I am stoked. I had such a great time last year. What a lovely crowd! I am checking out the lineup and listening to artists I’ve never heard of, like Heiruspecs. So good. And old favorites, like The Pines. Loving rdio.com to check it all out. Good vibrations.
Dhamma dharma the path, the way…
An old friend recommened I go on this meditation course. “I think you’d really get a lot out of it.” I signed up right away, don’t have to tell me twice. I’ve dabbled in meditation for a couple years, but it never really took root…
So I went on this 10 day donation-based course. They have centers all over, probably even a center near you. It is great. Total mind/body cleanse. Have the notion? Check it out.
www.dhamma.org. No dogma. Just some meditation.
Be well.
Anna
Just read this interesting article in Spirituality & Health entitled “Is There Still a Glass Ceiling on Enlightenment?” (Sept/Oct 2009, p.64-66). The last paragraph addresses “The Female Roots of Sexism” and goes like this:
“Tenzin Palmo believes that the problem now is not sexism from men but from women. ‘The age-old problem is that women tend to idolize men. They give their deepest respect and devotion to the male teachers and spiritual leaders. Until this fundamentally changes and women begin to support and appreciate their own gender, they will remain weak and overlooked.’” So true. Made me check myself. This NYTimes article was sent to me today (thanks, Lex!), & came at a good time for this blog post:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/fashion/20Guru.html
Oh, and Rachel Getting Married rocked my world.
Mmm she’s so amazing, I just found her on Lucinda Pandora radio. And then then I read about Cayamo Cruise. Whoa! http://www.cayamo.com/Artists/
Driving into Salt Lake City, 4/16/09.
Driving into Salt Lake City, 4/16/09.
How great is this video?
New Soul by Yael Naim
SXSW was amazing. I arrived on Monday night and met up with my friend Eddie from LA (who is riotous, and came up with literally 200 band names during the five days we were there, dig Outer Space Coffee Break)* at the enormous Whole Foods in downtown Austin. They were out of spinach. Apparently there was a spinach shortage. Wha? Anyway, on Tuesday I kicked it and recovered from the 13-hr drive (on 4 hours of sleep) the day before and finally made it downtown around 6PM to celebrate St. Patty’s day.
Wednesday
We started things off at the HearYa party, got some free beer, finally met Steve Shrik (so great!), caught a cool Canadian band and a bit of Joe Pug before running off to our gig at the live.create lounge. Played a 2-hour set, saw an old friend from Belgium, then met up with Katjusa Cisar briefly post-gig who did lil’ piece on the new record, which was fun because we recently became Twitter pals and I experienced what Ariel Hyatt discusses regarding internet —>in person interaction. Had an enchilada and regretted it, killed any post-gig buzz I had going and got pretty mellow, which turned out to be the perfect mood to go check out Ben Sollee, cello player/singer-songwriter extraordinaire who was sweet as pie and playing the official showcase in the live.create lounge. He was great, and I called it a night.
Thursday
Wash repeat…well, kind of. Got up early after a late night back at the homestead of my friends Jeff and Mel, and had breakfast at the Magnolia Cafe with Mike Penard of ISA Radio who has been graciously spinning Outta My Head in France. He was great and we parled some francais, which apparently I can still speak un peu. Headed downtown and drove around for literally** 70 minutes until Eddie decided he was bored and manifested us a parking spot. We were hoping to hit up the NPR party but that was wishful thinking as the line was around the block: no Blind Pilot for you, Ms. Laube! So we did what any self-respecting SXSW-er would do, headed into Buffolo Billards and got a couple beers. Incidentally Wild Light was taping a radio show which sounded great.
Played another 4-6PM gig at the live.create lounge and then hit up Iron Works BBQ (see photo, below). We headed east to hear Brendan’s singer-songwriter friend from Nashville, Jacob Jones, had a great discussion on Yin Yoga with Mel, and then caught Joe Pug at Fado. From there I went to see Langhorne Slim and to my delight caught the tail end of Blind Pilot! Oh, how the universe doth provide.
Friday
Lazed around, said adieu to Eddie, headed to Red-Eyed Fly for Phosphorescent, who I saw last week in San Francisco and who knocked my socks off with their Willie Nelson covers. Love Matthew Houck’s performance style and energy in general. Thought I’d be too late for the Indigo Girls over at the Belmont (considred taking a ped-cab) but hoofed it and got right after they started their first song. So great! They are the reason I started playing guitar and singing (more specifically, their song “Ghost”). We just happened to notice they’d be playing when we walked by the day before. God bless SXSW.
Saturday - Sunday
I attended a yoga class at Yoga-Yoga, hung around with Mel and Jeff and caught up with some friends at an Austin back patio party. Had breakfast tacos (finally!) at Boudlin Creek Coffeehouse which were delicious, and hit the road. I’m in Ft. Stockton, TX, making my way back to San Francisco via Los Angeles and then gearing up for some more gypsydom this spring. Yay for Austin and SXSW: Amazing vibes…nice folks…so many laughs…and great music!
*compare to actual band names such as Gaybomb and Babydick
** actual usage of the word “literally”
Woohoo!
Post-gig feast at Iron Works BBQ! Can’t say I partook in the meat-fest but the kids had fun. I relished the good company and perfect Austin evening.
SXSW Part 1!
The last leg of the 3-day pilgrimage to Austin, TX for SXSW. Decided to make a video blog to ward off boredom using my cell phone. Inspired by CD Baby Musicians Podcast Episode #12 re: video stuff. I hoped to do some more videos at SXSW but it turned out my cell phone only exports really short clips and I forgot to do them for the most part, there was beer to be drunk and shows to be seen! To be continued…
The Last Thing On My Mind (Tom Paxton) by Blitzen Trapper.
Apparently this is a week for videos. It’s like I’m running a real music blog. Ha! But seriously, this is a performance of pure beauty, in this beholder’s eye. In other news, my LA experiment has come to an end. How sweet it has been, but I guess I was fooling myself into thinking I could grow some roots. It’s back to Gypsydom, my beloved San Francisco, and the tall trees of the Midwest. Although I have to say that Santa Monica was really starting to grow on me, especially that little corridor on Main St. in right on the border of Venice and SM. And I still can’t get over the friendliness of the folks in Los Feliz. I guess there’s something in a name afterall~
Do what you feel now…
MGMT - Electric Feel
Music video for Tanya Davis’ song, “Art,” by Andrea Dorfman. Thanks to Lexy for sending it my way!
I first heard about Twitter at SXSW last year. “What the hell are these people talking about?” I wondered. Interesting to think back on, because it truly does take hearing about something several, maybe even 6-10, times, before you check it out. They did some study about that. For me, interesting as a musician to think about those stats and people discovering new music. But anyway, finally signed up for Twitter last week and the implications of the technology are mind-blowing. Actually keeping me awake at night. Definitely fodder for someone’s sociology thesis. Everyone elbowing to be the first to post an idea, observation, breaking story. Case in point, The Jindal-Kenneth comparison. I watched Jindal on “The Daily Show” last night and thought to myself, “Wow, he sounds like Kenneth from 30 Rock! Why didn’t they think of that?” And then did a Twitter search (www.search.twitter.com) and discovered that the whole Twitter-verse thought the same thing, and were all wanting to be the first person to proclaim it. Truth is, with Twitter, we are able to see the reality of collective consciousness, that it’s not always one person with an original idea, but we are all receiving the blessings and knowledge from the ether, whether we are conscious of it or not. In fact, someone’s probably writing about this very thing, just as I do. My favorite example of that is Lucinda Williams describing at a show how she wrote a song (damn I wish I could remember which one!) and was about to release it and found out Bob Dylan had just released one with the same (or very similar) title.
