Katie Henry: News & Blog

Every music festival and camp is like an archeological dig, turning up strings of connection between past, present and future. Opening doors and collapsed arches, stories of old loves and new friends. Some are people and some are songs, some are instruments and some are ideas. On the drive home, we sift gently through new memories before they become dust. We drink the last of the tea from the thermos we filled to bring on stage. We listen to recordings of tunes we're bringing home. Think of the set list for next year, what songs we still need to hear again before we get it right. Hearts and souls make their way back to the every day, fuller for the singing.

Listening to recordings of my dad's new songs for the upcoming folk festival. Oliver came down from bed and commented on the sound quality, suggested that I plug my computer into the stereo so "we all can listen" as he goes to sleep. I used to say he was a blues player, but tonight I think he's really sounding like Mose Allison. And the songs just keep coming.

The Vocal Art Ensemble tour to Ireland is becoming more real by the week. The dates are set for September 2-11, 2010. We'll start in Shannon and end in Dublin. I will already be living in Prague, but will join the choir in Shannon to hop on the bus. It's all very exciting, though it will be hard to leave my kids right then, just after they have started in Czech public school. We throw ourselves into life and swim as hard and gracefully as we can. All of us.

Life is swept right now with plans and preparations for our family's upcoming sabbatical year in the Czech Republic. This summer we'll leave our cat and belongings behind and head off to Prague for a year. Petr has received a Fullbright research fellowship there for the year to expand his brain function computer modeling skills, so and we're all tripping off across the ocean to improve our Czech language skills and live an expat life for a while. I'm thankful that Jimmie Bozeman is there... a touchstone of my musical past to hook up with. We visited with him and his family and played some music in Nizbor and Prague this past summer, and it was a great comfort to slip right back into an old musical friendship. MudLark is plotting things before we leave and angling for what we'll be doing when I return. I think Laura will record a new solo cd while I'm gone... and so our musical lives unfold together and apart.

If you race the sun to the lip of your specific hill
The warm kitchen far behind
You climb inside the glow zone
Where morning rays pull illumination from under the snow.
The oranges of Red Butte kindle over your shoulder
The grey ice of blue moon night is drawn up in the gathering purse strings of shadow,
Now lit to soft ivory and straw on south-facing slopes.

If you stop just below the rim
Teasing the salmon-tinted path
pushing eagerly around the corner to greet your feet
Stop for a breath to see the shadow retreating up the valley on your coattails,
the cusp of a peachy new year is sweeping up behind you

If you watch too long, high cirrus wisps of the next storm mute the path
If you step around into the sun and greet it, the glow zone is not so seeable,
and you must focus up and down to hold yourself there
Two-toed tracks of Mule deer punch into the pinked crust
Munched, seedless grass stems bent over into the way
Newer than sign from yesterday

As you crest the rise
There might be another ridge above the canyon
Drawing you on
This, too, becomes
Your favorite place in the world

Oops. picked up a fever. must have picked my nose too much after that potty stop at the Texaco in Green River. Driving back to Salt Lake tomorrow in the storm stocked with cough drops and kleenex. Still, I love southern Utah more now than after the disaster float trip with Melissa down the Green River in '94. Did I ever tell you that story?

Morning walk up the hill to the Bonneville-Shoreline trail, drinking in the snow, ignoring the brown air in the valley. When I get beyond the massive, opulent house-compounds to the edge of the Wasatch, that's when things are magical here. At night there are sometimes coyotes, but today, just footprints and quiet. Can't be grumpy there. Merry Christmas! And thanks for the birthday love yesterday. It was a sweet day.

Crunchy frost on the field! Crackles as I cross, soles crush the icy crust on leaf edges. My son stays behind to skate on a frozen bike path puddle with his pack of pubescent cronies. I have a plastic mug of steamy tea and a fleece daughter in my hand.

A cute little kindergardener threw up on me today. She preceded this charming behavior by panting like a small, wild animal and rolling around on the classroom couch. I was trying to get her to the bathroom before she blew... I wonder what the incubation period is for whatever she has, and how long it will be until I start to throw up too.

I keep telling myself that there is artistry in mothering... and the stream of songs that flows just above my head is always there to dip into. After the garage is clean. and the classroom is set up. and the coworker politics are soothed and the camping reservations are made. and the sandwiches are packed. and the soup...

Walk walk walk walk walk in the morning.

I am listening to avalanches and psyching up for the opening night of the folk festival tonight... Avalanche chutes out my bedroom window. small yellow warblers. dogs without leashes. dynamite blasts for the new parking garage downtown. Hiram says they're overbuilding the foundation just in case they ever decide to build a new state Capitol building on the site some day.
Massive ravens. Smoked salmon. Still waters out on the channel, fishing boat with orange dinghy headed out for the day. Sarah Palin lambasted in folk song, Green house on the hill crammed with an entire gene pool. And 4 laptops. And dozens of boiled easter eggs. Laughing hysterically with Hiram and Petr now that all the easter bunnying is done. The best part was hucking the plastic eggs into the snow holes in the front yard, trying to avoid the poo being uncovered by spring rain, hoping that the eggs would make it through till morning despite the ravens. Juneau rain begins, also clouds break up. Coffee is excellent. Daddy turned 70 last night and we jammed him into his next decade until the wee hours. Petr, Hiram, Riley and Lori, Oliver, Fiala Mom, Kim and Phil, Charlie and Craig, Will, Nellie, Martha and Jim.

Watching the cricket over the back fence, thinking about the perfect acoustics in the room at Paul and Candy's where MudLark played last night. Didn't go skiing again, will finish my taxes and go for a gentle walk instead. It's spring in the Valley... I cherish the bees.

I am a high plain, stretched between jagged peaks. There is new dry snow on the passes, enough to outline footprints and hold them present for a while. There is a wind that drifts ice crystals in after a bit, the western slopes are warming.

I'm still getting ready for the MudLark show at N-street co-housing tonight. The CDs are counted and packed. The new tuner batteries are in.. it's gonna be good!

MudLark is playing at N-Street Cohousing tonight for the second February in a row, and it will be a great show. We have some exciting new songs worked up, and I biked off to get batteries for my banjo tuner this morning, so the song transitions are bound to be seamless. :-) Come out to this lovely house concert series - they have great refreshments, kind folks, and an amazing garden to walk through.

I love singing with the Vocal Art Ensemble. I seldom have to work as hard musically as i do with that group... and I am beginning to know the next concert material well enough that I am falling in love with it. I used to fall in love with one person after another. Now I seem to fall in love with one music after another...

I'm sending in my Alaska Folk Fest paperwork tomorrow. The plane tickets are in hand. Oliver is working up a great trumpet part for "Shakedown Street" to play with Petr and Riley in their set. He's one rockin' kid. I'm waiting to get my dad's new songs in the mail... sometimes we don't get to hear the songs in that set until a couple of days before we perform. It is a wild a crazy ride, and and excellent party. April 13-19, 2009...

It keeps raining. The back yard is full but the reservoirs still have a long way to go, so I hope it keeps coming. I marvel at how my kids like to listen to The Band on sunday mornings just like I did when I was their age. Ophelia never gets old. I wrote a paper in 7th grade on Acadian Driftwood and the forced migration of Acadians south out of Canada... I think my teacher was stunned that someone would base a junior high level paper on a rock ballad, but the story is all there, and so fine. Oliver spent about 2 months listening to this album as he went to sleep every night and now knows almost every lyric. Genetics in action?

We've finally routed my old EFN site to here, and it only took two and a half years! Heh. Heh. Our MudLark site has been more on my mind recently because of the recording and the release of our cd, Nest in 2007, and almost all my music has been made with them for a while now. But in February I always start thinking about how I'll be playing alone at the Alaska Folk Festival in April, and how I should get back to working on my next solo project. Grey sky dreaming leads me here today...

I am up much too late for the night before a gig, but this new website is so pleasing to me! I am happy and relieved to finally have an updated window into my musical world, as barebones as it is. My last site was created in the very early 90's, and has hardly changed over the past 10 years... I look forward to updating this site a bit more often than once a decade...

Hooray for each step forward.

Welcome, all.

-Katie