quilt by Stella Mae Pettway, Gee’s Bend, Alabama
Hello from a thankfully air-conditioned and relatively mosquito-free room! May this find you well. I’m fair to middlin’, myself. Working on some new songs, playing guitars, plotting and scheming for a better year in 2022. This one is better than the last, no doubt, but seeing festivals get shut down again and more people getting sick has been hard to take. Though I feel very glad to be alive and well, the combination of the climate crisis along with the extreme politicization of the pandemic has given me a fairly dim view of the future. So, I take my solace where I can find it–in an accidental new chord on the guitar, in the daily garden harvest, in the endorphin-inducing ping that my morning walk/run provides every other day. The band and I had a great time playing the 5 Spot, our neighborhood joint, recently. Here’s hoping that with proper precautions and rules in place that we all can continue to enjoy live music IRL.
My friend Otis Gibbs came by the house and interviewed me recently; it was great to see him, and sit down and tell some stories. You can see the first installment on his YouTube channel, where I talk about the recording of a song Gwil Owen and I wrote, Deuce and a Quarter, by Scotty Moore, D.J. Fontana, Keith Richards, Levon Helm and others:
There’s at least one little part of the story that I’ve never talked about before. Check it out, if you haven’t already. And yeah, I suppose it’s the ongoing pandemic state-of-mind that makes me come off a bit like a shut-in who hasn’t had a visitor in a while:). I had fun. And no, I don’t read the comments. I’m a sensitive critter and seeing even 14 “thumbs down” (as of today) was plenty enough negativity for me. And leave it to me to focus on the negative, though the positive far exceeds it! There’ll be a few more excerpts posted soon. Thanks again to Otis for doing such a great job on this.
Save the Date: I’m back on the road! Well, in my dining room, at least. Yes, I’m returning to StageIt for a solo livestream on Sunday, September 12, 3pm CST. Here’s the ticket link:
stageit.com/KevinGordon/100661
I’ll be playing some new songs I’m working on, as well as songs from the back catalog. Feel free to send in a request! I’ll play the top 2 or 3 songs that get the most votes. Email your asks to: songsinthehat@gmail.com.
Thanks to those of you who responded to the recent survey about what you’d like to see/hear next from me. I’ll probably be asking more specific questions via social media in the near future, and your input is very much appreciated. In case you need ’em, here are some innerweb addresses for you to follow to hear about all things KG:
Facebook: https://facebook.com/kevingordonmusic
Twitter: https://twitter.com/kevingordonmuzk
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kevingordon/
I just finished reading Milan Kundera‘s novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Loved it, but like any of his books, it would take writing a book to even hint at what all is going on there. Now I’m about 60 pages into another novel, Go Went Gone by German writer Jenny Erpenbeck. Question: when you start a book do you feel compelled to finish it, though you may hear your inner voice telling you it’s not what you need to be reading right now? (Though it seems to be a fine book, no matter my thoughts about reading it.) I usually do force myself to keep going, but I’m really questioning that now.
I’ll update you in the next post about some exciting new projects being developed for next year.
Thanks, as ever, for your support–I hope to see you in person, or at least virtually, very soon!
Love,
Kevin
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