I feel sort of weird posting a video with my closeup in HD, but I am really, really excited about my new camera lens.
The Voyageurs (a.k.a Marshall and I) play the beautiful duet “Kate and the Ghost of Lost Love,” written by the late, great Dave Carter.
My awesome new taterbug mandolin
We’re playing on local Southern Illinois community radio station WDBX tonight. You can presumably listen to it online, but I’m not feeling terrific about the prospect so I’m not even going to encourage you to. Marshall and I both have this weird asthma/allergy thing going on that makes singing super frustrating, and I’ve never played on the radio before so I’m a bit jittery. Performing live onstage is no longer anxiety-inducing in the least for me, but the sheer newness of a radio performance has got me a mite wound up. But! It is a small, dinky radio station and no one will be listening anyway, probably. That’s not entirely true but I’m going to tell myself that. Anyway, we’re playing during the 8:00-10:00 p.m. show, and we’ll probably get rolling around 8:30.
This is what it looks like when you make $455 in three days doing the thing you love most. And that’s not counting all the amazing free wine, beer, and food we’ve consumed this past week.
Becoming a professional musician = the best decision I ever made.
Gigging gigging gigging ALL THE TIME (Taken with Instagram)
Marshall (my bandmate) and I play Janis Joplin’s “Mercedes Benz.”
Basically we were just drinking wine and messing around with the secret evil sound system we (he) installed in our living room.
In case any of you have short attention spans and didn’t get to the end of my last post.
Well Hi There!
I found an internet stick! Obviously, my access is super limited and I can’t do a whole lot (also, I can only use it for the next few days), but you guys! I have been completely without cell phone service and internet for the past two weeks-ish! Gaaaahhh! (Actually, it’s been kind of nice.)
So here’s the sitch: I have been playing music nonstop with my old college chum, Marshall, in Carbondale, IL. He and his dad are letting me live in their cellar and play in the Bone Dry River Band with them. We arrived here in the middle of a practice, and I played shows on each of the next five nights (which was exhausting!). There is a really high concentration of talented bluegrass/folk/Americana players in this area, and everyone is super supportive of each other rather than competitive. I made dozens of invaluable connections almost instantly. After years of being pretty directionless and lazy with my music, it’s nice to have a clear focus.
Marshall and I call ourselves “The Voyageurs,” and I’m lazy so I’m just going to yoink the description from our Facebook page, which you should “Like”:
Taking their name from the 19th century traders who braved the wild Mississippi River to bring goods to New Orleans, the Voyageurs aspire to capture the feel of America past and present, from the rocky shores of St. Louis to the muddy Delta.
We spent a couple of hours in the studio on Sunday recording a quick demo to hand out to some of the local venues. You can listen to and download that here. Everything but Bessie Smith’s old tune “Muddy Water” is original.
Not to plug myself too heavily, but if you could share/like this post, we need all the exposure we can get! And if you have any suggestions or feedback, pass ‘em my way.
XO,
Janis
The Dirty Water Darlin’s
Drunk Sessions #1: “20 Years” by The Civil Wars
(This is me and fellow New Orleanian Krystal [kudzujulep])
