why do I bother.
when the ends just the same.
over and over and over again.
why not move on?
why not give up?
there’s no point in quitting
when I know I’ll just keep on and on and on…

Just gotta shift focus.

Following the show last night, a small crowd grew around the barricade surrounding the Avett Brothers tour bus – the biggest bus I have ever seen – and we were all told that the band had already boarded and would not be signing autographs or meeting with the fans. Disappointed sighs and a general reluctance to move along followed for a bit until the door opened and out walked the band’s tour cellist, Joe Kwon. Crowd excitement grew. Following Joe, out walked Bob Crawford, the band’s bassist. Smiling, they both started to shake hands and sign autographs. Then the brothers came out and the crowd was VERY excited. Someone piped up, “Hey, they told us you wouldn’t be comin’ out to sign autographs,” to which Seth Avett replied, “We just couldn’t help it.”

Joe, Bob and the brothers Avett, Seth and Scott, put on one hell of a show last night. It was a sold out audience at the Barrymore Theatre in Madison, WI, and the Avett Brothers wanted us to know that they appreciated us all comin’ out on a Wednesday night. One long set was briefly divided by a curtain-less call out from the fans with chants and clapping and voices loss in chaotic crescendo crushed back down when Seth declared that sure, they’d play another tune. They preceded to play THREE more tunes and just brought down the house.

The band’s constantly evolving sound was clearly displayed with members swapping instruments, shuffling from drums to keys to even having Bob sing lead on a song. From their original setup with upright bass, banjo and acoustic, their signature sound and fan-favorite tunes poured out over us and we were pleased. Peppered in between were tracks from their newest release, “I and Love and You”, and we were *moved*.

I’ve read complaints that they seem to be drifting too far from the shore; a sentiment reminiscent of reaction to Bob Dylan’s switch to electric that was all too amplified by a fellow show-goer behind me continually declaring that Rick Rubin (the legendary producer who worked with the band on their new album) was taking the band down the Dave Mathews path to “crap-town”. (My words, not his. Poetic, no?)

However one feels about the growth of the band and the product they thankfully chose to share with us, you can’t help but feel excited for them. They work hard, relentlessly touring and composing…and their growing fan base is a testament to that. Three years ago I was introduced to the Avett Brothers at the High Noon Saloon. On a whim, a friend and I had decided to check out a honky-tonk band that was passing through town, BR549. Opening that night were the Avetts, and they stole the show. There were about 50 people in the entire place – if that – and we GOT DOWN. The following two years found the Avetts returning to Madison and to the High Noon and to bigger and bigger crowds. Clearly, as receipts from the Barrymore prove, they’ve outgrown the High Noon, and perhaps even the Barrymore.

Maybe we’ll get treated to TWO shows next year. How’s about a Friday & Saturday night lineup, guys? Waddayasay?

The raw emotion released upon the crowd last night seemed almost involuntary; a catharsis for some terrific love lost, with the pain pressed from their flesh. Or….perhaps, torn? Some people in the crowd had wet eyes, broadly grinning and singing along and for a few moments I was actually somewhere else. A place where classwork and and my job and the day-to-day stress seemed featherweight in comparison to what these four men were sharing with us. Good music does that. It removes your pain and shares with you new perspective and you feel gratitude.

Someone might want to ask the Avetts how they were able to put on the best show Madison has seen this year. They may ask how they managed to put on the best show that I have EVER seen at Madison’s best indoor venue. The Avett Bros need only reply, that they “just couldn’t help it.”

1. Moth’s Wings – Passion Pit
2. Lisztomania – Phoenix
3. And It Spread – The Avett Brothers
4. West Won – These United States
5. Mama Tried – Merle Haggard
6. Sun it Rises – Fleet Foxes
7. Janglin – Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros8.
8. Cinder And Smoke – Iron and Wine
9. No You Girls – Franz Ferdinand
10. In My Dreams – Eels
11. Say Please (album) – Monsters Of Folk
12. I’ve Got Your Number – Passion Pit
13. Horchata – Vampire Weekend
14. Lasso – Phoenix
15. Don’t You Evah – Spoon
16. Three More Days – Ray LaMontagne
17. Black Dresses – The Builders and The Butchers
18. Stranger – Noah and the Whale

You wanna know what I really want? I really want to be good at something. Anything. Like REALLY good, ya know? I’m only sorta good at this and that…but excel at nothing. Gotta work on that.

 

The 2000’s are almost a thing of the past. THINK about that. I keep gettin older and they stay the same age and time keeps speeding up. A month is a blip; a year, a flutter…and I’m pretty much doin the same thing now as I was almost 10 years ago. Well…pretty much.

As the year 2000 rang in we were knee deep in the Florida Everglades, ushering in the new millennium with our favorite band and 85K of our closest friends. I was still delivering for Pizza Hut and desperately trying to find some sense in it all. Late nights spent smoking and drinking and pondering and noodling on the guitar. There were parties and parties and the hangovers lasted half a day. An EPIC summer PHiSH tour changed my life.

By NYE 2001 I’d had been at a new job (Latitude Graphics) for 10 months and had even taken a computer class at MATC. Things were looking up. The lifestyle hadn’t really changed, however…I just got up much earlier in the day. Hangovers were still somewhat manageable. This was the year I became acquainted with my true nemesis, ANXIETY.

Marriage was the best thing to (Ever) happen to me in 2002. A beautiful day for me and my beautiful bride who’d been with me since 1997. What else happened that year…I cannot recall. I think we saw the PHiSH a few times.

The years 2003 through 2006 are a bit jumbled; a hot sticky mess of late-night hootenannies and camping trips and PHiSH concerts and general depravity. Throughout the whole time…employment at Latitude Graphics. Trusty, instructional, helpful, flexible, and understanding…Latitude Graphics. Oh, and I went back to school. MATC has been teaching me things ever since. Keep changing your program..and you can keep going forever. Things were solid throughout these years…but I had no focus, just short bursts of peace and satisfaction. 2007 changed all of that and everything else.

This was the year Lizz told me that she had news. Nine months later I was a father and the focus had arrived. Living for a child is the most gratifying thing one can do. It’s indescribable. That year was filled with fear and love as we built a new world for what was coming and studied up on all sorts of ideas and methods. We were showered with gifts and excitement. We breathed it all in that summer…and despite my understandable nervousness, I had the lowest blood pressure readings I had ever had. In fact, it has only continued to climb every reading since. Peace was upon us.

The next year was fraught with change and decision. Lifestyles were permanently altered and I went back to school with a CLEAR mission and program. I finally had a five-year plan I might stick to. 2008 brought our world in much closer to us. Our circle tightened and we felt safe within it’s warm seemingly controlled circumference. Little things began to take on greater importance and I felt older than I ever had before. Not that I minded, as Oliver brought us back to when we were young. He didn’t care about “big pictures” and “five-year plans”. Responsibility – piled high on someone working full-time, going to school and raising a child – was something that didn’t affect the way my son saw things. Everything is raw and real through his eyes…and for the first time in a long time, Lizz and I were seeing things with the same measure of abandonment. We were young again. We watched as our son learned to speak and walk and run and jump. He wanted to be us…and we wanted to be him.

Coming into 2009 I was as stressed as I have ever been. School was taking it’s toll, as was my inability to find time for friends and family. Money is always tight, deadlines are deadlines, and a man with responsibility has little time or energy for letting loose like in the good old days. As stressful as things could be, however, they were often equally exciting and truly amazing. Oliver was learning so fast. Lizz was impressing me every day with the ways she managed our home. She always smiles as she cleans up after us, cooks for us, loves us and hugs us. These things got me through….these things and the people behind them were and are the reason I’m here. I am no one and nothing without my family and my family that was about to get one bigger.

I spent the first half of the year reveling in the new pregnancy and looking forward to summer and it’s little gifts it brings us. Like those perfect days where if you step to the left…the sun hits you hard. You feel warm and everything is good and nothing else matters. If you step to the right and into the shade, you feel refreshed and new as that soft breeze tickles your face. You have choices to make that don’t seem so hard anymore…a calmness comes over you.

And so here we are. The decade drawing to its close and what’s changed? I saw PHiSH again last week for the first time in five years. They sound better than ever, even if I can’t party like I used to. Goin’ out drinkin’ with the friends happens very rarely and the hangovers now last two days solid. Still working at Latitude Graphics, and still in school pluggin away at that 5-Year. Starting full-time in a week, I’ll be away from home WAY more than I want to be and I’ll be spending that much more of my time studying when I AM home. Lizz is VERY pregnant and I’ve been spending more and more time with my hand upon her belly, feeling little Elliot kick kick kick away (gonna be a soccer player). Oliver amazes me more and more every day. His mind is brilliant; his energy, constant.

Last week I saw into the new little baby’s heart. Four chambers beating away at top speed working for the day when he’ll be able to run around and demand crackers and TV like his older brother. We saw his little feet and little arms all curled up. We saw his beautiful face and there we were again, re-experiencing the joy that had been so moving last time around. As I begin to stress about the upcoming semester I think about that and it calms me down. As I read and read and sit in class after class; as I pour over notes and take exams and get up for work and have to constantly leave the house and everything that means so much to me….I will think about this little boy and what he’s about to go through (not to mention his mother and what she’s about to go through!). In comparison, my struggles seem so insignificant; my experiences so thickly veiled with sarcasm and contempt. I could learn a lot from my children.

I sure hope the next ten years are as exciting and interesting as these last ten have been. I hope my children look back on them fondly and remember trips to the beach and camping and swimming and ice cream and movies. I hope they look at the 2010’s as the years where they learned how much their parents loved them and would do anything for them. I want Oliver and Elliot to learn as much in these coming ten years as I have in the past ten times TEN. I want their mother and I fall deeper in love while the kids experience childhood they way children ought to as childhood is the only time we are really free and real…even as we are held captive by curfews and frequent groundings.

This is my 10-year plan. A new career, a new job. A healthy and fun-loving family. Friends and parties and trips and laughter. Days spent outside from dawn till dusk….and movie marathons spent astride the couch with buckets of terrible snack food and smiling faces. Oh, and I wouldn’t mind seeing another PHiSH show or two while we’re at it.

As long as we’re all together.

Is just always so damn sad when summer starts leaning toward that far end. Winter is just so LONG and cold and constrictive that anything else makes it feel like we can simply BREATHE and live another day. Spring is beautiful and refreshing and promises so many things. Fall cools us down; slows us down…we sit down and sip slowly as we try to take in and truly remember these final moments during which we were happy.

Summer, though…with it’s bikinis and sun and water and fun; beaches and blankets and campfires and fireworks. Parades and parties and backyard high-fives….Summer makes us young again. Even if all we do is stare out the window at someone clearly making better use of this beautiful day, at least there’s LIFE to be witnessed. YOUNG life; vibrant and moving very fast…..toward that inevitable end on that far side, wherever the wind takes us.

I’m gonna miss days like this…

any which way the wind blows, originally uploaded by Ryanwiz.

For over 11 and a half years we’ve been together, with almost 7 of those as husband and wife. Next Monday, the 20th, will mark another anniversary…and words nor photos can sufficiently describe the adoration and love I have for this woman. She is the most beautiful, loving, caring, smart, and sexy person I have ever or will ever meet. She is the best mother and mate anyone could ever hope for and I get to sleep next to her every night. I am luckiest man in the world.

1. For the love she shares with me.
2. For the innumerable ways she cares for our son and unborn child.
3. For the way she cooks and cleans for us with a smile on her face.
4. For the kisses I receive on my way out the door and the one I look forward to upon my return.
5. For all the unmentionables…
6. For the beautiful years she has so graciously shared with me.
7. For all the years to come…

I love you now, more than ever, Elizabeth.
Happy anniversary a bit early.
~ryan

Those folks at Hulu have got to get their shit together. I’m dyin over here.

Four is a nice even number. The thought of pairing off for a quick match of table tennis; or perhaps grabbing one kid a piece, throwing them under your arm, and making that dash to your gate; these seem so much easier to grasp when it’s the neat and clean number four.

One of us is 4 inches long, crown to rump, and weighs in at about 2 1/2 ounces. Another can now climb onto the bar stools, loves wagon rides and plays the harmonica. Two of us are tired most of the time and couldn’t care less. What’s worth doing but that which comes coupled with sacrifice and fear…and shock and awe?

Four of us, four for all; together some time, around Christmastime.
~ryan

1. Cello Song – The Books (Featuring Jose Gonzalez)
2. I Think I Need a New Heart – The Magnetic Fields
3. Smoke Detector – Rilo Kiley
4. Melody Day – Caribou
5. Mykonos - Fleet Foxes
6. My Girls – Animal Collective
7. Over And Over – Hot Chip
8. Riot Radio – The Dead 60s
9. Earthquake Weather – Beck
10. Biggest Loves – The Quiet Ones
11. All The Things That Go to Make Heaven And Earth – The New Pornographers
12. Golden Age – TV on the Radio
13. Campus - Vampire Weekend
14. The Rat – The Walkmen
15. Train Song – Feist + Ben Gibbard
16. Girls & Uniforms – The Quiet Ones
17. Soon - My Bloody Valentine