- Tussling with Hayden and Miron’s puppies at the farm.
- Remembering when gas stations prohibited cell phone use because something about static electricity from their antennae could cause fires?
- The only thing better than Wilc-os cereal is the new Wilco album, out May 27.
- “Concrete over Water” by Jockstrap.
- The launch of Spoon’s General Store, an experimental online shop full of art and home goods made by artists I admire.
- Recording a choir of “mouth synth” (the band imitating a slowly sweeping sine wave) under blue lights, dimmed.
- It still amazes me that airplane wings are meant to flex.
- Thank god for medical researchers.
- Watching the sun set over gorgeous Colorado mountains.
- The deer casually walking through our friend’s backyard as we sat on the patio eating breakfast.
- The wifi router on the green room ceiling, which someone had signed, discontent with merely signing the wall or the ceiling itself.
- Bluebird Theater’s beautiful marquee.
- Night two at the Bluebird Theater in Denver playing with Liam Kazar opening for Fruit Bats!
- Staying up all night post-show to make our 8 AM flight home.
- Visiting Casey at her first bartending shift ever.
- Installing the DL signal switching panel at our studio.
- Sam Evian and Liam Kazar at the Hideout. Liam’s birthday!
- The smoky smell of the Horween Leather factory wafting into the Hideout patio.
- Putting my winter coat away now that Chicago has had several days of 90-degree weather.
- Kevin Kelly’s hopeful and totally classic-sounding advice: “Whenever there is an argument between two sides, find the third side.”
- Watching playoffs hockey with Casey.
- My nasal cavities are so much more accepting of foreign objects now, two years into covid swabbing.
- Gluing up some oak desktops.
- Installing another Tushy bidet attachment for a relative.
- Flying next to an adorable puppy.
- Hiking with Sammy and Dad.
- Hiking s’more with Sammy and Dad.
- Eating a delicious lobster roll at a suspicious, bowling-alley-attached restaurant.
- Alan Jacobs: “I don’t expect that anyone will be reading my stuff after I die — I expect that I’ll be wholly forgotten before I die, if I live to a good age — but I almost never think about that. At the end of Middlemarch George Eliot says of Dorothea that ‘the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts,’ and that captures better than I can my convictions on this point. Diffusive is the key word: an influence that subtly spreads, perhaps without anyone noticing. I find that model of influence more encouraging and comforting than any hopes for fame could ever be.”
- Walking around Mass MoCA before the Solid Sound festivities begin.
- Day one of Solid Sound. Kicking off the festival with an Ohmme pop-up among Amy Hauft’s installation. Wilco performing all of Cruel Country. The release of Cruel Country!
- Day two of Solid Sound. Playing with Liam to a super sweet, packed audience, the first show of the day. Lawrence Azerrad and me hosting the first in-person event for Mirror Sound, which came out in 2020: a self-recording demo with Sam Evian and Liam. One of Sammy’s first solo electronic shows ever, a pop-up inside the museum.
- Day three of Solid Sound. Playing cymbal and snare drum in Sam Evian’s “long tone” meditation pop-up performance inside the museum. Playing Liam’s new songs. Watching Sun Ra’s Arkestra led by Marshall Allen end their set marching off stage and continue playing music off stage for a few minutes, which moved me. Jeff Tweedy & Friends! David Byrne singing “California Stars” with us.
- The tiny orange lizard on our Massachusetts hike.
- Fried fish from Pedrin’s Dairy Bar.
- Some of the most delicious pho I’ve ever had, at Pho Capital, Montpelier, Vermont.
- Sleeping at a friend’s self-built cabin in the middle of nowhere, Vermont.
- The hearts designed into the roofing shingles of a church steeple in Montpelier, Vermont.
- The bird whose call sounds like an eight-bit arcade sound, heard on a pre-show hike in Winooski, Vermont.
- Thunderstorms lighting up the pitch-black dark outside our temporary Vermont cabin home.