Kind Words

Little sweetheart, like I was saying, the new album doesn’t release until April 7, but we’ve already gotten some lovely airplay and very kind words from WFMU’s legendary Irene Trudel to KFJC’s great Carson Street, from NSPR’s wonderful ambient music show Tapeta Lucida, to Italy’s White Light/White Heat music zine, who named it to their “Picks of the Week”. We’re very honored and grateful and, little sweetheart, it is, as ever, all for you. With all my love…
 

In The Hours Left Until Dawn

Little sweetheart, our 11th album is complete! I’d been tinkering with the mixes even into January but finally sent them off for mastering and then with the finished artwork to our CD manufacturer. The digital and CD versions will both come out the same day - April 7th (Jesse’s birthday). 

The album is another double-album - 22 tracks over two discs and 2 hours and is called In The Hours Left Until Dawn. 

As ever, it is very much for you and, as always, your soaring vocals weave their way throughout the journey. Advance copies will head to some radio stations and music from here to Europe and beyond. I’ll let you know what we hear. As ever, it’s so very much for you. 

With all my love.

CAMP Radio Show (Jan 3)

Our most recent show for France’s great CAMP Radio aired yesterday, little sweetheart. It’s the anniversary of our first broadcasts - we’ve been doing this for a whole year, now! - and the show is now archived and up on the station’s MixCloud here. Thinking of you, always. Listen, little sweetheart - you're on the radio!
 

New Year's Day 2023

The first day of 2023 is a cold clear one, little sweetheart, and I’m sitting here at my desk with a cup of coffee doing some writing, which I hope will find me making progress toward completion of one of our books by this time next year. Things seem to get a little harder each year, I find I need to rest more often, but I’ll keep going and trying to be as good as you want me to be. It helps to know that you want me to do just that. Happy New Year, little sweetheart. I’ll do my best to make it a good one, I promise. With all my love forever.

New Year's Eve tonight

It’s New Year’s Eve, little sweetheart. You and I never got a chance to have one together but I do remember you calling me each year and especially one year when you were at a party and had gone into another room especially to book a flight to New York and called to tell me you were coming! 

It’s been a few years since I’ve seen your parents because of the pandemic but for several years I’d been with them and I began a tradition of making beef stroganoff each New Year’s Eve - which your dad, in particular, likes - so, that’s what I’m doing tonight. 

Probably be a quiet night, here. But my thoughts, as ever, will be of you and wondering when I will fly to your side. Whenever that may be, I will endeavor to do my best in this coming year. 

With all love forever.
 

Davis Christmas

I’ve so many memories of being with you in the beautiful house in Davis, little sweetheart, and the haven, the heaven, the sweet little retreat it was for the two of us to kind of get away from everything for a few days every now and then.

I won’t unpack every single one of them here just now but am thinking today of how lovely it was in the days after Christmas when, before we headed back to San Francisco, we first stopped off in Davis for a bit.

As ever, we started off by swinging by the Nugget Market for a few provisions, including all the ingredients I needed to make yet another batch of Christmas cookies. I had my mom’s vintage cookie cutters with me - stainless steel ones from the ’60’s in the shapes of a bell, a star, a snowman, an angel and a Christmas tree - but you encouraged me to use some cutters of your own and you retrieved them from the pantry to show me. I quibbled because they were decidedly non-Christmas shapes but you wanted to “shake things up”. Ha! Who could argue?!

I remember, even though California is not nearly as frosty as New York in December, that the house was a a little chilly when we arrived and that, instead of just cranking up the central air to a higher temp and heating the whole house - since we mostly stayed in the living room, your room and the kitchen - that we’d light the little potbelly stove just this side of the garden doors. It had a pilot light that required getting down flat on the title floor to find and engage its button. It was kind of a two person job - one person had to hold the button down from below and the other watch from the top to see that the flame went on. You took the hard part, the floor job, and we got it up and running after a try or two.

I also remember your “floor work” there because you’d recently gotten a new series of ear piercings, and ever vigilant, made sure to soak them in salt water for 2 minutes, three times a day. You’d lay on your side, little sweetheart, dipping your ear in a little teacup and ask me to time you. I have a picture! I’ve gotta find that!

Anyway, here is it, the third day of Christmas and my thoughts, as ever, are of you. Wonderful you. My treasure. With all my love…  
 

On Christmas...

We've made not one but two Christmas albums over the years, little sweetheart (!) - BPXmas in 2014 and Til Morning Is Nigh in 2018. 

This track, written for you, of course, opens the first of them. 

You are in my heart, my prayers, my every thought. Love you forever. Happy Christmas, little sweetheart!