Friday, January 15, 2016

Anticipating the Road and Where it will Lead or Is It Really a Long and Winding Road?

Hey!  Check it out.  This is one of our new videos.  It was shot at King's Books in Tacoma.  It is our title song from our CD.  Gen wrote it.  I really love playing this song both as a guitarist and as a backup singer.  Ya gotta love this.  I'll speak for myself.  I love this video!




Wow.  Blogging.  How exciting!  We can only hope huh?  I woke up this morning with nuts and bolts of preparations for the Cosmosbigdream tour of 2016.  'Goin' to Kansas City, Kansas City here we come" etc. via Spokane, Bozeman, Missoula, Rapid City, Lincoln, KC, St. Louis, Boulder, Cascade, and multiple points in between.  In the meantime we have been communicating with the International Folk Alliance Conference.  We're going to share a table with the great Seattle guitarist Rick Ruskin.  Nuts and bolts include labels for CD envelopes; getting press releases out to our destinations with enough lead time; getting reviews of our new cd; making arrangements at our performance points; and booking places to stay (Gen has taken care of that).  

There is a road that I must follow
I'm not sure where it will lead
I will strike out unprotected
I am following my dream

The road runs right through mountains
Over deserts and the plains
It will ride us past lakes and rivers
Until we come home again.

I have faith in my fellow travelers
We know that we'll all share the load
From the rise of sun in morning
To the evenings golden glow

It's a road that we must follow
We've all followed it for years
We accept the joy and laughter
As we accept the pain and tears

So I am writing to you
That you might ride along with us
As we follow rainbows where they fall
And the footprints in the dust.

If you should choose to follow us
Whether lose or we shall win
You may know our story
And when we'll hit the road again.

One thing I look forward to is increasing our repertoire.  There are a lot of songs even now that I look forward to performing every time we play.  I don't know if I'm exceptional this way, but I truly love being in a "band" which is more than two.  It's not that I don't experience a lot of joy playing with Kristi as a duo because I do.  I'm able to be more personal with our duo than I am with the trio which is an important component in our performances.  I think there's also an earnest quality to our duo performances. 

I love playing with Kristi and Gen because both of them are accomplished musicians who have your back, and I hope I provide the same kind of comfort to them as they provide me.  Both Gen and I write songs.  You can look forward to hearing material you've never heard before although it takes time, and we have material that we need to keep together right now which limits the amount of time we can spend on new material.  I'm looking forward to more material that we have a capella parts in.  It is just a thrill to have confidence in a sound that doesn't rely on instruments.  It is a thrill as well to play instruments and have them provide strong support for the vocalizing.

I think that all of us have been thinking about the road conditions around the country and how they are going to be in the month of February.  Kristi and I have quite a bit of experience driving in snow and ice.  I suppose that I sound a bit arrogant sometimes when talking about it.  The truth is that when there is a shortage of friction between your wheels and the road, it is a crap shoot whether you will arrive at your destination without incident.  I was talking to someone recently about an incident where they had ended up in a median after hitting a patch of ice on a freeway.  In the winter those kinds of incidents happen in the hundreds, or probably thousands or more every day.  

We have been lucky.  That's all I can say.  I have slid off of roads on occasion, spun out, come close to collision etc. but never had a really serious accident.  I have distinct memories of driving in Northern B.C. and Yukon Territory in the middle of the night.  I would be sleeping in the back of our big white van and I'd awake the the vehicle shimmying a little.  I would look up over the driver's seat and see the reflection of the headlights off of a sheet of solid ice on the highway and Kristi driving at a speed between 50-60 mph and marvel at how fortunate I was to have such a strong, directed person to drive on these highways with.

Nonetheless every year when the snows fall and the roads get icy I get jumpy until I am out on the road feeling the tires, testing the friction, and doing it all again.  So it is with some trepidation that I look forward to our journey.  I know that whatever happens I will be protected by the aura of camaraderie that surrounds "Cosmo's Dream" (what was that guy thinking?).  Be careful out there.
Steve Nebel


  

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