"It's a smile, it's a kiss, it's a sip of wine, it's the summertime"

July 1st??????? Here are some updates:

***Last weekend the whole band and I trooped up to San Francisco to play a show at the Hotel Utah. It was a great show, I seriously had the most fun I think I’ve ever had, and I was SO proud to show off the band and have my friends and family see what I’ve been up to for the past year. Natalie and Allen opened the night with their respective musical glory and between their set and the whole band’s I couldn’t help but feel that knot of gratitude in my stomach reminding me of my many blessings. I got to take the band around to see some Bay Area sights, my favorite of course being the Headlands- the most spectacular view of a city I’ve ever seen. Natalie and Jacob and I walked some of the Golden Gate Bridge on a perfect late spring afternoon. The night after the show Brother Beist took us all on a caravanning tour around San Fran, stopping at the top of Market for another sparkling view, as well as a trip down Lombard. Every time I go back to the Bay Area, I hear it calling me home. Until the day I actually make that move, it will always be the shows I get to play at home that mean the most because I just want to make everyone proud. Thanks to my amazing and hospitable family for all their help and to all my dear peeps who came out to support.

***Three Cities is almost on itunes. I swear.

*** Here at Cleon we barbeque at least 3 times a week. I'd say that qualifies as pretty amazing. I just saw that movie "Food, Inc" and it surely inspired me to become a more conscious meat and produce consumer, but none the less summertime barbeques are really one of the best thing in life. And Natalie Metcalf cooks one hell of a burger. Late night bbq with a glass of wine while sitting outside in the backyard chatting with friends and singing songs? Yes, this is my life and yes, I know I'm so lucky.


***This morning I had to take my roommate Allen to Bakersfield. It’s a long story but basically his car broke down in Modesto last week on the way to SF and he had to leave it there and was taking a train out of B-field to retrieve it. Natalie woke up at the buttcrack to go with me, bless her heart. I haven’t been through Bakersfield in years but I got the urge to try and find my old neighborhood and house. Somehow, by recognizing random street names and taking wild guesses, I ended up in ‘The Oaks’, our old housing development. It was weird. Everything was still there, the old parks we used to play at, my old elementary school. The old cul-de-sac. My bedroom window is completely blocked by a big palm tree that must have been planted there in the past 15 years that we’ve been gone. The pine tree I did plant and lovingly named Herby must have either died or been pulled up because he was nowhere to be seen on the side of the house. All the ghosts of my neighborhood friends and me were silent. Everything just looked old and kind of muted. I remember it all looking so much more alive. I didn’t feel sad to tell you the truth. I was expecting to have a much more significant emotional reaction. What I felt was more of a shock- life indeed goes on. Other people live in all those houses now, other lives being lived, there is no trace of me there. The roller-blading competitions, the bike rides, the basketball games played half court style on everyone’s driveways, the pool parties, the hide and seek and tag. The big trampoline at Tami’s house, collecting cans with Todd, chasing the ice cream truck on hot summer days. Those early years were good ones, but they’ve given way to new families, new 9 year old kids running wild.
There is also no trace of the cloud of smoke we left behind. All the tears we cried and secrets we kept behind closed doors don’t hang heavy over the house, over the court, over the block. There is no one in that neighborhood left to remember. It kind of felt liberating, like maybe I’m more grown up than I thought.
Each of us has our own script we remember and carry with us about what really happened there, and our own truths are the only legacy we leave behind with whomever we decide to share it with. I’m thinking about reinventing mine. Or at least taking a big, deep breath and remembering that in real time, Bakersfield is only a town. The people I love and hold dear from there are scattered across the country now, but it is through them that I honor the years of my childhood that were innocent and sweet.


***And finally, I saved the best for last: this girl, this ‘cynical about marriage, jaded about relationships sometimes skeptical about commitment’ girl has been swept right off her feet and fallen flat on her face in loooooooove. And I mean SWEPT. For the past 2 months or so it’s been all I can do to conduct a normal life at any level because my head has been completely in the clouds. I don’t want to go into too much mushy detail but I will say this, it was really the easiest thing. All my freaking out, all my incessant rationalizing and ponderings about partnership and personal space and independence and expectations- suddenly didn’t matter when I met this magical man of glory. Everything I’ve been so afraid of turned out to actually not be real. To really feel this mutual magnetism, it’s like I’m a 5 year old in a constant state of amazement. I just never thought it’d happen to me, but lo and behold it did and I’ve never been happier.
Sooooo- stay tuned for some happier songs for sure!! Haha.

Happy July to all and happy summer!!!!