Far-flung friends,
Would you believe it's October and we're still on the road?!? We're in Ithaca, New York to play my agent Lara's new concert series Beacon on Aurora tonight, then we're winding our way circuitously homeward via Louisville, Kentucky and one last festival in Southern Illinois––our eleventh of the season.
We've been so busy all summer that we had to put the Roadetta Roadshows on hold, but we're finally resuming our livestreams from the back of the van on Tuesday, and we've got two really special guests joining us: Scott Nolan from Winnipeg and Joe Nolan from Edmonton. They're the same two fellas I'll be joining onstage at the lovely Festival Place theatre in Sherwood Park for my homecoming show October 29th, but on October 3rd they'll be joining us in the back of our van in Cumberland, Maryland by the magic of the internet, and by that same magic there's room for all of you too. Tune in at 5:55 Mountain Time (find your time zone here) on either of my Facebook pages or on YouTube here, and be sure to say howdy when you do.
It's been a long, winding, wonderful year of roads (which I'll try and recount properly in a Hobo Travelogue from home) but amazingly, we're down to single digits for the remaining shows:
Oct 1 • Ithaca, NY • Beacon on Aurora Concert Series
Oct 6 • Louisville, KY • The Monarch w/ Flagship Romance
Oct 7-8 • Makanda, IL • Little Grassy Get Down
Oct 10 • Appleton, WI • Stone Arch Brew Pub w/ Sirsy
Oct 12 • Fort Atkinson, WI • Cafe Carpe
Oct 14 • Maple Plain, MN • Sun Dog Farm
Oct 15 • Winnipeg, MB • Wit's End House Concerts
Oct 29 • Edmonton, AB • Scott at Festival Place w/ Joe Nolan and Scott Nolan
Nov 3-5 • Cumberland, BC • Woodstove Festival
I wanna highlight those last two, since I'm pretty excited about both of them. On Sunday October 29th I'm playing a matinee homecoming show alongside two great Canadian songwriters, Winnipeg's Scott Nolan and Edmonton's own Joe Nolan. Scott's songs have been recorded by Mary Gauthier, Corin Raymond, Hayes Carll and more, and I'm a longtime admirer of his work. We've been on festival bills together in the past, but this'll be our first time sharing the stage. He's coming out for a run around the prairies with his Nolan-namesake, hometown guitar hero, great songwriter and longtime pal of mine Joe Nolan. They've got duo shows in Inglis, Erickson, Saskatoon, Medicine Hat, Calgary, and Red Deer, but for the last show of the run it'll be all three of us onstage sharing songs and stories in the round. It'll also be my only proper Edmonton-area show for the year. And it'll be my first time back on the Festival Place theatre stage since my high school band Super Dooper did our darndest in the 1994 Battle of the Bands.
If you'd like to join us October 29th, I reckon it's gonna be a special afternoon. The ticket link's here and there's a Facebook event here that you can invite your nears and dears to.
My last gig of the year will be at Woodstove Festival in Cumberland, on Vancouver Island. My friend Tereza Tomek started it, and it's something I've wanted to do for ages, but just could never make work until now.
After that I'll be hibernating, catching up with myself and getting to work on a long-awaited new album! I'm going into it with a surplus of songs, for the first time ever, thanks to the monthly writing schedule I've been keeping up for my Fellow Travellers over on Patreon. If you don't already know it, it's a subscription-based platform for creatives of all kinds. Mine's only got one tier to it, and it's pay-what-you-can. Last I checked there were 169 souls on board. I've released 26 new songs so far on the platform, all of which you can go back and listen to if you sign up. The latest one's called “Frankie's Braids” and I think it's a keeper.
Once I'm back home I'm also going to resume my monthly Fellow Travellers-only Zoom hangs, where we share songs, learn a tune or just hang out. They've been a lot of fun in the past but were hard to find the time for while the road's unwinding. I'll also be polling my Fellow Travellers about which of the songs they think belong on the new album. It's been really wonderful and supportive to have this community in my corner for the past couple years. If you like, you can join us on my Patreon or on the subscribers-only section of my website, where I've mirrored all the same content with less fees.
Alright, we've got a gig to play! If you're in Ithaca, we hope to see you there. If you're in Edmonton, I hope to see you October 29th. And wherever in the world, if you're free to hang out, we hope you'll join us in the back of the van on Tuesday.
Love from here,
s