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Every single source claims custard should melt more slowly than ice cream, but I remain unconvinced. 84° in my office at night, my custard inside a frozen metal beer cup (further nestled inside my Justin Farren “There’s No Such Thing As A Bad Day” koozie) … science and all my talismans are failing me. I am racing the melting points of my brain and my dessert. I’ve been working so hard – not only to bring my album into the world, but to give it a real future. I’ve been knee deep in spreadsheets and endless fields of metadata. I hate it. My friend-who-gives-exceptional-advice reminds me: The success you’re looking for is on the other side of the work you don’t want to do. 

Today’s 2-Minute Tale

I prefer working in real fields, in the yard. During lockdown, that exertion was the only safe place to take my rage. I was too close to screaming at someone who only slightly deserved it. Down into the backyard, I saw the decade-overgrown disused garden, chose my victim, and grabbed a shovel. 

I recognized the opportunist from childhood; its magenta fruits were our sidewalk paints. Dolly Parton used its berries for lipstick into her teens. I had a friend who grew up poor enough to have eaten its leaves, which require three rounds of boiling to leech out all the toxins for poke sallet. Phytolacca americana. Pokeweed. 

What I didn’t know as I without plan plunged that first shovel into the dirt, is that it’s also called the “resurrection plant.” Not only can its seeds stay viable for 40 years, but it grows a tuber the size of a large newborn, from which thin roots shoot out eight feet in every direction. I was two feet deep and four hours in when I pried out the first one. I’d figured maybe two or three plants to dig up. 

There were seven. 

Days and days with shovel in hand, my musician callouses fading with so little music to maintain them. Unfamiliar blisters reforming into something altogether new. Eventually, this spectacle drew the attention of women walking their dogs – all seemingly named “Sue” – who’d stand at a safe distance and watch me work. They started bringing me snacks. Then recipes for the snacks. Then, tools.

“This is what you’re going to want for that,” said the next-door neighbor I’d never met, handing me a more effective torture device. 

When all was said and done, it took more than 20 hours to dig it all out over the span of a week or so. And I learned that was successful work I never wanted to do ever again. 

A few weeks after I black-bagged it to kill everything I couldn’t till out, shrouding it in absolute, merciless darkness and suffocating heat … I got curious and peeked beneath. Much to my horror, an army of anemic little seedlings STILL burst forth from earth. The friend-who-gives-exceptional-advice told me that seeds are their own energy source, and have enough stored power to force themselves through the soil … even in the dark. 

I won out in the end, when I took up the tarp one year later to the most satisfying, desolate wasteland of boring dirt I’d ever beheld. Never before had I been so proud of nothing.

For all I have destroyed, civilizations have risen with my improvements to the yard; My personal Works Progress Administration, to survive my great depression. And things have come to live with us. Even in that inhospitable landscape, a big black toad took up residence. I started bringing him caterpillars who got too friendly with the pepper plants. Nature has varying levels of welcomeness.

In this, the Fifth Year of our Flower Bed, something unidentified is nibbling for the first time. When you create worlds that weren’t there before, they aren’t discovered overnight. But, if you’re good at it … if it becomes a reliable world … word eventually gets out.

***

I can only hope I'm so lucky with this new album, “Panic Room With A View,” which backers received their advance digital copies of a few days ago. Your messages have confirmed my hopes that this work was special. The rest of the world gets it Oct. 17. Look for the first single on all streaming platforms on Aug. 15. Ya know, right before I play the PHILLY FOLK FEST ON AUG. 17!!! WHAT!?!

Don't see it? Check your spam filters, storm drains, even under the garden toad. Don't have it and can't wait? I got you. DM me a screenshot of your advance ticket to my show with Wicked Sycamore this Saturday, Aug. 9, and I'll reward you with a digital download. Click the pic for tix/info:

UPCOMING:
Aug. 8 - w/ Ayreheart @ Elk Run Vineyards
& MORE AT THE FULL CALENDAR

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