so if I fell I would fall right in

you know how sometimes you'll buy an album, and for some reason, whatever reason, no reason, it gets set down someplace and left un-listened to?

friday picked a cd out of the stack a couple of weeks ago while he was here, and i realized sheepishly that it still had the plastic on, despite having moved with it twice, if not three times.

tonight i pulled off the cellophane and listened to it, and was reminded of a feeling i get now and then about these sorts of things. that sometimes the reason you haven't listened to an album, is because it just wasn't time yet. whyever this album waited until now to be listened to, it's just what i needed.

cold weather is brenda weiler pushing her boundaries. i hadn't been particularly inspired by anything she'd released since crazy happy, and so that's probably part of why this one wasn't a priority when i picked it up. but this is a different sort of exploration of her sound, and it's just what i needed to hear as i try to pick out where i'm going with my own. (not that i've any idea of where that might be mind you.)

brenda's a musician i can think of in at least a tangential way as a peer, having opened for her so many times, and to hear her manage to do such different things and yet still be so clearly and identifiably herself is a really. good. thing.
something tells me i'll be living with this album for a bit.

no more coffee for me at night! seriously. how many lessons do i need to learn this one?


also, the next time lis harvey comes through town, i expect more people to go see her! though having such a small audience made for a stellar concert experience. if you're in chi-town, she'll be there twice in the near future. once at schuba's with girlyman and once at the heartland. go go go. really.

boy comes home today. he's been gone almost a week, and i miss him. i'd also hoped to get a lot more done while he was gone. but i didn't. so now i have to see how much i can get done super quick before i go to work for a couple of hours. then i pick said boy up at the airport and then go back to work to do an overnight.

i had something to say, and now i don't remember what it was. damn.

in lieu of whatever i've forgotten, i ask you for words.
when i can't decide what to listen to, i'll type a word into the search field on itunes and then ask it to limit it's search to song names. i end up with a playlist of songs that all have said word in the title. as in, at the moment, i theoretically am listening to a star list that contains 38 items from ben folds "bastard" to hum "stars" to david bowie "ziggy stardust."

so. give me words to make playlists from. just single words, likely to pull up a few songs.
and for the record, tortoise pulls up nothing.

so tonight i went to see girlyman and dar williams at o'shaughnessy with julie and lauri and a good time was had by all. which seems simple enough. except that girlyman is so much more endearing live and ty just slays me (and everyone else if we're counting) and she signed the album 'hey rose--' and now i own both albums instead of just having them and they're both signed. and this song, this song is just.... well. and dar babbled and told stories and was her usual charming adorable socially conscious self and apparently she's had a baby which i did not know. but she played "we learned the sea" and i never thought in a million years that i'd ever hear that live and it broke me just a little in just the way it should. i hated her guitarist who was too loud and seemed like he was bored and trying to amuse himself. but girlyman opened with paul simon's "born at the right time" and this was one of those shows that i belatedly wished i'd sneaked my minidisc into so i'd be able to listen to it again later. oh. and i got one of dar's set lists. so i'll include that list below in case anyone's interested. and then we drove around in the mini trying to go to a closed coffee shop and ended up at spyhouse along with naoumena who i haven't seen because i never get to the parties i always mean to try to make it to.

but it was a good show. and i know perfectly well that i need to be seeing more live music. but this was a show that helped drive that home again. in large part because of how you could see the stratification of where dar is now and where she had been and where girlyman is now and where they're likely to go.

but i'm almost ready to write again i think. it's kind of like i've been shut away for quite some time figuring out who this current me is and who the next me is going to be and i'm almost there. but the getting there involves the writing and the not being afraid to be scared. and then of course the being me and living that. if that makes any sense. so here's to finding my own wings one of these days.

( set list )