Whoa, horsey

A charming thing about Portland is there are little rings on the curb so that a long, long-ass time ago, people could tie their horses to the sidewalk and they wouldn't run away. Isn't that cool? First of all, imagine the pace of life back when you would get around town by horse. Life must have been so chill. I wish life could still be like that. And second of all, isn't it cool that they haven't torn these out for fear of a child tripping over them or something like that? They are still there, reminding us all the good 'ol days. Over the weekend, on the up-and-coming North MIssissippi Avenue, we spotted a funny little golden horse tied to a ring. I mean, how cute!

Magical Missy

Today is the one year anniversary of the day that my new friend, Missy Baron, passed away to the other side of life. I had only just gotten to know her, as we had just spent New Years together seeing music. The last time I saw her was when she stayed in our hotel room on New Years eve. Ziegy and I left early in the morning for the airport. She hugged us goodbye and climbed into the bed that we had left warm for her.

Missy was amazing. Always smiling, glowing, and inspiring people to be all that they can be. I don't think I've ever felt so wamly influenced by another person the way I was with Missy. I was so happy about this new friendship.

As sad as it is, I'm allowing myself to feel comforted today. I've always felt Missy's death to be a little, well *magical,* if you will. I'm not normally a very spiritual person, but I often feel a deep meaning behind Missy's death because of her connection to death in her own life. My best conversation with her was listening to how excited she was for her future in working in hospice care. After just having lost her best friend to cancer, she was planning to move to Georgia where she would pursue this dream while caring for the children that her friend had left behind. I watched her dramtically say goodbye to her good friends on the west coast. Just a couple of weeks later, while en route to Georgia, she died in a car accident.

Missy is now with her friend Lilly casting beautiful light over on the other side. And like my friend Jen Ammenti beautifully stated, her death feels understandable.

I love you Missy.

Tonight, to honor Missy, we will be with other friends who also knew her. We will gather to listen to the live webcast of tonight's Hot Buttered Rum show, which is dedicated to her. We will remember her by lighting candles, singing, dancing, laughing, and having fun.... just like she would want.

Hawaiian Butter

Aloha my friends. It's been over a week since being back from Hawaii but I still can't stop saying that cause it just makes me happy. In the past couple weeks we meltded down with Hot Buttered Rum in Hawaii, followed by a show in Seattle in Portland, so, a total of 6 shows. Totally over the top!

My Hawaii Highlights:

--Sharing a house with Ziegy, Pam, Lindsey, Jeff, Scotty, Pat, and Zac and Josh. Pam you are a superstar for putting all of that together. Thanks!
--The Busted in Hawaii hour. How cool is it that we turned the broken boat thing into a fun, butter sing-a-long party. Totally fun!
--The had me sit in on fiddle! I was surprised but pleasantly stoked. I heard a rumour that Josh the soundguy said the mic feedback was due to the overstoked crowed volume. and I don't mind blaming it on them. I love Aaron Redner! I will play next to him any day. There is a youtube video of this. If you type in Hot Buttered Rum, it's ther very top clip:
www.youtube.com/results
--Riding around in our convertible. Sweet!
--The lovely Jake Shimakaburo on Ukelele.
--Drinking out of a coconut.
--Playing in the waves. I felt like I was 5 years old again. (I got an ear infection from water in my ear, but alas, I'm nearly recovered now.)
--The crowd at all of the shows. Plenty of dance space! Such a great mix of die-hard fans from the mainland (how many of us were there, like 50?) combined with new fans on the island, meeting new people at shows like Beth, Allison, Jen Redner, Zac's parents, the Kauai girls
--The rented clarinet. Hilarious!
--Seeing Amanda, my island friend on the first night. Good luck in the Honolulu Marathon!
--Speding quality time with all of my fabulous Hot Buttered Rum family who are full of love, live, positive energy and I wish I could take them home with me.
--Imbibing at the Star of Hawaii. Floating around from pool to hot tub to ocean totally nakid. Too fun!
--The music and the dancing. I am a sucker for dancy, sing-a-long tunes like Busted in Utah or Sweet Honey Fountain, but the band also continues to amaze me with their tight musical language that is full of interesting twists and turns. Totally outrageous! How are they so awesome?

When is the next Hawaiin Meltdown?

But wait, there's much more.... After taking the red-eye flight and then sleeping for like 2 days, we cruised down to Portland for the Doug Fir show where we raged it with all of our lovely Portland brothers and sisters who who don't see as much now that I live in Seattle. The band sounded really good at the Fir. Good thing that Ziegy and I stayed at the attached Jupiter Hotel because this girl had a little too much fun that night. The next day--ouch.

Oh, but I recovered. You see, this night we were set to go big for the Seattle show and I did not let anything stop me. Not only was this our 6th and final show of our Hawaii Hurrah, but it was also Mr. Andrew Ziegwied's BIRTHDAY. He looked so great in his new dobro t-shirt that I made for him. And not only the birthday, but I also performed with the opening band, Deadwood Revival before the Butter set. Playing music with one ear is awfully hard, but who really cares, I decided. I went BIG. The highlight for me that night was the fact that Deadwood and Butter met for the first time that night and completely hit it off. We were fortunate enough to have special guests Bryan and Erik (on dobro!) sit in with us and it was just completely awesome.

Next up, Deadwood Revival and Hot Buttered Rum at Wintergrass!!

Aloha and Mahalo my lovely friends.

Hawaii Bound!

Tomorrow we're going to Hawaii! I can't wait to bask in the sun. Our time will be spent at Hot Buttered Rum shows at night and hanging out with our Buttery brothers and sisters all weekend long. It will be a mini-vacation of music and play. I think I'll get to hangout with Pretty a little too. This is my first time to Hawaii and my first time in a looong time going on a warm beach vacation. So I am super excited. I've always wanted to be on an island, even better, a tiny particle of land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I am such a sucker for all things paradise like palm trees, blue waters, and white sand. Bring on the sunshine! Aloha!

Knitted Graffiti

One thing I love about Seattle is that it seems little elves have knitted little teases of texture all around town. I don't know why, but I often see a street pole or bike lock post with a swatch of yarn knitted around it. It's as though an organized group of people decided that random street signs deserve a colorful glove or a little sweater for the cold days ahead. Every time I find one I get happy. You can't go wrong with a little public decoration and who doesn't like a little knitting? The picture you see here is the mother of all Seattle knitted graffiti. This huge quilt-like huggie is around a huge concrete beam underneath the monorail that goes from Seattle Center to downtown. It is the most wonderful thing to walk or bike by. It's like this huge organic piece of love that shines and sparkles even on the rainiest days. How amazing...Several people knitted this massive colorburst by hand (chunky style-which is my favorite) and diligently secured it around and around the post. It was given city approval because it was for a good cause. It sits through rain and shine and never moves. I do not know the story behind the Seattle knitted graffiti, but somehow I don't need to know. It's fun to imagine and I'm just happy it's there.

Minnesota

I just had a fabulous weekend in Minnesota! My friend Katt (middle) was visiting from Chicago, I hadn't seen her forEVER, so I thought it was a great excuse to visit my friends and family in The Cities. I saw tons of people! Pictured at left are Julie, Katt, and me. Both are super sassy women. My college girls are the best and never fail to be there for me. Hooray for the midwest! Now... we just need to get them to visit me out here.

The CD

I spent the early part of my Seattle days working on the album design for the new Cross-eyed Rosie CD. And now... Ta-Da!!! It is done! Over. Finished. And it looks good. The name of the album is called Adjusted. It's a 6-panel digipak, with a photo on each panel. The three outer panels are blue like night and the three inner panels are yellow like a sunny day, so the idea is 'getting adjusted to light'. Now all I have to do is sit back and relax and wait for all 1000 of them to show up. The CD also sounds super pro. I've have been rocking out to it in my car. I'm so happy with it! I think you will like it a lot. CD release shows are November 11 in Portland, November 18 in Seattle. I'll make sure you're all aware, no doubt about that!

I live in Seattle now!!

Ziegy and I have a little apartment in the Lower Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle. We are at the bottom of a hill just off of downtown, so we have a really fabulous Seattle view from our rooftop of the space needle, downtown, and the whole east side of Lake Union. And there's a hot tub! So when you're in Seattle, come and visit us! This is a picture of our living room window. I love to gaze out at the tree foliage-- framed by christmas lights, plants, and instruments. Ziegy bought a dobro a few weeks ago and I LOVE it when he plays it!!

String Summit

Here is a picture of a great moment from the String Summit over the weekend. It was our friend Eric's 50th birthday, so we did a big happy birthday during our set. (Click to enlarge.) Notice all the people behind him on the stage, that's all of Cross-eyed Rosie, plus Kim and Jason, our fabulous friends from Deadwood Revival. We had a totally killer set! I feel on fire with my fiddle right now. I have a new cordless pickup and I'm loving the freedom to move around.

The String Summit is always a delight, but it was extra special this year being IN it. Ziegy and I relished in the back stage-ness, drinking lots of free beer, and chatting it up with musicians. The Yonder boys and all of their crew and friends were really sweet to us. My favorite part of the weekend was the Chris Thile superjam, with a fiery lineup that kept changing on the fly. Observing the action from the sidelines was seriously fun! They would literally work it out seconds before walking out on stage... Awesome.

Late Sunday night was the Benny Galloway pig roast. Benny or 'Burle' sits in with Yonder sometimes and he writes a lot of their songs. He is a super sweet guy who plays bass with the Wayword Sons (www.waywordsons.com/). On Thursday night before the String Summit, Deadwood Revival did a house concert and me, Benny, and Anders (the dobro player from Wayword Sons) sat in with them. A hot jam! I can't wait til Chip gets the recording done.

Summer

AHHHHHHHHHH.......... big sigh of relief.

That's how I feel right now. It's Monday. And I don't have anything scheduled for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or even the entire weekend coming up. It's uncharted territory. This summer, I haven't felt this refreshing feeling of wide openess until now. Today.

Guess what...the album is done! My band just got done recording our 2nd CD, one that I've been anticipating making for almost a year now. TO-tally done. For almost all of July, I focused on my fiddle playing. I spent long hours, working out solos, finding cool lines, and mostly playing along to a lot of CER on my ipod. Most of it was really fun, but it's pretty much impossible for me to record without a whole lot of stress and high expectations of myself. I get really caught up in all that performance anxiety, and I think way too hard about the few critical listeners of the CD instead of all of the people who don't know a thoughtful line from a shaky screech. I forget that all that really matters is how I feel about my playing.

At any rate, it's over, and I feel just fine and dandy. We recorded the entire album in one weekend, believe it or not, with instruments on Saturday and vocals on Sunday. It was practically recorded live, since we only had time for 2 or 3 takes on each song. It was really intense and nervewracking, but through it all I did a lot of reflection on what I can reasonably expect of myself and I think I gained a little more overall self-love. Yay!

So, now I am peeking my head back up in the real world and saying hello again. I just had a really fun weekend to celebrate being done recording. My friend Kelly had a beeee-yootiful wedding on an island on Saturday, and last night I was lucky enough to make it down to see String Cheese in Eugene, seeing many good friends. Just before the weekend, I found the time to bike up Mt. Tabor (my personal outlet for peace). While I was up there, I discovered this new angle while hanging upside-down and stretching the backs of my legs. Sometimes I get pretty locked in that position.

I hope everyone is feeling relaxed and being sure to not overbook themselves!