"Where Have You Been?"

Asked no one. But I'm here to tell you.

Substack, it’s been a while. Or at least, specifically on my personal publication, it’s been a while. I’ve been regularly posting on TW, but haven’t been writing anything personal.

For the past year and a half, I’ve been mostly covering the basics in terms of output:

• TW podcast episodes

• associated notes and social posts (one Substack Note, and an identical IG post)

• live shows

• associated flyers, posting

I’ve also been operating on four to five hours of sleep each night and limited to one or two hours a day to focus on anything outside of childcare and housework. Occasionally I’ll get six or seven hours of sleep in a night and be AMAZED at how alert I feel.

Things I have not been doing, but think would be good ideas:

• writing on this Substack

• video and graphic social media posts containing quotes and clips from our TW episodes

• newsletters summarizing what we’ve done this season and what’s to come

• working on a new website

• new live material

• new recorded material

• show recap/thank you posts (I’ve done some but stalled on others, and the ones I did get out there were very very late)

• working on my house and music space

That’s not to say that I’ve been completely absent on all these things. Within my live shows I have made some progress, like incorporating a video player and signal splitter into my setup that allows me to create a single file for all three feeds:

No more DVD players for me. While I’m a little sad to get rid of the nostalgia for old technology, this setup is much more reliable for playback and syncing. Also easier for the equipment packing job.

And I’ve also started piecing together an ensemble for my performances of White Zinfandel, constructing charts for other players to learn the parts. I mean, sure, they’re rife with mistakes, but they exist and help the process. Here’s a clip from the first performance with Dave McDonnell:

My second performance added Koof Ibi on trumpet and flugelhorn, but I don’t have any video clips from it.

I’ve also developed an entire set for the first episode of 902win Peaks. I still have some polishing to do, and the plan is to make a video of the live performance and an instrumental recording of the music, but it’s all written and planned out. If you have a place where you would like me to play it, you should ask me to do that. Here’s a piece of the test shots:

I’ve also started another post twice now about how much I’ve forgotten about what the first couple years with a child are like. Now that I’m going through it again after eight years of having a child who has been increasingly easy, it’s making me realize that people’s minds erase a lot of those early years. Probably a good idea evolutionarily because otherwise people would never have more than one child.

We’re heading into the end of our TW season, so hopefully I’ll get around to polishing that up and hitting publish on it at some point soon. We’ll see.