Going on the road at the end of January. Time for some adventures and misadventures.

All I know is that music quiets the chattering voice in my head, it makes me dance, it makes me laugh out loud, it makes my heart race, it makes me sweat, it makes me feel heartbreak.

Happy New Year. Old Irish saying: may you always be the naughty kid in the classroom. Whenever the teacher steps out to talk with the principal or parent stand on your desk and put on a show for the rest of the class.

And we rocked out in a small room in a small home on a dirt road in the Swannanoa Mountains. Does it matter? In the scale of things? Not really. But it was a wonderful night making up songs that made us smile and move and shout and laugh.

Right is the new wrong. I have a terrible time remembering lyrics. But if I can remember the first line I can get through a song. So I write the first line of songs on my hands. This is a photo from the morning after our last show…

Playing with a band is trying to push at the boundaries of reality. We’re trying to create something more than the some of the parts, the individuals in the band. When we get together we’re trying to create a larger energy force than is the sum of each individual life force. We’re small quiet people when we are alone - but when we are together we are 100 feet tall and dancing in the sky.

These wonderful people spend hours, days, weeks, months, years working on songs with me, playing shows with me, trying to make the most beautiful music with me. Thank you.

On Tuesday night someone called us “feel-good punks.” It makes me smile to be called punks. We have a cajon and fiddle and sometimes a keyboard and we write pop songs. We talk about hooks and melody and making our songs accessible. But if punk is DIY and anti-establishment then - yeah - we want you to smile and be happy and have a fun night - and that is so f*cking subversive.

I lived on St Marks Place in the East Village in the early 90s. I was trying to be an artist/writer. I was on the periphery periphery periphery of that world. @thaliazedek was in the middle of that world. If you listen to Dark City Kings our lyrics reference the mountains and the Lower East Side. Come out to @slygrog tonight. There will be mountain artists. There will be New York City artists. There will be young artists. There will be artists who have been working the fields for many years, planting and reaping. It is all beautiful. Everyone is aiming at their best idea of beauty. We are all just trying to figure this out.

This life is not about staying home and going to bed early. This life is about maximizing joy.

We live in the mountains because we want a harder life, we want adventure, we want to be closer to beauty and closer to the wild. We live in the mountains to form our gang and act like clans and work together to make this world a little better. We live in the mountains because we are trying…