Holy Shit We’re Kicking It Into Gear
YESTERDAY I spent 350+ 4x6 fliers for the JARSH & MUDD SONG SWAP. Tomorrow we’ll see how people decide to respond to them. It’s been quite a while since I’ve made the push for posters and fliers. To be honest, it’s been a while since I’ve been able to even afford them. The last time I put some together was for a gig right when I had moved to Fort Worth.
These fliers were made up by none other than ZACH DOMINGUEZ, and, believe it or not, myself! I put together some elements for the flier, thinking at least we would have a digital poster to drop out into the universe just in case we weren’t able to get anything else together. Zach took it and ran with it! He put together several versions, and as usual, I try to only give him as much input as is helpful. I know from having QCed my own projects, that saying “it’s great” every time doesn’t really give the art any other direction, and can tend to cause a collaborator to feel they’re working on their own. Zach put together three different size variations, and even had the idea to add a little squiggle to the thang so it’d work in 16:9 on one of the platforms.
So JARSH is over at the Leavitt right now, and I’m super exhausted, so I’m taking the night to rest and get myself together for this weekend. I’m staying at a hotel this weekend as a little belated birthday present from a friend and myself.
The show will be a celebration of the highest order of magnitude celebrating the release of SOME NEW AMERICAN CRUSADE by GRANDMA MOUSEY—and if you haven’t, you should stop reading this right now, and click this link to start listening to it. The show is also celebrating my new release SHINE ON which took a longer time than I’d care to admit (five years) to produce.
We’ll also be celebrating the first time JARSH and I have shared a stage since our little gig at New Main Brewing one year when they were having a festival in a little outfit we called CHINGA-MUNDO, which in hindsight was a little ill-advised, but here we are. It was a portamanto of CHINGALOTUS and CHILLAMUNDO.
So, yeah. I don’t think Josh and I have played together on stage since that show, or—actually I think it was probably the 2019 celebration of 4th of July at The Tin Panther, when GOODNESS GRACIAS along with three other pickers filled the haunt with music for seven hours, complete with M.C. and a captive audience (they had closed SH-199 for the firework show on Panther Island, so none of the attendees could actually leave).
WE have some pretty exciting plans in store for tomorrow, and I’m really looking forward to seeing if I can recoup my 100 bucks I spent on posters and fliers by selling some tees and posters, ‘cause that would be fuckin’ SICK as FUCK.
MY BIOLOGY APPEARS TO BE CHOOSING to allow me to be able to stand and maybe even dance for the duration I will need to be able to tomorrow. With this new retail sales job, I’m on my feet for 5-6 hours at a time without much of a break, and sometimes the break really isn’t very long at all.
If you don’t know, I spent the better part of four years walking with a cane or bedridden, with the worst of the period not being able to eat much solid food, and not being able to walk 40 meters without experiencing severe pain for several days. I had an estrangulated inguinal hernia, and could not get any doctor to diagnose it. Thank fuck that I can walk again, and that I can move around and actually interact with the world around me.
A hot-air balloon on a hazy day in 2018. En route to Poconos, PA for a mindfulness conference.
I don’t often share how serious an appreciation for humdrum daily occurrences I got from having experienced this (all during covid, no less), but each day I have several things reminding me that this experience of life could have been completely finished, or my life could be looking very different if it weren’t for our public hospital.
SO PLAYING THIS SHOW, and even scheduling it and getting the word out about it will be an enormous victory, no matter the turnout, no matter anything else that happens, and that’s what helps me to be able to access lucidity on stage, is the ability to be grateful for the whole thing before it has even happened, because I know all the work I have put into it being completely awesome, and I know my community is putting forth similar effort, so whether we’re just playing songs for one another, or even if the power goes out, and we’re unable to perform as we intended, we will have pushed out a huge buzz about the art we’re creating, and that, in and of itself is an extraordinary feat. This is a time when our humanity and our voices are being pushed down. Not only are we all pushing out incredible art, we’re making a serious effort to get that art in front of people, all the while, not taking ourselves or the process to seriously, nor diminishing the role any person involved has played in order to get to where we are.
I really hope to see you at the FREE SHOW tomorrow! I’ll only be signing babies, titties, and posters, so don’t ask.
