Happy New Year Pt. I - My Shows

1/4 - Cambridge, MA CLUB PASSIM https://www.passim.org/live-music/events/vance-gilbert-2/
1/5 - Centerport, NY. http://fmsh.org/events/event/vance-gilbert-guy-davis w/GUY DAVIS
1/11 - Timonium, MD www.uptownconcerts.com w/CHRISTINE LAVIN
1/12 - Richmond, VA www.shadygrovecoffeehouse.com

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ECONOMICS, JADE, HOW DOGS SWEAT, AND STANDING UP FOR MYSELF

Happy New Year Pt. II - My Brain

Here’s a lengthy read...

As I head decidedly into my 61st year, these aren’t really resolutions but more just stated - yeah - personal observations and giveashits we’ll call them. They’re not for everyone. You may not agree. That’s the personal part. That said, you’re welcome if the help you. Here:

1) Now that me and my neighborhood have both aged a bit, the "Drive Like Your Kids Live Here" signs mean less to me. I’ll have a counter-sign on my lawn that says:

Live
Like Your Kids
Drive Here

2) Sort of the same thinking goes for the "Hate Has No Home Here" signs. My sign will say:

Hate Lives Here.
In My Basement.
I Bring It A Cup Of Tea Every Morning.
Then I Proceed To Kick It In The Ass -
All
Day.

3) I’m in the midst of making the wildest, craziest album ever. I vowed to not make another album that wasn’t focused for Americana this or Triple-A that ever again. Well bullshit. This one is R&B, Celtic, Tom Waits on crack, Al Greenish, Earth, Wind, and Paul Brady, Louis Jordan and Shawn Colvin has lunch with Macy Gray, Richard Thompson and Neil Sedaka have lunch with Ariana Grande while watching Ella Fitzgerald videos. Screw marketing in the midst of production. This is a blast.

4) Haters. It’s time to bury you in my 61st year. Nicholaus F, Himes, Isaacs, June (my childhood best friend's housekeeper who took me personally aside and told me through doing this I’d amount to nothing), Dr. Ed, Scotty H., DT, Maureen C., yes, you most present in my head-group, and those I have forgotten, intent on taking my legs, jealous of my success, or actually quite brilliant but just thoughtless and mean - Here’s the partial lyric to my Bringing Down The House Of Pain:

"The critic's words previously
Residing in my head
Have found their way inside this house
And I've locked them there instead
Successfully forgetting all their names
And the deeds they've done
I've set the charge to blow this place
From here to kingdom come”.

I’ll find forgiveness in time. Simultaneously I need to stand the fuck up for me. If you’re on that list and you still don’t get my resolve…just see #2 above.

5) We root drecinia and jade so carefully in our windows in jars of water. What the hell? These are weeds and shrubs elsewhere in the world. OK, maybe that only happens in this house. Still…

6) My dogs are aging quickly and will surely die in the next few years. I will be so very broken. Irrecoverably broken. Changed forever. I will taste tears that I never have before. And I will deny the existence of a god that gives dogs such a despicably short lifespan and yet lets my friend’s shit-anytime squawking biting parrot live for 50 years. He has a plan my ass. Please don’t be religiously or animally offended, reader. Or be offended if you want, I don’t care. It’s my page and I’m just right about this. I'll eat extra chicken tonight in righteousness just thinking about it.

7) I swear Joe & Lisa I will finish the primer book on Economics you got me for Christmas, a subject I know so woefully little about. Gosh, I can be as dumb as a bag of dicks about some stuff. Some know that already just reading #1 thru #6, I guess.

8) People need to stop criticizing people who latch on to diets as their way to lose weight, because "the weight won’t stay off, and you’ll rebound". “Stop dieting. Make peace with food.” Shut your pie hole.
Shut up.
Screw constant steady weight loss like 2 lbs a month for 18 months or such similar shid. Please shut up. If us heavy people had the resolve to lose weight that steadily and slowly we’d have done that. It’s like watching the minute hand of a clock. Look here - if we lose weight in a bunch and get down to that ideal weight, and we “rebound” back a bit, well:

a) we got partway there which is better than a hole in the head,
b) If the diet is bad and all but gets you relatively quickly to a point where you can finally go exercise in a way so that knees and hips no longer hurt, then I’m in and I’ll change the rest over that 18 months as my mileage goes up. So shut up.
c) when we get down to “that weight”, we will always remember how great we felt at “that weight”. It’s in the back of our minds. The ungrabbed rung. I’ll succeed better next time.
d) I do believe a 24/7 diet of broccoli and chicken wings from Great Wok will do this, if I’m stringent. Shut. Up.

9) what is that insane background, maybe even purposeful hiss at the start of Ariana Grande’s hit "Thank U, Next”, and why do I work so hard to remove anomalous sound like that from my recordings?

10) I do a thing, when I’m not doing music, at which I quite excel, and I’ve seen recent comments that smack of an anti-detailing sensibility and a profound disdain of history, nostalgia, and tradition, of said thing, comments questioning the worth of faithful historical reproduction via careless slapdash disparaging statements to my approach, putting greater worth in a blanket all-involved-at-all-costs populist attitude. You purveyors of the latter mindset will find me at my utmost ultra-conservative traditionalist self as I will ever so gently be guiding you to examine #2 above. Maybe not fully in that basement, but surely just past the railing on the last few steps before the mismatched linoleum. Beware of me. I’m now old, I do not yet understand economics, I eat more chicken than most, and I have quite the basement..

11) How is it dogs actually sweat through their feet? That just doesn’t seem right.

12) I’m at Club Passim in Cambridge this Friday night. There’s like 4 seats left. It’ll sell out. I think Abbie’s dad Herb may join me for a mess of it. I’ll call him and see if he wants to rehearse a little bit...

13) The next night I’m in Huntington NY Long Island with Guy Davis, whom I never fail to have a great time with.

xovg

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Still collecting $$ donations for the new album:
Vancefunder@gmail.com
or
Vancefunder
P.O. Box 17
Arlington MA 02474,
...plenty of time to be a part get your name on the cover - yes, THAT is the perk!!

Coaching, Christmas tree light disentanglement, private parties. Just ask.