This all to say that much to my surprise I came to kind of love these online shows. So it is, that I am now offering private songwriting sessions on the Zoom. Maybe you already write songs but would like a few tips. Maybe you’ve never written a song but would like to spur the creativity. Maybe you have a friend or a child or a special someone who might like to develop the craft. Well, now’s our chance. Although working in person is still my first choice, Zoom offers some real advantages for this kind of work. Songwriting is intimate and exposed and requires great faith. Sometimes being in the same space can make this intimidating and uncomfortable. Zoom allows for many an introvert to raise their voices.

So, if you’re looking for a unique and personal gift for the holidays, something edifying, something creative, might I suggest a songwriting lesson or two. No shipping. No plastic. No lines at the register. Nothing to wrap. Nothing from Amazon. Just your friendly neighborhood songwriter and you (or your loved one) kickstarting the imagination and opening up the emotional conduits.

Book your session here.

The post The Surprising Wonders of Zoom – One-on-One Songwriting Sessions Now On Offer (just in time for the holidays) appeared first on David Berkeley.

I stumble in here real early, often with a guitar in hand and sometimes with a mug, and I grope across the dark floor for past a rarely used drum set to the light, which casts a golden glow across my desk. Sometimes Mali (also pictured above) runs after me. Amazingly, she has never entered my space, despite basically having full reign of all our rooms and furniture everywhere else in our house. She respects that this space is sacred to me. I love her for that. And then I try to get to work. Sometimes I’m working on something for Son of Town Hall or a song for a future record of mine. But this past week or two, I’ve been working on a private song for someone who was hoping to use to propose to her fiancé. It’s something I do periodically, (enough so that I have a page on this here site in case you would like one).

I finished the song two days ago and sent it off. And then I didn’t hear anything for a couple of days, which was very unlike her typical response time. I’ll admit that even after having written a lot of these songs, I still get a nervous that what I write won’t be what the person wanted. Is the melody sweet enough? Is the feel too slow? Too fast? Are there any details that are off? Do any words or phrases or images stick out? Is it over the top? When someone commissions a piece, I first try to solicit as much as I can via email or phone about that person’s feelings and story. This can feel a little like therapy sometimes. Some people are very open with their emotions. Others require more encouragement. I collect these details, and I live with them. I look at photos if they’ve sent any. I think about their joys and struggles. I try to internalize them. And I recognize the gravity of it all and the trust they are putting in me to express their most private of emotions. And the truth is that I come to love the people I write for, and so I want the songs to be perfect. It’s like commissioning a portrait. You want the resemblance to be flattering (as opposed to some of the Spanish royals pictured in The Prado).

Anyway, this morning, after arriving in London, I got a note back. Part of it read, “It’s more perfect than I could have dreamed and to be able to hear myself and my heart in the song so purely is magical.”

Phew. Big relief. I wanted to share this for two reasons. One is that even after writing songs for over two decades, I am okay admitting, as I wrote above, that I still worry about what people will think. And two, for a long time I’ve been wondering about whether it makes a difference if just two or two thousand people are moved by a song. Many friends go into writing rooms with other musicians in Nashville or LA or London to collaborate and hopefully write hits. I often go into the above hut in the early morning alone to write songs that very few people will ever hear. These commissioned pieces will never appear on my records. In fact, they probably only get heard by the close family and a few friends of whomever I’ve written the song for. I don’t often play them for Sarah even, and that says a lot. But despite the very limited size of their audience (0 Spotify spins), they are really important–to the people who commission them and, ultimately, to me. And so it speaks it gets me thinking again about how to value art. Audience isn’t irrelevant. We do make pieces so they can be perceived. But I’ve never felt art should be quantified in numbers. This is obviously not the trend these days. People often look up someone’s Spotify count before they make any sort of judgment on the quality of their music. Our society leans so heavily on statistics in making any sort of determination. But something is missed in the numbers.

In case you’re out there writing songs that might not be featured on NPR or painting paintings that won’t be hung on any crowded gallery wall in the near future or writing philosophic memoirs that few people may read…or even if you’re just writing reflections in your journal. Art never was meant to be a numbers game. And often the best work is not the most popular. I at least work to believe that moving one person with an expression of something real is of unquantifiable value and, therefore, is neither greater or lesser than moving a lot of people. Try to be honest. Try to be observant. Try to work a little every day. Try to keep your voice your own. I believe that matters no matter how many people see or hear it.

The post Writing Songs That Few People Will Ever Hear appeared first on David Berkeley.

I wanted to thank all of you who came out to see this show over the past couple weeks. I know for some it’s a leap of faith to follow a new project. And for some of you, the theatrics may not be your bag. Maybe part of what you like in what I normally do is the sincerity, and so seeing me in a top hat performing under a different name kind of runs counter to that. I get it. But in an odd way, I think there is an honesty in Son of Town Hall that is harder to achieve without the artifice. Obviously there’s the absurd conceit that we are traveling the world by a junk raft of our own making. But somehow the costumes and the frame allows me to speak and write about the human condition in a more direct way than I might without the device. So it’s true that the songs might be more metaphoric and pull from imagery that is at a remove from my own experiences. But the message and meaning is very real for me. It also feels like the natural progression for me from writing books that go along with my albums to, in a sense, acting out the stories I am singing about. And our project that we are working on now–a podcast in the style of old radio theater with an original song for each episode–is in some sense where all of my creative life has been unknowingly aiming toward all along. I can’t wait for you to hear it.

And that’s not to mention the harmony. I have always loved to sing. But there is magic in harmony. It is up there with the highest forms of human connection, I believe. It requires a kind of listening, of adapting, of submitting, of teamwork that is very rare and very special. It is strange that Ben and my voices blend so well. We sound nothing alike when singing solo. Our tones, our timbre, our accents are all completely different. And yet there are many times when listening back to something that I can’t tell which part I sang.

This all to say thanks for giving the project a chance. And if you haven’t heard us yet, I hope you’ll come out when we’re on the East Coast after Thanksgiving. We play Boston, New York, Memphis, Nashville, Atlanta, and Tallahassee. All info on the Tour Page.

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge what has been so much on the mind of the world of late, that is the passing of Elizabeth the II. It’s obviously caused a lot of controversy on the socials. But another beauty of Son of Town Hall is our ability to answer history’s call in a way that manages to be both sincere and ironic. Hence, when we heard the news in the Austin home of Phil Collins, we immediately got to writing a tribute, which I hope feels fitting to those who loved her and, maybe can be heard as a queer love song for those who didn’t. You can listen to it now on Spotify or watch our performance below recorded at The Kitchen Sink.

That’s it for now. Fall is about to break. Tomorrow is my birthday. And though there is great suffering and sadness in most corners of this world of ours, there is still blazing beauty and heartbreaking acts of goodness.
Chin up,
David

The post When History Calls appeared first on David Berkeley.

But if that were the case, it would be hard to show you all the things I wanted to show you in an organized fashion. You would be at my mercy as to which songs I played you when and what I served you to drink. You would and I would both feel awkward as I read you bio and reenacted all of my videos. The truth is, though, I still think there is value in a website, in a virtual repository for the things I do and make. And I’d rather be able to curate it more than Spotify, say, or FB allow. And thanks to the great Lacey Passman Smith of SiteSmith Studio, I now have a home here on the World Wide Web that allows you to go as deep as you’d like into my head and heart. Want to read all my lyrics? Just go to the Music and Books page and then scroll down to the album you are interested in and click to read the Story Behind the Music. Want to watch a video? Well then, pop over to the Video page. Want to see some pictures? Check out the Press Kit. There is a LOT here. And that’s because I’ve now been doing this for a LONG time. But Lacey made it all look so clean and clear that it won’t bog you down. So thank you Lacey.

And while I’m thanking people, thanks Nicole Moulton, too. She’s the girl behind Birdgirl Photography. She’s the best. If you ever need someone to hike with you through the desert carrying your guitar, a chair, your change of clothes, and a camera, she’s your girl.

That’s it for now. I’m not going to pledge, like I have before, that I will write a lot of blog posts. I hope I will. But I know myself, and I likely will not. But I will pledge to try. I will also try to update the scrolling lyrics on the Home and Tour pages, because that’s a pretty sweet feature Lacey created. There are a lot of other people to thank: every musician I’ve played with, all the great artists who have helped me on my album art, all the agents and promoters I’ve worked with, my family of course, and all of you for being here and being wherever I perform. I am very grateful. And though I don’t always recognize it, I am very aware right now, at this moment, as I type into this virtual space to be read whenever it is you find these words, that I am extremely fortunate. So thank you. Have a look around. Enjoy your stay. Let me know what you think. And if you like how it looks and sounds, tell a few of your friends.
I remain,
David

The post The New Home appeared first on David Berkeley.

Salt’s role is mainly a flavor enhancer, drawing out the subtle and not-so subtle characters of that which we salt. But pepper adds a complexity to our food that I, at the time of writing the last blog, undervalued. It’s spicy; it’s nutty (and no, I definitely do not mean in the goofy sense); it’s earthy; it’s herbal; and, unless ground too coarsely or applied too heavily, it doesn’t overpower. Oh, and it’s cheap. For those of use who can’t throw down for, say, the golden strands of saffron, pepper is there for a buck and a quarter to kick some refinement into your salad or fried egg.

So pepper, I hereby apologize. You don’t need to return to the spice rack like I previously suggested. You hereby may remain on my table beside the salt.

I remain,
David

The post Pepper – An Apology appeared first on David Berkeley.

So it was that Jackson and I researched out plans and started dreaming up a box. Now, some of you who have read my earlier posts may recall that I am not exactly “handy with tools.” In fact, despite being only one remove from Bob Villa, I share very little with the man save that I also walk upright and have ten fingers divided evenly among my two hands. Jackson of course is no fool. He knows my skill set. Because of this, his eyes rolled when I said, “if we make clear plans and can cut our measurements, we could have this baby assembled and painted by this afternoon.” That was maybe May 8th.

Let’s skip ahead to, oh, October 20th. Let’s not dwell upon how much sawdust is now on my garage floor, upon how many trips I took to the various hardware stores in town (rotating through so I could ask the same idiotic question multiple times), upon the expletives that I shouted, upon how many tubes of wood filler we went through, about how good it turns out I am at stripping a screw…and let’s just focus on the results.

I’m proud to say, the results are strong ladies and gentlemen. For now there stands in our little village of Santa Fe, tucked beneath the arms of a big spruce tree, backing up against our coyote fence, a proud a wonderful Little Free Library. It is painted blue with hand cut shingles on the roof, wallpapered on the inside and even carpeted with a little remnant. So far it has stayed dry in several downpours, has survived the first snow of the season, and wasn’t vandalized on Mischief Night or Halloween. It currently contains a handful of children’s books and some hard philosophy. It has a set of literary journals and cooking magazines. And it even has a copy of my new book in there.

So if you’r in the neighborhood, come on by. Grab a book or give a book. And if you’re not in the neighborhood but want to contribute to the “stacks,” feel free to send your already-read novels and histories to my attention, PO Box 8642, Santa Fe, NM 87505. Send them media mail. It’s cheap.

With much book love,
David

The post The Lending Library appeared first on David Berkeley.

The post “Shelter” on the TF1 appeared first on David Berkeley.

The point is there are lots of possibilities. Nearly all are bad. “Is that your child?” is a similar situation. Rarely are you about to hear how kind and calm he’s been or how intelligent she is. Probably another kid is bleeding, and your offspring is to blame. Maybe someone just peed on the rug and your boy’s pants are soaking. It’s likely all the books on the low shelf in the library are now on the floor. That sort of thing.

So it was today. Both kids off of school. I’m lugging them into Noah’s preschool for the parent teacher meeting. The meeting was going well. Noah is all sweetness they said. He shares, they said. He picks up after himself, they said. And then the door opens.
“David, is that your blue Prius?”
“Ah, fuck me.”
Well, that wasn’t exactly my response, but that’s what I was thinking.
“Your front right tire is completely flat.”
“Really?”
That was what I said. As if the principle of a church pre-school was in the business of that sort of practical joking.
“Really,” she said.

So I ended the meeting with Noah’s teachers thinking that at least I now knew what that horrendous noise was I was hearing over the Lou Reed we were blasting when I had backed into the parking spot. And then a few minutes later, I’m out on the side of a relatively busy road (by Santa Fe standards) with both my boys (who were way underdressed given the wintry weather), chest against the pavement trying to figure out where to position my jack.

I wasn’t thrilled about the situation. For one, all of the other parents are streaming in for their parent-teacher meetings. The guys are giving me a thumbs up. The mothers are asking if I need help. Neither felt good. For two, Noah (who has just been universally praised) has taken to poking me in the butt whenever I’m bending down or in anyway engaged and not guarding my backside. For three, Jackson keeps asking me, “ugh can we just go already?” For four, I’m not entirely, shall we say “sure” of how to change a tire.

Luckily I wasn’t changing one of these tires.

But here’s the thing: maybe it’s that I now own an axe, or maybe it was some strange competitive surge I got wondering if I could change a tire faster than a parent-teacher meeting, or maybe I was aware that this was one of those moments my kids potentially would never have let me live down (you know, the car sliding off the jack and somehow trapping me under its hybrid heft)…well, whatever the reason, I changed that tire like Jim McGee (Mario Andretti’s longtime pit crew chief, for the few of you who didn’t already know). I jacked the car up smooth. I loosened the lugs two at a time. I pulled off the tire and rolled it to the back of the car. I picked up the spare and bounced it on the ground a time or two before tossing it onto the bolts like it was a pizza dough. And then we revved the silent engine and sped off, getting up to about 35mph in around 20 seconds.

So, despite tarnishing my reputation as not being very, shall we say “handy,” particularly around automotive matters, I felt pretty great this morning. In fact, I’ve never felt so good having a flat tire or having it be my car that was called out. I suppose I take back all the above. Next time I hear “is that your blue Prius?” I’m going to say with cockiness, “you’re damn right it is.”

Chin up,
David

(Oh, and since my primary job is making and playing music, I should add that I’ll be in the northeast next week for a string of shows. Full details on the tour is listed here, but I’ll be in Philly Friday the 1st, DC Sunday the 3rd, Portland Tues the 5th, Brattleboro Thurs the 7th, Boston Fri the 8th, NYC Sat the 9th and South Orange Sun the 10th, with private shows filling in all those dates in between. NY is going to be a special show, as I’ll be playing for the first time with an unbelievable drummer/percussionist.)

The post Is That Your Blue Prius? appeared first on David Berkeley.

A long overdue post coming to you from my kitchen in Santa Fe. I just returned home from a quick tour in the upper midwest. Chicago, the middle of Wisconsin and the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, to be exact. The astute among you may realize that it’s the middle of January. You may question the logic of touring up there at this time in our orbit. Legitimate question. Really tests your love of the game. I doubt Beiber ever paid dues like this. It snowed basically the entire time we were up there. Temperatures rarely broke one degree. That said, I’m not complaining. I had a good time. I have a good coat and an odd new system of neck and head scarves that, though it makes me look vaguely like a cross between Keith Richards and Bjorn Borg, keeps me warm. Plus people in that part of the country are by and large (that’s not the end of that sentence) kind and warm. Someone even brought me a couple brownies from Zingerman’s. And although I wore more layers on stage than I would wear ice fishing (were I ever to go ice fishing), the shows were enjoyable and the food was tasty and, well, meaty (particularly the “Easy Like a Sunday Morning” burger in Chicago, which featured a fried egg, bacon and a breakfast sausage patty all on top of a burger).

Really just wanted to chime in quick to say that this blog ain’t dead, it’s just in semi-hibernation, and to muse a New Mexican minute over one amazing example of the advancements in modern travel. Yesterday morning Bill and I awoke near Grand Rapids, Michigan, to weather that I was pretty sure no madman would fly in (let alone a commercial airline with a good name to uphold). Wrong I was. We pulled out of the gate on time, if with close to zero visibility due to the Lake Effect, which basically spits snow at you sideways and blows your car door near off its hinges every time you dare open it. No matter. Our pilot wasn’t afraid (and apparently unaware that every passenger was–one robust reverend led a public prayer session in the aisle), so we pushed on. We had to be de-iced, though, and that mysterious pink chemical bath took a long time, so I missed my connection in Chicago (where it was also snowing). At first it looked like I was going to have to stay the night in Chicago and fly back to Albuquerque the next day. That was upsetting, as I have a wife and kids at home who I miss and who rely on me. Plus in this day and age, two days to get from Michigan to New Mexico seemed pretty excessive. So I found a route through DC that would get me back to Albuquerque late that night.

And it came to pass. I was flown from Grand Rapids, Michigan, to Chicago then to Washington, DC, and then to Albuquerque (where my bag was waiting for me beside the carousel) after which I drove the final 60 miles back home to Santa Fe. I was in the door by 9pm. I probably traveled close to 3000 miles. It took about 12 hours (I can’t really figure out how to adjust for all the time changes back and forth) and several of those hours were spent sitting in Dulles watching the first two episodes of the new season of Downton Abbey, so that really shouldn’t count in the travel time.

I live right off a road called The Old Santa Fe Trail. It actually is the Old Santa Fe Trail. The old trading route used to run from Missouri right here to our Plaza. It was maybe 1/3 the length I flew yesterday. It took men months to travel it. No fool would have been caught dead trying to do it January. Or if they did, they actually would have died. Caught dead. That’s probably where the expression came from–from someone trying to walk that trail in January with just a donkey. I don’t have to tell you the stories of the pioneers. It took some close to a year to get from places like DC out to places like New Mexico. You got all sorts of nasty diseases on the way. Syphilis, probably. People gave birth along the way. You buried your inlaws. You lost maybe a younger sibling trying to cross a river. You were shot at by Apaches. You considered a squirrel kill to be a gift from God. Or if you were a conquistador coming up from the other direction, maybe part of Coronado’s band, you spent years getting utterly lost in the desert searching for the seven cities of gold. You went completely delirious. Started speaking in tongues. Most of your fellow silver-clad horsemen died of dehydration, exposure, insanity or gangrene. The others went native, literally. You get the idea.

The hardest thing I had to deal with was a bit of turbulence over Tulsa, a cell phone battery that died and a strange lady behind me who, when I reclined my seat, grabbed onto it and tried to push it back up yelling “No you’re not allowed to do that yet!” Otherwise the travel was easy and nothing short of miraculous.

So I guess my point is, next time you get frustrated by your plane coming up short of the gate, and you need to wait to be pulled in, or you’re annoyed because it’s taking them a few extra minutes to get your big ass duffel onto the conveyor belt, do what I’m going to begin telling my kids to do: think of the pioneers.

Chin Up,
David

The post Think of the Pioneers appeared first on David Berkeley.

Yesterday I found myself teetering atop a metal patio chair, a seven-pound sawzall in my hand and maybe 200 yards of daisy-chained extension chord trailing behind me. I had decided to trim the wooden fence between our yard and our neighbor’s (for those of you wondering, I wisely chose not to use my axe). It was a project that had long been on my mind. Our fence on the western side, though quite attractive, is about ten-feet high. Our neighbor’s is only about man-height. I believed that if we lost the extra four-ish feet, we’d get a little more of the crazy New Mexican late day light, as well as a more expansive sunset and maybe another hundred vertical feet of the Jemez Mountains in view.

Weeks earlier, I went over the plan with the neighbor. Let’s call him Hans. In addition to being a former Alaskan wildfire fighter, on his side of the fence in question, he grows chard and grey-water irrigated fruit trees, keeps goats, a turkey and enough chickens to provide us and several other neighbors with eggs. We’ve become friends. He gives me native medicinals, tree bark that he suggests I boil into a tea, and the like. He smiles at most of my projects and plans with a sort of patronizing consent, stemming perhaps from a parenting philosophy that urges allowing your children to make their own mistakes. He often has a look in his eye as I talk of this or that, which though quite kind, also seems to say something like: “I never knew a man could reach an age where grey grows in his beard with such a small skill set or general sense of how the world works…but sure go for it.” In general, that’s all the encouragement I need.

Although Hans and my wife were well aware of my rough idea, the decision to cut the fence yesterday afternoon was mine and mine alone. It came on quite suddenly. Having made a breakthrough on the penultimate song for my book/record project, and having nothing to do for the next hour or so, the classic “why not cut down your fence” thought that comes calling to most men of my general disposition with spring right around the corner, came calling quite loudly to me.

There were a lot of things that could have gone wrong. And each potential problem kept flickering through my head like a blooper reel as I was up on my chair wailing away with that saw–my arms vibrating wildly, muscles beginning to lose the ability to keep the saw up; my hands blistering at an almost visible rate; sawdust in my hair, my eyes, my mouth, all over my neck and back, finding its way even inside the waist of my jeans and into my socks; the string of extension chords catching on the cactus in the backyard, maybe sparking a little; my uneven chair wobbling; the blade of my saw bent into a banana shape from a knot in one early beam and so cutting at a very peculiar angle; and the whole saw–even the plastic handle of the weapon–hotter than a cage of hatch chiles over a blowtorch. Still I forged ahead. Time was limited after all (the wife would return any minute), and I could deal with all those problems. There was a fence to be cut, damn it.

Now this fence had not been level to begin with. Each piece of wood was intentionally cut unevenly or sunk unevenly into the ground, giving the whole expanse a natural look (see above pic) that I was working hard to match by making some pieces taller and some shorter, some straight and some angled. Also, I only wanted to lower the height of the southern half of the fence. For privacy sake, I wanted to preserve the existing height of the stretch between our houses. I had decided that a gradual (and thus invisible) slope would be better than cutting off four feet from half the fence and the none from the rest. So the goal was to do uneven cuts and to slowly and steadily reduce the slope of the overall reduction until I got back to the original fence height near our houses.

Turns out it was a prospect for a master builder not a procrastinating musician. If you weren’t already aware, intentionally cutting wood to look “naturally uneven” is far harder than an average city dweller might assume. Also, the notion that a gradual slope would be undetectable on any length shorter than say a quarter mile is highly unlikely. I realized pretty quickly that my plan was not a good one. Yet driven by the classically male belief that if I just finish the whole thing it’ll work out in the end, I pushed ahead.

About mid way through the cutting, Hans popped his head up over the fence (luckily I wasn’t cutting nearby at the time).
“Looks good,” Hans said in a tone that I had to assume was sarcastic.
“Not so sure about that,” I laughed nervously, blinking sawdust out of my eye and trying hard to hold onto the scalding chainsaw.
“Nah. I’m glad you’re doing it, David. Might let in more of that morning light.”
“Man, sure hope so,” I told him. “I realize I’m probably breaking some adage.”
“How’s that?”
“You know, good fences, good neighbors.”
Hans chuckled but said nothing.
“Well, we think you guys are great neighbors,” he finally offered. “The old ones didn’t take as kindly to our backyard farming.” He stepped down from the stump he’d been standing on. Then out of view, he said, “The only thing I might have done, though, is not cut the fence quite so low beside our chicken coop here. I bet you’re going to start seeing some of birds in you yard.”

I looked back at the area he was referring to, the part I had just finished, the part I had cut pretty much flush with the tin roof of his coop.
“Ah fuck,” I said, wishing he had told me fifteen minutes earlier. “Didn’t really think of that.”

He laughed, but he didn’t seem to really mind. And so I finished the job as best I was able. Then I threw away the burning hot bent blade, coiled the extension chords and hosed myself off. The boys loved how the fence looked when they saw it, and together we stacked an SUV-sized pile of cut wood to one day toss into an epic bonfire. Last evening, the sunset was incredible back there. And this morning I looked out expecting to see a bunch of chickens strutting around but found none.

So far so good. That said, I’m not proposing cutting down anymore of the fence anytime soon. I’ve vowed not to pattern my fence cutting on the way I cut my boys’ hair, which steadily gets shorter and shorter as I try to level it out….That said, I must admit that I am itching to replace that blade and trim just a little bit more here and there…Still I still see the value in a good fence. But let’s hope a little more light and free ranging chickens make for good neighbors as well.
Chin up,
David

The post Chin Up appeared first on David Berkeley.