preparing for the long trek home....

so the phone calls have been flyin' around this week like you wouldn't believe...

i'm about to do something that i haven't done in over a decade.

visit my family in tennessee.

the kids are getting older now, they're curious about the stories that i've told them, and they want to know where i come from. they want to make up their own minds and form their own opinions about the other slice of their heritage, and shit, man...who am i to deny them that?

so i've been calling and emailing people that i know in that part of the country - i'm having dinner with ed king on thursday night, and i'm also trying to work out logistics to add a lap steel track to a song called "concrete charlie" by my old buddy charlie degenhart while i'm there, too. not sure if we'll be able to pull that off or not, but i'll know within a couple of days. might have to plan on packing my sixty year old rickenbacher lap steel in my dufflebag...

left a message with george grantham from poco about possibly getting together, but they're going to be in NJ on thursday night and in UT on saturday, so travel may rule that out, since they're going one way and i'm going the other...but that's just nashville.

i'm completely unprepared for what i might see and have to deal with at home...ten years can be a little or a lot, depending upon where it's added...and i'm approaching the age where every ten becomes more visible - and so it is with a lot of the people and the places i grew up with/in. i want to take my kids to the places i grew up, and i know already that a large number of them won't even be there. the last time i went, i took pictures of a house that i lived in as a child, which was totally uninhabitable at that point...i'm sure it's gone now. the one i would so love to show them wasn't even there the last time i went.

i have this vision of driving back to "the grove" and getting lost - not even being able to find my way around. it's been a source of preoccupation for a while, now. it's as if it's becoming pretty obvious to me why i've avoided this for so long...something about this makes me vaguely uncomfortable, but i'm not sure what the source of that is. i do think, though, that this trip is going to be a bit more emotional than i probably was thinking it would be when i started planning it. the kids are probably expecting all funny stories and landmarks and such, but i think it might be a little more intense than that.

i'm taking a couple of instruments, though, and may even end up playing some while i'm there - who knows?

nashville will be a good time...savannah will be the revisiting of old wounds.

stone road is off until 9/6, which gives us some time to break in our new guitar player and solidify our setlist...the week we return from tennessee, charlie is coming up for a week, and we're doing a handful of acoustic shows, in philadelphia, phoenixville, and reading, before he goes back. then it'll be right back into stone road with a vengeance.

gonna try to get as much stuff done this weekend as possible around the house...need to feel less like i'm living in a warehouse. want to get the studio squared away as well...conversations with blake are starting to turn towards finishing the record, both at "the dungeon" and at target studios in delaware. there was a final aunt pat show recently, and i think that blake was really uncomfortable with how it went, so there seems to be some renewal of purpose after that...i think he's starting to get a very real sense of finality where they're concerned.

ok. my son needs to be returned to his room, to the sanctity of air conditioning - from the spot on the sofa where he's fallen asleep watching TV. and i think that i hear the sanctity of AC calling my name, too.

i am so sleeping in tomorrow.