QTNews: Harvest Between the Veils

 

 

Howdy and Boo to you!

Here we are – somehow already perched between the veils in the Samhain time of the year where it’s All Hallow’s Eve. The harvest is in and the dark season begins, meteor leaves are falling and the first blasts of cold come wheezing in – but wasn’t it just berry-picking August last week? Time is a funny construct indeed and another one of those things made up by someone, like maps, calendars, money, laws, political parties and race. It is all made up, ostensibly to serve a purpose, but not always the highest-minded purpose we are capable of. Some of these things even betray our basic humanity so hearts hurt and suffer because of them. If those things can all be made up by humans and eventually accepted, I’d say it’s high time we got to work making up other possible futures we can believe in to include and celebrate ALL the parts. Perched between the veils we are indeed…

After two eclipses in a month, annular and a lunar, and a whole lotta shakin going on, it’s been difficult to focus on present time with all the rage and terror surrounding. Where I come from, life is sacred in all forms and with dear friends in the line of fire there, heart is filled with trepidation here. Still I feel it’s important to continue to raise these collective voices, push the art pedal to the floor and bust through the prevailing cognitive dissonance and ridiculuum that surrounds. Art saves lives everyday and is needed more than ever now. Artificial Intelligence (if that’s what you want to call it) can never replace real heart connection work. I don’t have any answers to the world’s biggest questions, but I believe the work I do is the best I have to offer.

This year I released Logodaidalia, a new book of bedtime stories to read when you wake in the morning. The book’s dreamtime metafable language encourages us to stay with our dreams a bit longer upon awakening instead of jumping out of bed to begin the day. The 52 stories are a full deck of liquid, playful narratives that zig and zog, and sound great read out loud. Click on the blue title above to order your copy online through my Bandcamp portal. Not buying online? Reply to this email for orders with me directly. See the beautiful cover created by San Marcos artist Nick Mackee below. 

Another new book I'm honoured to be a part of this year is an anthology just published by Tsunami Press called Bookstore Clerks and Significant Others. Two imaginative stories I wrote not in Logodaidalia are included and the book hits the street this week. Its online ordering portal is instantly available by clicking on the blue title above. Last year Tsunami published Ken Babbs’ Cronies, a true Merry Prankster memoir-burlesque by Intrepid Traveler himself. Babbs has been there from the beginning of the Prankster adventures. 

Tsunami Press follows that book with this collection of 28 wild-mind writers from many backgrounds. I am pickled tink to be included and I can’t wait to read the whole thing.

Books ship free to anywhere in the US and if you live around these here parts, you can pick up a copy of either book in person at Tsunami Books in Eugene. Logodaidalia is also available locally at Sundance Natural Foods. Buy extra copies for your bookloving friends. They will thank you most heartily.

A toast to the emerging season! 

Heartpeace and deep breathing to still the rampaging being I wish you all.

You corn forest pundit,

bq

QTN Summer News: OCF, Logodaidalia, gigs and hilarity!

 Howdeee folks!

Here we are mere hours away from the longest day of the year and the season is sweetly turning even as Texas is already in the 100s and Oregon is not even 70 today and the rain gushed forth in fifths and sixths. I’m just returning from this year’s Kerrville Folk Festival filled to the brim, Jim, with inspiration, songs and after spending golden time with brilliant beings, new and old and many excellent songwriters. Living in a tent for a month changes everything I’ma tell you whut.

There are a couple sections here of news to cover

A. New Logodaidalia Book

B. Upcoming concerts

C. Oregon Country Fair

A. New Logodaidalia Book – I am here to tell you this summer is looking busy with gigs and fun but the big news is the QTN book, Logodaidalia. It has just been released and is available for mail order or local delivery now. It’s a book of bedtime stories for when you get up in the morning, and I’ve heard many rave reviews already. I did a reading at Kerrville for the annual Road Dog Literary Society and folks really dug it there. Copies are $15 each postage paid. Reply to this email with your address and either use Paypal and send as a friend payment at (paypal.me/BQTN) or feel free to send an old fashioned check. Here’s the gorgeous cover:

B. Upcoming QTN concerts – Here is a rundown of what’s coming soon in the Willamette Valley of Oregon:

• Sunday, July 2, Matt the Electrician from Austin at Tsunami Books with QTN opening– Tickets $21 on sale now at the store or call 541.345.8986 to reserve. Order from Tsunami's website here.

• Saturday June 24, QTN Wordless Guitar at 16 Tons, 2864 Willamette St. 6-8 pm in the South Eugene plaza with Market of Choice. All ages are welcome – it’s free!

• Every other Monday QTN Wordless Guitar, July 3, 17 etc before bingo at Sam Bond’s Garage, 6:30-8:30 free for all ages.

••• JULY 7-9 ~ OREGON COUNTRY FAIR •••

I’ll be playing OCF again for my 35th year accompanied by the luminous QTN Band this year featuring Jason Montgomery on bass, Michelle Alany on violin, Courtney von Drehle on accordion, Andrew Alikhanov on clarinet and Simon Lucas on drums and percussives. See the whole weekend’s line up and read all about it in this year’s Peach Pit here

QTN stage sets (others possible and guests likely):

Friday, July 7 – 1:40 pm – Blue Moon 

Saturday, July 8 – 1:40 pm – Hoarse Chorale

More on other July gigs including the annual Post OCF Scobert Park Picnic and Applegate Folk Festival and others coming soon! Stay tuned!

Your corn forest pundit,

bq

QTN Springing Forth in FIfths with shows in the Willamette Valley and slightly south

Hello to you all in these swiftly tilting of the axis times!

Even though it’s becoming warmer around here and the Boing of Spring is nearly here in the Northern Hemisphere that sure feels good, and even though nearly a third of the year has already slipped by, and the trillium in my yard have just poked their green heads out of the ground (always a good sign) and even though I’m not sure which winter projects will see the light of day in this Water Rabbit Year, thanks to the encouragement of many folks, I'm finally getting around to celebrate my newest recording with live performance in several places around the south Willamette Valley this month and next. 

And even though many folks don’t look at their email much anymore or have CD players or record players or ipods, and even though I am not a big fan of Spotify or other digital platforms that are not big fans of supporting artists who make music, this new disc is available as both a physical CD and streamable and downloadable through my Bandcamp page  It is called OsculEARiosophy (it really is not difficult to say) and there are many other recorded delights there too.

QTN LIVE IN MARCH AND APRIL

• WORDLESS GUITAR ALTERNATING MONDAYS IN MARCH AND APRIL AT SAM BOND’S GARAGE, 6:30 pm – Sam Bond’s is continuing its long tradition of Monday night pre-bingo music that Richard Crandell began and played for nearly a quarter of a century. Since he isn’t around to play live anymore, I get to play Wordless Guitar alternating weeks with the piano music of Ty Connor. This will be my first week, MARCH 20, on the day of the Vernal Boing. There is no cover and all ages are welcome. We gonna have fun.

 

 • MARCH 25 and 26, THE 46th ANNUAL SPRING FLING, Roseburg Oregon, 2 pm sets both days. Other musical guests throughout the weekend include Alice DiMicele, Jack Fallsrock and Friends, Elizabeth Cable and others. The Spring Fair is held in Douglas Hall at the Douglas County Fairgrounds. (I-5 exit 123). Fair hours are Friday 1-6,  Saturday 10-8, Sunday 11-5 and there will be artisan crafts, delicious food, live music and community! Admission is $3 and everyone is welcome.

• SATURDAY APRIL 1, THE 3 LEGGED CRANE PUB AND BREWHOUSE, 48329 E First St, Oakridge, OR 97463, 7 pm – It will be an All Fool’s Songwriting Evening in the Round with me, Peter Wilde and Tom Hughes swapping tunes. We all go back a long ways and this is going to be some big fun indeed. On the venue's website it says “All ages always welcome” and their menu features plenty of tasty choices for kids and biggerfolk too and is huge and incredible! There is no cover. See the cool poster below.

• FRIDAY APRIL 14, BRIAN QTN AT ALLUVIUM, EUGENE, 810 W. 3rd Ave., 7:30 pm – A hometown concert in a sweet community venue to celebrate OsculEARiosophy and stretch out for a longer set of new and older songs and beyond. Special guests areAmy Danziger (of Mood Area 52) accompanying me on cello and playing solo! and the one and only Peter Wilde (!!!).The poster for this one is coming soon.

All for now. It’s getting light later as the days are lengthening at last. The sound of photosynthesis is everywhere and always has been even way before there was an album by that name. Breathe deep this incredible place we call home. Even though the challenges and vexations are many, the only thing to atmosphere is sphere itself.

Your corn forest pundit,

bq

QTN Wintry Whirling Wonder-Wanderings

  

Photo by Sally Bogardus

 Greets of the Season of the Long Night!

This latest musing finally got typed. Complicated thoughts for a complicated year. There are 3 newsy parts here, but first – announcing a Eugene, Oregon gig I haven’t played in person since The Pause. 

It’s the return of 

QTN’s WORDLESS SOLSTICE

WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 21, 7 pm

TSUNAMI BOOKS, 2585 WILLAMETTE

A live river of guitar music, 

candlelight, community, space and focus 

to embrace the longest night

with no holiday hoopla.

Bring a friend, a candle and your ears.

A. 2022 extrapolations in review

B. Newly released recordings

C. Continuumusing – again!

A.  Another spin around the wheel, another year draws to a close. Another opportunity to leave old ways behind and to welcome the new with open receiving arms. The new chops and experiences, new ways of dealing with old patterns and situations appear suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere. Once a pattern is recognized, the option to participate – or not – is clear. Once volitional consciousness discerns what is significant, choices are weighed and made.

And so the inward and the outward (as well as the toward) collide with one another, change each the other and, as it is outside, so it becomes inside. A look around the metaphorsphorescence and careening impossible of the worldsphere reveals the too much of it all, so stepping into silence is a river and a pulsing sinewave. A quieting of the chaotic rampage of elephant monkey donkey trickster mind patterns while listening and being still is a rrrrrr-evolutionary act; not indolence but a useful tool.

What kind of newsletter is this and what the hell am I going on about here? It’s another part of the music that surgemerges through and this has been a year the likes of which we’ve never seen the like of (just like every year has been previously for a bunch of em in this century). Living with uncertainty is a certain solace, and watching traditional forms dissolve around us and becoming new forms is revealing and a deeper kind of green yes we’ve barely had time to explore and celebrate, like dwellers on the threshold beckoning and becoming. It is what we are here to do the best however we can.

B.  Much of the last few years of pause I’ve had the opportunity to do the best I can by bringing songs I make and play and others' songs and sounds together into tangible form. The Pause time without live presentations has felt impossible at different times for many and the challenges of living and the constant river of change (along with cherished others leaving life) can make present time difficult. Still I am thankful that some projects I've long wanted to bring to completion (after years of only being home maybe three weeks at a time) have finally been made 3D. 

These days, Bandcamp is the closest thing I have to a website (my other site was last updated about 2012). You can stream whole albums, download them or send for physical CDs. I’ve posted many odd downloadable sonic relics there too that will never be made into CDs. Music is a thoughtful giving to share and CDs still make great gifts. Click on the blue links in this letter to listen in and take a ride in the earbuds. 

Al Grierson, The Petals – In 2020, I made a CD of Al Grierson’s uncollected songs, a project Anne Feeney and I talked of doing for years. Al died 20 years ago, swept into Texas floodwaters after a gig, but he made two fine albums while he was alive. Now there is a third and I think he would like it too. Listen to The Petals here and if you only listen to one song, play the title track. You’ll likely listen to the rest after that. Download or order the album there. All the $ goes directly to his daughters and there are still a few physical copies available too. 

Richard Crandell, Lost Legacy – This summer, as my musician friend Richard Crandell was in his last days on Earth, his dream album of piano originals, Lost Legacy, was delivered to the hospital. A master musician, Richard made his first guitar record in 1980. He played jazz and salsa piano in many combos too. After six guitar albums, his hands could no longer play due to his Essential Tremor. He then became an international-recognized innovator on the Zimbabwean mbira played in his own most untraditional style. He made five mbira albums (two with koto master, Masumi Timson) and he and I worked on Lost Legacy for the last year and a half. This one is only a physical CD and isn’t online yet but if you’d like more info, just hit reply. His other recordings are streamable via all the usual places.

Brian QTN, OsculEARiosophy – This year I released a new recording of my own, OsculEARiosophy, a naked voice and guitar record with ten songs, new and not so new. The Bayard guitar I play is the whole band and it all was recorded in one session. It has gotten a lot of radio and online airplay this year and has stimulated many great emails and letters. Take it for a spin. 

C.  It is a changing time and music you enjoy is a great tool to have in your box. It slows time, changes the channel, and fills your head with ideas and stories. It fills your heart with melodies and rhythm. It can be habit-forming and yet, it is way better than teevee. Or obsession, alcohol, drama or confusion. I agree with George Harrison who said it was the best part of himself he had to give.

With so much in constant flux all around us, it is good to remember that we are people all in this together with much more in common than our differences. Sometimes what needs to change is our ideas about each other and as much as systems and politricks, corporations and global dysfunction would like to separate us and make us dislike, hate or fear each other, we are all riding on this same little pebble in a vast swift evre-expanding river that curls back on itself like Ouroboros eating its own tail. Mind yer entropies and cues and let’s be kind to one another and embrace the changes we all are facing. As the song goes: let us know, let us know, let us know...

Oh, and Richard Crandell made acronyms too. My favourite of his is: ACRONYM - Another Creative Round of New Youthful Music! 

The Wordless Solstice is dedicated to Richard this year.

May you find heartpeace in your days. Onward into 2023!

Your corn forest pundit,

bq

Brian QTN July Music in Oregon!

 

Andrew Alikhanov and QTN at OCF 2019  Photo by Kimm Still

 

 

 A hat tip of the summery daze to Upper Left Edge folk near and far!

OCF, Wordless and worded post Fair dates and times below

Still swimming through Kerrblur after six weeks in Texas at the 50th Kerrville Folk Festival. It wasn't below 95 degrees any day of that time and often it was triple digits. I learned to take 5 showers in a row everyday and it helped immensely. Indeed a tough beautiful time with many dear heartsouls and beautiful long unseen faces. Here is a video peek of the finale of our Crow’s Nest show with us all singing “Sometimes A Darkness Comes” for your edification and enjoyment 

I realized I mostly was peripatetic throughout years of this liferide (at least til the past couple) and I moved through many communities for most of it. Two and a half years is a way too long time between visits. There are new things in the big mindheart and faces outpictured by so many I saw. And now I get to do it again with an intensive weekend at the Oregon Country Fair, my 34th year of playing music there. I am celebrating with the release of a new 10 song album, OsculEARiosophy, linked here for streaming.

This year’s QTNBand has the usual suspects – Jason Montgomery on bass, Lewi Longmire on mando, Michelle Alany on violin and Andrew Alikhanov on clarinet and for the first time this year, we'll be joined by Courtney Von Drehle on accordion and whatever he feel like playing. 

Strangely we have two sets both on the same stage at the same time each day, two days in a row and we’ll have musical surprises each day.

Saturday July 9 1:40-2:40 PM@ Blue Moon

Sunday July 10 1:40-2:40 PM @ Blue Moon

For folks who won’t be at OCF this year too –  my annual post Fair gig with two sets, a picnic, kids, cookies and community encouraged.

Wednesday, July 13, 6:30 pm 

Eugene’s Scobert Park 

(on 4th St. by Sam Bond’s across the street from Nelson’s)  

Later this month, I’ll be playing guitar and feeding the ravenous Wordless Beast in me with two outdoor Saturday evening gigs:

Saturday July 23 and Saturday July 30, from 6-8 pm 

at 16 Tons in South Eugene at 29th and Willamette St.

in the plaza with Market of Choice.

World is a hot scary mess nowadays and human gatherings are more important than ever. There are many ways to raise our voices to call attention to the madness all around. We are not powerless working together and we can move many heavy huge stones like we have many times before. World is changing and the dysfunctional ways things have always been done are running themselves out. Metamorphosis. Image a nation. Image a world. Image mindfulness, connectivity community.

Your corn forest pundit,

bq

Brian QTN Going Through Texas With Drawl 2022

 

Mark "Gumby" Williams and QTN, Kerrville Folk Fest, 1983

Hello people of the HeartMindMusicSongSoulVerve!

All the boing of Spring to you all!

It’s April already though it got here mighty fast. Still chilly here and even though baseball season has begun, it’s snowing in several parts of the country. Grateful for  snowdump this week in the higher elevations here as that is our summer water and we are still in drought. 

Worldsphere is waking in a new form. Everyone and everything has been changed somehow in the last couple years of staying far from the crowding mad and reassessing what works and what doesn't. Through it all folks still create, and the new songs, poems, paintings, films, books, dances and expression move and speak differently. There is a line from the Before Times to now and even though there are difficult and terrible things happening all around us, there are also things that are proceeding, overcoming great odds in a more positive way in tandem simultaneously.

Winter was deep and productive, even in my learning to rest differently and better. Been working on archives, recording new music, playing guitar, making a new album, compiling a book of stories for Kerrville Folk Festival’s 50th anniversary written by a folks who took the time to write a story to benefit the KFF Foundation, and space here to ponder other endless imponderables. There is a rhythm, and in every beginning is the rhythm even before words are necessary.

I am excited about heading to Texas in a few weeks as I've done for so many years for playing shows, Kerrville and for visiting familyfolk long unseen. Right after the Texas trip I’ll be playing at a real live and in person Oregon Country Fair  too. Tickets for both events are on sale now and are smaller in size than previous years so don’t wait to get em. I’ll send OCF details soon.

Texas gigs:

• Mother’s Day, May 8, I’ll be celebrating the new QTN album, OsculEARiosophy, with a concert in Austin at Radio Coffee and Beer, 4204 Manchaca Rd., from 7-10 pm. Got special guests in mind and there’ll be a Texas sending with more info this week. 

Meawhile, if you’d like to order a copy of the OsculEARiosophy CD or download the songs, go here.  I've just ordered a second run of CDs as the first pressing went fast and what good news that is. The album is intimate – 10 songs with one sweet Bayard guitar and one QTN voice, recorded head on with 3 vintage mics in the sweet studio where I recorded Guitarred and Feathered and songs from The Sound of Photosynthesis. Thanks to all the DJs who are sharing this with their listeners already.

• Thursday June 2, at 9 pm, Steve Fisher and I host the toasting of the wonder that is the Crow’s Nest, saluting Crow Johnson who the campfire is named for onstage at Kerrville on the Threadgill Stage. I’ve camped and sung around that Ring of Stones for more than half the years of my life and some pretty astonishing things have taken place there under the stars in the deepest night. There’ll be songs and other guests and I’m thrilled to hear that Crow will be there in person as well to make this festive night ever so much more heart-moving and indelible.

• Sunday June 12, 2 pm, I host the Ballad Tree session on Chapel Hill on the last day of the 50th Kerrville Festival. Bring a song or poem, your friends and your ears. Also that night, you can see David Amram conduct the Festival Orchestra for the grande finale. David is 91 and still an extraordinary performer! See the whole amazing Fest schedule here.

During the week before Kerrville, while in Austin, I am looking for a set of street legal wheels I could borrow for around town use and/or a venue for me to play Wordless Guitar or a singing guest set or two. Best way to reach me is through this email. 

Thanks for your ears, your kind letters and good thoughts about OsculEARiosophy. The sap is rising and the energy is high for change and evolution. Doing my best to rise to meet it. After all, we didn’t come here to go to sleep – we came here to WAKE UP.

Your corn forest pundit,

bq

Hot veggie links:

QTN music
QTN fb

Aged website 

Hibidiville Youtube channel

QTNs OsculEARiosophy and the Water Tiger Year

 

It’s the top of a new ear and already in process! The sap is rising like the rivers and the water is a-flowin.

There are four parts to this newsletter:

1. A Musing on the Water Tiger Year 

2. New QTN album, OsculEARiosophy

3. The Petals by Al Grierson

4. Last Call for Kerrville Stories

1. Here we go round and round the big wheel that scrapes the sky. Moon was New February 1 and so a new Lunar Year begins. This time around itsa Watery Tiger following a heavy Metal Ox and it’s been observed that if the Metal Ox was a dam, the Water Tiger may well burst it as big energetic changes move further in. Water is yin, an element of ending and a preparing for something new. Other perspectives can be helpful especially in times like these.

Lots of deep breaths lately to begin again in this contracted winter with grace and fluidity.  Fluid-ditties are fun to sing even though there aren’t many gigs to play with real live people these days. I am digging into singing and guitarring, making new things to sing, finding older ones to re-sing. Real eyes sing.

2. I begin this new lunar year offering the heartiest thanks to all of you who’ve been preordering OsculEARiosophy  Preorders have helped mix, master, manufacture and send this new recording out into the whirld at large. Already it has gone many places and it goes out to many more round the world officially this month. Physical copies and digital files are there (even though we are in an odd time where CD players have largely gone the way of the Thesaurus.) 

For those of you in radio, a separate sending is coming your way. If your email address has changed, please let me know asap. Radio folk can request digital downloads with metadata to get the music out faster (and less $ for postage). 

 I made a new recording last summer in my favourite studio here, with three vintage mics, six exceptional strings on an extraordinary Bayard guitar, ten fingers and a voice, and in one 6 hour session, ten songs were recorded. Order and stream tracks via my bandcamp page linked above and you can comment there or send words here. I’ve been told it’s a fun album to listen to on a cold day with a good cuppa something hot. 

Two other important mentions:

3. The Petals, Al Grierson’s 3rd album, was released last year as a collection of unreleased gems he left behind and curated by me with a baker’s dozen of unforgettable Al tunes. The project was begun by Anne Feeney and I years ago, dear to our hearts and it all came together incredibly. Al's been gone 20 years now (and Anne left us a year ago) – his songs are eternal, so what’s a couple decades between friends? The other two albums he made while he stomped the terra firma are streamable and downloadable at his Bandcamp page here and all sales go directly to his two daughters. 

4. 2022 is Kerrville Folk Festival’s 50th Anniversary and that means it's last call for stories for the Kerrville book Festfolk are writing together. If you’ve been procrastinating, the buzzer just sounded. I need them all as soon as possible to get it together and done by May Fest. Don’t wait to send your tales of amazing Kerrville happenings, camp origins, rain stories, Kerr-characters, raisin consciousness, rivers and weather, synchronicities and absurdities. Wax poetic and share your unbelievable experiences with the Kerr-munity and the rest of the outside world. Just collect your thoughts, type em up and hit reply to me here. If you’ve posted a great story on fb, copy it off the page and paste it into an email.

Here's hoping we have places to gather and sing again, festivals for the soul and other community hoopla. Hoping too we can come together as human neighbours and people with kind hearts to stop the animosity toward each other and focus on the important changes inevitably headed our way. 

The oldest trick in the book is propagated by those with hubris and no hearts inflicting dualities into everything so folks argue endlessly about what they choose while their pockets are picked, and their rights and culture are exploited and stripped clean of its soul by those who stand to gain the most… it’s the oldest trick…

Thank you for being a part of this list, for your many letters, your enthusiasm and your ears. It is no small thing to me here on the hill over by the way and I hope to see you out there soon.

Lord Buckley said it best:

“The flowers, 

the gorgeous, mystic multi-coloured flowers, 

are not the flowers of life, 

but people, 

people are the true flowers of life 

and it has been a most 

precious pleasure 

to have temporarily strolled in your garden.”

Your corn forest pundit,

bq