20 Years: All That’s Changed is Everything and Nothing August 15, 2009

I’ve just returned from 10 glorious days in Kodiak, Alaska for my 20 year high school reunion.  I captured 8 hours of video, wrote 3 new songs, and took scores of photos.  Best of all, I reconnected with classmates and THE WILD.  I can still smell the smoke from the driftwood fires, the fish rotting in the creeks, the salt air cleaning me inside and out.  Here are the lyrics to a song that I penned with my pal, Jennifer Beardsley.  I performed it at our 20 year reunion party at El Chicano’s.  It was written for our classmates, to the tune of a certain Guns ‘n Roses song that we all loved.  89 is FINE!!!!

 

Julia and Jennifer on the float plane from Larsen Bay to Kodiak, AK. 8/5/09

EVERYTHING AND NOTHING
Lyrics by Julia Francis and Jennifer Beardsley
Copyright 2009 No Shrinking Violet

 

Shed a tear, I was missin’ you, my class of ’89
It took all my airline miles to get here
Some lost weight and some lost hair, but there’s one thing that we all share
20 years roll back with a shot and a beer

 

Where were you when you lost it?
Where were you when you tossed it?
All that’s changed is everything and nothing.

 

Too young for the bar, so we drank Luckies in our car
Cruising the road to Chiniak
She puked on your pants, before the teen center dance
Got the evil eye from Mr. Kubiak

 

Where were you when you lost it?
Where were you when you tossed it?
All that’s changed is everything and nothing. 

 

He touched me out of bounds, late one night at the Rodeo Grounds
Straight up now tell me are you really gonna love me forever
He said let’s just be friends, thank God there was no Facebook then
I was a sucker for any guy in leather

 

Enough Bartles and Jaymes’ and you won’t care what their names is
Coastie says ‘Hey baby, you got a nice rack’
You got spew on your shoe, at the VFW
Tomorrow morning your boat leaves for Afognak

 

Everything and nothing….changes…
Everything and nothing….changes…

 

Scorps had a really cool truck, but did he ever get a single fuck
Larry Ledoux tellin me what do to, and I’m breaking own my own curfew
I just want to fit in, I’m waiting for my life to begin
Everybody’s cooler than me, I’m as morose as Morrisey
I want you to see me, I want you to know me
I want you to hold me, just hold me, please hold me…

 

As I look around the room, I see the story’s the same
We did what we had to do to make it
New friends may come and go, but only you and I know
Our special strength and how this island shaped it

 

Where were you when you lost it?
Where were you when you tossed it?
All that’s changed is everything and nothing.

So much fun, so little time May 25, 2009

Victor and Mike

 

This picture pretty easily sums up my feelings about playing NYC last week.  I was fortunate enough to have my Milwaukee-based Lucky Penny producers, Victor DeLorenzo and Mike Hoffmann, join me onstage, (along with John Montalbano) and it’s safe to say we had a blast.  My iPhone captured this happy little moment on May 19, 2009, after our rehearsal at Smash Studios in Midtown – we were cabbing it back to have drinks with the lovely Karen Keene at the Hotel Giraffe.  I am so grateful for these guys in my creative life – they inspire me, encourage my voice, helped me realize my latest album, and then were good enough to come and play the songs live with me.  I love their spirit of fun and exploration, and their willingness to jump in on harmonies.  Just so much fun, and it was over way too fast.  I look forward to the next time we’ll get to play together.  Our shared creative time is a big ol’ gift to me, and I can’t thank them enough.   If I may say so.  And I do.

Jack London’s Piggery February 8, 2009

I am preparing to leave the Valley of the Moon for the East Bay.

My love affair with Jack London continues as I am currently inhaling a wonderful biography of the writer, which fills in many holes for me.  I now know that his Beauty Ranch in Glen Ellen (just five minutes from where I currently live) was meant to be an escape from San Francisco, Oakland, all of industrialization, and his painful past.

I moved here with a kindred desire to get away from the din and the negative voices in my own head, to become closer to Nature, and to my own voice.   In the two years I’ve lived here, I have been somewhat successful: there is never a shortage of animal life to encounter – the squirrels in our redwood trees talk to me, sounds I’ve never heard from squirrels elsewhere.  When I go for a walk I am met by at least half a dozen cats, and I always take time to stand under the eucalyptus tree that is home to four hawks, who flirt and fight with each from the highest branches.  There are so many animals that have talked with me, I have begun writing a song about them.  I am researching ways to record this new song on Jack London’s property.

But in a week, I will be moving all my belongings to a new home with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge, just a few miles from where Jack sweated, fought, struggled and starved in his early days.  I hope the industrial life will be kinder to me than it was to him.  I would have liked to have been more prolific in my time in the Valley of the Moon, but I find that I need more stimulus and more conversation than the animals alone can provide.

I know that I will continue to visit Sonoma Valley and find inspiration from it.  I also hope to find more peace inside my mind than Jack was able to find in his short lifetime.  He died in 1916 on November 22, and I was born 55 years later to the day.  I feel there is still much work to be done with Jack – this incredibly flawed, ego-fed, fatherless writer who was never afraid of making a reality of his dreams, whatever the cost.

Jack, I will be back.

Jack London and his piggery

Honest Abe is a Lucky Penny September 23, 2008

Today I discovered another reason why the artwork on my latest CD, ‘Lucky Penny’, of a penny, is so cool!

The significance of Abe Lincoln just hit me over the head after watching this feature on the news tonight. Next year marks his 200th birthday, and they’re making some new penny B-sides to celebrate him. 146 years ago today, President Lincoln presented his Emancipation Proclamation.

Honest Abe has been popping up everywhere lately. I particularly liked hearing about him when Obama announced the exciting August news in Springfield, Illinois.

I like the ghosts that have been hovering near us lately. They are good ghosts.