Great Danes

I am sure there will be a lot of recaps floating around the internet of Kilby Block Party, a really fun 4 day music festival that just ended in Salt Lake City, UT (my home!). This is not going to be one of those. I love live music and witnessed a whole helluva lot of it this weekend, but if you’ve read any of my newsletters at all, you know that what I like to write about is music as an avenue to feelings. B i g sticky GOOEY feelings. So this is not a festival recap, but more so a feelings check-in from your guy, Me.

A poet that I really love, Sierra DeMulder, has a poem called “New Vows” that I think about a lot. It’s a love poem. Specifically a love poem about wedding vows and all the heartbreak we sign up for when we open ourselves to loving someone. Though I’ve never been farther away from romantic love in my life than I am lately, a line from that poem has been in my head recently:

I was thinking about that line because I have been thinking about impermanence. I have been preparing with a new band to play Kilby Block Party for the last couple of months - the stars aligned with schedules and dedication that my best friend Jordan Watko (Crowd Shy) was able to fly here from Japan to spend a month here and play this show with me. It also aligned perfectly to catch Andrew Goldring on guitar before he moves back to Nashville next month. Julie Boswell, who played bass with me, also has plans to move to a new city soon. Thank god for Ken Vallejos, drummer extraordinaire, for many reasons, but also for not having any immediate plans for moving away from Salt Lake City. Through the timing of things, this band playing this set became a bit of a Great Dane.

From day one of practice, this band has felt deeply special to me. I had been eyeing Ken and Julie for years hoping that I could find the right show to recruit them on, and Andrew being back in SLC for a bit and releasing some of the most beautiful new music just felt right. Everyone brought such a unique perspective into my songs, just as I had hoped they would. I love to write songs, but I always feel that my vision for them is limited to the feeling I’m trying to convey lyrically. Collaborating with Jordan over the years has showed me the true magic of being creative with other people. The doors that you didn’t even know were doors being unlocked by someone else. I just wanted everyone in this band to feel like they had a creative voice and the room to play, create, and explore, even if the songs had already existed.

We put together a 5 song set for KBP. So short and sweet. We practiced a handful of times in the dank, dark, smoke-filled gloom of Down Town Music in SLC (IYKYK). Competing with dog barks and metal bands, eating hi-chews or pizza or La Barba breakfast tacos (IYKYK!!!). After our first practice once Jordan got in from Osaka, I experienced a come down I haven’t felt since before I quit drinking. Standing in the aisle of Chinatown Supermarket next to jet-lagged Jordan, I was overcome with the inability to speak and a sudden, irreparable sadness. Band practice with these folks was filling my heart in a way I don’t think I’d ever felt. Especially after not playing music with Jordan in person for over a year. My body took a moment to adjust to the massive levels of happy.

Jordan’s trip back to Utah was an entire month. Granted, he has family and other friends to see here, but the amount of time he made for practicing and recording and writing new songs with me was the most generous gift I can imagine giving another person. In one of the early, quiet moments alone at the beginning of the last month, in between eating tacos or tracking guitar or gulping down another coffee with Jordan or practicing with the band, I felt a glimmer of sadness - thinking about the end before the beginning is even over. A Why Me Moment of “why does everyone keep moving away? Why can’t this band last forever?” And truly I am so grateful that that moment happened. Because after I let myself feel that glimmer of sadness, I made a promise to myself - “I will be present for every possible moment of the next month. I will appreciate this time with these people, not only in spite of the impermanence, but because of it. I will pause and take deep breaths, I will try to write about as many moments as I can, I will be there.”

Some of the most nervous moments of my life have been with Jordan next to me. In September of 2021, we opened for St. Vincent as a two piece - I’ll never forget back stage at the Gallivan Center in downtown SLC - me in my green suit and Jordan wearing my button-up with bugs, sipping whiskey straight from the bottle and slurping nicotine vape to “ease” the anxious worms in our bellies.

This time, the nervous worms felt similar to 2021, but WE felt so different to me. Different people, older and changed, living such different lives than just 4 short years ago. A year ago I was a wreck - so worried that Jordan moving to a new country meant the end of our creative projects together. Too big of a change that I wasn’t sure our friendship would survive. I now know that if anything it’s made us closer. The commitment we’ve made to keeping in touch and the intention behind this trip and time together - I can’t even believe the way that this sort of love feels. The 48 hours before our performance at KBP was fueled by nerves, but filled my heart so deeply. Belly-hurting laughter followed by chaotic trips to the craft store with Jordan, meeting up with the band for load in at 8AM, piling into a van as if the two miles to the one event was a month-long tour - in my heart we may as well been.

In the hours before we took the stage, I kept feeling my brain want to hit fast-forward. A helpful defense mechanism I’ve picked up over the years that often brings me to the end of something I was looking forward to saying “what the fuck was that!?” Man of the hour Ken Vallejos played the show while suffering from kidney stones. I still can’t even believe that. I told myself if Ken can play this show in pain, I can focus on being present for the whole thing. I took as many deep breaths as possible, and kept telling myself to “Slowwww down.” Jordan and I shared bites of the same apple to help our voices ring clearer, and before we knew it we were on stage.

My favorite part of the entire show was how happy Ken, Julie, Andrew, and Jordan were. It was all smiles before, during, and after, even nervous ones. Everyone, including myself, was just so proud of how we sounded and how it felt to be there. It was palpable. Ivy Fraser, our FOH sound angel, was even gushing about her mix and flinging out hugs left and right. I’m so fucking happy I remember it all. I got to drag them all into interviews and photos with me later on in the day, but I’ll never forget just how happy and loving it all felt. It felt professional but it also felt like play.

I may have taken my present promise a bit too far - looking at my pile of laundry and empty fridge and bank account and amass of unread text messages now - but after dropping off Jordan at the airport this morning, I have never felt so grateful that something happened. So at peace with the fact that this iteration of this thing is over and whatever happens next in all directions will still be beautiful. And I’m thinking about that feeling in relation to everything in life. When you are writing an album or getting ready to record, it feels like you’re working in the direction of the day that you get to hold that physical record in your hands and pass it off to others - the life of it has tendrils spooling out that you have no say in. Preparing a possibly temporary band to play one show felt so new and different from this process. The act of creation was in preparation for a single 25-minute long chunk of time. Whoever was there, was there, and the experience was ours and big, but finite and fast. By the time I tucked myself exhausted into bed next to my dog at the end of the night, I was already forgetting certain feelings I’d felt throughout the day. The cycle of the last joyful and chaotic and creative month coming to an end; leaving it’s mark, holding me close to its center and then letting me go again.

When I talked about this with Jordan, he did something very Jordan, which is to say something incredibly devastating/insightful/beautiful in the most casual of all ways. “Not to get all Buddhist about it, but isn’t that everything? Whether the cycle is the last month of preparation for this show, or a span of 5 years of working on an album, or a span of 80 years working on life - none of it sticks around.” I’m generalizing, but it was something to that effect, and I teared up in the car, so incredibly happy to get a couple cycles in this life with him and this band and this experience.

We’ve got a theme for our next record put together, I think. Something about the things we put in between ourselves and our understanding of ourselves - things we chose that create distance and things that are chosen for us. I’ll leave it vague for now while it’s cooking. We’re pretty close to having a new song that we can share into the airwaves.

I have some solo shows I’m playing this summer (6/19 at Kilby Court with Mini Trees and 7/2 at The International with the one and only June Swoon). Ken and Julie are down to keep being a band so I’m on the look out for a magical guitar player. Andrew and Jordan won’t be rid of me so easily - I’ll just have to keep booking cool shit in Utah and bringing them back whenever I can.

I love a Great Dane. Demanding your attention; unavoidably present. Here for a good time, not a long time. And another, and another, and another . . .