up now.  I’m not crying anymore.  

( did you know that they ask you your RELIGION when you get arrested?  isn’t that weird? does anyone know why? please explain.) 

(oh! also, speaking of my grandmother - she has a BLOG!  You can read it HERE)

Anyway, onward into 2012.  Mostly I hope for more of the great things that happened in 2011.  With fewer arrests.

making pies

Today I had my first adventure in pie making.  Actually, I’ve made a couple of pies before  - key lime pies - but I’ve always cheated and bought a crust.    I’ve been too scared to try making the crusts until now because when you read about pie-crust-making in the pie cookbook I have it sounds really scary and stressful.   There’s all this stuff about how the butter has to stay super cold and the water has to stay super cold and the gluten needs to be not overworked otherwise terrible pie crusty issues will arise.   I just couldn’t face it.  I have enough stress in my life.

But yesterday when I was shopping for pie crusts, the ghost of Thanksgiving past was annoyingly whispering in my ear and telling me that I was a sorry excuse for a pie-maker.   ”You’re going to BUY that crust??  I used to have to walk 7 miles in the snow with no shoes and then MAKE pie crusts from scratch with frostbitten fingers.”

Fine.   

So I tried it all from scratch this time.   I made the dough, rolled it out and then baked the crusts with lentils in them in order to weigh them down.

Then I whisked up the fillings…

 

and baked them.

Here’s how they turned out:

They look like pies, right?  I was pleased. 

(for those of you wondering what happened to that spot on the pumpkin one, yes I DID accidentally attack the pie with my oven mitt at one point)

So, at this moment I feel like my adventure in cooking was a success.  Here’s the worrisome thing about pies though —  you can’t really taste them without messing up their wholeness.  So for all I know these things taste really horrible.    

Oh well.     We’ll find out tomorrow. 

lucky

I’m a lucky girl.  Thanks to everyone in DC, Pittsburgh, Louisville and Grand Rapids for a great weekend of shows and thanks to Chely Wright, Over the Rhine and the Indigo Girls for sharing your stages with me.

Mother/Daughter Roadtrip Summary (a little late…)

So after the shows in Denver my mom and I drove and drove and drove… 

 we stopped in Cisco, UT:

we met some horses who were walking along the highway…

and eventually we made it to flagstaff.

The route we took from Denver was amazing.  You should take this drive sometime.  It was so beautiful that we decided later in the trip to come back this same way even though it was way out of the way.  

The next morning we went to the Grand Canyon.  

 Our amazing friends ( who we were staying with and who drove us to the canyon.. and who know a LOT about a LOT of things including the Grand Canyon) tried to explain to me how the Grand Canyon came to be.  I really tried to understand and I asked a lot of questions but in the end we all gave up on me getting it and we ate some hot dogs instead.

The next day we started our drive home and we booked it across the country in about 2 1/2 days.  Here are some highlights of our trip:

Mother/Daughter Roadtrip?

I have a guest flying into Denver today.  My mom is coming out here to take a little road trip with me and help me drive home to NYC.  Instead of just heading East from Colorado, we have decided to take a little detour to the Grand Canyon.    It’s a mere 12ish hours in the wrong direction… 

Here’s our plan, in case you want to follow along with us.   Tonight after my show with Over The Rhine we are going to leave Denver and drive to Glenwood Spring, CO to spend the night.  We’re hoping that the snow that Western Colorado is expecting will hold off until tomorrow so that we don’t have to be driving in it at night.  Tomorrow we’ll wake up and head into Utah, cutting down through Moab to get to AZ.    We’ll see the sights and then turn towards NYC on Monday and head home at a brisk pace.  

I’ve loaded up my iPod with some podcasts and audiobooks.     I’ll let you know how it goes. 

Thanks.

         

Thanks to Brandi Carlile and her fantastic band and crew for making me feel welcome on tour with them this week.  Thanks to NYC, Kent, OH, Des Moines, IA and Billings, MT for being excellent at the shows.   It was an honor to get to open up these shows. 

This Week in Driving: IA, SD, MT, WY, CO

Beauty Queen Sister

                                  
Today the Indigo Girls release their newest album, “Beauty Queen Sister”.     I’ve had a copy of this album in my car for most of my fall tour and it’s kept me company as I’ve driven around the country.    Check it out HERE -  there are some real gems on this record that I’ve really fallen in love with over the last couple of weeks.
Back in May I went to Nashville to sing on the album.  I had a wonderful time in the studio - there were lots of great people there and even better- lots of great dogs in the studio.   It’s always more fun to have some pets around when you’re making a record.  Makes everything sound special.  
I’m excited that this music is officially available today!  And I’m honored to be a little part of it.   I think I’ll be listening to it today while I drive through South Dakota…

Things that were awesome in September.

Let’s see…

I started the month out on the west coast with Girlyman, opening shows for them in Berkeley, Sebastapol, Seattle, Portland and Eugene.   The first time I ever saw Girlyman was in Felton, CA when I was opening for them at  mexican restaurant called Don Quixotes.   I was totally blown away by their songs and by their show.  Turns out, they are also absolutely amazing people on top of that.  They are recording a new album right now and I am counting down the days until I get my hands on a copy.

This is Doris of Girlyman practicing her drum prowess.

After I said farewell to my Girlyman friends I drove south to Los Angeles… I don’t know how this works but somehow things always get really nutty in Los Angeles and I always end up having some surreal out of body experience.     This time, the crazy/amazing event was singing some last minute backup vocals with Neko Case and her wonderful band at the Hollywood Bowl.

I’d never been to the Hollywood Bowl before,  I’d only seen it in the movie Beaches and so it was pretty crazy to suddenly be onstage there.  I felt like Bette Midler in 1988 but with smaller hair.   In the past when I have done some singing with Neko, I’ve been standing next to the wildly talented harmony-ninja  (as well as a super talented singer of her own work) also known as Kelly Hogan (Hogan also has a blog that I love and that you can see HERE).  Hogan can kick the butt of any harmony big or small, twisty or zig-zaggy.  She is the master and so it’s always excellent to stand beside her onstage when you aren’t sure what you’re doing because she gives me special ninja messages about when to sing and stuff and if I totally lose my marbles I know I can just stop singing and she will make everything sound amazing.  UNFORTUNATELY, Hogan was snared by a terrible, terrible flu just before the show and couldn’t make it to Hollywood that night.   SO… I trembled in my boots and listened to my iPod a lot that day to try to learn some of Hogan’s Ninja moves and then I did my best.  Yikes.    One of the wonderful things about Neko and her band-peeps is that they are relaxed and easy to work with and they were very kind to me about my singing attempts.

When it really came down to it, it was a beautiful night in LA.  Singing in that huge space, out in the open air was a really special thing to get to do.  Like I said, often times, Lady Los Angeles cooks up some kind of random cinematic-ish adventure and I thank her for it.

   

Next, I drove to Claremont, CA to visit my sister who is a Freshman at Pomona College which was excellent.  (more on that in a later post)    

Also, in September I did some driving of course.

I played a show at a really unique and great venue in Atlanta called Grocery on Home.  It’s a really special place.  A trio of gals made up of the band Larkin Poe and the solo singer Emily Lynch opened up for me.  Their new band MIGHT be called Gunshot Glitter but they aren’t totally sure.

I ate these:

My dad and I did a show in Durham, NC on the lawn of the old tobacco factory downtown.   It was a great show although towards the end of it the rain started coming down so hard that we had to call it quits.  Here’s a photo from the soundcheck…pre-rain.

Onward to Swannanoa, NC where I played a show at Warren Wilson College.  It was the 4th time I’ve played there and every time it’s a really special event.  For those of you who haven’t heard about it, Warren Wilson is a pretty interesting school.  As I understand it, all the students are on different crews and they basically run all aspects of the school themselves- including the farm on the campus and all the vehicles on the campus… and even the sage cafe where I did the show.  The students at these shows have always been really fun to play for and talk to.  The first year I was there they took me to a bonfire in a cow pasture after the show… and another year they had a viewing of The Goonies in my honor after my show because they knew I’d never seen the movie.  Here are some of my audience members from this years show:

What else, what else…

OH.  I got some t-shirts made and sold them for the first time at Town Hall in NYC where I was opening for Brandi Carlile (who is AMAZING) :

Saw my pal Ira Glass do his thing at Oberlin College (my almamater) and got to sing a song with him to boot!

The month ended with a visit to SPACE in Evanston, IL - one of the nicest venues to play in the country.  They give you yummy dinner and treat you well and the audience is always excellent.   Next I played in Excelsior, MN with the lovely Mother Banjo!  A good time was had by all.

I spent yesterday, the last day of September, driving 700 miles to Kent, OH…

Bring it October!