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ninetymilewind: December 2008
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Wednesday, December 31, 2008. Looking Back, Looking Forward. It's time once again to take stock of my year and set goals for a new one. I'm exhausted just typing that sentence. Many of you probably do the same thing on New Year's Eve. We torture ourselves needlessly and try to put a smiley face on our accomplishments the way Mrs. Walker did in second grade. A migrant orange picker gets a raise. A guitar picker gets permission to park near the dumpster. Friday, December 12, 2008. I always wanted to be a m...
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ninetymilewind: Cold Eye, Warm Heart
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Thursday, September 3, 2009. Cold Eye, Warm Heart. A procession of ants invaded our kitchen not long ago. We sprayed, we cleaned, and the ants retreated. They were back a few days later following a slightly different path. It has been a month now and we've conceded that maybe these ants are smarter than we are. Their intelligence is collective, of course, but does it matter? The truth is I’ve had no real. The world was like a distant storm. I could feel it on the breeze. Just a whisper in the trees.
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ninetymilewind: April 2009
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Saturday, April 11, 2009. Song, Come Free Me. Music is sustenance, oxygen, bread, water, faith and nurture. We all know how it feels to starve on the fat of some success or to thirst in the fountain of a few good times. Success and good times do not satisfy the soul’s craving for music. I’ve prayed for a little music, but never for success or good times. When the music is gone, as it often is for a season of fruitlessness, I turn to stone inside. It again, and I’m resurrected. This week was like that.
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ninetymilewind: May 2009
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Monday, May 4, 2009. It's All (Almost) In A Name. I think a song title should catch my eye and stir up some curiosity. That's what the artwork on the LP/CD was all about, too. Except for some of the Indy stuff, lately CD artwork consists mostly of airbrushed photos of the stars. Who cares? I figure if the artist can pull that one off I might like what they do with an ordinary title, too. If I write a 500 page book called "Headache", will you want to read it? Pretty boring these days whether they sound.
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ninetymilewind: February 2009
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Tuesday, February 10, 2009. We multi-task our days away in a whirlwind of keyboard activity, and we’re even programmed to enjoy our interruptions- that’s what the researchers have discovered. Interruptions increase adrenaline and the kick is addicting says author Maggie Jackson in her new book “Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age”. We’d rather get an email or a Tweet than focus deeply on anything because the short-term rewards are greater. I would dive into a song idea early in t...
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ninetymilewind: August 2008
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Wednesday, August 20, 2008. Van Ronk's Last Cigar and Other Fables. Now, try to forget this simple story. If you're like me, that may be a difficult thing to do. Fortunately my friend David Massengill has turned it all into a beautiful tribute song on his latest CD " Dave On Dave. Just in case you manage to forget it. We took to the road and he showed me the ropes. Never count the house* kid, keep dreaming your hopes. And keep an eye open for the bizarre'. The best stories are usually the unnoticed incid...
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ninetymilewind: August 2009
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Monday, August 24, 2009. I arrived in Nashville to write songs for the first time on the day that Marty Robbins died. It was December 8, 1982. The timing of my arrival seemed uncanny to me because Marty was one of my biggest boyhood heroes. How this came to be is a story in itself. Was a record made for stirring up the imagination of a young boy. I spent hours listening to it on my little suitcase turntable while the bright sunbeams crept drowsily across the floor and I slid over a few inches along w...
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ninetymilewind: The Bear
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Friday, September 25, 2009. The big Boeing 737 whined into the blue carrying a stocky man in a twill coat. His beard was neatly trimmed. On his lap sat a hunk of greenish rock. No one had objected to him bringing it onboard the plane because this was back in the days before terrorism and the lethal fear of men with beards. 8220;I saw the bear in it as soon as I picked it up out of the field,” he said. 8220;Seeing is one thing, but taking the time to chisel it out…,” I said. 8220;Neither did I.”. Fritter ...
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ninetymilewind: Painted Pony
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Wednesday, November 18, 2009. It was the icebox winter of 1972. The Pennsylvania hills were covered in blue glaze that locked the land in a glassy silence. Coming up the last hill the car's tires whirred on the frozen patches, fishtailing through the black woods until the lights of an old farmhouse broke through bare branches. I met me a Bearcat Woman, high on a mountain side". Sassafras on the wind. Fog in the morning where the river begins”. We climbed to the upper level, opened the bay doors, and sat ...
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ninetymilewind: January 2009
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Monday, January 26, 2009. If you try to please audiences, uncritically accepting their tastes, it can only mean that you have no respect for them: that you simply want to collect their money. No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader's intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing. I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done. As hard as it is to understand, you will not be successful until you digest all of the elements of commercial music until they are in your very fibre and blo...
