Good Record 006
Hello Friends!
It’s December. Every December I say to myself or the nearest bystander, “I can’t believe this year is almost over. They just keep going faster!” Today I’m writing that sentiment to you as well and I bet you know exactly what I mean. In my part of the world (Minnesota, USA) December means darkness and cold. “Lovely place!” you may say. I would agree, but not usually because of the weather. The grinding towards the solstice and the dropping of the mercury do afford some of us a nice opportunity to “hunker down” as we like to say around here. Winter is annually the time when I feel the most creative. Or, more accurately, the time when I create the most work.
In our bands’ earlier years, we would tour pretty much all the time so winter was not a break in any way, but more of a real pain in the ass time to drive around the country in a rear-wheel-drive van. There was many a white-knuckled mile clocked in various 15 passenger behemoths, dragging a trailer like a lead sail across the icy roads and counting the cars and trucks in the ditch, sometimes ending up there ourselves. Often, we’d get to the gig hours late because of the condition of the roads and have to switch from our slightly terrified and fully exhausted travel mentality to playing on stage in mere minutes. You’d think the mountains might be the hardest place to travel in the winter, but my vote would go towards the Midwest. Miles and miles and miles of open road with nothing to block the icy wind from blowing its snowy breath across the roads. Hypnotizing swirls of featherweight death-snow quickly melting as the passing tires momentarily heat the surface, then almost instantly freezing after the vehicles pass. This creates a layer of ice as clear as the morning light and thus very hard to see. You can most likely infer the consequences of this on our nation’s rapidly traveled interstates.
As we’ve luckily gotten older, we have decided that keeping winter a slower time of the year aligns more closely with the lives we wish to lead. It allows us to be with our families on the various holidays, get through the inevitable colds and flus while home sweet home, and avoid too much winter road travel. I try my hardest to use this dark and cold season to create. Once the summer touring and festival madness and the autumn bird hunting whirlwind all subside, I find a lot of peace in the insulation of snow and a fire in the fireplace. Like the winter season of a human life, this is a time for reflection and for me this often translates into songs (and poems and essays and paintings if I’m lucky). Winter is a great time for us to be in the studio as well. We’ve always felt best in there with the cold and snow swirling outside, warm inside and free to take our time.
If I’ve timed this right, you should be getting this newsletter on Dec 21, which is the winter solstice. Call me an old-fashioned pagan, but I love both solstice and equinox. I love that our country’s largest recognized holidays still fall roughly in the solstice and equinox timeframes. I know the date on which Christianity celebrates Christmas was chosen to suppress the winter solstice celebrations of the other religions. I’m choosing not to be cynical about that at this moment and just see that the result is it is now two thousand years later and we still get together and put a tree inside as our totem and feast and give gifts to celebrate another trip around the sun.
Here in Minnesota the seasons starkly govern our lives. To celebrate each one is to celebrate being alive. So, I hope you’re getting together with your people this week in whichever way you want. Singing Christmas carols or setting up the Festivus Pole or dancing barefoot in the snow around a fire. Our space rock has circled once again around the sun god and not everyone that was here at the beginning of its path is still here at its terminus. You and I are among the lucky ones for now. Let’s party.
Yours in Music,
Dave Simonett