Hump Day Inspiration

Live music at Gruene Hall.

1990s festival ware.

Jack Ingram, Texas bad-ass.

Vintage Video Friday

This video represents a huge part of a special time in my life. No, not the time of one night stands...that would be a very different blog post! The time when the music that I loved and real life started to become one.

Leeann's style in this video is breath-taking. She was a major country talent taking a chance and going retro. The leading man for this video is Jack Ingram, a Texas country artist at the time. Over the past few years, Leeann has become a bit less in the spotlight while Jack has left the "Texas" style for Nashville at times. But in about 2005, it was the perfect pairing of the female singer-style that I adored, a man who's attitude I loved and a new place, Texas, that was full of intrigue.

Over the next 4 years, music (its style, its location, its breath, its everything) began to play a bigger and bigger part of my life. Eventually, I'd meet Jack. I'd move to Texas and I'd think that music could save me.

But then, it got fuzzy. Real life and real work in this beautiful new land didn't quite fit. I knew I'd never return to Iowa but life wasn't perfect. I was starting to feel more like William Miller's mom in Almost Famous than Penny Lane. Everything got too heavy. I had to start over. Again. So tomorrow, I head out to see Jack Ingram at Gruene Hall in New Braunfels, TX: my adopted hometown. Second chances at a second act.

Who's gonna love me tonight?

What is Contemplative Rock + Roll?

Kat here.  The full working title is What is Contemplative Rock + Roll?: One Woman's Search to Figure Out What In the Hell She's Talking About.

I am a prophet of contemplative rock + roll.  According to Merriam Webster, a prophet is “one who utters divinely inspired revelations...one gifted with more than ordinary spiritual and moral insight.”  It’s not me, though, it’s the rock + roll working through me. 

I have known that my life’s work is to carry out a rock + roll campaign and I’ve meditated on what that could possibly mean.  In the last two years, it has become the specific crossroads where spiritual contemplation and rock + roll meet. 

I am coming to understand that I cannot wait any longer to start pursing this more actively and publicly than I have been.  I think I thought I had to understand it before I started sharing it, but when approaching mysticism, that’s probably not an effective technique.  

Contemplative rock + roll is life-saving, not life taking.  It’s not the rock + roll of sex, drugs and rock + roll, it’s not the killing kind.  Some people are on to this, but I don’t think anyone’s really talking about it - at least not with me.  I don’t think anyone’s brought the contemplation element into it as much as it is in my visions.  

Patterson Hood of the Drive-By Truckers stood on the stage of Gruene Hall a couple years ago and told a story I wish I had bootlegged about how rock + roll was the thing that kept him from turning up dead of self-destruction.  The line I remember, paraphrased, is, “And every day that I wake up, rock + roll saves my life again.”

That’s a good enough place to start this discussion. 

Gruene in the Afternoon

Spent the afternoon at Gruene Hall the other day. No cover, cold beer, great tunes.

It's the oldest dance hall in Texas. All of the tables have a certain patina.

Empty when we got there.

Ted Russell Kamp playing some California Rock and Soul. We actually met Ted years ago
when we lived in IA and he played with Shooter Jennings and the .357's.