#005 November 2023

Eastbound and down

Hello!

But first, a gift:

I’ve been really feeling the changing of the seasons. Grieving the end of summer and feeling bitter when it comes back in the warm salty air of Halloween weekend in Red Hook, like when you run into a bad ex. The incipient chill is a nice spiritual reprimand. All of the warmth beside and within it feels rebellious, like desire.

I’ve been kicking around the idea of a record of cover songs for a few months in my private life but before making anything real I just felt that feverish thing again, sexy zombie half-alive feeling of “let’s record wendy try to find all the right cables in time and catch the wave” and I did, and so I did, and here is The Kiss. Judee’s version changed my life a decade ago when my friend Dan Hockstein showed it to me, specifically this video:

Christ, it’s beautiful. I had all these amazing insights I wanted to share with you but what else could I share with you that’d be on the level? I feel lucky to wake up every day and play my scales and work on my right hand, to receive messages from my log(s) and from God, and feel myself in a vast lineage of everyone else who has ever made a sound on purpose. It is time travel, to feel like Judee and feel her harmony close to my chest as I play her song in my physical translation. Something shifts and aligns, the rhythm of life slows down and softens.

Here be the gigs:

Nov 3 with Darlin’ at the Dreamaway Lodge in Western MA - that’s THIS FRIDAY! hollowdeck opens <3 set times are 7:30pm and 9pm. Be there.

Here are the european/uk tour dates I have coming up! Everything is with the Bill Orcutt Quartet except at Cafe Oto I play Solo

EU / UK Tour November 2023
11/08 Kunstencentrum, Ghent BE
11/10 Music Unlimited Fest, Wels AT
11/11 Le Guess Who? Fest Utrecht NL
11/13 Pardon To Tu Warsaw PL
11/14 Cafe Oto (solo etc) London UK
11/15 London Jazz Fest, London UK
11/16 St Mary the Virgin, Shrewsbury UK
11/17 Alice, Copenhagen DK
11/18 Risk, Stavanger NO

11/20 Mayhem, Copenhagen DK - I play solo on a bill with a duo of Vincent Yuen Ruizon double bass & Johan Carøe - cello; Blue Lake (solo) – zither/guitar/clarinet; and Laura Hyland - voice, guitar with Carolyn Goodwin - clarinet/bass clarinet & Asger Thomsen - double bass.

11/21 I play a venue called West Germany in Berlin, two sets - the first solo, and the second with my beloved former roommate and inspiration Jeremy Viner, Brad Henkel, and possibly another special guest.

11/26 Editrix plays Baby’s All Right with Disco Doom !!! ROCK BABIE!!

11/28 I play Union Pool in a quartet with Chris Corsano, Madison Greenstone, and Laura Cocks !!! ROCK BABIE!!

Insane month, huh? As I said in passing to a friend at work the other day, who noticed how smiley I was: “I’m always happy! It’s my cross to bear.” Let’s see how long that lasts. :P

On My Stereo:

1. Elliott Smith, Elliott Smith, (1995)

2. Sy Stone, Higher! (literally the whole comp)

3. Emily Haines, Knives Don’t Have Your Back (2006) (specifically Winning)

4. John Hartford, The Love Album (1968)

5. The Necessaries, Event Horizon (1982)

6. Rosinha de Valenca, Apresantanto Rosinha de Valenca (1964)

On My Bookshelf:

1. Britney Spears, The Woman In Me

2. Peter Linebaugh, The Many Headed Hydra

3. Joe Wenderoth, Letters to Wendy’s

4. Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms

5. David Grubbs, The Voice in the Headphones

On My Mind:

1. I don’t know, and I don’t know if I care, whether the unconscious is structured like a language, but I do know that wherever she is she is demanding a lot from me, recursively. I didn’t ask to hear her messages but they come through, loud (in a way) and clear (in another way) and there is only sorrow when I ignore her demands. If animals and people demanded this way the world would be more peaceful although the pain from that peace would be deeper, longer lasting, and with slightly curvier effects.

2. Let’s say it is a woman, I think that could be true; she is lying underneath something like a word for snow, telling me it’s possible to play like her, but she is time, so of course she is correct. What a presence! Not just in the aftereffect, but in the impossibility.

3. I take a million words to describe one precept, but the precept rings like a fresh set of pickups. Eventually the words don’t matter, which is alright, they can still get you high. I’m less shy at night except as the night continues on, like a boomerang.

4. That unconscious figure, the world beneath the world, is automatic. Her soft way of moving colors and scents the air and how I look, whoever is chilling out there underneath everything is also the air (tax me, if I am a poet) knows really hard. I love her. She is sound. We just throw our precepts down at her and see how or if she accepts them, if she chooses to use them to decorate her nest or as a lens, like how key centers are kind of lenses.

5. The god of songwriters is a smoker (all definitions).

See you around,

Wendy