How would you feel if this were the view from your backyard?  After a little while, the mountains probably go the way of everything else. Not even noticed while going through the motions of doing the dishes and obsessing about the roof, but every once in a while being striking again over a cup of coffee. Heading out into the mountains has been my plan for falling back in love with Maine. While Portland, to me, is a great little town, it also reeks of stagnation and extreme class separation. I feel like my own history is erased as I pop coins in the meter next to the same shops (thankfully still mostly locally owned), feel a sense of deja-vu from ten years ago, and remind myself that I have been to Mongolia in the meantime. There is a Maine outside of Portland, and it is like another world.

My brother commented earlier this year when I was observing that for economic reasons I will be “stuck” in Maine for the time being, that I’m more comfortable when in survival mode. Never one to be an adrenaline junkie, I don’t think that’s quite it. It’s not the rush, but the adventure of the unknown; a first-hand acquisition of knowledge and experience. I am still seething from a comment made by a friend earlier this week that implied there is something inherently wrong with me for avoiding settling down. I feel the same way about people who shack up in their dream house and begin the process of erosion that familiarity works on our senses and perspectives. There must be a middle ground where connections can be maintained, but the mountains don’t fade into the background of the everyday.

Earliest graves dated to the late 1700s

So off to ramble in the White Mountains near Evan’s Notch. I was looking for a short hike called The Roost, but I couldn’t find the trail head. The Caribou trail had parking, and a clear map, so I headed off. I was planning to make a loop around that was described as Caribou to Caribou MT to the Muddy something-or-other trail. What this heavily wooded trail lacks in views of the surrounding area, it makes up for by following a river that it crisscrosses over several times dotted by waterfalls.

Natural slip and slide

It took me significantly longer to get through the Caribou trail to the head of the Caribou Mt. trail than I thought it would. But at this point I wasn’t going to not see a summit after a couple of hours. I half ran up the first part of this trail into what turned into a mythical scene of short pine trees, mosses, and the start of a granite instead of wooded landscape.

As I sat down to enjoy the view and finally eat my hard-earned sandwich, I realized the sun was looking awfully low. I double checked my time, and noticed it was actually an hour later then what I had thought I’d read the first time. Shit. I was at the very least two hours away from the car with exactly two hours of sunlight left.

Here is where the adventure of the unknown mind took over, and was insisting that I continue with my original plan of completing the loop. But when I followed the trail marker, it dead ended. A cliff on one side, and extremely dense bushes and pines with no trail on the other. I backtracked and tried again, but the same thing. I was going to have to backtrack down the trail I came up. Something I never do if I can help it when hiking. I realized a quarter of the way down the original trail, that this was the best thing that could have happened. Not only was it significantly darker in the woods, but I moved as fast as possible because I already knew where I was going, and the landmarks in my mind kept me motivated and with some idea of how far out I was. I even patted the half way marker and called it old buddy outloud as I passed it.

Perspective changes instantly when the conditions change. On the way up I was plodding along feeling the thrill of each new water fall and getting up each rise. On the way down, I was racing against time, and each landmark turned into a checkmark to get to next. All the things that were in my car, and not in my backpack, that would be useful if I did for some reason get a stuck kept flashing through my mind: two flashlights, two sleeping bags, a reflective heat blanket, a tent, a pocket knife…..

I made it back to the car at 4:42, the sun set yesterday at 4:18, although I could still see well enough. The tree stumps had only just began turning into boogiemen and wild animals. When I got back to the car it was pitch dark in a matter of minutes, and promptly began pouring.

So much for my life in Maine becoming routine.

Paradise is finished. What started as a mellow, dreamy account of a confused boy being taken from his family as repayment for debt, turned into an adventure as he grows and proves himself to be a savvy and lucky young man. As a sub-plot, the book also looks at the growth in popularity of organized religion as the merchants travel from village to village and have to navigate a new set of customs and beliefs at each one.

Information on the author, an expat himself, whose books explore ideas of displacement and desire.

A quote I found interesting, a reminder that perspective is everything. When I was doing archaeology work, rain was the bane of our existence. It ruined sites and brought everyone’s moral down. In this case, it has quite the opposite effect,

“A light rain sped them on, making the men break into song as their bodies cooled. Even the ones who were ailing from the wear and tear of the journey found their old strength returning.”

Total pages read: 154
Related Charity:

I had left Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club: A Memoir open on my bed, but I think I’m going to move on to Paradise, which I’m halfway through and really need to finish.  Although the Lairs’ Club was considered the cutting edge of confessional autobiography where you get to lambaste your family and tell all your secrets, I think I’m reading it ten years too late.  Now this kind of thing is common place, and it even seems to pale a little compared to The Glass Castle: A Memoir.

Paradise is a subtle story of a boy sold to his “uncle” Aziz when his dad can’t pay outstanding debts in colonial Africa.  Short-listed for the Booker prize, it thankfully is not full of the expected violence, but is more of a coming of age story as Yusuf adapts to his new traveling merchant lifestyle and realization that he may never see his parents again.

Current book: dabbling, but will probably take a chunk out of Paradise.
Pages read since start of read-a-thon: 9 (but I’ve got coffee in hand and am about to remedy that.
Current page in Paradise: 93

The e-mail I was a little conflicted about. People seem to think that musicians are hankering to play at every opportunity that calls. This isn’t true. I’m eager to work, as it were, but the hours of writing, practicing, rehearsing, not to mention the cost of equipment, gear, gas, and the like, mean that I expect to be compensated for my work. Regardless of the fact that the work in question is also art. “Exposure” is, largely, bullshit. It doesn’t pay my rent, or buy me groceries. To be asked by a successful national chain to play at their annual event for free, is a good exercise in asking for what I’m worth and potentially saying no and walking away.

Current Book: The Liar’s Club
Page: 26
Pages read since start of read-a-thon: 2 (go ahead laugh)

And yet another thing that is not actually reading: A Book Puzzle!

What do you think this title is?

@

My friend Susan in Korea, who writes a fantastic book blog: Naked Without Books, got me hooked in the first place.

Luckily for me, the only thing I have to do today is play a short gig at the Munjoy Hill Association Fall Festival, but first I’m going to read a little while eating some leftover Indian food from the new best Indian restaurant in Portland, Maine, Haggarty’s. I know, I know, doesn’t sound very Indian does it? It’s Brit-Indi owned by a couple of Scotsmen, and it’s great.

I actually have a purpose for this read-a-thon. I uploaded a bunch of books to paperbackwap and bookmooch, but haven’t had time to read them before (confession) marking them mailed. I know I’m terrible, but they are my books, and this is my method for getting through my monster To-Be-Read pile. So I need to quickly get through:

And for my obligations on Bookobsessed Yankee Book Swaps, I may dabble in:

and

And just because the opening chapter is really fun, it has pictures, and it’s by two local authors:

I have a wide range of relatively short things to choose from, and tons of leftover Indian and Thai food from the last two days musicians meetings.

For people who are used to seeing my posts on international and national travel, you are about to see a level of book geekdom that you may not have known existed in me. You can choose to follow along, or ignore and wait for more pictures of pretty places to pop up in the future. Although, the limbo my life has been in lately hasn’t been very inspiring for travel blogging. I’ve been in Maine much longer than I intended, and I’ve been in denial about how much I’m actually enjoying being home.

And on to the Read-a-Thon’s official questions:
1) I am reading from Portland, ME today. (My hometown, which I’ve inadvertently returned to after seven years of jaunting around the world.)

2. Three random facts: Well, I’ve already admitted that I post books to bookswapping sites before I’ve read them so that I’ll read them faster. I’m on a diabolical plan to be the best female honky-tonk guitar player. Cambodia and Chile are the two places I’ve never been to that are top of my wish list. Oooo, and one more, my mother recently informed me that I’m a sapiosexual.

3. Goals for the read-a-thon: see above.

4. Advice to new read-a-thoners: don’t feel guilty about sleep.

My Backyard

10/21 Harvest on the Harbor , Portland, 12pm – Hear local music and taste the latest innovations from Portland’s best restaurants.

10/21 Wine and Bluegrass, The Hive, Kennebunk, 7pm – Wine tasting and roots music

10/22 Munjoy Hill Association, Community School, North St. Portland, noon

10/28 Trader Joe’s Anniversary (tentative), 6pm

11/5 Slater’s, Bolten, MA 1pm – My internet friend, Beth DeSombre, (from Whole Wheat Radio and Blue Ridge Radio) has invited me to share an afternoon of original music with her in Bolten, Mass.

11/11 The Hive w/Rod Picott, Kbunk, 7pm – Sharing the night at one of my favorite venues in Maine.  Rod Picott is a Maine native who has found a good amount of success on the nations Folk Scene.

11/19 Bayside Bowl, Too Broke To Be This Drunk, Portland, 8pm – I’m so glad to be doing this night with the Too Broke crew.  We’ll be singing songs by Patsy, Waylon, Dolly, and more.

12/17 The Dogfish, Free St., Portland, 8pm – You know the deal.  Come down and drink beer.

In 2007, I lived in Charleston, WV while working on an archaeological project for six months. Partly for the undeniable natural beauty of the area, and partly for the great memories, I feel attached to this small city in the mountains. Some of the folks I met on the crew are still some of the strongest, although not the closest, friendships I have. I was chatting to a couple of those folks on my drive down to the city, which made it all the more emotional to roll into a ghost town. It was Sunday, not a busy day in places that push closer and closer to GOD’s country. Almost everything was closed. And what wasn’t closed was just as often an empty, abandoned storefront.

That’s one thing that comes up as conversation in a lot of arch crews. We roll in, in this crew, as many as seventy people at one time, with per diem checks to burn, a rate of pay probably significantly higher than the average laborer in town, and a cultural hunger that put us on that path in the first place. The impact we must have had on a town like this is probably as big as the impact living there had on me. When is the last time a mud covered bunch of folks rolled into Charlie’s and ordered beers by the case to play pool on a rain day?

Charleston has some of the best small town architecture I’ve ever seen. It’s a clean city (maybe because there doesn’t seem to be anyone around), with really interesting buildings and public art.

While I was looking for effective places to hang up posters, I a guy in what I think was a fake security officer suit starting chatting me up. “Yeah, you’re a lucky gal. I wanted to be a musician once upon a time. I had it all set up after high school. I was going to go on the road.”

This is the point where I start wondering if he’s going to ask me for money.

“I had everything lined up. I was going to be famous.
But then a damn truck came along and ran over my monkey. My music career was over.”
I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that one before, but it still took me a second to get it after he started chuckling and walking away.

These trips are as much about visiting the folks as it is about the music and the places. Morning coffee in Alabama, New York with a friend from Nashville, and his mother, who is one of my favorite people ever. An inspiration of a woman who travels with her mind, and treats everyone with an open heart. Evening picking in Batavia with a multi-instrumentalist friend and then going out to watch his seventy-something year old dad play bass for a classic rock cover band. I’ve been so lucky this summer to be able to travel around and meet great new folks, and spend time with old friends all over the place. If only I could drive to Korea, we could get into some serious trouble.

At least somebody is dancing in Charleston.

On 64, right over the border from West Virginia, there is a giant factory, an oil refinery it seems, on the Kentucky side. I wasn’t able to really capture the magnitude of this place from the window of my moving vehicle, but it’s like a distopian factory-scape rising up out of hills. Another couple of hours past this, one of my longest running close friends, and a bunch of Chinese take out was waiting for me. Now that’s worth driving to Ky for. Today, it’s on to Nashville, baby.

Upcoming Shows

8/16 Nashville, The Family Wash, Short Set at 8:30pm

8/19 Knoxville, IndieGrrl Showcase, World’s Fair Conference Center, 6:30pm, $5

8/26 Berea, KY, Main St. Cafe, 6pm

8/27 Charleston, WV, Taylor Books, 7pm

8/28 Thomas, WV, The Purple Fiddle, 1pm

8/29 Pittsburgh, Club Cafe, 8ish

9/9, Bar Harbor, ME, I met this guy at a gig who booked me at his venue, but hasn’t told me the name or location of said establishment.  But, hey, road trip to Bar Harbor?  I’m in.

Excerpt from show that airs on August 12th on Great Falls TV in Auburn/Gorham and surrounding areas. 9pm

It can also be viewed at www.greatfallstv.net and follow the links to the VOD page.

Upcoming Shows:

7/1 – Friday, Blue, Congress St. Portland, 6 to 7:30pm – In the round with Griffin Sherry – further proof that there’s something in the water in Buxton, and Adam Klein on tour from Athens, Georgia.

7/2 – Saturday morning Farmer’s Market in Deering Oaks

7/3 – El Rayo, 101 York St. Portland, 7 -9pm – A great night of music with myself on tune-writing, vox, and guitar joined by one of longest running musical friends Joe Bloom on Harmonica, a new friend and amazing fiddle maker as well as player John Cooper on fiddle and dobro, and Devon Colella on Cello. It will be a really interesting night, and I hear the food is good too.

7/7 – Dogfish Cafe – come on down and sing a few.  I have the whole night to myself, but I’d like some other folks to join in too.  Leila Crockett and Griffin Sherry will be singing a few.

7/9 – Kennebunk Old Homes Day – The Hive 2-3:30ish

7/13 – Lonfellow Arts Center.  Maine Songwriters’ Association night at the Longfellow.  Will be joined by Drew Wyman on bass and Joe Bloom on Harmonica.

7/15 – Gritty’s Freeport.  Free for all – in more ways than one.

7/16 – Yarmouth Clam Fest – 4:30 on the Green something or other stage.  Joined by Zach Ovington on fiddle, Drew Wyman on Bass, and Joe Bloom on Harmonica.

Ant marks the spot.  I’m not sure about what.  If someone knows what the cool ant is for, let me know. For me, it marks the best spot to play some music during the Wed. Farmer’s Market in Monument Square.  First come first serve, and the quality of music in the farmer’s market is pretty spectacular if I may say so myself.

This week I had a really pleasant surprise by running into my old roommate and bandmate Leila.  I had just moved back from my first teaching job overseas in Thailand when I met Leila at an open mic.  I was talking about needing a place to live and she invited me over later that week to check out her place and her roommates to see how it would fit.  It was a great time in a vertible flophouse that included sporty types, musicians, and eventually a couple of eastern european girls who may have been prostituting out of the back door.  Leila is an amazing player and scholar of old timey music.  The dude is a regular at the farmer’s market, an old-time banjo and clarinet player who worked with Louis Armstrong when he was a teenager.   The one thing that can be said about Portland, is that it has no shortage of creative characters.

Playing music in the streets and unamplified in coffee shops have been my favorite shows this whole summer.  People tip, buy CDs, and feel like they can come up close and ask a question, talk about the songs, or tell a story or two themselves. Although that has the flip side of people walking up in the middle of  a song, like an adorable old lady on Wed., who just started  gabbing, ” I got one of them (guitar) for mother’s day.  I sure don’t know how to play it though.”  I’m not going to stop singing mid song to chat with you, unless you’re handsome and now wearing a ring.  Luckily, Leila, who was playing guitar, was able to talk to folks, and responded in a cheery voice, “Get a book!”

Last Saturday, as I was getting my guitar out of the car, a lady walked up to me.  Didn’t introduce herself or anything.  Just started gabbing about how her husband had a home studio and was looking for clients.  Guitar does not equal sucker willing to throw money in your general direction for services rendered in a mediocre manner.  Well, actually it does mean sucker, but for different reasons.  The music industry has morphed into this system where musicians spend considerably more money than they make putting out what have become “necessary” aspects of self-promotion – from recordings, to photos, to websites, to advertising, to playing shithole clubs that want you to buy beer by the case.  If there’s one thing I’ve realized this summer, it’s that I was right to trust my instincts to stay as far away from the meat-grinder and stick to the streets.  If I’m in your town, I’ll probably find a way to play a few tunes, but you can pretty much count on the fact that it won’t be at a bar.  I hear parking garages have good acoustics these days.

Besides spending every waking moment either playing, advertising for, or practicing music, I am trying to get out and enjoy what Maine has to offer.  The Maine Audubon Society at Gilsland Farm is one of my favorite places.  They have fields of peonies this summer, and I got away from the computer and the guitar long enough to hang out with the nieces and mom in this sanctuary by the ocean.

Upcoming Shows:

6/25 Gorham Grind, Main St. Gorham 10am-1pm

6/27 Champion’s Sports Bar, Travis James Humphrey hosts, 9pm, Biddeford

6/29 Portland Farmer’s Market, Monument Square, sometime between 9am and 2pm

7/1 Blue, songwriter round with Griffin Sherry, Adam Klein, and myself, 6pm to 9pm, congress St. Portland

7/7 Dogfish Cafe, Free St. Portland, 8 to 11pm

7/13 Longfellow Arts Center, Maine Songwriters Association showcase, 7pm

7/15 Gritty’s Freeport, 8pm

7/16 Yarmouth Clam Festival, 4:30

One of the things I love the most about Mexico is that there is music in the streets all the time.  From people practicing their favorite American rock tunes in their living rooms with the windows open, to mariachis, strolling trova singers, to jazz, to banda bands, to those god awful party bands with all the horns that don’t actually know any of the songs they are playing, or for that matter how to play their instruments.

Some of the best and worst experiences I’ve had coming back to Maine have been as a street musician.  For the first time ever, I have enough gigs (plus playing on the street most days since I have no prospect of work in Maine at the moment) that I am feeling a little burn out.  I don’t want to sing any of the songs I know, but then I do one particularly well and the feeling subsides.  I had the chance to participate in the 4th annual Music in the Square in Eliot Square Cambridge last weekend.  For me, the event was ruined by weather, another event happening that drowned out our busking style festival, and a general feeling of malaise and the creating music is hardly ever worth it.

One event that has been worth it is playing in the Portland Farmer’s Market in monument square.  This week I snuck in after a trio of tuba, banjo, and clarinet.  They are a professional group that has held the same spot on Wednesdays for years.  Everyone respects their time and their location, and they have created an institution of free, impromptu music.  The banjo player stuck around as I started to play for a bit.  He listened thoughtfully, picked up one of my cards, and said, “That, young lady, is some quality work. Not that it’s mine to give, but you have my official permission to use this spot.”

Working through gigs that have no monitors so the hired-hand bass player who was counting on hearing the changes is desperately trying to watch my left hand, trying to wrack my brain for one more fast song to sing over the din of young drunk folks who only want to hear Old Crow Medicine Show covers and don’t know who Neil Young is, and generally feeling like the drunk version of Bad Blake, that one comment from a respected musician can be enough to hold onto for a little while.

Now back to busking.  I was busking down by the Casco Bay Lines last week, and a man who clearly didn’t listen to anything I sang, distantly reached into his pocket to throw some change in the tip jar without slowing down or looking in my general direction.  One thing that most real street musicians are not, are beggars.  Although the money is a necessary and motivational part to continue making music, people stopping to enjoy, a smile, and a compliment are equally appreciated.  I think that people are afraid if they stop, they are going to be obligated to donate money, at least for me, that is definitely not the case.  Although it is highly appreciated, the point is to create an atmosphere.  To expose people to new music, and hopefully find a few people that connect to my version of the art.