I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about Pete Seeger since he died. I took some time to wander back through my memories. I visited my childhood, listening to my parents sing “Where Have All the Flowers gone.” The soundtrack of my youth included Peter Paul and Mary’s version of his song “If I had a Hammer.”  At any significant gathering of family or friends my father could be found with his Banjo singing Pete’s version of “Hobo’s Lullaby.” The kids all knew if they were patient they’d get treated to my dad’s rendition of Pete’s story of the giant Abi Yoyo.

Pete once said in an interview “I lost my heart to the old-fashioned five-string banjo played mountain style.” That happened to me when I pulled open one of Pete’s LP’s I’d found in a dusty box somewhere and first heard him play East Virginia. I decided I had to learn the banjo. My dad loaned me his Seeger style long neck banjo and the banjo instruction book (by Pete Seeger) that he had used. It was the one where Pete included a section on cutting the neck on the banjo and whittling a new piece to insert so you could add three frets.

Over the years I’ve watched Pete sing with everyone, and listened to almost everyone singing his songs with him from all over the place. On his banjo he wrote “This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.”  He felt the boundaries we erect between us could be removed through music. He said “It's a very important thing to learn to talk to people you disagree with.” And he made that possible by giving us songs we could all sing together. He said “I have sung in hobo jungles, and I have sung for the Rockefellers, and I am proud that I have never refused to sing for anybody.”

Pete once said “I feel that my whole life is a contribution.” He lived according to that motto, giving the country he loved, the planet he loved, the human race that he loved, so much. Thinking of all this, I was keenly aware that for all these ways in which Pete had shaped and touched my life, I had never met him in person. That in fact, although Pete was gone from his body, he was still very much present in my life. Inspired by that, I wrote a song in memory of Pete Seeger, and everyone else… because I think Pete would like it that way.  Travel on Pete! And thanks for showing us the way!

Travel On

When I lay my body down
You won’t find me underground
Won’t be singing praises above
I’ll live on through those I love
Hallelujah! When I’m gone 
That’s how I will travel on.
Hallelujah! As I go
Back from the part into the whole.

When I lay my day to rest
I hope I have done my best
To give my heart to those in need
Like others did for me.
Hallelujah! When I’m gone 
That’s how I will travel on.
Hallelujah! As I go
Back from the part into the whole.

When I’ve said my last farewell
Here’s where I’m going to dwell
I will nestle like a dove
In the hearts of those I love. 
Hallelujah! When I’m gone 
That’s how I will travel on.
Hallelujah! Do your part
Hallelujah! As I go
Back from the part into the whole.

When I lay this body down
You won’t find me underground.
Won’t be missing when I’m gone
I’m going to travel on.

©2014 Otter Creek Music LLC, all rights reserved.

What a full week! Our once in a lifetime Thanksgiving Hanukkah mash-up at Otter Creek central was a bustle of business with big meals three days in a row followed by a party that left our house bursting at the seams. Gatherings at our home are always a bit anxiety provoking as music takes so much of our time that not infrequently routine household maintenance takes a back seat. It’s times like these when we realize that it’s not entirely normal to have to instruct guests on procedures for successfully locking the bathroom door, turning off the kitchen faucet, or the need to ignore one overly sensitive smoke detector determined to curse every attempt at frying latkes or making toast (hey, at least we’ve had plenty of fire drills to ensure the Muses will escape alive if there ever is a real fire!). 

Peter was in fine form, belting out Yiddish songs at the top of his lungs while the rest of us tried to concentrate on getting everything ready. Mary reminded the kids of their Pilgrim ancestors and we recounted the story of the first Thanksgiving. As a capstone to our weekend we played for the Menorah Lighting Ceremony at the Governor’s Mansion. 

This year happens to be the 75th anniversary of Krystallnacht (a coordinated attack on Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria at the beginning of the Holocaust).  At the ceremony we heard the moving account of Ambassador John Price (born Hans Joachim Praiss) and his memories of living through the attack prior to fleeing Germany for the United States. Later, Governor Herbert spoke movingly of his own encounters with the record of the Holocaust and his determination to pledge himself to the cause of “never again” allowing our fellow humans to be slaughtered. Rabbi Benny Zippel spoke about the vandalization of the menorah in front of his synagogue earlier in the week, and how Jewish teaching encouraged the conversion of suffering into more joy. He recounted the many offers of help from the community and his own congregation’s dedication to celebrate Hanukkah more fully and restore the Menorah more festively than before. He then presented both Governor Herbert, and Ambassador Price with Crystal Menorahs stating he wanted to transform our commemoration of the pain of Krystallnacht into something of beauty. In wrapping up, Rabbi Zippel asked Otter Creek to play the Theme from Shindler’s List. 

It was one of those rare moments in performing where you can feel every mind and heart connected to the music, where the music sings not only out of the performers, but streams out of the souls of those connected by listening as well. There was a pause after the music, as we all breathed in the beauty of the moment, the memories of pain, transformed by the courage to move on, and the light of each of our souls, flickering like the flame of the candles on the menorah, and as Rabbi Zippel pointed out, “no matter how you hold the candle,
the flame always points up,” upwards toward whatever it is that binds us all together. 

We finished out the musical program with our favorite Hanukkah song “Fayer” a rollicking klezmer tune about the cooking (and eating) of latkes, and I was struck at how perfect this mash-up of Hanukkah and Thanksgiving was. The simple explanation of almost every Jewish holiday (and especially Hanukkah) is this  “they tried to kill us, they didn’t succeed: Let’s eat!” and isn’t that really what Thanksgiving is about as well? Relishing the fact that we are here together with no intention to do each other harm (at least for one day) and enough food that we can afford to overdo it a bit. Savoring for just a moment the connection we all share across the boundaries of religion, race, and political ideology we are first and foremost all part of the human race, fellow inhabitants of this precious little pearl of a planet sailing the vast universe together on a voyage of discovery focused both inward and outward. Remembering that the soul of each person, even those we don’t agree with is a flame pointed upward toward that which connects us all, whatever it is. Pausing to notice that there is so much more we have in common than that which so arbitrarily separates us. 

That’s definitely worth feasting about!

I was chatting with a folk musician friend of mine about the difficulty of finding a tagline to describe our genera of music. I said “people don’t always conjure up the image I want no matter what term I use.” She said she had
recently begun saying she sings “old and new songs about all of us” Which struck me as a very nice way of putting it.

Here at Otter Creek, we work hard in two main directions, mining the traditional music of our country, (and hence a great number of other countries from whence many of this nation’s inhabitants hail) and the creation of new songs. You could call us folk musicians, but when we bust out with something Celtic, old-timey, bluegrassy, klezmerish, or singer-songwritery (or just confusingly genre-bending such as the “chamber influenced acoustic tweeny punkpop” song we just wrote, or the “apocalyptic heavy metal death folk” setting we came up with for a favorite Robert Frost poem) we don’t want anyone to feel betrayed or confused. We’ve tried calling ourselves “Rocky Mountain roots music,” and that’s about as close a description as we’ve been able to find.

I kept my friend’s description of her music in mind and one evening found myself saying that we play “music of the people, by the people, and for the people…” and I realized that was about as true as it gets. We’re dedicated to keeping alive many of the great songs that rose up from the common folk of our nation, and we’re dedicated to writing terrific new songs about our surroundings and the journey we share through life with all of you.

So I’ve found a new way to describe what we’re doing. I hereby declare that Otter Creek is first and foremost dedicated to the proposition that music of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth. We’ll do our part to keep people humming and tapping their toes to “Shady Grove” and “Sally Goodin'.” We’ll keep on playing old songs that draw a tear or leave us with a sigh, like “Fare Thee Well, or Stephen Foster’s “Hard Times” We’ll rollick with an old Scottish tune turned into “Jefferson and Liberty” (Thomas Jefferson’s presidential campaign song) or cavort with “Farewell to Ireland” (while inserting a little American funk) and we’ll keep on writing songs about the people we meet on our own journey.

That, for me, is what folk music is about. It resonates deep in our souls, and hopefully, if we’re doing our job right. It will move you as well.

“Stop fiddling with that or you’ll break it!”
“I fiddled around with it enough that I finally got it to work”
        -Kate MacLeod, quoting her father


“Stop fiddling around!” I spent most of my school years in a fog of missed deadlines. I never knew about schedule changes, when my homework was due, or sometimes even what class I was in… I still vividly remember looking up from reading a book and discovering that the kids sitting around me weren’t the ones I had been sitting next to when class started. I must have totally missed a class change! It wasn’t that I didn’t pay attention, it was just that my attention was always drawn to the wrong thing, like a really good book, where I was going hiking after school, or how to construct a robot of myself so life like no one could ever tell if it was me or my robot sitting in that school desk.
 
I was one of those kids whose pockets, if turned out, could have probably filled a small rucksack. I was terrified of being caught with nothing to do (which was pretty much my view of “appropriate” school behavior) and so had enough materials with me, on the sly, to keep my attention occupied precisely where it shouldn’t have been. I still remember the day I realized that all the desks and tables height was adjusted with Alan screws. Most kids my age didn’t even know what an Alan screw was back then, but my dad was quite the tinkerer and I knew just where I could find the tool I wanted. I spent plenty of time working on a look of decided innocence and mild disinterest when puzzled teachers had to reseat classmates whose desks were now to small or too tall, or call the custodian when a table collapsed because the screw on one leg had suddenly given way. I didn’t view myself as a troublemaker, just a very curious student of the world around me. I couldn’t understand why my teachers valued repetition and sitting still more than imagination and movement.

 My interest in music started at the age of four when I saw a performance of a violin concerto on the television at home. My parents traded and bartered to afford the cost of classical training with a family friend who played in the Utah Symphony. There is a VERY specific way to play the violin that has been carefully honed, honored, and cherished over the past 500 years. My instructor initiated me into the world of etudes, exercises, and note reading (with somewhat sporadic success) and I made reasonable if not stellar progress. I was expected to practice a lot. (Often two hours a day or more). As I advanced into more difficult music my teacher prescribed an abacus which I was to use to carefully count the number of times I played a difficult passage
  correctly (often 50 or 100 times were ordered). I found the structure stifling and the repetition mind numbing. My sight reading skills negligible, my attention span crumbling, I often turned to the instrument and simply fiddled around, following my dancing thoughts up and down the fingerboard, growling with anger, or laughing with delight. Luckily I was blessed to have one of those rare teachers who could honor imagination and passion as well as rote learning. She always told me that to play music you had to be like a tiger, you had to take a risk and leap at the prey or you stood no chance at getting what you wanted.
 
I switched to Viola when I was 11. This more introspective instrument was a better fit.  As the “poet-philosopher” of the string family its deeper tone and more dreamy nature spoke to me. Still, I found myself wasting my practice time “fiddling around,” making up tunes, trying out tones. I carried my passion for Viola into college, pursuing a double major of Music Composition and Viola Performance, but, as usual, I got involved in too many things and my graduation languished on the periphery of unfinished projects and an overbooked schedule. My composition teacher eventually forced me to make a choice. He advised me to drop one side of my double major and progress on toward graduation. Agonizing on which side of myself to favor, performance or composition, I finally went with the latter, feeling  it offered more room for my “fiddling around.”
 
From the start it should have been clear I was more of a fiddler than a violinist. Naturally curious, I spent hours exploring the sounds the instrument could make. The fiddle is a remarkable canvas for the imagination. An embodiment of paradox, it can both break and heal the soul. Perhaps that’s why so many folks have been frightened or dismissive of the fiddle, it represents something other than business as usual. It refuses to sit silent, or still. A tool of dreamers and prophets it can both create and destroy. It can set the feet of the righteous dancing down the path to hell, stich up a broken heart, or leave one grasping on the edge of epiphany. It caters to those whose attention wanders the roads less traveled and whose feet march to the rhythm of a music only they can hear. As a musical explorer, the fiddle keeps me on the sharp edge of discovery; exploring new sounds and techniques, diving into the deep waters of tradition, or gathering the strands of a new song out of the immense shimmering firmament of notes. The fiddle can stand the strain due not to its rigidity, but because of its flexibility.  For a long time fiddling was a secret side affair for me, something I did when I should have been doing something else. Now I realize that everything else was just getting in the way of fiddling.

“Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and  frightened.
Don't open the door to the study and begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”
 
-Rumi
 
We spent Memorial Day weekend in Lake Tahoe performing at Marriott’s Timber Lodge resort which is nestled comfortably at the base of Heavenly Mountain on the South Shore of Lake Tahoe.  The weather cooperated Nicely leaving us with light blue skies and the deeper and more mysterious blue of the lake.  Our Muses have three cousins who live in the area and spent the whole weekend playing hard. We had some pleasant hours out on the beach, hunting Crawdaddies, playing in the sand, or just quietly listening to the pulse of the planet.

Sunday we performed a couple of sets out on the patio near the Gondola and ended up with a great crowd, many of whom braved 2 hours of sun to stay for both sets. Afterwards, a group of listeners came over to talk with us. They had been finishing up a round of drinks and were planning to go for a short hike before heading home early from vacation later that day but heard us sing a snippet of one of our songs during our sound check and decided to stay and hear a couple of tunes. Two hours later they said they had decided to extend the vacation another day or so and told us how much the music had meant to them and how it had opened them up and helped them relax into their vacation instead of rushing back home to work.

I am constantly amazed at the power music has to connect us deeply to our souls, to each other, to humanity, to our planet, and to the universe.  Hearing from others, the difference our music made to them is always humbling. I still remember years ago the first time I heard the Indigo Girls on the radio. I was driving home from work and pulled in to a record store because I had to buy that song so I could listen to it again and again. I
remember how much certain songs helped shape the course of my life, opening up in me the courage and passion to face a struggle, or at other times, providing safe passage for sorrows that seemed too great to bear.  This is the reason I call myself a Folk musician, because the music doesn’t just belong to me, it belongs to everyone it touches. My friend Utah Slim once said to me that “music opens me to myself.” I’ve thought of his words many times since then. The music that moves me most opens my heart to let me peer a little deeper into my true nature, It opens a door or a window into my soul and leaves me looser and more open than I was before, it connects me outward to the people I am with and the planet I’m on and the universe I gaze outward at on dark nights. I don’t know how it works, but it is the closest thing I’ve ever found to magic. There’s something about music, that reminds me that we’re all in this together, that we were all once (the stuff we’re made of at least) part of some long extinguished star, that our hearts are never as separate as we might think. 

Most of our drive back to life as usual in Salt Lake was stormy and both the muses and their parents were beginning to get irritable, but late in the evening the clouds parted and the sun illuminated a Rainbow that arced right over the road home like a gateway into Oz. “Maybe,” I thought, “music is the light that lets us see the beauty of the moment that we were blind to before.”  As a folk musician, I love sharing the music that flows from my heart and out into the world, where it mingles with the hearts of others and comes back to me richer and more pure! If that isn’t a gateway to a magic kingdom, I don’t know what is.


 

I love rocks. As I child visiting Yellowstone national park, I had difficulty understanding why I couldn’t take a few of the more unusual rocks I had picked up home with me. My father encouraged me to ask a park ranger who explained it to me this way. “It really wouldn’t make any difference if you took a few rocks,” he said, “but we have over two million visitors a year. What do you think would happen to our park if each of them took a few rocks? How many years would it take before there were none left?” Since then I have often reflected on that question. “What would happen if everyone does this?” In fact, in many ways I’ve made it my moral compass. I try to behave based not only on what good will come of my individual actions which are often quite insignificant, but to imagine what the outcome might be if “everyone did what I am doing.”

This weekend we’ll be performing our new song Bidder 70 at a benefit concert to raise funds for Peaceful Uprising’s new complilation CD Folk Songs for Climate Justice. The song tells the story of Tim DeChristopher who was sent to prison for disrupting an auction of Oil and Gas leases near Utah’s National Parks that had been rushed through without proper review at the tail end of the Bush administration.

Listen to “Bidder 70” or read the lyrics.

Both Mary and I have been fans of Tim since his act of civil disobedience however I have found that rational people certainly disagree on whether his actions were warranted or admirable. I did a lot of soul searching while writing the song. I read, re-read, and read again Tim’s statement at his sentencing. His story, and what he was trying to tell the world is in many ways too large and too complex a subject for a simple song of three verses. In the end, I settled on a phrase he uttered at his sentencing: “I’m not saying any of this to ask you for mercy, but to ask you to join me.”

The power I find in Tim’s story is not defiance, it is his love. What if everyone loved the planet so much they were willing to go to prison to defend its future? Whether or not I agree with his actions, his story inspires me to ask myself that question. That is the cause our song and Tim’s story is inviting you to join. It is not always in our nature to ask ourselves this kind of question and add to our workload, or tolerate the discomfort of knowing we are contributing to a potential disaster. Our nature has primed us to seek comfort and it is easy to trade an uncertain amount of disaster in the future for the satisfaction of happiness in the present, but our nature has also gifted us with foresight in the ability to want a safe and secure life for our children and our grandchildren, and that safety and security can only come from examining the long term impacts of our daily actions.

For me, this means I ride my bike when I can instead of driving. I make sure we use most of the plastic bags that come through our home at least twice before they are discarded. Sometimes I take a little extra time to separate out recycling from trash. I use my own coffee mug instead of disposable cups when possible. None of these small actions is particularly significant on its own. I’m well aware of that. Yet when I am tempted to do differently, that question is always lurking, “what if everyone does what I am about to do?”

I do things too that I’m not proud of. I sit with the discomfort of knowing that I’m mowing my lawn with a very dirty gas mower instead of trying to use a people powered option. For that matter, I probably have more lawn at my place, and use more water keeping it green that is wise. I’m not overly fond of riding public transportation and don’t always use it when I could. I’ve found that allowing that discomfort, over time, moves me to take small actions I might not have considered in the past.

I’m not asking anyone to do anything they disagree with. I know reasonable people can completely disagree on what action is needed, possible, and useful. I know people have vastly different ways of expressing their love for the planet. I’m simply asking you to join with me in this one question, “What if everyone does what I’m about to do?” I wrote Bidder 70 not to suggest we all do what Tim did, but to suggest we love our planet, and our progeny the way he has demonstrated, with a passion, intensity and devotion great enough to risk prison. His closing words were “this is what love looks like, and it will only grow.” I’m “asking you to join” in growing that love, wherever, and whatever it looks like for you.

You can start by coming to hear 14 different visions of that love at the benefit concert as some of our favorite local and national songwriters including Ann Kelly, Cambriah Heaton, Chris Orrock, Dana Hubbard, Jen Hajj, John Paul Spehler, Kristin Erickson, Marv Hamilton, Otter Creek, Raven Spirit, Shaney McCoy, Steve Bassett, The Hollands!, and Utah Slim play their songs that will be included on the album.

Let us know what your love looks like by posting about it below!

I got up the other morning to discover that our 60 year old apricot tree had seen its last season, the weight of an early snow had overwhelmed the ailing trunk and the whole tree had tumbled unceremoniously to the ground during the night. Since pretty much anything that can break has been staging a coordinated descent into disrepair at our house, it wasn’t really a huge surprise. I grew up in a home where not everything worked, so I tend to have a lot of patience with bathtubs that take 4 days to drain, hinges that go bad, dishwashers that won’t wash, leaks in the ceiling, and well… just anything broken in general (I might note, oddly enough, that Mary does not seem to greatly appreciate my patience).

The day before was our Salt Lake CD release concert for our new album Shiver Into Spark at Holladay United Church of Christ (HUCC).  Normally, on the day of a big concert I have a bit of a routine I like to follow: a quiet morning with a cup of coffee, and a newspaper, then a bit of woodshedding on some of the tough instrumentals, followed by a brief vocal warm up. Later in the day, I’ll go through the whole program with Mary, and show up for the performance in tip top shape. What we hadn’t expected was that our cars were in collusion with everything else that has broken.  That morning we discovered our van wouldn’t start. Our other car was immobile due to an electrical problem I was exercising a little too much patience on. However, it was clear that if we wanted to show up to this performance at all, I’d need to be a bit less patient. Mary, who has even less patience than me for this sort of thing had already called a neighbor who is a mechanic and he said he could fix it sometime that weekend.  I called my brother, who told me I was welcome to Dad’s old truck but that I’d need to put the spare on it as one of the tires was flat. Sounded fine to me… besides, I had an old broken trailer full of discarded bike parts, odd bits of wire, and some bent stove piping, and a wasp nest I’d been meaning to get rid of once I ran out of patience. A truck sounded like just the thing.

A brother in law gave me a lift out to my brother’s place and we set to work on the tire. Since the truck didn’t appear to come with a jack, we borrowed a high lift jack from his neighbor, and thought things should be a cinch with my brother’s set of pneumatic power tools… However, over the next few hours my usual patience gradually gave way to a mantra of whispered and sometimes grunted words that I think decorum indicates I should not repeat here.  The lug nuts had obviously been tightened by some overzealous person armed with a bucket of superglue and the spare tire looked as if it had been entombed with an Egyptian mummy. We called a used tire shop to see if we could buy a couple of tires cheap and were told they had just what we needed and that the bay was empty. We got there 15 minutes later to discover that  “empty bay” apparently translated to “there’s only twenty people in front of you.” Following a very patient 2 hour wait, we were surprised when he only charged me $30 dollars instead of the $80 I expected. “What luck!” I thought.

 “Only one tire… not so good tire.” He said apologetically in his heavily accented English. Sure enough, it was as bald as Patrick Stewart. Still, it was inflated and meant I was on my way, with a full 30 minutes to spare! I got home, changed and dashed out to load our gear. The universe somehow picked that moment to stage a blizzard. Luckily I had run across a large tarp left over from our tent (which I had recently run out of patience with and discarded due to a large rip, catastrophically failed zipper and a long mosquito filled night) when I was cleaning out the garage a few days before. It was just big enough that all our gear could be wrapped tightly in the bed of the truck and we set off.

We made it to the sound check, out of breath but relatively on time. We had the good luck to be backing up Kristin Erickson (one of our favorite songwriters) for the first half of the show, and were playing tunes from our CD Shiver Into Spark on the second half. Having had no chance to warm up made the whole thing that much more exciting. Hugs all around helped center and calm us down and Kristin loaned me her spare guitar so I wouldn’t have to retune between songs. We had a great sound guy (Bill Green) and the church's music director had hot soup for us in the green room. The concert was warm, intimate and beautiful in a way that only happens when the weather outside is frightful.

When it was over we took our time getting back out into the cold. It had snowed another four inches and was still coming down heavy. I began to worry about getting home in a rear wheel drive pickup with no significant weight in the back and bald tires as well as regret the patience that had left my car (the best one we have for snow) out of commission. Our friend Sterling must have had similar thoughts, as unbeknownst to me he followed us out of the parking lot and down the street, a fact I only discovered when I gave up trying to drive up the .05% grade that lead home. I backed up and turned around, following the path of least resistance towards (and sometimes away from home).  The roads were bad enough that the truck wouldn’t go uphill at all, and much to my dismay, I discovered that the windshield wipers had long since lost their rubber blades, and that the fan for the heat and defrost was not working often leaving me unable to see well enough to read the street signs. Adding to my stress was a crowded cab with two muses in the small seats behind the bench, and one muse sitting up front between Mary and I who began loudly worrying about needing to use the bathroom, a worry which continued to increase for all of us as the drive (normally 15 minutes or less) stretched into an hour and a half or more. My usually inexhaustible patience wearing thin, I switched back and forth between irritably explaining that if we pulled into a gas station for a bathroom we weren’t likely to be able to pull out and demanding Mary figure out where in the hell we were since I couldn’t spare attention for anything but the road in front of me. When we finally arrived at home (without any accidents inside or outside the truck) I was pleased to find all our instruments still snug and dry in the bed. All in all, it counts as the most exciting drive I’ve ever taken (even including the time my hood blew off on the freeway!)

Sterling pulled over to talk before he left. “I know you grew up here and know how to drive in this stuff,” he said (mostly I know enough to leave a rear wheel drive pickup with bald tires home when it’s snowing!), “but I wanted to make sure you got home ok. You’ve had a run of bad luck recently."

The phrase “run of bad luck” stuck with me that night as I ran through my mind the list of all the things that had gone wrong recently. It was indeed quite a long list. His words were still running through my mind the next morning when I looked out the back window to discover my beloved apricot tree was gone. It hadn’t crushed the fence though, and hadn’t damaged the outbuilding under it. I had a year’s supply of jam from that tree in the basement, family and friends who help me out in a pinch, a truck to drive, a neighbor who would fix my van, a guardian angel named Sterling, a smart, gorgeous, talented life partner, three beautiful muses, a warm place to sleep, a fantastic gig, a shower that ran, even if it didn’t drain, and people who would come out in a snow storm to listen to my music.

“If that’s a run of bad luck,” I thought, “Bring it on!”

Last weekend we traveled down to the San Rafael to scope out a location for our CD release party. We wanted to get the lay of the land and make sure we could give everyone accurate directions and let everyone know what to expect. We finally settled on the campground by the bridge.

As we set up camp and ate dinner under the giant twisted cottonwood trees, we breathed in the clean desert air and drank in the beauty of the surrounding cliffs in the evening sun. It was deeply satisfying.  We saw only one other vehicle that evening. From where we were camped we could just hear the faint running of water from the San Rafael River.

After dinner we went down to the river with the Muses (our daughters, Eliza, Kjersten, and Lucy). Its waters were still muddy from a rainstorm a day or two earlier and the kids remarked that it looked like chocolate milk. They spent an hour or so wading in the lukewarm water, slipping over rocks and squelching the rich mud between their toes while Mary and I reminisced on our many trips down here while we were dating.  

Back at the campsite we sat and talked and sang as the sun slipped lower and the evening sky began its colorful pilgrimage toward the moon and stars. We sat facing Bottleneck peak. As dusk turned into a rich luminescent darkness I pulled out the mandolin and sang Utah Slim’s song Sister San Rafael. It was a moment I’d like to have packaged and put away to pull out years from now and breathe in its beauty and stillness.

The front cover of Shiver into Spark is a painting of Bottleneck peak by Mary’s brother, Andrew. The album is about transitions, about the places in our lives and the universe where inexplicably, something old ends, and something new begins. It’s about things stripped down to their essence. Over the years the San Rafael Swell is a place we have returned to over and over to come back to that place in ourselves. As I sat in the moonlight I recalled Gerard Manly Hopkins poem...

God’s Grandeur

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
  It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
  It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
  And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
  And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
  There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
  Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
  World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

...and I realized what it was that called me back to the San Rafael Swell year after year. It is the chance to pull off the chains of living in the city, to drop the pretenses of the petty concerns that occupy me, to let my soul sink deep into the soil and the rocks, my sense of time slow to the rhythm of the seasons and the movement of the sun and stars.  I gazed up into a sky free from light pollution, and looked out into the universe, drinking in the vision of vastness and the beauty.

I recalled a conversation I had with an astronomer a couple of years ago. He told me he was often asked what the most marvelous thing he had seen in the skies was. He told me his answer was that in all his stargazing, he had never seen something so beautiful, so fragile, and so glorious as this planet of ours.  He told me that all of his searching and studies had driven home to him just what a gift we had in the planet that birthed us.

I recalled another friend telling me he thought that we humans would only change our relationship to the land once we discovered a sense of “sacredness” for our earth. I thought again of some of my favorite lines in Slim’s song. “This life is your temple… We have no sense of beauty, much less gratitude for grace which keeps this warm blooded planet alive in endless space… This here and now is all we’ve got and my sister’s not for sale.”

It troubled me that I couldn’t remember all the words to the Hopkins poem. I pulled out my smartphone to look it up and saw it had no signal. I smiled, laughed at myself, then settled back to gaze out at the universe in wonder.


Otter Creek will be hosting an intimate CD release party for their album Shiver Into Spark at the campground near the old bridge on the Buckhorn Draw road on September 29, 2012. If you would like to join us you can RSVP and get all the details by joining our event on Facebook or contacting us directly.

We’re excited! The recording is finished. We’re still tweaking a couple of the mixes, working on liner notes and final art and photography selections but Otter Creek’s second album, Shiver into Spark, is now complete enough for us to sit back and listen to it while we finish up final production. The album features some great new songs, a lot of new instrumental techniques we’ve been working on over the past couple of years, and Mary’s recording debut on the Viola.

Here’s our current choice for track order and just a little bit about the songs on the album.

1.       Shiver into Spark

This song helped Peter place as a finalist in two song competitions. As title track it helps set the tone for the whole album, it’s about the spark that lies hidden in cold ashes.

2.       Farewell to Ireland

This is a traditional tune from Scotland. We were first introduced to it by Kate MacLeod when Peter was accompanying her for a short set. We fell in love with it and decided to do our own arrangement. True to form, we couldn’t stay quite in one genre as a little bit of very American funk crept into our version.

3.       Hard Times

Peter first learned this tune from his father, a folksinger, who in turn had learned it from the singing of Rosalie Sorrels. Peter’s father used to perform a Utah specific version of the tune which referenced the Mormon pioneer’s sufferings while crossing the plains but we decided for this project to use Stephen Foster’s original lyrics as they speak eloquently to the economic hardship so many in our world currently face.

4.       Nine Hundred Miles

We first learned this tune from the singing of Odetta. It speaks of the pain of someone far from home, and perhaps far from the person they want to be. It also features the unique instrumental pairing of Viola and Long Neck Banjo. I guess you could call it our “low lonesome sound.”

5.       Ashokan Farewell

One of our favorite fiddle tunes ever worked into both a mellow fiddle solo and sparkling mandolin instrumental.

6.       Meadow Green

This is our arrangement of a little known folk song about one of the greatest tragedies in Utah history.

7.       Devil’s Boots

An original tune about overcoming anxiety (yes… Peter was QUITE shy once upon a time). This song took first place in the Suzanne Millsaps Performing Songwriter Showcase in 2011.

8.       Getting Past the Barking

Another original song about finding love in the most unlikely places.

9.       Fisher’s Hornpipe

Peter’s version of this traditional tune on solo mandolin.

10.   Hi Diddle Di

Some of the people we admire most are living one day at a time. This song is for them.

11.   Take the Climb

We wrote this song in memory of Tyler Clementi, who tragically took his own life after an instance of cyber bullying.

12.   Morning Has Broken

OK… Here we can brag, our own beautiful daughters “The Three Muses” sang this one. We’re pretty sure you’ll love it. We released a preview of this track on Youtube, come have a listen!

13.   Old Joe Clark

Mary plays this traditional tune on solo fiddle as only she can.

14.   Sister San Rafael

The first time we heard Utah Slim sing this song about one of our favorite places in the world we knew we wanted to do a cover of it. Slim’s song went on to win the 2011 NewSongs Showcase at the Walnut Valley festival in Winfield, Kansas where he invited us to perform it with him.

15.   The Times They Are A Changin

Our version of a Dylan tune we really, really love.

The album should be printed and ready to ship by the end of August. We’re taking orders now and offering free shipping for anyone who orders in the next month! We’ll be having a couple of events to celebrate the album’s release and are hoping to have a CD release concert down in the beauty of the San Rafael swell in late September. We’ll post details as they develop. In the meantime you can listen to the two tracks we’ve posted on Youtube or drop in to hear us in concert!

All my life I’ve harbored the not so secret aspiration of being a hobo. It goes right along with my love of the outdoors and trains and travel. I don’t know where I first picked up the desire, but in order to keep my wife, Mary, from pointing her finger at me I’ve given it considerable thought.  I initially assigned blame to the movie “The Journey of Natty Gann” which I saw when I was 12 or 13 (I mean, what’s cooler than riding the rails with a wolf at your side) but more often than not over the years I’ve blamed the banjo. I also blame the banjo for my love of boxcars, beans cooked in a can over a fire under a bridge, and the wild crazy idea I have of running all across the country to play music. There’s something about all those things that just seems to fit with the banjo. 

My introduction to the banjo came before I was born. My father was a folksinger, and although his professional performing days were mostly over before I came along, he often sang for family and friends (or more often just to please himself). Most of his songs he accompanied with the guitar, but when it came to homeless tramping or trains he generally pulled out the banjo. There were just a few of these songs but they seemed so perfectly suited for me. The plucky tone of the banjo, along with my father’s rich baritone spoke to me of letting go of attachments and fear, of letting the wind and the rain and the rails carry me far from home. They taught me of the wistful longing of lost innocence and the sweet lullaby of a long journey, and the wonder of belonging to the wide, wild, flabbergasting world we live in.  

Click to listen to a recording of my father singing “Hobo’s Lullaby”

That was a long time ago. I’ve had plenty of times in my life where I’ve done the opposite, where I tried to hide from my wild wandering self, times of fear and loneliness, denial, and clinging. I’ve fought change till my knuckles were bloody and I was exhausted.  But somehow, when the time came, I’ve always heard the sound of the banjo and the train as a summons to let go and move on.  I started playing the banjo at a time like that, a time where I was hanging on for dear life and at the same time afraid of where that life might take me.

My father wasn’t performing much anymore so he loaned me his banjo for a while when I said I wanted to learn. When I came back playing tunes he’d never heard before, he generously told me that since I could play it better than he could, maybe I better keep it. Doc Watson once told an interviewer that his first real instrument was a banjo his father made for him. Doc said “one day he brought it to me and put it in my hands and said, son, I want you to learn to play this thing real well… it might help you get through the world.” In a very real way, my dad did the same for me.

Over the years, I’ve generally kept the Banjo to myself more than my other instruments, I get it out when I’m feeling the wistful pull of the road, or when I’m feeling a little stuck, or need to connect with the wild untamed being I am inside. Recently I began teaching a beginning banjo class for the University of Utah. Although I’ve taught before, I was really struck while preparing lessons just how deep down the banjo was in my soul. I teased the members of the class that they should enter the novice division of the State Banjo Championship, and they in turn challenged me to enter the open division. It was something I’d never really considered too deeply before. I finally decided to give it a go. Knowing that my old-timey clawhammer pieces might not be quite what the judges were looking for I didn’t expect to win, but Earl Scruggs and Doc Watson had just died, and in some way, this was my way of letting them go. They are both on that last train over the River Jordan, and I guess, in that way all of us are just hobos passing through.