We Did It! Alright Alright Returns Part 1

Well, wow.

We did it.

We hauled ourselves, our children, Katelin, our gear, and our vintage 1959 trailer across the country and back.  5700 miles, nine house shows, twenty-one nights, countless truck stops, a few state parks, a national monument, one national park, several national forests, and one Crazy Horse later, we have returned to our Colorado crash pad across from the train tracks.

It was epic, this tour we dubbed the “Tin Cup Nights Tour”.  Not because of the raging after-parties or screaming fans busting their way to the front of the stage, and not because we made out like bandits financially. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I‘ll take all of those things AND an invitation to open for Nathaniel Rateliff and the Nightsweats.  But this tour was successful because it proved something epic to us: that this weird musical lifestyle can actually work for us, for our family.

For so so long, I was convinced that I had to either be a mom or a performer.  The traditional avenues to success in the music industry are woefully un-family-friendly.  Believe me, I’ve experienced it, and I’ve watched other families go through it.  I’ve played shows that started at midnight, gotten home at three am and then woken up with the kids at six am.  I’ve watched wives become single parents for whole swaths of time while their husbands toured.  Heck, I’ve been one of those wives.  Ugh.  I still shudder when I think of those days.

How in the world could we possibly make touring work for our family?  I mean, there was no way we were going to let our kids sit in a nasty greenroom for and hour and a half while we played to half-listening, half-drunk people at 11pm.  And we aren’t quite at the stage where we can hire a full-time nanny to tag along with us, whisking the kids away at bedtime while mommy and daddy sing pretty songs.  Nope.  It had to be a whole-family affair.  A road-trip with some singing involved, and a few strategically placed destinations to buoy our cute little charges along the way.  It had to be musical, professional and family-centric. Somehow, almost accidentally, we struck that balance.

In the following days and weeks, I will tease this out, devoting a blog post to each of the intentional or completely accidental tenants of our success.  We are home now, and honestly, I just want to get back on the road.  It’s easier there.  Life on the road is definitely difficult physically, but oh! The freedom from the trappings of houses, pets, lawns to be watered, pianos to dust!

The duality of this life we have chosen, the necessary stasis of home and family and school and soccer and music lessons juxtaposes, sometimes jarringly, with the equally necessary gypsy-like life of a troubadour.  It is not for the faint of heart. This re-entry into the Typical American Life has been like shifting from fifth to first gear.  Clearly, there are lessons to be learned on this side of the adventure, but thank God we had the adventure in the first place.  

Upon Announcing our DIY House-Concert Tour, I Got Hit By A Giant Ball of Fear

As you may well know, we are planning a tour of house concerts for the middle of August.  That idea has been in my mind since at least January, but I lacked the confidence and vision to start planning it then.  So it’s July and I am nailing it down. Which is fine, really, except that I need to keep a rigid schedule to make sure that I am actually doing everything that I need to be doing (and honestly, I feel like I am inventing a wheel here and I sort of don’t know all that I should be doing).  Oh yeah, also, the kids are home for the summer, and my sister is getting married in 2 weeks. So, you know, real life is all around me every day in the midst of planning this trek across the country.  Everyone keeps saying, “I am so excited for you to go on tour! “ or “Wow! Fun! Tour!” And, honestly, I don’t know what they are talking about, because, and I just realized this a minute ago, it's as if an entire family of critics, nay-sayers, fear-mongers, and work-a-holics moved into my mind and set up shop as soon as I wrote that last blog and announced our tour to the world.

Yeah, you know who I'm talking about.

Finally, yesterday, I paused long enough to realize that this is absolutely not the way I want to approach our maiden voyage.  I want to approach my life, my art, my endeavors from a position of JOY, not FEAR, and I have been holding a fear-ball in the pit of my stomach since I wrote an email asking people if they wanted to host house concerts.  And this fear-ball sucks all the life and all the excitement and all the joy out of this whole process for me.  And I really want to figure out how to start bouncing it and playing with it and getting it out of my stomach.

So, I figured it would be a good idea to catalog all of my deep-seated terrors about tour, and see if any of them hold water.  so here they are:

That I am not good enough.
That I am going to be a disappointment.
That this is going to feel like so much work and no fun.
That I will feel awkward about money with my hosts and their friends.
That I will somehow damage friendships in the process of playing at friend’s houses.
That I will irreparably damage my children and they will grow up to hate me/us and blame all of their social anxiety on their parents who took them along on tour.
That we won’t eat well and all get heartburn or food poisoning or giardia
That the whole endeavor will be a bust and a huge waste of money and time.

So there you go.  There is my full-blown tour anxiety in black and white.

Now that I have written that I am like, “What the hell am I doing?”

And then I think, “Why do I even want to do this? Any of it? Why do I even want to continue playing music and trying to share it with others?”

Then I remember yesterday in church.  I remember singing the hymns with my whole body, because, honestly, if you are going to go to a church that still sings hymns from a hymnal, why not just go all out and sing the alto part at full volume?  And when they choose one of your favorite hymns that you knew all the verses to back in your evangelical days, you just belt it out, not worrying what the lawyer in front of you is thinking.  Because that’s what you were made to do.  Literally.

My body was made to sing loud.  I guess I was made with a volume level that (sorry, guys) "goes to eleven."  So when I actually stop feeling embarrassed about this fun little fact about myself and I actually start playing with it, something wonderful inside me starts to happen.  I get really really happy.  I guess that’s what joy feels like.  It feels like a lump in my throat that automatically travels up my face and into my cheeks.  It makes me feel full, like post-brunch full, except I won’t have heartburn.  It makes me feel soft and a little sappy, and I know it makes me feel a whole-hearted satisfaction that, for some reason, only happens when I do music.  The piano kind or the singing kind. 

So how can I figure out how to apply that kind of joy to this scary and arduous tour-planning process?

I think I start with playing.  There must be a reason we call it “playing the piano”.  We don’t say, “working the piano”.  Somehow, in all that music training and in the process of figuring out how to make money doing music, I forgot how to play. 

A quick etymological search tells me that the word “play” finds its roots in the West Germanic word “plegen” which means “to occupy oneself about” and can also be traced to another word, “pflegen” that means “to take care of, cultivate”.

BAM

Cultivate.  Play is cultivation.  Playing music, for me, cultivates joy. 

So I am going to head to my piano now.  I am going to see if I can play my way out of my tour anxiety.  I’ll let you know how it goes.  Hopefully, after some time at the piano I will start feeling more like this:

The Unexpected Return, or, Hello Again After These Many Years, or, A Christmas Newsletter Goes Rogue

Hi.  It’s us, Seth and China. 

This blog post is kind of like a newsletter…one of those ones that should have gone out at Christmas (oh. so, you noticed we didn’t send out Christmas cards last Christmas??  yeah…we actually started them - made them ourselves…and then at the addressing stage I bailed.  Big time.  We sincerely hope you weren’t offended.  Maybe they will be resurrected as Thanksgiving Day cards this year?? Don’t judge…) Thing is, usually Christmas newsletters catalog the best sort of mundane American family life.  This post is actually about how our lives have been turned inside out (I know.  Again?!)  and how we decided to venture forth into the most un-mundane American-dream-family-life we could presently conjure, and still be considered decent parents.

Here goes.

Once upon a time there was a boy named Seth and a girl named China.  Through no fault of their own, their worlds collided (BANG!) and now they can’t remember what life was like before that big bang.  Naturally, they started working together making, playing, and generally music-ing.  Life was one joyous, albeit slightly untethered, occasion. 

Then there were the child bearing years for China and the “holy crap! I need to make money for this growing family!” years for Seth.  And the gypsy-creative-sing-song days seemed to wane.  Sure, China continued to teach music to children and Seth took many a guitar-tech/engineering job, (along with so many others, it’s hard to remember them all) but their own projects took a back burner, leaving room for the other beauty they were creating: family. 

Fast forward: November 2014:

The Kent family is in full swing.  Fender and Harper in full-time school, music lessons, baseball practice, dance classes, a full-bred Springer Spaniel romping around.  So all-American you would have swooned (or puked).  Life is good.  Life is normal.  Maybe too normal.

Seth finds a cigar box his parents gave him lying around the house.  It soon becomes a guitar under his luthier-skilled hands. That guitar becomes an obsession. Now he has a garage full of cigar boxes and builds strange guitars out of them. He begins to sell them, to donate them to silent auctions, and then he plays them at shows. Check them out here!

December 2014

China has a routine dental appointment (it’s always those routine ones, isn’t it?).  The pearly whites are fine, but there is a growth (a growth?) on her throat.  Appointments are made, biopsies are performed.  There really isn’t anything like a cancer scare to wake up the sleeping giants inside of us, giving us the strength to actually do the things we were meant to be doing all along. The biopsy come back clear, as does her vision, and she commits herself to recording an album and giving the one thing she has to the world: her music.

January: 2015

Seth’s “cushy 9-5” comes to an end, leaving his employment canvas blank… the possibilities are endless!  Should he purchase a mountain property and run back-country adventure trips? Should he buy an archery range/shop? Maybe pursue something completely new? After some research, soul searching and beer, he realizes that he still really loves music, especially music with China. He also remembers that he is good at a lot of things in and around music. He decides to dedicate 2015 to making music with China, to giving this Alright Alright thing another shot.


Spring: 2015

BIG CHANGES are afoot. We have been recording together since March to create a new and interesting album as Alright Alright. We are clearing schedules and booking rooms for choir recordings. We play a show to a room of 140 new sets of ears and we love it. We design and print t-shirts. The Safer EP (from 2007!) has been re-printed to sell. We are booking house shows and lining up gigs around town.

In the midst of all this creative movement, through a crazy set of circumstances, China hears about a house being remodeled just 13 blocks from our house. It is brand spankin’ new, in the quirky industrial part of our neighborhood. right across from the rail yard. Best of all, there is an 8’X40’ shipping container in the back that can become a recording/studio space. Before we realize what we are doing, we pack up our things and head east. 13 blocks east, turning our Zuni Street house into an Air BnB. Whew!

Check out this sweet logo! This has been waiting for 7 years!

Summer 2015

Now to what is next. More shows, more recording, more creative. We have a decent chunk of our recording done and will soon have space for all of the musical instruments, recording gear, and the old analog console Seth has had for years to all be in one place. The recording will be very Kentish.  You might just hear the trains passing in some of the songs.  The album will be out in September.  We will let you know when it is available (and we are stoked about it!!!)

mini-tour 2015

Yeah.  That’s what we said.  We are heading East in August, and on the way we are turning the trip into a mini house concert tour.  With 2 kids.  Maybe with our doggie.  Are we crazy?  Yup.  Quite.  Crazy enough to try to do this music thing in a way that works for us, in a way that is life-giving and relational and fun and, I don’t know, sort of the way we think music should be.  We have some experience with touring, and we want to try our hand at it with Alright Alright. 

DO YOU WANT TO HOST A HOUSE CONCERT?

Well, do you?  AWESOME! We are looking for places to play between Denver and North Carolina, mainly through Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina between August 8-12 or August 20-23.  Even if our route doesn’t hit your town this time, we will be back.  Please let us know if you are interested at alrightalright@mac.com!  We can’t wait to meet your friends and play some tunes for (and maybe even with) you! 

WHAT IS A HOUSE CONCERT?

yes.  I knew that one would come up.  A house concert is a donation-based show that we play at or in your house.  You get to invite your friends, neighbors, relatives, co-workers, whomever you want to come share a night of music in your home (usually you have to invite twice as many people as you want to come in order to fill the room) and we pretty much provide the rest (everything but the booze!).  You get to introduce us, we get to play for you and your people, and at some time in the night, you pass a hat around the room (or yard!).  People can pay as much or as little as they want.  It’s great. It’s intimate.  It’s a musical experience like no other. Read more about it here on the Wikipedia page.

The Grief Pygmies

When your Dad dies, things happen like stabs out of nowhere. Like blowdarts through the window from little invisible pygmies. It happened to me this morning, and instead of cleaning the kitchen, I have decided to write about it in search for more clarity, more understanding of what this thing grief, this thing death, is.

A few years ago, at the family reunion right after my Dad died, John, Dad's cousin, sat me down and beautifully recounted some of his best memories of Dad. He ended saying, "when someone we love goes beyond this life, we keep reaching, beyond the grave for that relationship, for that person, and though they are dead, that relationship still grows with each new understanding of who they are."

Today, I was pulling Harper's tights up over her sweet little booty, and reached down to straighten that pesky toe seam that always ends up vertical instead of horizontal, and WHAM. It happened. I nearly missed that imp, that pygmy with the blowdart. He hit me right where it counts and the crack in my everyday armor split wide open. Of course I didn't recognize it for what it was at first. I just stormed around the house mad at everything and Seth in particular for all those dumb things you get mad at when you are deflecting your pain. But for some reason, straightening that vertical seam on Harper's tiny foot kept coming back to me, frozen in time. And I realized that I was Harper and my Dad was me 33 years ago, and he was straightening my tights so that the seam went horizontally over my toes. I was in his lap and he was concernedly and anally perfecting my two-year-old hosiery.

And I am undone.

Damn you, grief pygmies.

When my Dad died three years ago, he hadn't been a part of my everyday life for several years. Sure, we talked on the phone a few times a month, and I flew out to see him a few times a year, but his presence was psychological, not physical, for the most part, and I was fine with that. It took me at least a month to cry after the funeral, and the grief process seemed to be in slow motion. But every time I get hit with one of these moments, these stabs out of oblivion, I am thrown into accelerated grief, and feel sort of guilty: "What is wrong with me? Why am I feeling all of this emotion? It's been three years, aren't we finished with this?"

I guess all I can see through this is that when your Dad dies, the unravelling, the understanding, the weight of his influence, his role, his personhood is far too much for anyone to work through. Even in a lifetime.

A dear friend of mine says that to love someone is to understand them. Love and understanding are interchangeable. There were huge swaths of misunderstanding and unknowing in my earthly relationship with my Dad. This reaching out beyond the grave, this yearning for understanding of my Dad is love. And I can imagine him now, on the other side, now in the arms of Perfect Love, now reaching back, now understanding.

Things we don't particularly like

Today was the grand packing day. "Aljo," our trailer, borrowed from some dear friends, is a 1958-ish 10 foot aluminum camper, and also our home for the next 6 weeks, give or take. We are headed East to "une grand fete" - Nathan Johnson and Katie Chastain's wedding. It's going to be a 5-day affair, if we can make it for the Van Gaylen show on Wednesday night! We are super excited to see our old friends, but I am definitely NOT super excited about this final push to get out the door.

The house is a wreck, the final packing details: "where should we put the childrens' books?" and "should we take the Brazilian hammock or the REI hammock," and "I know I saw my sun hat just the other day, where the &$*! is it now?" I think the final 10% of all packing sometimes takes the longest.

My friend Cindy compared our situation to giving birth, and in some ways I agree. The last few days of pregnancy are just sheer hell. Then you have a baby and BAM! You are immediately shot into a brand new phase of life.

In a few short hours BAM! we will be launched into the first experimental phase of gypsy-dom.

On a different note, Fender's been testy with Harper lately. Tonight, while I was tucking him in bed he says, "I don't wike Harper anymore."

Me: "oh? why not?"

Fen: "sssee aways messing fings up."

Me: "ya, little babies tend to do that when they start walking..."

Fen: (with the beginning of an impish grin) "Maybe we ssould sell her"

I think we all could use a nice 30 hour road trip...

Starting Over

Seth got "let go" six and a half weeks ago. It was one of those ugly incidents full of bewilderment and betrayal that ends up feeling like someone took a blow torch to one of your appendages. An arm, a foot. When he told me I was driving, leaving a long day of killing time at the mall behind me. I was good at that whole how-to-fill-a-day-with-enough-to-help-you-forget-your-loneliness thing. I guess you could say his job was prestigious, important. Not in a white-collar sense, but he worked for important people, and was on the road to his dream. And as a result, I spent a large part of this last year as a single, albeit, married mother of two.

It was a slow descent, that loneliness. Like a long dreamy Southern Belle descending a spiral staircase on a torpid Georgia afternoon. It was full of valor and idealism. I was such a good wife, so committed to my husband's dream that I thought the emptiness almost charming. I had found so many creative ways to entertain the kids that my life felt like one long succession of play dates and trips to the zoo.

So, when he got fired, I felt like I had gotten fired too. And I was mad. Mad at his employers, mad at the company, mad at the industry, and mad at his employers again. My sense of outrage was heroic, fueled by my loss of identity and that ugly feeling of being victimized, of being scorned.

But immediately Seth and I were a team again, and that felt amazing. My typically non communicative husband had suddenly begun to talk to me constantly about how he was feeling, and I was over the moon! Conversations would just start up at all times of the day and night. Most of them revolved around his ex-job, but some were the beginnings of forward thinking for our family. And suddenly, in the midst of this great tragedy, I started to feel alive again, for the first time in a year.

Which means I was dying before and hadn't realized it.

I guess I had been like the toads my mom always warned me about.

"Don't you be like those toads, " she'd say, and I would roll my eyes.

"You put them in a pot of cold water, put the pot on the stove and then wait while the water heats

up. Those frogs don't know they're in hot water until it's too late 'cause they're cold blooded and

their bodies just adjust to the heat 'till they die!"

I think secretly she's always wanted to try to actually boil a frog, she's just that curious.

But, Mom, you have a point.

I guess I believed so blindly in my life that I thought loneliness, emptiness and lackluster were just par for the course, and as the water "heated up" I absorbed it, thinking I was somehow being righteous or a good wife. Yeah, good and miserable.

Blech. I want to scratch and re-write. I want to crumple that sorry acceptance of mediocrity, of a life of chosen unhappiness, of voluntary aloneness and toss it baseball style into the deepest darkest trash bin I can think of. To think that I was beginning to sacrifice my own soul for the comforts of steady income, a husband with a high-profile job, and *maintaining* said comforts!

We are leaving this town for a while to go re-write our story. Our dream right now is to buy an old bus that's been converted to an RV that runs on Waste Vegetable Oil (WVO) and drive it across the country to a few weddings, a family reunion, and some good old-fashioned family vacation time. We leave Monday, actually, and, um, honestly, we still do not own a vehicle that will transport our family across the country. I have said many times that I feel like Noah, only for me, the flood has already occurred, I'm just herding and packing and praying like crazy that the boat is going to appear!

And, dude, I know that I sound utterly insane.

Stay tuned for more news. I promise I will blog more.

So Seth and I just spent loads of time trying to upload the new song, "The Scent of Honeysuckle" to no avail. I am seriously considering switching my blog to Tumblr...it's so much easier, I hear? Anyhow, the song is a rough draft recording we did 2 nights ago. I'm not too concerned about perfectionism at this point, just keeping momentum going. I like this new momentum.

So, I have a piano lesson scheduled for Wednesday night at Dr. G's house, but I haven't even looked at Prokofiev for over a week and I am tempted to cancel. Bail. Ditch. Always my temptation. Just writing this down and confessing my sins to the unknown vastness of cyberspace (not that my reader base is vast - but you get the point) is serving as the ass-whooping I need to get myself to that black shiny thing with white buttons 4 feet away from me as I type.

Seth is doing dishes, the saint, and again, the dishwasher is running. And, oh, it was a lovely Mother's Day. Maybe I'll write about that later.