The woodpile is buried in snow.  So is everything else, for that matter.  But the wood is important.  It heats the house and the water.  I should probably clear that snow off before it freezes tonight and makes grabbing a log ten times harder, but my back is already killing me from this morning’s shoveling extravaganza.  I ran out into a field just before dark last night, when there were still only a few inches on the ground.  The land down here is rolling and untouched by glaciers, like in southwestern Wisconsin.  It was tranquilizing to look out over the empty fields, with tractor treads winding their way up hillsides and tree skeletons lining my periphery, silence broken only by the sound of a train passing through.  I belted out “Winter Wonderland” all the way home.

I awoke this morning to an even more dazzling sight, with the tree limbs of the woods that surround me all iced with a good inch or two of wet, sticky snow.  This is one of my favorite winter scenes of all and usually happens only once or twice in a season.  It puts me in the mood for a warm beverage and some warm tones, like those of my friend David Goodrich’s song “Snowed In”, which is a fitting piece on a day like this, for obvious reasons.  If you have a moment, I posted a version of Bob Dylan’s “I Threw It All Away” on my youtube channel yesterday.  Be sure to turn the sound on the player down a bit to avoid the digital distortion I somehow missed.  It’s pretty good, otherwise.  Well, I’m off to brew something up for myself.  All the best to anyone who might be reading this, and be careful out there, midwesterners!

SNOWED IN

Hey, all! I’m just getting settled down in northwestern Illinois for a week-long housesitting stint. Lucky for me (and perhaps even you, if you’re a fan), the place I’m looking after is somewhat of an artist’s retreat (for those of us who don’t normally reside in such tranquil and beautiful places). This being the case, I brought along all of my recording equipment with the intention of creating and posting some new live videos while I’m down here. Stay tuned!

GOODBYE, SUN

Hey, all!  Like I said in the last post, the least I can do is post some live video recordings of both songs I’ve written and songs I love to play.  I’ve posted a take of A Heart Grown Old in the visual page, and plan to keep posting more and more.  They’ll all be embedded youtube files from my youtube channel, which can be found at www.youtube.com/satchelpaigemusic.  There, you will find additional live video recordings of songs I did not write and therefore should not have embedded into my site, since I plan to activate a donations page soon enough and want to be sure I can argue in court that there’s no way for a label to claim I received a donation based on a video of somebody else’s song that I embedded into my own site.  Just playing it safe, folks…  I hope you’re liking the video concept so far!  Also, the talkboard is now up and running, so please leave me with your thoughts on the music, if you’re feeling inspired to do so.  An RSS feed/site subscription concept is still in the works, as well, so that you can comment freely without waiting for my approval and can receive any site news automatically.  I’m off to work!  Cheers!

Admittedly, allowing three months to pass between blog updates is not a promising approach to building repeat traffic.  I’m sorry to have let you down- yes, all four of you.  In the months since my last entry, I have been busy working to improve my life-my physical and psychological health both.  Though I seem to succeed at putting on faces, I have not been particularly well- no energy; chronic aches, pains and sadness all feeding off of one another.  Perhaps with a few thousand dollars, I could have been diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or something.

And then what?  Like millions of Americans, I have no insurance.  On top of that, I have a pre-exisiting condition that most insurance policies won’t cover, meaning  insurance could potentially be useful in covering the  expense of  some unforeseen disaster (if they didn’t cop out using one of their many loopholes), but would pay not a dime towards my pursuit of addressing the problems I already have.  Gee… that’s not such a good deal!    I also missed the boat on Wisconsin’s Badger Care, which I had trouble signing up for when I tried via the web and was too stubborn to wait an hour and a half to do by phone.  Absolutely my fault in the end, but as it wouldn’t have covered much of what I need it most for, I’m not particularly devastated.

Between a cyst in my bladder wall which survived two surgical attempts at its draining, a chronically inflamed and varyingly painful to excruciating epididymis which has plagued me, my back and, most importantly, my nuts for twelve years now, along with a rough, disheartening stretch of many years in my non-existant love life, I have not been well.  I did my best to cope with these ailments, but they slowly, yet ceaselessly and systematically destroyed my overall health and vitality over the last decade.  With no insurance, urologists mystified about the origin of my condition and stumped on how to address it and blood tests that cause no alarm (at least, not if read only on the basis of whether or not you’re in “normal range”, which leaves room for all kinds of problems and merely rules out the worst of possibilities), I knew that I needed to seek out alternative, self-empowered methods and treatments that could dramatically improve the health of my organism and its systems.  In the last two months, I have changed my walking gait, become an avid barefoot runner, altered my posture, improved my diet immensely by eating more greens, nuts, legumes and fruit, along with lots of chia seed and fermented cod liver oil (mostly for a good source of vitamin D, aimed at my sadness, stress and dermatitis)… and started a quantum medicine treatment with NutriEnergetics, which aims to fix the control systems which regulate (or, if sick, clearly fail to regulate) healthy biochemical processes in our bodies.  This treatment is responsible for the newfound sense of vitality that has given me the hope I can actually get better.  And as a I get better both emotionally and physically, my musical focus and stamina improve as well…

Speaking of which, there have been recent developments that may land me in a proper studio, which is very exciting.  In the meantime, I owe y’all some videos of the songs I’m working on.  It’s the least I can do, considering there are only two songs on this site right now.  I’m sorry.

I played an opening set for John Sieger (& the sub-continentals) here at the Carpe last night.  It’s really difficult to shake the feelings of ambivalence towards performing in my own home… which is too bad, considering how exceptional the back room is for a show.  I enjoy myself more here when I’m playing with others.  It allows me to more easily forget where I am and treat what I’m doing like it matters.

All of this aside, the sub-continentals kicked some major ass last night and sounded great in our room!  I asked John if he knew of anyone who could help me out with some new recordings on the cheap and he told me that he’d be happy to do it.  Just like that!  Sieger has been a strong supporter of mine for a long time now, despite my unconventional “career tactics”, and I can’t seem to knock the sense back into him.  What is he thinking, getting behind a fool like me?!  In all seriouness, from what I’ve gathered in my conversations with him, we’re quite like-minded when it comes to music and songwriting.  We don’t write similar songs, but we treat them with the same care.  As such, I can’t imagine this experiment failing to yield positive results.  This means new songs, people!  I’m actually going to get some of these little bastards out of my head and, with any luck, into yours!  Cheers, y’all (clink)!  I’m off to knead a sore shoulder.

So, I confirmed my suspicions of a theft committed by a “friend” long ago today.  Do you recall trying to sell a delay pedal that didn’t belong to you, Mr. Anonymous?  How about the P-Bass that went missing?  What ever came of it, fine sir?  What a schmuck you are, you!  I always knew it was somebody familiar and not a random thief happening upon a spooky, abandoned building in the middle of the night.

In other news, I’m going to be helping my good pal Jeremy Pinc in the recording of a new batch of songs, starting this weekend.  While he is first and foremost a visual artist, he has been dabbling in the writing of songs for many a year now.  This should be fun.

Again, many thanks to Steve Tesmer for helping me make this the site I want it to be.  He and I have lots of good ideas to improve it further.  To anyone reading this admittedly dull verbage, thank you for stopping by, and may your evening be merry.  Cheers!

With the help of my good friend Steve (TallGuy Productions) and the many people involved with WordPress,  I now have a proper blog with self-organizing capabilities to keep things from spiraling out of control.  Having recently addressed a long-term musculoskeletal misalignment, my overall comfort level has vastly improved and, as a result, so has my playing.  I’m quite confident now in my ability to lay down tasty rhythm, lead and upright bass parts for recordings.  However, finding it next to impossible to constantly switch between being my own producer and engineer while also being the performer, I contacted Willy Porter last week about a previously discussed possibility of recording at his studio.  With any luck, we’ll work something out in the next couple of months and I’ll be able to go into a studio again and concentrate on good performances and not on organizing takes and dialing in sounds all by myself.  Then, I’ll put those songs up for download here in mp3 and WAV formats and activate my donations page, which will allow all y’all to help a brother out in continuing to make music for you.  No labels, booking agents, managers or publishing houses involved.  If you make a donation, the money will actually get to me!  Novel concept, eh?  But you’ll be able to download music without any forms or transactions and decide for yourself if I’m making music worth supporting.  Yes, like Radiohead.  No, it’s not where the idea came from.