The Miracles Of Multnomah, The Wonders of the Willamette

Archive:  January 19, 2012

Let me start off first by saying that I am playing live in Portland, OR on Saturday, January 21st at The Hawthorne Theater Lounge with Destroy Nate Allen.  Here’s what you need to know if you’d like to come:  

Address + 1507 SE 39th, Portland, OR 97214 + 8:30 PM Doors + 9:00 PM Start. + $2.00 +Kat Jones (first) + The Darkest Moons + Destroy Nate Allen (last)

The following morning I will be recording a podcast for Live From The Yellow Room, here in Portland.  I will let you know as soon as that posts.  

Last night I found myself pulling over to the side of MLK Blvd., just off East Burnside.  Compelled by the giant flakes of snow and the glistening streetlights brightening the world by the fluffy layers of white in every direction.  I couldn’t resist the opportunity to play.  For about 30 minutes I had been driving down the road from a delicious Mexican restaurant (Oh Dear God!  Real Mexican Food!  Finally!  Thank you!) and feeling envious of all the 20 and 30 somethings running through the streets at midnight, throwing snowballs at my car passing slowly by, young couples holding hands or snuggling under the covered bus stops along the street.  I pulled over, prepared my self for the cold, and took off into the night, with the only goal of crossing the Burnside Bridge, turning around, crossing it again, and driving away.  So many times at night I have had the unbelievable desire to cross those bridges and hang my head over the water, watching the blue and green lights of ships passing underneath.  However, I am a female.  Portland is one of the drug and homeless capitols of the U.S.  Practically, it’s not safe to do.  But with the city out in full wonderment and the night sky lit up by the reflection of snow from the ground, I felt confident of my safety and everyone else’s distraction by the whimsey of giant flakes easing their way onto the noses of everyone in the city.  I walked.  I skipped.  I stopped and wrote on the banister of the bridge in snow.  I tilted my head into the flakes and watched them land on my face.  I didn’t notice how cold it was.  It was incredible.  It reminded me of walking at 3 a.m. in Scotland.  Down Leith Walk from Princess Street.  I would marvel at the fact that I was actually living in Edinburgh.  200-1000 year old buildings towering around me in every direction.  This was much the same feeling.

As I walked across the bridge a car, being propelled up the slope of the icy bridge by two young men behind it, slowly tobogganing up the hill and back down again.  I looked over and smiled.  They laughed and greeted me, remarking on the glorious evening.  I could not disagree.  I arrived in the heart of downtown and made my U-Turn.  A lost 21 or 22 year old boy asked me if I knew where the Greyhound Station was.  He carried a small vintage suitcase.  I didn’t know where it was but I connected him with some men my age to help him get to it.  I turned around and made my way back across the bridge.  A young couple greeted me on the bridge.  I stopped to look at the water.  I wished my camera was working.  I crossed the street.  Three grown-ass-men asked me if I wanted to snow ball fight with them and then they took off running across the bridge.  The kind of run that lets you know that their inner 8 year old is the one in control.  It was beautiful.  And as I made my way to the car I breathed deeply.  A free, deep, unselfconscious breath.  It filled my lungs and then I got into my car.  The first order of the moment to thaw out my feet.

The rest of the drive was gorgeous and slow.  My Toyota Camry with my dads “If you can read this, you’re keeping up with the Jones’s” vanity plate around the license.  I swerved.  I fish tailed a bit.  I was one of the only vehicles on a street filled with pedestrians who were not going to be affected by the car careening at them at a whopping 3 miles an hour and the only time it looked like I might have to ditch the car and figure out if I could call someone to pick me up (on the way up a not very steep hill) 2 men, my age, were walking by and just gave me that extra push up the 20 feet of asphalt and into smooth sailing for the rest of my journey home.

It was wonderful.  And it brings me here:

I am officially going in to a stage of rest and preparation for the next tour and I am so excited.  For the next month and a half I will be resting and recording new material for this next tour.  It will be an e.p. to have for everyone for this next leg before the album comes out.  And it will only be available from the road.  So, hopefully I’ll see you at these shows.  Things are starting to look awesome but we need some help on the tour. So if you have any ideas please shoot me a message.  Here is the general outline:

Sunday, February 26, 2012 – Southern OR/ Northern, CA – Help! 

Tuesday, Februrary 28, 2012 – Sonoma, Ca  – Confirmed – TBA

Wednesday, February 29, 2012 – San Fran / Merced, CA – Help!

Thursday , March 1, 2012 – Fresno, CA – Confirmed – TBA

Friday, March 2, 2012 – Los Angeles, CA – Confirmed – TBA

Saturday, March 3, 2012 – Fullerton, CA – TBA

Sunday, March 4, 2012 – San Diego, CA – TBA

Monday, March 5, 2012 – San Diego, CA – W/ Gayle Skidmore – Confirmed – TBA

Thursday, March 8, 2012 – Phoenix, AZ – w/ Gayle Skidmore – TBA

Friday, March 9, 2012 –  TBA – w/ Gayle Skidmore

Saturday, March 10, 2012 – TBA – w/ Gayle Skidmore

Monday, March 11, 2012 – TBA – w/ Gayle Skidmore

Tuesday, March 12, 2012 – Austin, TX – SxSw – If you have information on an official or unofficial show you think I could be added on to please email me 

Wednesday, March 13th, Austin, TX – SxSw – If you have information on an official or unofficial show you think I could be added on to please email me 

Wednesday, March 14th – Oklahoma City, OK – Help! 

Thursday, March 15th, Memphis, TN  or Little Rock, AR – Help!

Friday, March 16th, Nashville, TN – TBA – abrasiveMedia Fundraiser

Saturday, March 17th, Chattanooga, TN – Help! 

Tuesday, March 20th, Atlanta, GA – Help!

Wednesday, March 21th, Ashville/ Chapel Hill, NC – Help!

Thursday, March 22, Charlotte, NC – Help!

Friday, March 23, Knoxville, TN – Help!

Saturday, March 24, St. Louis, MO – Help! 

Monday, March 26th – KC City, KS – Help!

Maybe something in between KC and Fresno

Friday, March 30th, Fresno, CA – Confirmed – TBA

Saturday, March 31, 2012 –  San Fransisco, CA – Help!

Sunday, April 1, 2012 Redding or Chico, CA – Help!

Monday, April 2, 2012 – Eugene, OR – Help!

Saturday, April 7, 2012 – Portland, OR – Vino Vixens

Sunday, April 8, 2012 – Portland, OR Vino Vixens

A Marvelous Mess Under A Full January Moon

Archive:  July 11, 2012

My belongings sit like stratum across the floor where I have been sleeping these last 3 months in Portland, OR. One kelly green dress shoe lays overturned, revealing one of my plastic surgical arch supports that I have worn in every pair of shoes every day for the last 21 years of my life. I am presently sucking on a slippery elm lozenge to keep from coughing. This is a feeble attempt to protect my voice from a cold that has come and gone and come again, maybe turned into pneumonia, and is now being eradicated by antibiotics. I am tired. Maybe even exhausted. Today has been hard and beautiful. The rough waters of the day have been stilled and there is a cool breeze blowing over the water as I sit at the helm of the ship and marvel at the stars and that beautiful moon hovering to the east.

My day started with calling the unemployment office in Nashville relentlessly. In theory alone I have been approved for unemployment insurance these last 3 weeks and have yet to see any benefits. I think it’s my being in Portland that’s messing it up. But this morning I was down to my last $20 and tired from being up all night coughing. In vain I have searched for a job and continue to. And what was my awesome Event Planning and Booking job for a restaurant in Sellwood quickly fizzled into ashes. Perhaps the restaurant only hired me to make themselves more sellable on the market. I have no idea. But 4 weeks later (and having turned down at least 2 other opportunities for a day job because it conflicted with the restaurant’s schedule) I find myself jobless in one of the worst job markets in the United States, and I am on the phone trying to get through to an unemployment office that claims to be too busy to put me in a waiting queue one the phone. This is one of those moments when one wishes they could just walk in off the street but logistics make this impossible. So, I will find myself waking up in a few hours to see if I can catch the Unemployment Office by phone again before things get busy in there.

However, I don’t regret moving to Portland. Not even for a second. I am in love with this city. Every time I go outside the hills, the volcanoes, scent of a doug fir catches me just right. I feel connected even though I am aware that in some ways I am still isolated. I know that I am not alone in my struggle within this city. I know that I am bound together with other people who feel about Portland what I feel, and even more! I still can not wait to find a place to live, get a job, and plant deep roots, at least for a time. But it strikes me as interesting that this city is forcing me to press into the business side of my art again. I think I can make music my full time job pretty easily here, or should I say, more easily and with less discouragement than in Nashville. And I have been broke before. This is not new.

The end of this story is that I have a very community of people who love me and are supporting me emotionally, in solidarity, in friendship, and in community in this time. I did not ask anyone for money today. But twice dear friends of mine donated enough to get me through this week and I am so grateful for them. I especially have to thank my church in Nashville who have shown me more kindness than I can express over these last 6 months. I have not known support like this before. I also have to thank the Maes, who have been letting me sleep in their home and drink their water. I have learned a new level of what it is to be charitable and have a charitable heart because of these people. I have been the beneficiary of people giving who have nothing to give and find some way to make it happen anyhow. And this above all things reminds me that I am exactly where I am supposed to be. I am even booked into April already for shows! That would have been normal for me 5 years ago. But it’s wonderful to see that things are falling into place professionally again.

So what’s in the future? The album is still in the works. I start Febrauray Album Writer’s Month again soon. I am planning on having a new acoustic e.p. out for your to purchase on this next tour coming up (did I mention I’m going to be on tour in March? If you want to book a southwest, midwest, southern, Northwest, or west coast tour date please email me at katjonesmusic@gmail.com ). And I’m even thinking about snaking my way into SxSw. We shall see. The album will be out by July. At the very latest. And though I have had the title chosen for the last 6 years I won’t reveal it until we’ve got the album artwork finished. But I am soooo looking forward to it.

And in Portland I am playing the Hawthorne Theatre on the 21st of this month (January). So you should come out if you can 

Thank you everyone for your support. There are still about 4 copies of the Without A Sound e.p. if you want to get one here.  Once they’re out of print they are all the way out of print.  Never to be heard from again.  New t-shirt designs are coming soon also.  And as I find a place to settle in there will be more for you to purchase than perhaps you could ever imagine.  🙂

Thank you everyone for your continued support and prayers.  I think this year might end up being pretty amazing.  And full.

And perhaps, just a very little, messy as well.

Christmas and the Careening Career

Archive:  December 8, 2011

My career is not really careening much.  It’s not “lurching out of control”.  I just really liked that title.  New and unexpected things abound, so why not call it a careen?  Even if it’s a gentle careen that leads me to better things.  Right?  Right.

Portland is AWESOME.  I have done nothing but marvel over the fact that life has led me here over the last couple of years, with a new record (to be released next year) in tow.  The people are kind, creative, and welcoming.  I have had a string of very very lovely solo shows, am looking to build a band in the city (just in case you know anyone that may be available), and am singing on the side for a lovely dance band in Seattle called Gold Wolf Galaxy.  I am also booking musical acts for a venue / restaurant in town called Moreland House.  So, it would appear, I am using my main skill set as my primary income.  Dear God – Oh Man, thank you so much.  Merry Christmas to me!

Oh!  Before I continue, let me tell you this:  There are only 2 copies of the He’s The One I Need The Most e.p. left.  Only 250 copies were made and once these are gone they are GONE.  In other words:  I’d buy one while they were available if you were putting it off this year for any reason.  http://www.etsy.com/listing/13365685/hes-the-one-i-need-the-most-christmas-ep

To continue, however, I really love Portland.  I miss my friends in Nashville desperately.  I had become so dependent on my weekly meetings with Audra Harvey and Kelly Landry but it’s been so good to branch out and discover my own gifts again.  Music was just stagnant for me in Nashville.  The struggle of trying to figure out how to make music was a tremendous inspiration to my songs but with few outlets to perform them I was just dying inside.  So it’s been nice to be playing consistently here and to be so well received.  I miss my band in Nashville immensely, having developed such close relationships with those wonderful men but I just feel so much more healthy, both personally and artistically that it seems utterly worthwhile to leave my dear friends and embark on a new adventure.  I do, have close friends in the northwest as well and am only a plane ride away from Nashville.  I plan on re-uniting with everyone soon, even if just for moments at a time.

Right now my main issues are having a physical place to be creative.  I look forward to finding a place to live and new room to play songs and be creative in.  I am aching inside for a place to pour a cup of coffee and take pen and ink to paper in my own space.  But for now the opportunity to strengthen budding friendships and raise the money for this new home is a great gift.  Even if it’s coming along slowly.  Portland State taxes are a bitch.  That’s my only complaint and I will figure out my way around that one.  🙂

I am really excited about the new album too.  As soon as I can save up some money we will begin the process of mixing and mastering and I am sure I will need to do some fundraising for that.  So keep your eye out for future opportunities to support us as we move forward.

Once I settle in and am able to get my bearings I promise to write more.  But in the mean time:  Please have a Merry Christmas Season, everyone.  Be kind to your family and friends and fellow drivers.  I know it gets tense out there, but if you can hold it together I think you will discover some pretty incredible gifts.

I will write very soon.  I promise.

Oh!  You can listen to the other band in Seattle that I am working with here if you’re interested:  http://soundcloud.com/gold-wolf-galaxy  I think they’ll be posting another song that I finished vocals on this last weekend very soon 

Merry Christmas!

xo

Kat Jones

Seattle in the Sunlight, Portland in the Rain

October 20, 2011

Well, I made it across the country, dog in tow, to Portland, OR.  It was an incredible tour over.  The shows were small and humble but extremely fun.  It was great getting to know Tyler (Dr. Folklore) from Insomniac Folklore as I don’t think we’d been on tour together even once since our first tour ever with MAP in 2003.  Since my arrival I have been catching up with old friends, getting to know some friends better who also have moved to Portland from Nashville recently, hanging out with some fellow Fresno transplants to the area, and most fun:  I have been hanging out with family and traveling around the Northwest to play shows and record some songs for one of my favorite unknown bands, Gold Wolf Galaxy.

I am sorry for how long it’s been since my last update.  Something is wrong with this version of WordPress and the way it’s interacting with my computer.  The downside of being a frugal and poor musician is that my computer is functioning on an operating system that many websites are starting to cease to recognize or be compatible with.  I have a good friend, Dani K. Johnson who is working on building me a new website entirely so hopefully that will be up and running soon.

The northwest is wonderful.  I feel more at home here than I have felt in YEARS and even though I don’t have a place to live yet or a part time job to supplement my income through the winter before I leave on tour next year, I feel at peace and excited about the future.

This last weekend was especially fun.  The shows in Olympia and Seattle were really fun to play.  I felt at home performing, even saw part of myself in the performances that I had never seen before (it’s always fun to watch your own performance change.  It seems like I would be able to have more control over the art form of performing than I actually do.  Often I find myself watching my own performances like I were a 3rd party than the artist).  I think the most fun in this last weekend had to do with seeing my family and hanging out with my friends Johnny and my new friend Spencer.

I drove up to Olympia the day before the show to see some cousins on my dad’s side of the family that I have not ever really had the opportunity to hang out with before on any sort of intimate level.  I got to know my cousin Evan (who is named after my brother) and my cousin Ginny and her very kind husband.  We ate salmon and I stayed in a house located just off the Puget Sound.  It was incredible!  I looked at the changing colors of the trees along the water, the salmon beginning to spawn, and saw a seal playing in the water.  Amazing.

The next day was the show at The Spar in Olympia with Paul Mauer, an artist that I have played with several times in Oly.  Thanks go out to everyone who came out to the show.  I really appreciated all of your presence and thanks especially to my family who came out in full force and brought a ton of their friends along.  I really appreciate your support guys.

That night I drove into Seattle to spend the next day recording vocals with Gold Wolf Galaxy. My friend John Roger Schofield gave me a cd of their electronic songs last time I saw him when he was in Nashville to see Mastadon.  It was really great and I totally fell in love with the songs and integrated them into my mixes on my ipod for running through Shelby Bottoms in Nashville.  I have a very clear memory of sitting on the floor of a totally empty house (as I saw him while I was going through being displaced in the Nashville Flood) that someone was letting me stay in while I waited for my basement apartment to be repaired, and loaded the cd onto my computer.  Straining to hear it through my tiny computer speakers.  I loved it immediately.   So, when I realized I would be living in the northwest I offered my services as a vocalist should they need one in the hope that I might get to participate in my friend’s project.  I figured it was a long shot but it turned out that they did need someone to help out with some vocal parts.  So I got to spend this weekend helping out with those.

Lyric Doodles with Kat Jones & Gold Wolf Galaxy What was better though, was that I got to hang out with these two friends.  I really enjoyed getting to walk around Seattle with them and hanging out with Spencer late at night, asking those get to know you questions that I hadn’t been asked in YEARS.  Like, “What’s your favorite concert experience?”  That actually meant a lot to me.  I haven’t had the opportunity to nerd out about music in a really long time.  Which seems silly since I lived in the music capitol of the world for 5 1/2 years, but it’s totally true.  So thanks Spencer, for that 🙂

The show in Seattle was also really fun.  I think we were the first show that venue had ever had but the other artist Asher Deaver, was really kind and my friend Colin Clark had an art opening.  It was great to see his art for the first time and he is always so encouraging whenever I see him.  Some of the members of the audience were very fun as well… Yahoo hat guy, I am talking to you 🙂

Kat Jones @ Kiss Cafe in Seattle With Mt. Rainier out in full force  and the reds and golds of the changing leaves singing in the sun in front of me on I-5, I began my trip home.  I am now working on those things like finding a place to live and a job and working on some new shows up in Seattle again.  I just wanted to thank everyone who was a part of this weekend.  You are all so lovely.  I really appreciate you all.

Next in line:  Editing vocals for the new Kat Jones record.  I think I am going to have to re-record some things in leu of having the vocals I did for GWG change the way I think a little bit about my voice.  So, we shall see how that all goes.

Also – Nashville.  I am thinking about coming back out to you for Thanksgiving.  Anyone want to book a show?  I need to pay for about 3/4th of the plane ticket with money I would make off the door.  Anyone got any ideas?  I guarantee a good turnout, whatever happens.

Much Love,

Kat Jones xo

Lyric Ideas for Gold Wolf Galaxy

Kat Jones And The Wild Goose

Archive:  July 20, 2010

This blog was from February 20 of this year.  I think I felt tentative in being so vulnerable and so I never posted it… but as it makes more and more sense every day, I thought it a good idea to let you see my mindset earlier this year.  As I move on towards what’s coming next.  I never quite finished it obviously.  But I have decided that I like it best this way.

We will see how brief this actually ends up being as it’s been a week of uncertainties.  I move forward without choice this month towards things I am unsure about.  With hope for the future and peace leading me through the doors I find myself stepping outside and asking the Wild Goose what is next.  He perches at my landing, peering through the doors at me, and occasionally I peer through my doors at him.  Eyes locked and fixed I wonder what’s coming next but I am afraid to step out and ask so we find ourselves mutual observers.  I think that if i step out onto the landing to greet him (or her, I can not tell the sex) I will find him to be ceaselessly kind, and perhaps even gentle with me.  But I fear the huge wingspan and bold temper, or worse, that I may startle him and he fly away and so I continue to stare, marvel, admire, and mostly likely unnecessarily, fear.

In the last three weeks I have officially ended a working relationship that I rejoiced working in for the last 10 years.  I will miss the hard work both for and with them, the kind things they did for me, and the encouragement.  But in the end, I really began to feel it best to venture out on my own, at least for now, artistically and see what happens.  I am not skilled at mourning artistic loss, and I am so anxious to put out more art in a hard copy that it was perhaps a more emotional break than it needed to be.  In the end I will have to mark the occasion somehow.  But I am yet unsure of how to do that.

I will also be moving out of my home at the end of the month into, what is looking to be a temporary living situation.  Three months or so, no longer, I am waiting to see how the story plays out.

It is curious to think that as I drove across the country I knew that I was changing.  I knew as it was happening that I was being restored.  I felt old cobwebby parts of my mind being dusted off.  My analytical wheels began to move again and shortly after my arrival even my flood damaged multi-track recorder began working.  Like a sign that I was going in the right direction, to reveal old songs that I have been trying to piece together for the last 2 years and hope and hope and hope will be on the new album.  And hopefully there will be a new album.

I find myself researching the way that art is bought and sold and marveling over artistic crimes created in the last century against both the artist, the collector, and the consumer.  I have been reading about people who almost changed the world, and have been marveling over the miracles of the last 200 years, to bring us to a near stagnation in our technology.  We invent smaller and smaller computers, as perhaps people have had to invent smaller and smaller wheels, but where is the desire to explore, discover, and delight the senses in the art of the new?

And all these things lead me back to what?  Change.  Both intangible yet apparent and apparently tangible.  It is here.  And I am in it.  And I do not understand it.

I know that this post in meandering, even more than most, and I struggle to find what is true even in my own life as I struggle to find what is the point of this post.  Over and over and over again people around me are asking me for the big reveal.  Something is changing, my life in Nashville is becoming more and more uprooted.  I see it and come with the same questions you have.

I would say that I fear my life becoming stagnant in the next few months.  For this is certainly true.  But up on looking at and surveying the land I find tours, moving again in June, recording, and more and more and more questions…

The Lamp Is Growing Dim But The Future Is Clear As Day

July 15, 2010

I always feel like the sun burns hotter in the suburbs.  Something about the shade of asphalt in the streets and the uniform color and shape of the houses that line the blocks for miles makes me feel like my eyes are failing me.  The particular suburb where I am staying this week has beautiful rolling hills, deadly quiet streets, and a view of grain silos from the hillside as though they were skyscrapers touching the clouds on the horizon.

I have moved out of my home and am living a sort of vagrant lifestyle at present.  With a huge step coming up in the future it may be a while before I see another grain silo.  I have picked up a new booking agent, am going into the studio next month, and more that I do not yet have the freedom to talk about that… but all those changes I sensed were in the future are here.  They are present.  I know what many of them are and I am no longer guessing at what they may be any longer.

I found myself catching up with punk rock duo Destroy Nate Allen last week.  Nate and Tessa Allen were performing at a music festival and asked me to guitar tech for them.  I stood on the outside of a circle of 5,000 people, trying to rush the gear that they needed backward and forward through the mass that surrounded them, “Excuse me.  I have a delivery for Nate,”  “Excuse me, I need to get to the front, ”  “Nate needs this guys.  Sorry.”  I would pass off the various and sundry items that the band required, I packed up their gear after the show, and then shortly afterward headed back into Nashville.  But not without having the vision for the next season of my life utterly shaken by several of the friends that I ran into at the festival.

I know that I have been quiet artistically for the last few months.  To be honest I was trying to figure out what in the crap was going on for me.  I think I know… and in the next few weeks you will have a better vision of that as I understand more clearly what is going on.

Until then you can just call me a big tease.

Kat

Dancing In The Dark

Archive:  April 18, 2011

There is a beautiful, full moon out tonight.  I am exhausted and actually don’t feel like writing.  However, at exactly the same time I have some really creative energy buzzing around in my head.  If my roommate were not asleep in her room at this moment, I think I would be banging around on my guitar.  As it is, the time is nearly 2:30 am, I have played a little, watched Stranger Than Fiction, and thought to myself, “It’s been forever since I blogged anything at all,” and so here I am.

Not much has changed since my last note, except for having moved, gone one tour, unpacked, am about to move again, one of my best friends celebrated her 10 year wedding anniversary, one of my other best friends is about to celebrate her birthday, I am about to celebrate my birthday, I have made a slew of new friends, am about to start 2 new Artist Way groups as a co-facilitator with the intent on writing some new curriculum in conjunction with it, have finished a new song I’d been working on for 2 years, and I have started dancing nearly once a week as an outlet for joy.  Phew.  For a minute there I lost myself.

To say the very least, I am in the process of being reborn in a completely new way.  I have been focused on personal healing for the last 2 years in a very intense way.  And finally, I am discovering myself again.  Really and truly.  I am not meeting myself as a stranger, as I have in the past, or discovering myself in shades and versions of who I used to be.  Rather, I am finding myself wholly me again.  Probably for the first time since my dad died.  And it is coming with surprising results.  Like this one:  I like Nashville.

It started with having come back home from the winter tour and really melting down into a ball there for a while.  I began to feel like I needed to start going to a dance night that The 5 Spot hosts here in East Nashville.  It seemed to me that I needed an outlet for my joy.  I tend to be an overly serious person if I allow myself to stay in that place.  I felt that I have such a strong gift for joy that I needed to spend some time in that place of joy and I would find myself really blossoming as a result of it.  I have to say that the results are continuously palpable.  Suddenly I felt hope like I have not experienced in a long time.  My art is thriving as a result of it, my social life is thriving, and I am bursting back to life in what feels like a really great way.  I am intensely excited.

I have new vision for music, new hope that people will begin to appear who can help me with the business side of things so that I can focus acutely on the artistic direction of every aspect, and new hope that soon I will be out of debt and traveling the world again.  There are new opportunities on the horizon that I am not yet free to speak of, and a new album to finish.  I feel hope and confidence for the first time in years and I am so thankful for it.  I have even begun to tell my friends that I have been brought out of hiding and I am not kidding when I say this.

Anyway – There is more to come.  I am sure of it.  More to say.  But it’s been so long since there was steady and complete hope, coupled with joy, that I thought it was note-worthy.

I will be playing Tomorrow, Tuesday, April 19, 2011 – At my place of employment The Family Wash.  Cole Slivka will be opening the evening, followed by some of my best friend’s in the world from Fresno, CA, The Old Tire Swingers, Tom Mason will be next (who plays amazing piratey music “Arrrr!”), then myself and my cello player, Tim, followed immediately by The Carpet Baggers (my boss’s band).  It’s going to be a fun night.  I will have made fresh deserts (Chocolate Molten Cake, Crème Brule, and Browned Butter Cupcakes).  It will also be pint and pie night (Shepherd’s Pie and a pint of beer for 10 bux). 

I would love to see you there.

Not my most well written note ever but now it’s bed time.

Xo

Kat Jones

Kat Jones Northwest Tour Is This Week! | Kat Jones & The Prophets

Archive:  March 8, 2011

Atpresent I am sitting in the air terminal of the Dallas Airport.  Gate D20 to be precise.  In expectation of my flight to Portland, OR.  Land of Douglas firs, great music, and organic, farm raised chicken, with papers offered to convince you of said Chicken’s happy lifestyle before he was beheaded and served to you in a sandwich.  Also – This is the land of my favorite coffee, my favorite tea house, my brother Aaron, and a dense collection of some of my favorite people on the planet.  Both vacation and work trip, I consider myself extremely blessed to get to go on tour at all and have people who actually want to attend the shows.  An airline pilot who has a haircut and gait more like an early 70’s cartoon than a real man (think Yellow Submarine), walks by with purpose, dragging his suitcase behind him.  I love it.  Airports are such wonderful places to people watch.  And I must say, I don’t mind being watched either.  I suppose that with my giant hair and my guitar I look a bit cartoonish myself.

I have been in this terminal, waiting on the very same plane, before and I have eaten at the very same pub that I just finished eating a traditional Irish breakfast (“No black pudding please”).  My flight here was probably the best flight I have ever had in my life.  My airline hostess, Josephine was so kind and inquisitive.  She grilled me about journal writing for a good deal of the flight and I did my best to explain the concept and necessity of Morning Pages to her.  Explaining that the purpose of writing every day for at least 30 minutes (ideally first thing in the morning) is to clear my head and to make sure that there is no subconscious rambling mucking up my day.  I digress.

I AM ON TOUR!  So… for those of you who haven’t realized I was coming… Here are the tour dates JStill working on one in Seattle for Thursday.  If you have any leads please email me at katjonesmusic@gmail.com or facebook works too.

2011 NORTHWEST WINTER INTO SPRING TOUR

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Olympia, WA

The Garage

7218 Timberlake dr. SE

Lacey, WA

Thursday, March 10, 2011 – Seattle, WA – “>Thursday, March 10, 2011 – Seattle, WA – Gainsbourg 8550 Greenwood Avenue N, Seattle, WA 98103-3614 No Cover 9pm

Friday, March 11, 2011

Yakima, WA (this will be my first time here!)

Northtown Coffee House 8:00 pm

28 N. 1st St

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Portland, OR

The Fun House

5732 NE Halsey

Start Time: 7:00 PM Cover: $5

This venue has requested that no one smoke on the premises.

The Future Is Certainly So Uncertain | Kat Jones & The Prophets

Archive:  January 21, 2011

It’s 4 a.m. sharp.  All that moves about my house at present are the ghosts of my own mind and the flickering glow of candles on my seemingly white walls.  There is a thin layer of new snow on the ground.  Snow that I went sledding down at the state capitol with my friends Kelly, David, and Justin tonight.  I was writing before I left and I came home to write as well.  My dog, Daisy excited to see that I had come home.

I realized as I thought about placing an entry down in this glowing screen that I had not only not written in far too long, but also had not bothered to write a tour diary.  Much to my chagrin I could not even begin to capture the days of the last tour almost a month away from them.  But I can tell you, they made me miss California and the west coast in general immensely.  I threw myself wholly into California when I arrived.  So happy to feel at home again.  So happy to be around people who love music and have a healthy view of supporting each other in art.  I have that here to be sure.  But it is different.  And it is heavily tempered with the knowledge that we are providing something to each other in leu of the immense poverty of it in naturally appearing in our environments.  Rather, we supply it our of our own hunger for it… I don’t know how else to describe this phenomenon.

The drive back from California was wonderful and full of imaginations and new music, good friends, and both good and bad wine.  I felt celebrated for being me and I celebrated my friends for being them and had a wonderful time.  There was even a snow laden drive through New Mexico, Jonsi blasting on the stereo and me imagining the snowflakes transforming into tiny horses as they hit my windshield.  They galloped up my windshield and over my car only to joyfully jump off and spin back into the snow driven background.  It was pretty amazing.  Solitude and lack of sleep will inspire some pretty amazing things.

Driving is, and always has been, one of my favorite things in the world.  I love the way the world looks as one passes it by, and even more I love driving through New Mexico under the night stars.  My headlights creating a limited and totally isolated view of the world around me.  I can’t get enough of that time.  (Keeping in mind that I have certainly had too much of it in the past.  I.E. A crazy drive from Fargo to Portland – a 23 hour drive – that I had to make in 26 hours.  That was enough to get me to take an extended break from touring.)

It was wonderful.  My time with my cherished and long-term friends was wonderful.  Almost everyone I interacted with I have known longer than 10 years and have a beautiful story with.  I felt known, accepted, loved, celebrated, and understood.  And as a result, I knew myself better.

I have struggled in returning to Nashville to find a place of peace.  It’s been as inconstant as the snow that has waxed and waned over the ground since I’ve returned.  But I keep trying to refocus so that the peace returns and I can be myself, able to bless the people around me, continuing to try to understand what I am doing with my art here.

I often feel transplanted into the wrong body in Nashville.  There are parts of it that are so right.  Parts of my community that I feel like I can’t do without.  Parts where I find myself more completely than perhaps I ever have.  But there is also such an intense discord.  Like I, or we, are classical strings tied onto an electric guitar.  I know I am not the only one who feels this way.

And so I, once again, find myself surveying the land and trying to find my place in this city.  For however long I am to be here.  I continue to pray for reconciliation and forgiveness in a lot of my relationships and I hope that those will be allowed to happen before it is time to leave.  But I do feel like my last chapters here are being written.  I have no idea how long it will take to finish them, I could even be totally wrong… but I get the sense that this book of Nashville is drawing to some sort of transition.  I would not live here unless I felt called to be here.  And I certainly don’t want to live with one foot out of a city that I feel called to for the time.  But I don’t know.  Something is happening… I could be mis-translating it.  But something is happening.

In all of this… I ponder many things… my need for solitude, my desire for community, my deep friendships, my singleness, my wholeness, my brokeness, my need for adventure, my shipwrecks, my desire to grow, my journey to get there… my need to think more externally rather than internally – one can only navel gaze for so long, let’s be honest.  I have found part of my identity in this city and in my community.  I had no idea that this was what I was coming to when I moved here.  But it has been so rich, full, abundant, good, and incredibly hard that I wonder what comes next.

I only know what I do know tangibly.  I am moving into a new home in Nashville in March.  So I am not leaving right away.  I am still in the process of working on the new record.  And I am going on tour in the Northwest in March.  Almost all the dates are booked.  I’m just waiting to hear from a couple of people but it’s shaping up to be a busy 8 days.  🙂  I might even play SXSW if we can get our ducks in the right row in time 🙂

And that’s that I guess.  For now.

The Wind Whipping Through The Trees

Archive:  December 14, 2010

It’s twelve degrees outside.  At this very moment it is twelve degrees.  I know that for many of you that’s not such a big deal but to me, and considering the humidity… that’s very cold.  The heater in my van broke early in the summer (rather the fan broke and therefore the air conditioning as well) so I was landlocked in my house.  Bound to my kitchen, trying to keep warm in my basement apartment and thinking of nothing.  I couldn’t leave so I watched Hulu all day and wished I was reading instead.  But these sorts of days happen.  I’ve had these snowed in days before.

But watching television all day made my 4 a.m. walk through desolate East Nashville just magical.  I ran down the street and stopped abruptly to skid across the ice.  I twirled around in circles.  I laughed and ran and walked.  I tried not to fall and succeeded.  I listened to a rooster crow.  I heard the wind, like waves, or an approaching car, talk to me from the frozen tree branches.  Each kind of tree singing a different song.  I marveled in the fact that my walk with Daisy just hours before felt like a frustrating chore for reasons I don’t understand but this… this was a great moment.  It represented the reason why I love night, why I love running in the night, why I love being in the night.

Maybe, I, like my friends am obsessed with the idea of nuclear winter.  Actually, that’s irrefutable, and one of the reasons why we are so close.  It’s interesting to think that you could be the only one alive.  I marveled at the suburban housing, the intrusive feeling of running into a manned car in the desolation, the way everything looked like the pictures of mid-west suburban life in the winter of 1984.  I picture in my mind walking through Switzerland in a desolate snow storm.  Trekking the white terrane to some unknown, coming emergency.  I invent stories of the world as it could be were I the heroine in a Tom Tykwer film.  I picture myself as the character of an Innocence Mission song.

I walked to the back yard of Stratford Highschool and looked at the untouched snow.  Not yet played on and enjoyed by children.  I looked at the baseball diamond and the football field, the streets around me and the slippery hill I would have to climb in order to return home in obscurity, unmet by passing cars.

I watched the glittering snow fall in front of yellow street lamps and thought about living in Scotland.  The knowledge that I was always cold, never really warm at any point of the year, the magical buildings of Edinburgh towering in every direction.  The Catholic church always offering candles to light in prayer for 10 pence.  Edinburgh Castle towering over my head, Princess Street stretching out in front of me.  The Elephant House offering me refuge from the cold, whipped creme for my coffee instead of half and half (I thoughtlessly asked for creme instead of milk), The Cameo Theatre.  The beautiful architecture of the restrooms. How desperately cold I was all year.  The snow brought back everything.

It also reminded me of how much I miss California.  Truth be told I haven’t been back enough over the last 3 years and I physically ache for the sun in all it’s glory, the experience of not ever actually ever being cold (and when I felt cold for some reason it always felt like there was some horrible injustice being done – or I was kicking myself for not taking a jacket – a jacket… not a coat – to San Francisco.  I miss not being in such a racially tense environment.  I miss not having to pretend or perform for anyone for any reason.  Less scrutiny.  More grace.  But certainly more gross materialism and vanity in pockets of the state… less in others.  Really really warm people.

The tour will be a collection of mostly house shows that I am waiting for their final cementation on.  The upside of booking house shows is that they’re more laid back and communal.  The downside is that you’re often not dealing with professional promoters and so it takes quite a long time to get the final information on everything.  So I will get all that to you as soon as I have it totally ironed out.   Please stay posted.

I think EVERYTHING is about to change.  And I don’t really know what that means.  But even being gone for 2 weeks and some change feels so permanent for some reason.  Maybe it’s just because my heart aches for California.  Maybe this tour begins a season of intense and quick change.  I am leaning on that likelihood pretty heavily.

These are the days where To Do Lists are imperative.  I am working my butt off to try to get all my financial stuff strait before I leave town and get everything cleaned and ready for Raleigh to house sit.  Hoping he has a really inspirational time in my writter’s nook.  I am sending out the last of the Christmas e.p’s  and hoping to have enough money to visit all my friends, see Eric Pare, my old manager, go to San Francisco to spend some time with the city, emailing songs out to my band in Fresno, getting ready for the radio interviews, trying to plan my outfits, doing laundry (as soon as the washer unfreezes… no joke… it’s literally frozen), writing, playing music, making sure I have Mom’s Christmas gift with me, trying to prepare myself mentally for the pressure of the holiday season, missing my dad, defending the truth of unicorns.  And getting ready for the inevitable and crazy culture shock that is waiting for me in Fresno and the rest of California.

Here’s to a slammed week.  Here’s to 2011.  Here’s to the future being completely out of my hands.

A 2,000% Spike In My Blog Readership – Holy Crap | Kat Jones & The Prophets

Archive:  December 8, 2010

For some reason I am giggling as I write this.  I also yelled out, “Holy Shit Storm!” when I saw the numbers.  But I have had a very strange 3,000% Spike in my readership since I STOPPED the writing challenge.  I have only made one single entry since that fated day but it has happened none-the-less.  What could explain this crazy spike in readership?  Well, apparently the image I selected for She-Ra on my Jem & The Holograms Halloween war over 2 months ago is the number 4 image for Google Images.  You click on that puppy and it automatically re-directs you to my blog.  Which is crazytown right?  I mean – FULLY CRAZYTOWN.

How to capitalize from this situation?  Well, I am going to offer you wonderful people some free downloads, that’s how.  I am loading them onto Bandcamp right now… as I type these words.  I am going to put links on that stupid Jem rant and I am going to give you the links as well.  Do you know what this means?  Free Christmas music.  That’s what.  Consider it my gift to you.  I am also going to give you guys some live music to listen to on that site.  Even if it takes me all night (and hopefully it won’t.  I have to wake up early)… you people are getting free music.  🙂

Alright… 2 weeks later and it’s all loaded up… Who knows why it’s so hard to load wav files onto the internet.  I have the last 2 ep’s available for download for you up there.  Some of it is free… some of it is name your own price… and some of it is $1.  You can also order “He’s the One I Need The Most” as a hard copy (limited edition of 250 – only a few left.  I am definitely going to sell out this year) and Without A Sound (only a few left of those out of 250 as well).  So I’d get your copies while I can.  I won’t be reprinting those.

Dear God please let me have a new album out soon… because almost all my cds are unavailable even to me.  And thusly she spake… and the Lord said… Wait?

http://www.bandcamp.com/katjones

Merry Christmas… one and all.  🙂

kat

Tour dates posted later this week.

The Great Scottish Hurricane

Archive:  November 29, 2010

First things first:  I have the Christmas e.p. “He’s The One I Need The Most” on sale again at http://theekatjones.etsy.com – Go and get yourself a copy if you want one. 🙂

Also – I am playing a Christmas show at The Family Wash in Nashville, TN with a full band on Wednesday, December 8th.  The Amazing Bill Davis will be opening up the show and The Magnificent Others will be closing the evening with their crazy awesomeness.  8:30 pm sharp!  Make reservations now.  It’s going to be a busy night.

I had a whole other blog prepared to write tonight but the project behind it – which hopefully you will hear about tomorrow is too involved for me to finish tonight.  So I thought I’d write about something more pressing and also on my mind this evening.

I have spoken often about the meaning of a song I wrote almost 10 years ago, almost to the day, called The Great Scottish Hurricane.  It’s weird that it’s been so long since I’ve been overseas and it’s even stranger to think that a song that has meant so much to me and is still making transformations and taking on changes live has been around for so long.

I wrote this song after what I believed at the time to be the most difficult 3 months of my life.  The lyrics were a mishmash of images I’d picked up from my whole life.  Images from Edinburgh, the thrift store I’d worked at before moving to Scotland, and most importantly, one fateful day when I was 5 years old:

This was a spring day.  I can remember walking around my front yard in Tulsa, OK and seeing a cluster of beautiful pink flowers sitting under the bush that hid my bedroom window from the view of the world.  I innocently got down on my knees and reached my hand into the  cluster of flowers so that I could have a bouquet to hold.  I don’t remember if I was planning on pulling all the petals off the stem (this was likely to be their fate), or to just hold them and inspect the pedals, to bring them to my mother and present them to her as a gift?  I don’t think I’d thought that far in advance.

I thrust my hand into the bunch of flowers growing at the base of the bush and immediately began screaming.  I don’t think I was successful in getting any flowers at all.  But upon bringing my hand out of the bush and opening it there were hundreds of little thorns that had filled the palm of my left hand from the flower stems.  I ran to my mom and I remember being able to feel how hurt she was on my behalf as I cried and she pulled each thorn out one by one by one… a very long process involving lots of tears.  I still feel a little sympathetic for that 5 year old girl just thinking about it.  My mom must have been so sad for me.  But she was there with her great love and the patience to make it all better even though her eyes were not the greatest and I’m sure I was screaming.

This image came to my mind this evening as I thought of some bad choices I’d made in my life.  I’ve been trying to figure out how to give the 5 year old me a stronger voice.  I think perhaps I have spent the year doing so much reflection and healing that the person who has been the loudest is the adult me.  The me that freaks out under the stress of paying bills on time.  The me that has to be responsible and the me who isn’t a very good artist at all.  Adult me offers a great deal of criticism and not a lot of help in art.  5 year old me offers almost all the artistic thoughts and knows that there is evil in the world but that it can be overcome.

I saw myself today as a little girl and a woman with my Father.  The little girl was happy and jovial, the adult was weighed down and concerned about everything ALL THE TIME.  The little girl was awed by people in general and saw The Name for all it was and the amazing weight it carried and the adult was too busy thinking about bills.  The little girl was getting distracted chasing butterflies and the adult was wishing she could get distracted chasing butterflies.  And I realized that the adult has some thorns in her hands left from a bit of artistic and personal self sabotage I’ve been processing through for the last 2 years and that they are patiently being pulled out one by one by one, gently, and with great care and love.

I also saw that the source of this self-sabotage was really very innocent.  That it was the little girl who made the decision to go for something she really liked, not realizing there were thorns waiting on the stems, and not realizing that if the thorns weren’t pulled out it would turn into infection.  And then I realized that nearly all the thorns were gone.  The shock of being stuck by something so beautiful was given permission to leave, and I surrendered myself to having the rest of the thorns pulled so that I could return to play time as soon as possible.

And that is why I am so excited about California.  I am going to go out and play and play and play.  I am going to drive around the state and hug and kiss friends, and love and be loved, and maybe have a couple minor tiffs with safe friends who love me very much and resolve them quickly because they are safe and healthy people, and I am going to laugh a lot and read and write a lot and write really long run-on sentences because they are fun and because not ending a sentence has that amazing and wonderful sense of excitement that accompanies it, and I am going to go on a house tour and play for friends and strangers and drive around the southwest part of the country in my dad’s car and sing along to cds and pick up nicknacks here and there to share with the whole of who I am and when I get home I will hug my doggie and thank Raleigh for dog sitting and sleep in my bed with my doggie after such a long trip and smile and sleep for a long time and not feel guilty for doing so.

If you’re interested in picking up a date on the tour, even if it’s a house show I have some available.

January 3rd – Albequerqui, NM – Available

January 4th – Dallas, TX – Available

January 5th – OKC or Tulsa, OK – Available

January 6th – Little Rock, AK or Memphis, TN – Available

Also – if you want to pick up any extra dates in California between Christmas and New Years (esp Southern California) let me know… I may have a slot available for you.  I will give you a better idea of when these shows are as soon as I have addresses and age restrictions etc.

email greenhillpromotions@gmail.com to get on that business.  🙂

For now I am most looking forward to this one:

Fresno, CA – Thursday, December 23rd – Audie’s Olympic Tavern

w/ Pinkeye – (I will also be playing with a full band:  Benji McEntee, Paul Chesterton, and Eli Reyes) and I will see you all there and it will be bad ass.  I am looking forward to this day with everything I have 🙂

1 Year Ago

Archive:  November 18, 2010

I spent a lot of today grieving my father in various ways.  It actually caught me off guard though I don’t know why.  I was hearing the Voice tell me that I needed to remember the promises I had about my father after he died.  The little things that meant so much to me.  That it was important for me to recount my understanding of his death.  I pushed it down but luckily it didn’t let me.

Today I met with my friend Erica for breakfast and at some point we began discussing our parents.  My father has been gone almost 5 years I think and her mother passed away 7 years ago.  As I began to talk about the circumstances around my fathers death (in a public restaurant) I began uncontrollably crying and I have to say it caught me seriously off guard.  Not to mention the embarrassment of crying in public, over eggs benedict.  I realized that  the things I needed to process through about my dad were actually A NEED (I’ve never had such a need be forced before and unable to be ignored) rather than a suggestion and began talking about him.

Somehow, by the end of the conversation we’d decided I would replace my phone today and get the ball rolling on that.  Which was drama in and of itself to be honest.  Buying a phone really stresses me out for some reason.  With everything else up it all just sort of hung around my head.  I felt foggy.  I couldn’t think.  And as I was talking about it with a friend later and she began to pray for me I realized… I miss my father so much.  I miss that he would check my tire pressure for me and make sure my tires weren’t bald.  I miss that he was so tender and caring and kind.  I miss that he was so understanding and encouraging about music and how he was really by biggest champion in my life.  Without his presence I feel a little lost sometimes.  I miss my daddy.  I miss him throwing me in the air when I was 2 and taking me out to dinner when my mom was out of town.  I miss his voice (though I can still hear it) and I miss his lopsided smile that I inherited.  I also realized today that I lost the last photo I had of him (taken the last time I saw him) in the process of loosing my phone.  That is the only thing about having my phone stolen that makes me sad.

As I went to meet with my friends this evening I saw Diana and Marc (who is 1 year old today) as I walked through the door.  One year ago today his mom was going through labor in my bathtub (though he was birthed at Vanderbilt Hospital – just to clear up any confusion) and I was amazed and stunned by his birth and being allowed to be present when he was born.  Today he took his first steps by himself and I heard him call his mother “Mama” for the first time.  It was all pretty miraculous and amazing and wonderful.  I love both of them a lot.

I am thankful today for my friend as well.  In very terrible circumstances (one of my friend’s homes was broken into tonight) I got the opportunity to give him a place to stay and listen to him.  I have to say that at first I felt a little put out as (for some dumb reason) I had planned an evening of being selfish and feeling sorry for myself and then going to bed.  But when he called and it became apparent that he was going to be spending the night because he didn’t feel safe at home I began to realize that I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself anymore and that I hadn’t really wrote any of today’s important events down.  So we set up the guest bed for him and I came out to write (I also got super distracted by trying to get my new, fancy phone, with my much less new and much less fancy computer – didn’t really work out for me) and think about the days events.

The sun is rising on today, the last official day of the blogging challenge.  I never wrote much about being misnamed… but I do feel like you’ve all been with me in the process of trying to allow myself to be Named again.

I’ll write some more later.  I’m not sure I’m done.  But – I’ll also be pulling down a ton of blogs soon as they are too personal and the website will probably take a distinct shift away from introspection in a few months.  I just have to figure out what that’s going to look like.  These notes have meant a lot to me though… and I think may put a few things into place for my life to be altered dramatically.

We shall see how it pans out.

I did not write every day of the challenge (which was the challenge) but I do not count it as failure.

kat

It’s Already 3:30 am.

Archive:  November 16, 2010

I feel like this might be one of the shortest days of all time.  Soon I will be drifting off to sleep but I am hardly ready for it.  It feels like there is so much to be done still today.  There is so much to be done today still.   I’m going to have to write a TO DO list for tomorrow.

One of those things will be meeting with Kevin Gordon (one of my favorite songwriters in town) about some ideas that I have for him.  One of these things will be baking deserts and sewing a table covering for The Family Wash, one of these things will be cleaning my house, one of these things will be going to work, and one of these things will be working on the tour and playing some music.  I have got to fit in writing in there also.  There is just not enough time in today.

Also – Those of you who are my close friends… I need your phone numbers.  My comments have to be approved… so if you don’t have my personal email or don’t facebook for some reason could you comment your number to me?  I’ll make a note of it and then delete it from the comments.  No one will see it 🙂

Alright… I have got to go.  🙂

kat

Staring At Everest

Archive:  November 14, 2010

A Quick Reminder Before I Begin:  I am playing at around 10:30 at the 5 Spot tomorrow (Sunday).  Admission is $5.  I’ll be with the band (Tim Denbo on bass, Megan Morrisson on pedal steel, Andrew Collins on guitar, me on guitar, and Jacob Briggs on drums).  Come out.  It would be lovely to have you there.  21 and over.

At present I am listening to a new song I wrote tonight tentatively titled, I Know I’ve Been.  It was written after hanging out with Eli Thomson from Everest tonight.  I got a pleasant email from him this week telling me that he remembered that I lived in Nashville and would love it if I could come out and see Everest tonight.  I was really excited.  I haven’t seen Eli in 5 years.  It’s been since May 19, 2005 actually.  The day that I released La Rosa, La Calavera and Richard Swift came up to open the show up for us.  He played on both of my Velvet Blue Music releases and is an all around wonderful person, so humble, so kind and thoughtful.  It was really nice to reconnect tonight and it made me feel a reconnection to my past that I really needed.

As a result of seeing them (they were wonderful by the way – one of the best shows I’ve seen in a long time and super fun.  I’d forgotten how much I enjoy watching Eli play bass.)  I realized that I’ve been approaching music in a very “safe” manner.  Not taking any risks and making sure the coast is clear before I move forward.  I don’t know what it is that inspired this revelation exactly.  Maybe my heart was just open to it?

But I looked at myself and all the super safe choices I’ve been making about my entire life lately and especially music because we have to say that it’s the thing I feel is most fragile right now and also the thing I care about almost more than anything and I saw my life as it was.  Really really unsafe.  I moved to Nashville and my father died less than 2 months later.  Over the last 4 years I’ve been trying to manage a series of events traumatic and came to this year realizing I just needed to let go.  To let Hope take control.  To take my fingers off my life and let someone greater take over.  Even when a flood hit my home and displaced me for 30 days and displaced some of my instruments for maybe their lifetime.  Even when things have been completely nuts.  I have essentially been learning to trust again.

I’ve been working on this re-birth all year.  Growing as a person, growing in my understanding of my gifts, growing in my artistic vision, taking baby steps out to be in front of people.  But I haven’t taken any real risks artistically.  And why?  Because life for the last 4 years was one uncontrollable saga after another.  The world around me hasn’t been safe and so the artist in me hasn’t felt safe at all.

This brings up a lot of different questions for me… an endless amount of philosophical pondering that overwhelm me just as I look at their names.   “What’s the difference between pursuing something out of calling and trying to make it happen yourself?”  “Am I actually SUPPOSED to be a musician and songwriter just because I have a bug that won’t let up it’s grip?”  “Is the fact that I have suffered for my art and continue to cling to it a sign of insanity or is it itself proof of a “calling”?  But I can’t not sing.  I love it so much.  It’s my favorite gift.

There is so much more that spills from this fountain.  I could literally list fear and questions that plague me all day long.  But wouldn’t that just be reinforcing the fear?  My desire is to live in hope and to live extravagantly.  Without conventional social ties binding me to a house or a lifestyle.  But for music to be possible.  Art to be revealed in everything I do.

And I want to start writing fiction again.  My life has been a blur of non-fiction and cataloguing a year of extreme growth.

I have no doubts that next year will be a year of huge changes in my life.  I can see some of them already.  I just have hope that in these plans will be the release of a new album and a lot of traveling to support music.  I have my hunches that there may be a lot of traveling involved next year and into 2012.

Living extravagantly in hope without the last 4 1/2 years having a strong pull to stagnancy.  Growing in the art and the skill by which that art is performed and growing as a writer and a performer.  All these are my hopes for next year.

Not to mention all the other ways I believe I will grow 🙂  It’s going to be a busy year.

kat

I May Fall Asleep As I Type This

Archive:  November 12, 2010

I am so tired tonight. So I’m going to make this short and get back to Lemony Snicket. But I’d like to reiterate that I love my friends very much. Also – I was thinking today that it would be fun to be not just a musician but a professional stylist. I’ve done this temporarily in the past and had such an amazing time. But I think it might be either a fun creative outlet or a totally fun distraction to style musicians as they get ready to put out their records. So how about it you Americana bands? Let’s re-define your genre again 🙂 That’s all. Mostly I’m joking. But I’m a little serious. Sleep now.

Nit Picking & Pin Pricking

Archive:  November 11, 2010

First things first!  I am playing Sunday @ The 5 Spot in Nashville.  I’ll go on around 10:30 or so I think.  The other bands that are playing are lovely as well and you can get more information at http://www.sonicbids.com/katjones – There.  Shameless plug completed.  Please go 🙂

I have to make this short because I’m doing some sort of filming or something for a commercial or… It’s for a southern tea house here in town and my friend Kelly will be here in 6 hours to pick me up so I need me beauty rest.

I’ve known for some time now that I’ve been doing so much self examination and sort of maintenance for so long (all year really) that it’s become a little obsessive.  Like I could never be a good enough person.  I realized sometime last week (in the acceptance of my being a leader) that I need to chill the f^$% out with that stuff.  The truth of the matter is that I need to allow myself to be myself.  Completely and unadulteratedly me.  Faults and all.

In order to be humble I must accept me for who I am:  Faults and strengths.  The whole bundle.  What I do that is actually really wrong I will ask forgiveness for and do my best to not repeat those actions or states of my heart but flaws are not the same thing as sins.  And I do not need to iron out all my flaws.  That’s not my job.  And isn’t the point of community and the point of love the very fact that we accept each other in spite of our inherent flaws?  Setting criticisms and nitpicking of ourselves and others aside so that we can actually move toward growth?

Now.  Bed time.

The Darkness and The Comforting Glow Of Fire

Archive:  November 10, 2010

I am sitting on my white mid-century couch.  I recognize that is a pretty pretentious opening line but I do love my floating couch.  I’ve never seen one like it.  I love the wine colored painting of a flamenco dancer on my wall, the teal and black hutch I finished painting last week before band practice, and the picture of my parents staring longingly into each other’s eyes (the first flush of love, the future stretching out before my father, my mom basking in the glow of his adoration) which hovers above the hutch.

What is it about the glow of a candle that calls me deeply to see what is truly there?  What is it about fire that brings my thoughts nearer to the front.  I feel more still, more hopeful, and more ready to listen.

As I sit and think about the many things that stretch in front of me, and think about how tired I still am from this weekend, I am particularly keen to the darkness that surrounds these situations.  The future is coming quickly but I don’t have vision for it.  There are people I desire to be in closer relationship with and I have decided to get over my own insecurities and pursue those relationships while I still have the chance.  There are people I desire to be in closer relationship with, but now is not the right time for all of that and may never be.

There are tours to organize and an album to record and change and change and change and change.

The good news is that I have stopped gritting my teeth.  I think I let myself do it with free abandon and stopped trying to restrict it and the moment I let go, my body stopped rebelling.  My teeth aren’t even sharp anymore 🙂  This is good news.

Anyway – I am going to find my pad of paper and an ink pen.  To indulge in more private thoughts.  And so I turn of this dim light of a flickering blog entry and leave you to the darkness until tomorrow.  (Nice eh?  See the way I wrapped that up?!)

🙂 kat

Those Sudden Drastic Changes

Archive:  November 9, 2010

In what seems like a very short week the air has become bitter cold, the trees have begun to mimic the look of winter, and I found myself driving down I-40 on multiple days wondering when I would be able to afford getting motor fixed on my heater so that I could use the defrost on the window and on my freezing little fingers.  Only last week I was able to wake up in the morning and open the door of my apartment so that Daisy could run out into the back yard and come and go as she pleased.  I can tell that she’s annoyed with the change in weather and the change of ritual as she has to stay indoors most of the morning and ask me for bathroom breaks.  Daisy is also sad because she misses Whitney.  I can tell by how much attention she requires right now.

But with the quick succession of the fall season into winter some big changes at work and some shocking news in my community have arrived.  As far as work is considered they were the kinds of changes that made me very excited for the business itself and for my friends, some of whom have gotten new jobs and new positions.

I am not at liberty to divulge any of the details about my community but it was the kind of news that uproots one’s understanding of a sense of their own life.  My own life.  It uprooted my understanding and I am left with some new knowledge and some information that’s been building up for a couple of weeks.  Like this:

I began to re-awaken to the fact that I am a leader last week.  Actually, it’s something that I’ve denied and denied and denied about myself for years.  The reason being that I love following other people’s leadership more than anything else.  I really do and I’ve always known that about myself.  I found myself multiple times doing those dumb team building games when I was in high school and though I knew I was a leader and though I knew I had a very strong personality I was always so relieved to give that role of solving a puzzle to someone else and take the head roll of following.  Third or second in command has always been a very comfortable place for me.  Or not in command at all 🙂  But non-the-less I accepted it last week.  I am a leader.

The next issue for me is that it’s time for me to really come into my own again.  I spent so much time trying to process the big changes of moving to Nashville and the unlearning of my own life when I lost my father that it was like I went from being a mature adult to reverting to being like a child.  I know that it’s time for all this to change in me.  It’s time for me to be who I am again.  Without apologies and without fear and hopefully as little distraction as possible and so I will be pursuing some new leadership opportunities and beginning the process of re-rooting myself.

There is more.  There is SO MUCH MORE.  But I need to have clearer vision of what’s happening before I make any crazy proclamations of anything.  I want to know it all now but it’s not all here.  So for now I will just keep going with what I know.  Tours to book, keep recording, get ready… because soon… EVERYTHING will change.

I was expectant two entries ago.  But this is a whole other level of expectancy.

This is the place where we hold on for dear life.  How this will unfold is not understood but the unfolding is coming and I am watching with one eye and preparing with the other.

kat

A Quick Jot

Archive:  November 6, 2010

Whitney leaves for California tomorrow and my sleep schedule is so messed up that I had to make a promise to awake by 10 a.m. so that we could go out and get breakfast and then relax our little butts off before she went back to Los Angeles.  It is true.  Our goal for her in this few days was to relax and I’m not sure we’ve done such a great job.  I think I might have become so used to entertaining my mom while she was here (it used to drive me crazy because when my mother and I were in Europe together she would never stop to experience the city.  We had to leave Brussels by 11a.m to make sure we made it to Thierstien Shluss.  We had to leave Theirstien Sluss by 12:30 a.m. the next day to make it in time to Zurich, we had to leave Zurich the next day to make it in time to Paris… etc. etc.  It created levels of frustration within me I didn’t think were possible) and so I’ve been running Whitney ragged.   Tomorrow the goal is breakfast by 11a.m. with the promise of nothing but getting her some crappy decaf coffee from Cracker Barrel before she gets on the plane to Los Angeles.  And I am happy to oblige.