I actually went to bed before midnight last night, but I simply couldn’t stay awake any longer, the sleep drones were dragging me down, they had ropes around my ears and ankles, I was being dragged onto the floor, into the mousehole, behind the panels in the walls, drawn into the darkness, I could no longer stay awake and I was gone. I woke up earlyish around 8 and got ready for today’s trip to Minneapolis, this time without the 10 feet of snow.

Sarah picked us up at the house and kindly drove us to the airport. There was of course a traffic jam with a truck broken down in a tunnel under a freeway but we were soon moving again and arrived in good time. I gave my unopened can of Coke Zero to a guy before I went through security, I couldn’t bring myself to just throw it away, I heard him open it as I walked away, result. I love these uneventful trips as we sail through the air high in the sky in a silver machine that to my non-scientific mind has no chance of staying up there. Olivia and I were not sitting together, I was behind her in the middle seat, she was between two women, me between two men. The plane had a queasy landing and a slow disembark but we made it to the baggage claim where sessioneer Fred met us.

Suddenly we were in Minneapolis, isn’t it amazing that we can find ourselves across the country in the blink of an eye or in my case in as long as it takes to listen to two albums. Minneapolis has always been kind to the music that I have been involved with and now with Jed and Space Summit and Fred’s project I am actively involved with making records with the locals. I will be here till next Wednesday playing electric guitar on Fred’s record and helping him complete an album. When I get back to Dallas, Jed will be arriving two days later as we start work on Space Summit II.

We drove through Minneapolis (through more traffic) to Fred’s house in St. Paul where this time green grass replaced the snow of Christmas. Fred’s wife Gerri Ann was there with one of the baby grandkids and Mum and we settled into watching the birds, woodpecker, cardinal, finch, chatting, and making plans for the studio tomorrow. So now, it’s bedtime again, it keeps on happening!

Music today has been Wilco’s A Ghost Is Born (2004), the band’s fifth album. It was a time when singer-guitarist Jeff Tweedy went nuts on the guitar with dramatic arrangements that had thoughtful songs suddenly surprised by often long angular noisy guitar explosions. Somehow it works but it wasn’t long before Nels Cline arrived to continue the idea with a little less abandon but with strikingly good results. Somehow the last ten years of Wilco have passed me by, I have some catching up to do.

Thank you for the continued support for the In Deep Music Archive project and the GoFundMe campaign, more on that as it advances.

Music Of The Daze