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.

            ♪♫•*¨*♪♫•*¨*•.♪♫ ♪♫•*¨*♪♫•*¨*•.♪♫ ♪♫•*¨*♪♫

• 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. 

                ♪♫•*¨*♪♫•*¨*•.♪♫ ♪♫•*¨*♪♫•*¨*•.♪♫ ♪♫•*¨*♪♫

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