Spring in Min­neapo­lis is your free-spir­it­ed ex-girl­friend who just moved back into town. ​“You’re back!” you say, breath­less. ​“I missed you,” she whis­pers, slid­ing into your arms as if noth­ing had ever changed. Lat­er that night, as you drift off to sleep in a post-coital bliss, you dream of how this time will be dif­fer­ent, some­how your hap­pi­ness will con­vince her to stay. But you wake up to find she’s gone, again, chas­ing dreams in a warmer cli­mate while you lie stub­born­ly to any­one who will lis­ten. Her absence doesn’t both­er you. She’ll be back in a few weeks. You hope.

In hon­or of anoth­er (admit­ted­ly very mild, thanks El Niño and cli­mate change) Min­neapo­lis win­ter on her way out the door, here are a few things I’ve been work­ing on, pre­sent­ed in mean­ing­less order:

My friend Carl Broemel’s new record has just been mas­tered and will soon be released to the wild. Like his last record, it was record­ed off-and-on over a few years, and like his last record it’s a heart-break­ing­ly beau­ti­ful piece of work. I had the huge plea­sure of play­ing with some incred­i­ble musi­cians on this, and can’t wait for you to hear it.

Speak­ing of incred­i­ble musi­cians, last month I joined Brandy Zdan for a duo show on her way through Min­neapo­lis. I met Brandy last year while in Nashville; we record­ed a few songs togeth­er in what turned out to be one of the most emo­tion­al­ly exhaust­ing and cre­ative­ly reward­ing moments in my musi­cal time­line. I haven’t writ­ten much about it — one of those cas­es where words are a let­down in com­par­i­son — but suf­fice to say play­ing those songs again was a joy. One of the most fun aspects of the show was tak­ing on a chal­lenge of per­form­ing mul­ti­ple instru­ments — play­ing a key­board to my left while play­ing drums; fir­ing loops and sam­ples while play­ing Moog and Omni­chord parts; walk­ing over to my bari sax for a solo through a mul­ti­tude of delays. Spe­cial thanks goes out to my Mac­book Pro for not melt­ing into a pud­dle of silicon.

I’ve also stum­bled into a few new projects; one that I’ve tru­ly been enjoy­ing is join­ing John Mun­son, Matt Wil­son, and friends in the The Twi­light Hours. The band is sort of a lin­ear exten­sion of their time togeth­er as Trip Shake­speare; the songs share a sim­i­lar fear­less, quirky, pop sen­si­bil­i­ty. They have a new record com­ing out very soon and some ambi­tious ideas plant­ed — I’m excit­ed to see what blos­soms this summer.