Love the interaction between friends! Love the hearts too!!!
Hello beloved friends,
I hope this finds you well and healthy. Spring has indeed sprung here in Boise and there are many projects coming to completion around our home during this quarantine. It’s interesting what you get use to, isn’t it? Here in the middle of a pandemic we find ourselves live streaming in our shop/studio and preparing for it all week. This is so different than how our “normal” gig life has been.
“Normally” we have 3-5 shows a week, we lay a “blanket set list”at our feet with over 100 songs to choose from and half the time I never look at it. I look in the eyes of our audience and my “Angels” give me a nudge of what songs to play. The perfect song between our confidence and feel good and the audiences wishes and wants. Those “little voices” beckon to play this song because Dave is in the audience or that song because Jane is in the audience. It’s been such a trip playing in front of a phone camera!
The phone camera does not give you expressions of feedback, it does not applaud, smile, gesture, cheer and nor does it frown, glare, talk loudly, yawn or chew it’s food!!! *Big Smile* We can interact during a live stream with the use of a notebook on the music stand. I absolutely adore the exploding hearts that rise up the screen of all the love sent from folks listening from their homes. So there is interaction, but there are no distractions. Nothing to take you off your mark except your thoughts. And now that I am use to this, I can literally “feel” the expansion of energy. It’s truly a trip! Like when we sang Life is Beautiful last week I could feel our audience and in my minds eye, SEE everyone. Like and elevated perspective. People don’t have to physically be here to FEEL them, which was SO COOL!!!
This time has also allowed us so much! For me it has allowed a much needed space. Space to get clarity. I am one step away from the audiences needs and wants (or what I tell myself they want) and one step closer to deciphering what I want. What kind of show would I like to play? I always have my audience in mind as a priority. Even still when we make the set list days in advance of a Saturday stream show, I am adding songs from the vortex and requests from the prior week. I think about the platform that we are on now (in our shop on a camera) and I have all these other tools at my disposal like different guitars and sometimes sheet music if we really love the song but don’t have it committed to memory. This has been a wonderful exploration to just allow myself to enjoy music! I can put my full attention to this once a week show! It’s been a bit of heaven! We walk to the gig…our back yard *snicker*. The equipment is already set up. When the show is over we walk back into the house! Ha! No driving, no fending off drunken hang ons -*loud laugh*. This is very different than how we’ve done music for all these years!
I have slept harder during this pandemic than I ever have in the last 20 years of playing music. (Well, after the first couple weeks of the pandemic.) I have had to ask myself, “What is this about?” Sparing you the psychological detail, it really comes down to taking care of myself. Allowing my wishes and wants and needs to be heard and acted upon, a bit more (a LOT more). Recognizing the stress of performing, what it does to the body, how it revs the mind. How much energy it takes to be social.
I’ve known these things, but not like I know now. You know things when you get away from patterns that once held you. We can be in automatic, running from one show to another, or one social engagement or appointment and all the while, self-care takes a back seat. And if you looked at our home, there are many things that haven’t made their way into our priority. Simply because we haven’t had the time.
One thing we just completed today is a drive way! It was a great project! Fun, hard, physical and we had no one show us the ropes on how to do it, go about it or even the best tools. I had wanted to do this last Spring yet we were off and running to Oregon I think and then it got too bloody hot! We completed the task in phases and Mo was a super star! We rented a “ditch witch” and I drove that around with reckless abandon! Ha! Well, not really reckless, I was very careful actually. I was surprised how innately natural I was driving and operating one of those “tonka toys”! It has always been on my bucket list to play with bull-dozers and tractors and fun things like that.
When I was young I would mow our folks 5 acre yard with a big international tractor. I LOVED that thing! My parents never had to ask me to cut the grass…I was on it!
So I got to play, and get an adult job done. Yay! Now as our nation and state starts to “open up”, we do have a bit of concern about how it all will go. Mo and I have tried to nail down what we can and won’t do as we all honestly still need to be careful. The virus does not discern and it’s not like a parent telling us, “Ok, you’re not grounded anymore!”. I would feel terrible if our show created a population to be infected. So each venue, party, person we will need to address what the protocol will be. We will probably cancel all of our out of state bookings through the summer. Which is sad because we had some GREAT venues and parties lined up.
But there is a larger part of the picture that I get to see from all this. I get to fall in love with music again, detached from what I want to DO with music or where I want music to TAKE us. I get to noodle and doodle and get my hands in the dirt tending to my own garden. In every way, we are “tending to our own garden” right now. Whatever your “garden” is…do it with passion and a grateful heart because this time won’t last forever. And when the merry-go-round starts spinning fast again, we don’t have to step back on it.
Which leads me to your new download this month, “The Garden Song”! (Mickey your are going to love this! LOL!) Patricia Daily, a great friend of ours, who is also a fabulous musician asked if we would do harmonies on this song she was recording. So, when you hear it, you will hear the lovely Pat Daily and then we come in for the harmony towards the end. It’s such a happy little tune I thought you would enjoy! It’s really perfect for this time period too…what “seeds” will you plant? How do you want to live after this great reflection of time? How will you “fertilize” your garden? Who fosters your garden? Who brings the weeds? Who steals the harvest? Who helps weed? Who makes a feast for you from the harvest?
Instead of “All the places you will go”…it’s more like, “all the things you will grow!” Ha ha! A twist on the ol’ Dr. Sues! ;-)
We love you all. Stay safe out there! For anyone that doesn’t know how to get on our live streams you can watch live every Sat. @7pm MST from Blaze and Kelly Facebook (you don’t need to be our friend…but you are!) OR if you are NOT on Facebook, you can view the show from YouTube search Blaze and Kelly “Love” Stream and you will find the series to watch. We hope to “see” you soon, and to someday actually SEE you!
Much love,
Niccole, Mo & Juno
The treasures you find when you clean out old stuff! This was my first ever Winnie! I adore Winnie! There was a time I had a 3 foot huge Winnie I would insist to take every where. He would sit with me at Church and take up space on the pew. I would bungee him to my big wheel. This little guy is my only survivor of those old days, and I don’t think I will ever part with him. He’s a late 60’s model ha ha! And so am I!
Nic Digs!
The Crew!!!! (and supervisor Juno!)
Edging, there is no quick tool to help this…total shovel grunt work. :-)
Leveling the “playing field”.
All the stones laid out and leveled with a weed guard tucked underneath.
A finished gravel drive way! This use to be a terrible weed field. Funny how a “weed” can motivate you to make something nicer! Every time I back the trailer over this, I will smile with the satisfaction of a job well done!
