Brian QTN's Summer Simmer of Live Spontanacious Music Sounds

 

Happy snappies, Solstice Fool Moon, and the return of HEAT!

I’m just back from another Texas Withdrawl and Kerrville Fest. All the gigs were so much fun with other great players/writers at legendary Austin venues and a fine community I miss throughout the year. Of course it also was swelter of a time and intense and tweflths. Heard and was in many conversations contemplating what a Big Folk Kerrfest during a different time of year would look like. It probably isn't gonna get cooler mostly as the last ten years were the hottest ever. Hmmm… lotsa folk all over the world are asking similar questions… Meanwhile, I hear Quiet Valley Ranch is hosting their Welcome Home Fest again in October and the musical line up is Fifth Dimensional indeed.

When I started going to Kerrville nearly 50 years ago, there was a banner across the ticket road going in that said “May the people you meet here be your friends for life.” Certainly that has been the case for me and a most worthwhile reason to come back every year. Of course, every year there are more new songs to hear, new hearts to meet and of course, to wave goodbye to. 

But that was Texas and it’s all in the rearview now. I’m in Oregon and there’s a buncha gigs around this part of the Valley to tell you about including, of course, another unbelievable round at the Oregon Country Fair where I'll play my 36th year with a great band of miscreants who know how to have fun with music (QTN tunes in particular).

 

QTN’s BIG JULY IN OREGON 2024

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Singing Wild Tunes at:

OREGON COUNTRY FAIR, 

JULY 12, 13, 14 Outside Veneta Oregon 

Advance tickets only! Available here  

3 QTN sets this year. 2 with The QTNBand! 

• FRIDAY JULY 12, 1 pm – A solo reading from Logodaidalia on the Chez Ray’s stage with musical interludes from myself and perhaps others as well. An author event where hilarity will ensue.

• SATURDAY JULY 13, HOARSE CHORALE STAGE 1-2 pm. An electric stage that will likely be livestreamed and broadcast live on KOCF.org.

• SUNDAY JULY 14, BLUE MOON STAGE, 3-4 pm. An “acoustic stage” that will likely be livestreamed and broadcast live on KRVM.org.

And after the Fair:

• THURSDAY JULY 18 – SCOBERT GARDENS PARK, 4th and Blair St. FREE 6:30-8 pm. A concert, a picnic, an annual gathering for all. Bring food, family, friends and good dogs. After a generation of Wednesdays, this year it has moved to Thursday. Local folk: there is a diabolical City plan to pour a buncha impermeable concrete and install gates in this beautiful legendary People’s Park here. There is a petition anyone can sign so please do. Click here.

 

Also QTN Squint-Yer-Ears Wordless Guitar this month:

• FRIDAY JULY 5 – NEW ZONE GALLERY FIRST FRIDAY • 5:30-7:30 pm  FREE ––– What could be better than fabulous art everywhere you look with live spontencious guitar music accompaniment? ALL AGES WELCOME.

• SATURDAY JULY 27 – EUGENE SATURDAY MARKET, 8th & Oak St. 10 am. Wordless Guitar on the Food Court stage to begin another amazing Saturday Market day.

• EVERY OTHER MONDAY at SAM BONDS GARAGE 6:30-8:30 pm (July 1, 22 and August 5, 19). Carrying on the 25-year tradition established by Richard Crandell before Monday Bingo. 

There may be more but this is plenty for now. Pass this email on to your any and every. As Tom Waits said at his induction into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame: "Songs are just interesting things to do with the air.” 

They sure are fun to share live too. 

See you suddenly somewheres.

 

Your corn forest pundit,

bq

 

Greetings from 35,000 feet in the sky! 

Our worldsphere is a single drop in a bucket and seems so simple up here. It’s only when we land that it will get complicated again. Suddenly I’ma heading to the Hill Country of Texas again to play music concerts live for all the many dear folk I haven’t seen in a good long while and to play at another Kerrville Folk Festival. It occurs to me now that this will be my 44th year of attending and that means I’ve gone to the Quiet Valley Ranch for more years than I haven’t. Here is the list of Austin area gigs this month. Lotsa QTN links at the bottom to connect with too.

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• MONDAY MAY 13 – TIGRESS PUB, 100 W North Loop 7:30 pm  with QTN and LACIE TAYLOR swapping sets

• TUESDAY  MAY 14 – HOLE IN THE WALL, 2538 Guadalupe St. 9 pm featuring QTN, VANESSA JOLLAY (TEARJERK) and JACK WILSON doing solo sets

• SATURDAY  MAY 18 – RADIO SOUTH, 4204 Menchaca Rd  QTN plays the first set at 7 pm. Then Dave Dersham hosts a Songwriter In the Round and then an energetic set from HIT IT HONEY (Tiff and Mollie).

• THE 52nd KERRVILLE FOLK FESTIVAL (MAY 23-JUNE 9) – playing with a full deck now! I’ll be camping there for the whole shebang. Come sing at the Crow’s Nest and all over the ranch and at The Ballad Tree I’m hosting Saturday June 1 at 3 pm. Share your songs with the best ear-hearts in the world!

• My recently released book, LOGODAIDALIA, Bedtime Stories for When You Get Up will be available at my shows. Order copies online too for $15 each, postage paid. Reply to this email with your address first (I’m on the road), and either Paypal (paypal.me/BQTN) or mail an old fashioned check. A copy will be sent directly to you forthwith and fifthsixth and hand-delivered by an uniformed uninformed govern-mental employee. 

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Living in the Specific Northwet these days, the slomo spring this year is greening and lush (even as it teems with heavy rains). At the same time other parts of the country are either roasting already, blasted by tornadoes or big storms or blown apart by idiocy. On a swiftly tilting planet, I am grateful for my tree and owl neighbours, critters and birds of all kinds, a mostly quiet refuge and skies that don’t smell like diesel. Grateful too for the rain as lifeblood (an occasional reprieve would be sweet too, but another hot dry summer’s is likely on the way) and especially grateful for friends and family along the way I make music, laughter and community with.

World is a huge conundrum to me these days. Some of us have days in nature, with music, art, creation and far too many bread and circuses, while too many of us are under fire, desperate and fleeing for their lives. All are us. 

Social media is so confining and confusing as pictures make us laugh and pictures astonishing us are followed by images of the unbelievable brutality of humanity and the economic tragedy of the monetized system we live in. Too many contradictions to make sense of and too much gun care and health control… how to change it? How to even sing about it, write about it, make art about it? 

Ursula K LeGuin wrote these words from long ago: "Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom — poets, visionaries — realists of a larger reality.”

Breathing deep here, the old world is fading fast but not fast enough. With just a turning of the cards, history unfolds….

Your corn forest pundit,

bq

Email is the best way to tell you about upcoming shows and events. I do use social media too but it is never reliable due to its extreme algorhythms. If you’d like updates from fb or insta, check out the links below the signature and I hope they will find you (monetized like many other things).

Looky this cool Hole In The Wall Poster by @prismcollage

 

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