I’ve kept this web­site for years. It’s an anachro­nism in the age of social media, but it’s my anachro­nism and I’m pret­ty fond of it. I was hop­ing my first post of 2020 would be chock full of fun things — albums I’ve been work­ing on, gra­tu­itous releas­es of per­son­al music, record­ing stu­dio updates, maybe even the last install­ment of the Able­ton Live series I’ve been work­ing on for years (not like­ly) — but here we are in March, and my first stretch of free time for the year is thanks to a glob­al coro­n­avirus pandemic.

Being a musi­cian is hard enough, but now that the world is shun­ning trav­el and social gath­er­ing the chal­lenges are feel­ing a lit­tle insur­mount­able. Over the last three days I’ve dropped over thir­ty shows and ses­sions from my cal­en­dar. The artists and venues that haven’t yet can­celed are run­ning on fumes of fool­ish opti­mism. (Maybe ​“cap­i­tal­ism” is a bet­ter choice of word.) They rely on an audi­ence to make a liv­ing, and musi­cians rely on venues, and I, pri­mar­i­ly a side­man, rely on oth­er musi­cians. It’s a chain of sur­vival that’s melt­ing down sur­pris­ing­ly quick.

What to do in the mean­time? Well, I do have my stu­dio, Bones & Wire, where I’ll be hun­ker­ing down after a thor­ough dis­in­fect­ing and mak­ing as much music as I can with what resources I have avail­able. Some of the projects I’ve been work­ing on over the last year will be com­ing out soon — with­out album release shows or tour­ing as an option to pro­mote them it’s still up in the air how they’ll be pre­sent­ed. I’ll be spend­ing a lit­tle more time than usu­al research­ing how to earn mon­ey from the music I usu­al­ly write for fun in my spare time. Most of my time will be spent home with my fam­i­ly, enter­tain­ing kids out of school and day­care and catch­ing up on house chores while the life­lines of music I’ve grown accus­tomed to are put on indef­i­nite hia­tus. I real­ize, of course, I’m luck­i­er than many.

It’s a top­sy-turvy world out there, who knows for how long, but hope­ful­ly you’re read­ing this from a safe and sane place and hang­ing here with me spir­i­tu­al­ly until life is as close to nor­mal as we need it to be.