Boy oh boy have I been negligent in updating this thing. I hope that isn’t going to become a standard preface for any new entry on here now, but for the time being entries are going to be pretty sporadic and thin. For the time being, at least, I have a good excuse–I am living out of a backpack, with no computer, almost a month into a two month long European tour with David Strackany, aka Paleo, a songwriter of abundant talent and resourcefulness. I am writing this from my great aunt’s cottage in Hook Norton, a village in the Cotswolds, one of my favorite places in the world. I was here for a week or so when I was six years old and it has retained its mystery and its charm.

So far we have been to Denmark, Holland, a bit of Germany, Belgium, and England. The bad weather has followed us around, as everyone we meet says that the week before was lovely and warm, and we have only been met with rain and an early spring chill. We have Scotland and Ireland to look forward to before the weather is likely to improve, but I am excited about Ireland in particular. Then it’s off to an extensive routing through France, with a quick stop in Barcelona included, and then we go to Switzerland, Austria, the Czech Republic, and through much more of Germany.

Many of the foreign reviews of Post-Empire seem not to understand its influences or its trajectory–”Clearly my guitar playing has been heavily influenced by the work of Leonard Cohen,” and similar nonsense–but I suppose that is to be expected. This is American music that I have been making, and not even the Americans appear to ever win this weird critical guessing game. Why critics play at knowing precisely what musicians have been listening to, and why they always present their guesswork in such a condescending way, their confidence matched only by their incorrectness, I will never know. Most critics these days are woefully underinformed about popular music history compared to the people actually making the music, in any case. I hold out hope for the French music press, for now, as the record is released on a French label, and as the notices there so far have understood what I am trying to do, at least. OK, time to stop bemoaning mediocre criticism. People are entitled to their opinions; I just wish they could express their opinions without putting their words in my mouth (and in my hands, and in my guitar, and in my brain).

“Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.”
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery