Spring's Sprung

With the best of intentions I promise myself to keep this front page up-dated every month or two.  Well, you know the old saying about the road being paved with good intentions.  Better late than never I suppose.

Spring is here at last in Nashville, the trees in full leaf, yellow pollen dust all around and the allergy meds flying off the shelves.  May is always a tricky time for the mid-west and the south, tornadoes, rain and the occasional cool snap.  It's been raining and grey all week here and 50 degrees as I peck this out.  This has been one of the longest and most severe winters in the States.  There was an old song from the 1930s called He's Dead But He Won't Lie Down.  That was old man winter this year.  Things becoming more extreme everywhere and the collapsing Antarctic ice shelf is troubling along with the recent climate change studies just released.  Not certain what it is going to take for people to change.

It's been a quiet few months for me and that's alright.  I've been writing and am heading into the studio next week to record a couple new tunes for my own ongoing project.  More songs to throw on the pile that will eventually be a new album.

I'm getting ready to record another album with Iris DeMent in a few weeks.  My good pal Bo Ramsey and I helped Iris make her last record, Sing The Delta, a couple of years ago.  For this one both Iris and I liked the idea of recording it at her home where she'll be able to play her own piano.  So, that's what we'll be doing.  From Nashville it's an 8 or 9 hour drive to Iowa City where Iris lives and I'll load up the car with bunch of instruments and head her way.  Coming from the west coast will be engineer Paul Dugre with microphones, pre-amps, various recording gear and loads of expertise.  I am really looking forward to a little driving trip and getting started with Iris.

Don't know what got into me but I've been beating back the honeysuckle hedges that fence the land around our home.  It has a tendency to creep if not tended to occasionally.  It's been 20 years or more since I've thinned it out.  I'm out there with machetes, long handled pruners, saws, flame throwers and an herbivorous dinosaur... anything it takes.  Spring's sprung.

Richard