Hey All!

Howdy! The different geographical locales of my boyhood were strung together by Idaho State Highway 95, which ran from the Canadian border southwards, through Bonner’s Ferry, Sandpoint, Coeur d’ Alene, Tensed, Plummer and Viola before taking a dog leg in Moscow and continuing on towards Lewiston.

We aren’t on that 95 today, but instead bouncing along the concrete and asphalt river connecting Washington D.C. to Baltimore. We’ll play in Baltimore tonight and then turn the ship around and try to sleep as we bumptiously make our way in a southerly direction towards Durham.

The last month has been a pretty hectic blur, as I expected it would be. Moments come back – on stage at the Grand Canal Theater in Dublin, making an off kilter music video, running along the reflecting pool near the Lincoln Monument, eating something dangerous in Philadelphia, and watching a plume of ash head inexorably towards Heathrow Airport on a weather map in a Seattle hotel I was hoping to leave. Has anyone else noticed that “Heathrow” and “death row” are only separated by a single letter?

All this is a rambling way of saying that the adventure of putting out So Runs the World Away is well underway and all of us are doing great. Sam is sitting here next to me checking basketball scores, Dan Cardinal (our great stage manager) is wearing a rabid monkey t-shirt, and Tim Craven our tour manager actually looks like he got a little sleep last night.

The shows are late night ones and we’ve been playing around two hours a night, which has been feeling like a great length of time to play a lot of these new songs. I have a bunch of phone interviews coming up this afternoon, but before they start calling Dawn and I are going to go on a tour of a decommissioned nuclear missile submarine floating in Baltimore’s harbor.

Thank you all. Touring the United States in the summertime is just as good as it gets. See you soon!

Best,
Josh