Sun Jun 22 in Bklyn and July Tourdates (correction)

Just wanted to let you know about our show this Sunday in Brooklyn, NY, and our July tourdates in Massachusetts, Vermont, California, and Canada.

This Sunday, June 22nd at 6pm we are opening for Salif Keita at Prospect Park bandsehll. Salif Keita is incredible he has one of my favorite voices on the planet. He's from Mali, which is the birthplace of some of the greatest music I know, besides Salif--Oumou Sangare, Ali Farka Toure... If you can make it to the big field in the park this Sunday, you will be transported.

Meanwhile, we have JULY tourdates to announce, see below. The LA date is on Wed the 16th and we also have a show at Pappy and Harriet's in Pioneertown, California--near Joshua tree national Park on Mon the 14th, so here are the dates once again... (we might also be adding a Sacramento date on Sat, the 19th--will let you know as soon as I do)

Thu 7/10/08 - NORTHAMPTON, MA @ Iron Horse

Fri 7/11/08 - TINMOUTH, VT @ Solarfest

Mon 7/14/08 - PIONEERTOWN, CA @ Pappy and Harriet's

Wed 7/16/08 - LA-SANTA MONICA, CA @ Temple Bar

Fri 7/18/08 - GRASS VALLEY, CA @Worldfest

Sun 7/20/08 - REDWOOD CITY, CA @ Redwood City Festival

Mon 7/21/08 - SAN FRANCISCO, CA @ Elbo Room

Tue 7/22/08 - SANTA CRUZ, CA @ Moe's Alley

Sat 7/26/08 - GUELPH, ONTARIO @ Hillside Festival

And of course, if anyone out there is moved to help us spread the word, we would love that! Please send us a message and we'll send you an email blast you can send to your list about the show and/or posters and we'll hook you up with tickets.

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'NO CEILING' REVIEW ON JAMBASE

Last wk we were featured on 'Jambase' with a review of 'No Ceiling.' Here's the link and an excerpt http://www.jambase.com/Articles/14184/Haale-Living-In-Another-Place

"Tough and seeking, bold and reflective, there's absolutely nothing timid about Haale's hybrid, which flows like hot mercury or pungent smoke, singular shapes impossible to pour into standard molds. Hard rock drones ride Middle Eastern percussion, while she glides between English and Farsi with a voice that's part PJ Harvey, part Nina Simone – resolutely powerful but capable of great, cathartic fracture.

On the heels of two excellent 2007 EPs, Morning and Paratrooper, Haale's full-length debut, No Ceiling (released in March on Channel A Music/Music + Art), picks up the fire of that performance and places it in wonderfully constructed lamps that light the way towards some of the first truly international music of the 21st century, a marriage made on Earth with an eye tilted skyward at all times.

This music offers a gateway to something far deeper than casual background accompaniment. Theirs is a door of perception swinging wide, and while many of us might not understand every word, the underlying meaning – and "the pleasure of foreign tongues" as Barthes once put it – is evident. Haale calls out to the universe, and by gum she might just get a response if she keeps it up like No Ceiling and the band's intense, almost ritual concerts, which seem hell-bent on shattering barriers and preconceptions at every turn."

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HAALE IN THE BOSTON GLOBE, ON NBC, AND BRITISH TV

Got some news to announce, a little belated, but here we go…

Got a review in the Boston Globe on the day of our Boston show back in May. Here's what they said about the album:

"'No Ceiling' is set to go down as one of this year's most memorable releases…a woozy, swirly little gem of an album…which brims with focused energy and sounds much bigger than the often spare instrumentation…It situates Haale in a particular tradition of female rockers who balance electric-guitar frenzy with the intimacy and alluring elusiveness of poetry."

Our song 'Ay Del' from the EP 'Paratrooper' aired on NBC's show "Life"—episode 107.

Fyi, 'Ay Del' is Part II of the song 'Home Again'—also on 'Paratrooper,' they're meant to be played back to back!

I made a cameo appearance on British TV a few wks ago, on the 'One Giant Leap' series—'What About Me?' in episode 4 alongside Daniel Lanois, Michael Franti, Sir Bog Geldof, and actor Billy Connolly. There are some interesting moments in this series, with Michael Stipes, Eddie Vedder, Noam Chomsky, Tom Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Oumou Sangare, either making music or talking about love, death, human evolution.

Meanwhile, been working on a bunch of new songs, they're coming soon. Will keep you posted on that.

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TOUR BLOG--SPRING TOUR ’08!

Here are some highlights from our Spring tour. We did 25 shows in 30 days in the South, on the East Coast, in the Midwest, Toronto, and New England, starting in Texas…

MARCH 13. Austin, Texas. SXSW.


A thousand bands, four blocks of dive bars turned into music venues just for the week, dissonance of crash cymbals and bass drums and distorted guitars swirling through the crowded streets, women in super high heels, press people snapping photos, smoke, band shwag, and beer.


We played Club 115, the Relix Magazine Party. Someone kept pressing the release button on the fog machine, so spews of fog billowed around us, golden beams of light shot through from behind us, and a troupe of long-haired guys got down to the beat. Oh yah.







MARCH 14. Fort Worth, Texas. McDavid Studio.


Driving to Fort Worth. Here's Billy, our cheerful road manager/Chi Qong master extraordinaire, looking ready to drive 8,000 miles in 28 days.






I have a this plan to do Chi Qong everyday on this tour, let's see how long that lasts.


Drove 3 hours to Fort Worth. It's a spanking clean town that looks like a Disney movie set.


We played McDavid Studio, sold a lot of CDs and met some myspace fans, very heartwarming.





And here were some finds at a nearby gas station:




"Jesus: Don't Leave Earth Without Him." And right above that, "Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off." Got to love the South.



MARCH 15 Hot Springs, Arkansas. Valley of the Vapors Festival.


Drove to Hot Springs, Arkansas. Imagined we could find some springs nestled in the wilderness of the national park, and soak in them the day after our show.


No such luck. As we found out, the hot springs are all enclosed in big tiled bathhouses, and apparently, as the drummer from Post Honeymoon told us, they're all run by big burly men—or women—that slap you around and thrust you in and out of the cold plunge. Surely he was exaggerating but anyway, decided not to give that a try.


We did see a hilarious trio of town offerings on our way in: a billboard advertising a Gunshow, a Church for the deaf and the blind, and a strip Karaoke joint, all within 3 blocks.


And then there was the Valley of the Vapors Festival, which was a little oasis.. The people who ran it were awesome. We played at the Low Key Arts Center, a forest green building, with a cozy proscenium stage, Nate Duval posters all over the walls, a living space for artists upstairs, and a totally hip and receptive crowd of Arkansanians.


The place was packed and we had a blast.




Nate Duval art, he's done posters for so many bands Explosions in the Sky, the National, Bright Eyes, etc. etc. etc.



MARCH 16. Day off. Driving, driving, driving to Nashville


Stopped in Memphis for lunch. Saw the obligatory Elvis banners and paraphenlia everywhere. Parked the car by the Mississippi and gazed at the muddy majesty of it all.


Read Neruda and the Onion. Listened to St. Vincent, Panda Bear, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and Deerhoof.








MARCH 17. Asheville, NC. Bobo Gallery.


Drove another 8 hours today to Asheville, NC. I love this state, creeks, mountains, kyacks, hikers, boiled peanuts.


We played Bobo Gallery at a benefit for poetixonline.com, an organization that runs poetry workshops and seminars in schools, prisons, at festivals etc. (They will be at Bonnaroo this year). They opened for us with a reading of poems written by incarcerated youth that had participated in the project but were still in jail. Intense and moving work, probably very cathartic for the writers. Glad we could do something to help with fundraising.


After the show hung out with some friends, and our management team, made a fire in a stone pit beside a forest of bamboo under a full moon.









MARCH 18. Chapel Hill, NC. School Kids Records.


Drove 3 hours to Chapel Hill. Today our new album "No Ceiling" is officially released! We're doing an instore performance at School Kids Records in Chapel Hill. We're one of the last to do this, as the record store is closing down in 4 days, another casualty of downloading.






MARCH 19. Chapel Hill, NC. Memorial Hall.


Played Memorial Hall, a gorgeous venue at the University of North Carolina. The hall seats 1,300 people. KD Lang had just been there a few wks before. Here we are soundchecking…






Rich Stein and Skye Steele (percussion and violin) flew down from NYC to play the show with us.










Packn' up.


Here's a review of the show we saw in the local paper the next morning


http://media.www.dailytarheel.com/media/storage/paper885/news/2008/03/20/Arts/Haale.Hooks.Crowd-3276481.shtml




MARCH 20. Arlington, VA, Iota Café. and March 21. Philadelphia, PA. Tin Angel.


Drove 4 hours to DC. Played Iota in Arlington, opened for Bitch of the once Bitch and Animal. Had a few drinks, watched the show, drove to Philly. Listened to Boards of Canada and a mix of IDM music Matt made. Our booking agent, Andrea from Agency group was riding with us. Talked about bands it would be cool to open for, named about 50…Nick Cave…Yeasayer…Sonic Youth…Next day Matt cooked a feast and we all napped, played the Tin Angel. Cozy joint with a dedicated sound guy. Drove to NYC after the show.


MARCH 22. Brooklyn, NY. Brooklyn Academy of Music,'s BAM café.


You can see Matt's new spiral cymbal in this shot…





Here I am suspended above Flatbush Ave, on an electronic billboard advertising the show.





Here's a review of the show


http://lucidculture.wordpress.com/2008/03/24/persian-passion-haale-at-bam-cafe-brooklyn-ny-32208/


"This artist is all about adrenaline, exhilaration, and transcendance, the soaring exuberance of her voice contrasting with the frequently haunting chromatics of the music.


The set built a crescendo to a wild, swirling finish; Haale saved her best songs for last. The crowd – an impressively diverse crew – wanted more, but it was almost closing time….


Not that readers of this space would be likely to argue with this premise, but what the world stands to lose if the Bush regime bombs Iran isn't weapons of mass destruction. We already know what happened the last time around. What the world stands to lose is music like what Haale played tonight, and the people who make it, certainly worth standing up and fighting for, before they try another war to distract us from the depression they helped create. "


MARCH 23. NYC, NY. Drom.


Played DROM, milled around the East Village after soundcheck. We're all psyched to sleep in our own beds for a couple nights.


MARCH 24, 25—day off!!



MARCH 26. Harrisburg, PA. Messiah College.


Drove 4 hours and played Messiah College—a Christian college in Harrisburg, PA. This is our second time there.


The occasional Persian lyrics and references to Persian mysticism in our music didn't turn them away obviously, which is cool, you never know in this odd time of religious fanaticism and insularity. They were spinning 'Ay Dar Shekasteh' on the airwaves while we chilled out in the green room before the show. This song is a big thanks to whomever/whatever made us, gave us life, put the fire in our spirit.



After the show we we plundered the cafeteria's cashew supply and hung out with some of the students and the guys who put on the show. Here's one of the campus cathedral against the black sky we passed on our way out…







MARCH 27, Pittsburgh, PA. Thunderbird and March 28 Cleveland, OH. Beachland Ballroom


Pittsburgh and Cleveland. We played the Thunderbird Café and then the Beachland Ballroom the next night. Stayed with Matt's family. In Cleveland, one of his relatives busted out some old records from the late 1800's and played them on this phonograph also from that time.





He played a track from an album by a Russian soldier's choir, which was surprisingly beautiful and eerie. He had a walls of books, among which I found a pop-up version of the Kama Sutra, 3-D paper figures getting it on.


MARCH 29 Chicago, IL, Kinetic Playground and March 30 Champaigne, IL Highdive


Rocked Chicago and Champaigne, the Kinetic Playground and Highdive. Our second time at both these venues. On the way to Champaigne, pulled out the percussion in the van and had an inspired little vocal--shaker jam. Worked on some new ideas as we rode across the plains, Matt and me on guitar, Brent on his violin.


MARCH 31 Milwaukee, WI. Day off.


Did an interview at WMSN. The DJ played Off-Duty Fortune Teller, No Ceiling, and Ay Dar Shekasteh on air and we did a short interview.


Then went to the Milwuakee Art Museum, very futuristic piece of architecture, designed by Santiago Calatrava…










They were showing a film presented by Alverno College in which we made a cameo appearance, so we checked that out, and a photography exhibit, some interesting Czech and German photographers. Couldn't get into the rest of the exhibits as it was after hours, so we feasted on strawberries and wine at the reception till they kicked us out.


Then we walked around the museum outside in the fog. Looks more like a space station than anything I've ever seen. Those white wings you can see in the distance actually beat everyday at noon.










APRIL 1. Milwaukee, WI. Shank Hall.


Here's a review of the Shank Hall show. http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/04/03/071509.php


April 2 Minneapolis, MI Cedar Cultural Center


Drove 6 hours. Listened to Nick Cave and Ali Farka Toure and Nina Simone. Talked about hyperspace, and human evolution, and how expensive gas is. Saw a burning car on the side of the road.



?????
Finally made it to Cedar, loved the place—and Shank Hall, great vibe in both places.. Here are some pics and a review from the show…














APRIL 3 Pontiac, MI, The Pike Room


Drove 11 hours. Watched Robert Altman's 'Vincent and Theo' on Matt's computer. The opening scene shows footage from a Sotheby's auction where they're selling VanGogh's sunflowers. The auctioneer starts at 5 million, then they go up 5.5 6, 6.5 7, 7.5 8, 8.5, 9, million, etc. At around 11 million, the scene fades to the impoverished Vincent in his hay bed despairing over his penniless state. And underneath, you still year the auctioneer's voice continue 11.5, 12, 12.5, 13 million, etc.


Pretty brilliant superimposition of scenes. So much money passing hands, and none of it benefiting the artist. We need more art foundations, and someone to funnel auction house money to LIVING artists.


Pontiac is 30 mins from Detroit. After soundchecking at the Pike Room, we went down the main drag looking for a place to eat. Store after store was for sale, for rent, for lease. Shops with brand new awnings and glass facades all shut down. Saw a lot of that in upstate NY as well.. The recession's in effect, we don't see this in NYC much.


We played for a small but enthusiastic crowd. Felt ridiculously good to play after sitting in a van for so many hours.


After the show, got back in and drove across the border into Canada.



APRIL 4 Toronto, Lula Lounge


Can't remember all that much. We had a great dinner at Luna, played for a packed house, and then heard part of a set by a wicked salsa band that played after us.



APRIL 5 Bellows Falls Opera House, Bellows Falls VT


Drove 9 hours from Toronto to the beautiful town of Bellows Falls, right in time for soundcheck. I love Vermont, the mountains, the air, totally unbuckles my heart.
This is also one of our home bases, thanks to Charlie from Flying Under the Radar. He brought us up here the first time after hearing us on NPR. This is our 4th show in the area we've done with his promotion team.


We played the Bellows Falls Opera House, a 500 seat theater . The poster for the show had us on one side and an ad for the Chris Whitley tribute on the other, starring Alejandro Escoveda. Chris Whitley is one of my favorite artists of all time, I once heard him called a contemporary, surrealist Robert Johnson. That's a good description. His album, Dirt Floor, is classic. Didn't know but he grew up in Bellows Falls.




April 6-9 Three whole days off!



APRIL 10. Falls River, MA. Narrows Center for the Arts.


Back in the van. Happy to be on the road again. Listened to Oumou Sangare, amazing singer from Mali, one of my all time favorites. Wrote out phonetic translations of her words as we're driving along, want to learn her songs and phrasing.


The Narrows Arts Center is a factory in an old mill town that was transformed into a music venue and art gallery. The exhibition they had was called 'Experiencing the War in Iraq through the Arts." It included a few pieces by Iraqi war veterans. There were prints, paintings, photographs, videos, and installations. Hanging from the ceiling where we played were almost 4,000 flags, each one representing an American soldier lost to the war. There were harrowing photos of Iraq showing the absolute chaos and despair. Very sobering to say the least.








APRIL 11. Buffalo, NY. Tralf Music Hall.


Drove 8 hours to Buffalo, was beamed in via skype and ichat from backstage for a panel discussion on Current TV. Then got on stage for the show. Here's a shot Edward Batchelder sent us….Holding up the Light.




And here's a preview of the show http://www.buffalorising.com/story/haale_no_ceiling




APRIL 13. Ithaca, NY. Cornell University.


Drove 3 hours to our last show at Cornell University in Ithaca past rolling green hills and lots of farmland. Adam Matta, the virtuostic beat boxer we met through myspace set up the show. It was called the Axis of Equals, Basya Shecter and the Near Eastern Ensemble also played.


We sauntered around campus before soundcheck, had a couple milkshakes and sat in awe before the waterfalls and gorges.


We opened the set with Hastee, and rocked through for another 40 minutes. After the show, a bunch of the musicians got back up on stage and we all jammed. Adam and Matt laid the beats down, and a violin and trumpet joined in with Brent and me. We were all lit up and loose, perfect way to close out the tour, in celebration of music, love, and unity.

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New Song from ’No Ceiling’ - Town on the Sea

I've decided to post backstories on some of the songs on 'No Ceiling,' 'Paratrooper' and 'Morning.' You can hear these tracks on our myspace player or on our website.

Today we're posting 'Town on the Sea,' track 10 off of 'No Ceiling.'

I started writing this tune while we were on a gig near Marseilles, France last July.
It was our European debut and we were playing the Mimi Festival which was on a tiny island off the coast of Marseilles, called Illes de Frioul.

This little island was gorgeous, stationed in the choppy Mediteranean sea, with free-standing columns and old stone stairs that looked like ancient Greek ruins---the remains of an 18th century quarantine hospital for victims of the bubonic plague. (!) The stage was set in the middle of it all.

Here we are at soundcheck:


View from the island—photo by Matt Kilmer






And here are the lyrics for the first part of 'Town on the Sea':

On a street in Marseilles
An old man sleeps under a sign
Beside a port of parked boats
Who's mind pines? Who's heart folds? Who floats in parallel?

On an island near Marseilles
We sang among the ruins
Surrounded by the sea
Who's mind reclines? Who's heart is still? Who rings like a bell?

Who rose? Who fell? Who drank from the waters?
Who knows? Who tells? Who found what bliss is?

Concentric circles of broken columns
And stone stairs
A rocky coast, a flock of sails
Who's mind finds a rhyme? Who's heart is wide? Who's ocean swells?

Who rose? Who fell? Who drank from the waters?
Who knows? Who tells? Who found what bliss is?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------


The outro for the song is in Persian.
Here's a translation:

"Traveler, there are so many roads you can take.
The road of transformation and change---the road of love and the heart, is your best bet."
(No more fear. No more fear.)

Sometimes I sing about evolving, breaking spells of fear, and so on, just to remind myself to keep at it. It's nice to sing those lyrics in Persian, b/c then I don't sound like a self-help book. ;)


Enjoy the song. Play it loud on good speakers if you can.


Psychedelic Mimi Fest

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Floating Down

"Floating Down" is Track 1 on the EP, "Paratroooper," released in 2007.

I wrote the lyrics after reading the biography of Jimi Hendrix called 'Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky' by David Henderson. There was a passage in there that described Jimi's stint as a paratrooper in training and inspired the song.

Here it is:

"He had reveled in the sound of the big plane, lumbering through the air.... The sound of the door opening was even more enthralling. The rush of air into the cabin, the howling singing of the wind, surging in, augmenting the sound of the engine. It had been a true marriage of machine and nature: the sound, the energy. And then falling. Falling away from that sound, farther and farther toward the earth, where he would float like an angel toward its silence and its life.

When he got his guitar from his father, he began to experiment with duplicating the sound of the heavens…He started sleeping with his guitar. Not only was he a constant fixture in the music room, but in the barracks he was constantly working on new sounds, even without an amp... He began to realize what he wanted to do in life."

Here are the lyrics to the song:

Floating Down

Falling towards the shimmering waters and the lands
Where I will be a fighter on command
Still my love blooms like the parachutes above me
I'm floating down, I'm floating down

Something mystical in this falling
The wind that rustles through their trees whips around my ears
Below, above, around me, strangers, soldiers, friends
All get lost in the sound,
Dissolve in the sound
I'm floating down, I'm floating down

1,000 miles above thousands of years of turning
Turning of blue and green, tears and dust
Take me out, take me back, take me out to where
Morning sun in meadows slides down the leaves of grass
as the sunlight comes raining down drop by drop
Overtake me till it's nothing like nothing---Life
I'm floating down, I'm floating down


I like the idea of dissolving in sound, or dissolving in one's love for sound, or for anything. That's basically what Jimi's life was about. That's what the Persian mystics are always talking about too, dissolving in love, and losing conceptions of boundaries that way, at least for a moment.

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Before the Skies

"Before the Skies" is Track 5 on "Paratrooper."


The first line of this song is by the Persian poet, Hafez, who wrote back in the 1300's. The second line is a rough translation of the first: "What matters most in this place is the fire that never dies, that burns in our hearts."

A lot of mystics talk about fire. It's a symbol for a big, radiant Love. The idea is that we all have a drop of this fire, and it's ours to tend and keep alive. This fire burns the ego down, it illuminates things, and it radiates warmth. It's like having a little piece of the sun in you.


Here are the lyrics to "Before the Skies"

What matters most in this place
Is the fire that never dies, that burns in our hearts
(Andar deleh maast---'it's in our hearts')

Stand closer. This fire will not burn.
It's only here to light, only here to warm you.

So walk backwards and help me trace
A million miles before the skies
What burned through the dark
is in our hearts (andar deleh maast)

Oh light, remind us.
Wake all these stones.
We're only here a while,
Only here to know you.



Here's a line by a French mystic poet named Teilhard de Chardin, who also considered fire an apt metaphor for this big, radiant Love:

"Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, and tides and gravity, we shall harness the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."

The first discovery of fire, in the caveman days, led eventually to all kinds of technological advancement. So what would emerge from the second discovery of fire, when, as Chardin says, we harness the energies of love? Some kind of global bliss, maybe? If it seems outrageous and impossible, it ought to. Whatever world would result from this second discovery should seem as outlandish as flying planes and surfing the internet would have seemed to a caveman. If that much change could have been spurred on from the first discovery, then yes, maybe if we really 'harnessed the energies of love,' the world would be totally different than what we have going on now. So we should try to imagine it then, and slowly it'll happen.


Speaking of imagining,
I wrote Before the Skies song with Dougie Bowne and we recorded it in late 2006. Sean Lennon played bass on it and sang some beautiful, Beatlesesque harmonies too. Here's a picture of us in the studio:





One more thing. Here's a short poem by Hafez, translated by Daniel Ladinsky, which reveals more on the subject:

Even after all this time
the sun never says to the earth,
'You owe me.'

Look what happens
with a love like that,
it lights the whole sky.

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Morning

"Morning" is the title track on an EP we released in January 2007.


The song was inspired by this image:



It's a shot from one of Shirin Neshat's films entitled 'Rapture.'

I love how the women start to resemble birds as they get closer to the water. It looks like their chadors turn into wings.

I was also longing for the sea and the sensation of release I sometimes get when I'm there when I wrote this tune.

Here are the lyrics:

Morning

In the morning when the sea is glowing
Do you still look out mesmerized by the water
like the times when we would fall into the tide?

In a photograph I see you walk towards the sea
The wind pulls your dress (veil?) to wings like you could take flight.
Just like the times when we would fall into the tide.

I still imagine you free.
I still imagine you mesmerized.
Just like the times when we would fall into the tide.


The cover shot on our "Morning" EP is also one of Shirin Neshat's photos. She's one of my favorite visual artists around.

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NEW ALBUM--NEW TOURDATES

Our new album is done! It's called 'No Ceiling' and will be released on March 18th. We recorded it in the final months of 2007 when we were back from touring. It features some of the songs we've been playing on the road this past year, like Zero to One, Middle of Fire, and Hastee, and a bunch of new songs you've never heard. We'll be posting several tracks from the album on myspace in a wk or two. And in a few days when our new website is up, you'll be able to pre-order a copy.

We start touring on March 13th with a show at SXSW in Austin, and will be hitting many cities in the South, the Midwest, and the Northeast in the first month of touring. Many more dates will be announced through the year. So excited to be back on the road!

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RENT, TOURING, WATERBEDS, AND AN ODE TO KINDNESS IN AN AGE OF TENSION

In 1999 I moved from an apartment on 4th street on the outskirts of Park Slope, Brooklyn to a room on the corner of Rivington and Allen on the Lower East Side, right above a Mexican restaurant that served greasy eggs with home fries for $2.50.

I had a room in a two bedroom apartment that I shared with an actress and dancer. She made good artichoke dip, read People magazine, and occasionally did showgirl gigs in Atlantic City to supplement her income. My room was a little square, around 11 feet by 11 feet. I was subletting from her ex-roommate. He had emptied everything out of that room, except for one piece of furniture: a king-sized waterbed. Splayed out like a manatee, taking up 80% of the floor space, there it was, a shining monument to impracticality, my king-sized waterbed.

When I was a kid growing up in Philly and hanging with my lip-gloss wearing disco babysitter named Denise, I heard about waterbeds a few times. It was the 80's and waterbeds were a dying breed, a dumb idea that still evoked the mystique of a 1970's California party scene. When I thought of waterbeds I thought of shag rugs, psychedelic posters, large aquariums, and sex.

But here we were in the post-sex, self-help year of 1999 (or at least of my life). As I stood there looking at the waterbed, I thought, this might be a good thing, the waterbed, maybe I'll have some soothing dreams of being at sea. Sails and waves and distant horizons. Could be a healing thing. Could lower my basal anxiety level!

I paid about $600 a month for the small, well-lit room and the magic bed. To my friend who paid the same for a two room house in North Carolina, with a backyard and a washer and dryer, this was preposterous. To most people I knew in NYC, it was a steal. In that little room, I started writing poetry. I had a small blue end table I had painted myself, a hanging shelf, with a wonderful selection of cassettes--yes cassettes. Of Elis Regina, James Blood Ulmer, Caetano Veloso, Eric Dolphy. I wrote some good poems in that room. Something about the simplicity of it all helped put me in the right frame of mind. Only the essentials. Paper, pen, music, books, my undulating bed. And a feeling that I was living simply, not cluttering my life with things.

A year before that, I was down in Boulder, Colorado at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics for a summer writing program started by two great poets of the Beat generation, Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman. One day during class Anne wondered out loud why any of us 'young writers' lived in NYC anyway. Rent was so high. When she lived in NYC, she went on to inform us, she paid almost nothing for rent. She was free to read, write, commune with other writers all day long. If she was a young writer today, she said, she'd live somewhere in South America. There, she imagined, and I agreed, the vitality of art and culture might not be stifled by exorbitant bills.

Right now, in 2007, we are living in an age of manufactured terror and fiscal tension. The rubble of unending wars, nuclear proliferation, dissolution of Geneva Conventions, 2500/month rent bills, mountains of water bottles, and pcb ridden waters are dark consequences of our (or some people's) addiction to power, money, and so-called progress. While all these hellish elements are swirling about our globe, we are trapped in the mundane, overwhelmed by the cost of living, and enslaved to our own rabid consumerism. Not good for music, art, or anyone's nerves.

Over the 10 years I've been playing music in NY, I've played with many amazing musicians. The ones that aren't struggling to stay afloat with a full time job, and are lucky enough to sustain a living by playing gigs, usually play with many bands. It's rare to see a great musician have the luxury of time or the luxury of a cheap rehearsal space to spend all their days on one or two projects that might not be lucrative, but might have some profound meaning to them, and might eventually lead to music that is innovative and authentic enough to enrich our lives if we put down our cell phones long enough to listen.

Kind of depressing, but of course there's always something good happening in the cracks of any system. And as things get worse, our coping mechanisms get stronger. Community. Tribalism. Barter Economy. Friendship. Helping each other out. In this age, kindness and generosity are our most precious natural resources. And then of course there is nature, and the sea. As ugly as the planet has become in places due to pollution and war, we still, in this country and on most of the globe are lucky to have hundreds of thousands of square miles of park, forest, desert, river. It's our duty to enjoy this and to raise our level of happiness. The more miserable we get, the more miserable we allow our governments to behave. Only hurt people hurt people, and so we owe it to each other and the planet to heal ourselves, and quit the nonsense!

Over the last 6 months, since Jan 2007, I've been touring with my band. We've got to experience the best of all this bright-side talk. Kind, funny, generous human beings, as well as creeks, caves, redwoods, oh puentia cacti, and waterfalls. We've stayed with old and new friends in Philly, DC, New Orleans, SF, LA, Chicago, Yucca Valley, Austin, Santa Cruz, Great Barrington, Atlanta, Charlotte etc. etc. Sincere, hospitable people, they are everywhere.

After Bonnaroo, we jumped in a river in Tennessee, sat under a waterfall and it beat upon our backs like the earth had 1,000 fists. We went to the desert of Yucca Valley and slept under the sky. We covered our bodies in clay on a tiny deserted island in the middle of Lake Norman in North Carolina. We ate rice and vegetables beside a bonfire, while we listened to Ben, the arid agriculturalist outside Joshua Tree, tell us stories about his urban punk days in Chicago when he had one foot Mohawks, and in his glasses I saw our little fire dance, and in his eyes I thought I saw a found man. He showed us what he had grown in the desert, radishes, for instance, I ate one. It was delicious, and so was the water that came out of a spring he found on the land.

Yes there is terror, there is fiscal tension, but there is also joy and there is also love and there is also beauty. And more people are full of it and/or capable of being full of it than we would ever guess. Isn't it important to know this, say it, feel it, tap into it, be it, and pass it on? Surely more than any pill, self-help book, or waterbed, knowing this and living it lowers my anxiety level,

And so I say…
Nothing we can buy will fill our gnawing souls.
We are of the sea, of the desert, of the mountains, of this world, we are alive---what a pleasure, what a gift.

As the wonderful poet Sonia Sanchez once said, "This is not romantic, this is hard-core."

I listen to the crickets.
I throw off all that deadened me.

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