My friend Rachelle came upon the idea of having some guest bloggers share their impressions of our shows out on the road.  Bryan Perry was nice enough to share this write-up of our first show on the tour, at the lovely Morris Organic Farm in Irwin, PA:

My friends and family loved hearing Jason and his band at the Morris Farm outside Pittsburgh. Sitting among fireflies at the edge of rolling hills, you’d have though we were in Jason’s native North Carolina once he started his set.

He played extensively from his wonderful new album, Highliner, a collection of wistful originals that shape his current geography of longing, love, and journeying. Jason’s musicianship is excellent as ever – sometimes delicate, sometimes driving, always effortless – and seeing him in the flesh is a treat.

I especially liked the kinetic “Train,” which nicely highlighted Jason’s distinctive upper vocal range, and made me want to hop on a boxcar to follow him to his next tour stop. “When I Came Down Off the Mountain” was a bluegrassy, down-home track (even better on vinyl, with backup fiddles – buy it!) that I think will get playtime on independent radio.

My wife loved “Outposts,” a narrative ballad marked less by youthful yearning and more by wisdom and contentedness – maybe this is what you appreciate more around age 40?

Jason has a fondness for lost souls, what-ifs, and quirky turns of history; “Moon Mission” touches on the loneliness that can come with courage and transformation, and “Snowstorm” is sort of a love song that references George Washington’s plight in icy New Jersey – and teaches some valuable vocabulary lessons.

Late in the set, he played some old crowd favorites from previous collaboration with Brian Funck, including “Hand Drawn Flowers,” “Lionsong,” “Your Voice at Tidewater,” and a joyful, upbeat rendition of “Carolina,” which is a beautiful love letter to his home state. With top-notch support from drummer Gerko Tempelman and bassist Toby Hazlett, this was a great evening for a new listen to an old friend – catch Jason and Highliner this summer!

Bryan Perry

Here’s a little gem, unearthed last year. The three Stooges in a 1938 home movie.

This footage was filmed 75 years ago today (July 1, 1938), on Atlantic City, NJ’s steel pier, by George Mann, an avid photographer who was better known as half of the acrobatic comedy dance duo Barto and Mann.  Barto and Mann were huge stars in vaudeville (where they first encountered the Stooges) and later on Broadway. George was always pulling out his camera, taking pictures of his showbiz pals and his wife, Barbara Bradford Mann, who appears in the video above as the beautiful blonde giving the Stooges a run for their money. George plays the tall interloper who calls security over just as Curly is about to get lucky. Brad Smith, the Manns’ son, who edited and uploaded the video, posted this about his mother:

“Barbara Bradford, married to George Mann, was a John Robert Powers model, appearing in ads for Coca-Cola, Chesterfield, Buick, Railway Express, Kodak, Ivory, and many other businesses. She was the model for a painting done by Bradshaw Crandal that appeared on the February 1937 cover of Cosmopolitan. In 1937, she was voted the most beautiful woman in New York.”

here are some of George’s photos from that day.

(Here’s Moe anticipating his role in You Nazty Spy, in which he becomes the first Hollywood actor to lampoon Hitler. George doesn’t look happy about it.)

You can find more of George Mann’s photos here, here, and here.

Here’s a set of old theater marquees, documenting some of the many appearances of Barto and Mann.

These stunning photos offer a glimpse into a lost time — a time when it wasn’t strange to have an elephant backstage, when theater marquees were spilling over with the names of live singers, dancers, comedians, and jugglers, when a guy could not only make a living but become world-famous as an acrobat-comedian, rolling across a wide-open country with his gorgeous wife and a camera, ready to lovingly capture the youth, passion, cameraderie, optimism, and joy of his fellow troupers and friends.

Many thanks to Brad Smith for giving me permission to link to his photos.

I was walking down West End Ave Last Saturday night after a gig when I saw it, on 100th street: a phone booth. I stood there and stared at it, then I took a picture of it, then I got inside and picked up the receiver. A lusty dial tone. It worked. I was excited to find this relic of a bygone time, not in the corner of a convenience store parking lot in, say, Indiana, but here, undisturbed, and only slightly (almost tenderly) defaced, on a Manhattan Street corner. It was a little jarring — slightly breathtaking, like seeing a deer or Lucy Liu. I inevitably thought of Superman changing — specifically, the version played by good old Christopher Reeve, who took my breath away in the 1978 movie and from whose era this phone booth seems to have come.

Some Googling tells me that the freestanding, outdoor, 4-sided phone booth I breathlessly stumbled into is one of only 4 left in all of Manhattan. All four are on the Upper West Side’s West End Ave (there’s another on 101st that I walked past without noticing). No one seems to know why only these four remain. It’s due either to the generous caprice of a Verizon executive, the tenacity of a few preservation-minded residents, or the klout of a Hollywood executive who demands actual phone booths to lend his films veracity. Incidentally, there *was* a movie called “Phone Booth” set in Manhattan, but instead of using a real phone booth they built a fake one, on 53rd and Broadway, before deciding New York was too cold, whereupon they moved the whole production to L.A. That movie contains the immortal line “hang up the f#@*king phone,” which, in a world full of cell phones but devoid of phone booths is something we’ve all wanted to say.

(Update: I was just about to hit the “Publish” button when I chanced upon this terrific article, which tells us that we owe the continued existence of these West End Ave phone booths not to any Hollywood mogul but to the persistence of a “self-described pay phone buff” named Alan Flacks who seems to have devoted his life to lobbying Verizon on behalf of his beloved phone booths. )

ok blogging every day is hard. If I could blog every day about being tired, that would be easier. cause guess what, I’m tired again. The commute. The commute from Jersey to NYC back to Jersey is not easy. As soon as I get a chance I believe I will move back to NY. In fact I honestly can’t wait to live in NYC again.

Someone is giving away a stripper pole, and apparently wants it gone very badly.

Here’s to new beginnings.

Album news. We finished the digital mastering today, and it’s being sent to the vinyl mastering guy tomorrow. Artwork and vinyl mastering should be done this week.

I’m excited to have an actual vinyl record out. Apparently they’re making a comeback, according to this article, anyway. The company I plan to use, Brooklyn Phono (chosen for reasons of proximity and expediency), is featured.

Today I woke up after a fitful night’s sleep and knew instantly that I was going to be ridiculously tired all day, the price I paid for having a miniscule amount of coffee the night before to keep me awake in a meeting. I’m constantly falling asleep in evening meetings full of 20-somethings, and in order not to be the old-guy-falling asleep at 9 o clock, I drink coffee and then I pay for it like I did today. It was a church meeting. I’m the oldest person at church, save for Stephanie. Thanks, Stephanie, for saving me from being the oldest person at church.

So I was tired all day, and while I still pretty much got done what I needed to get done, I did it slowly, as if underwater, or being chased in a dream by a slow-footed but determined monster. And my heart felt like I was being chased in a dream too. Stressed out.

I did later manage to muster up enough of a human feeling to tell a girl in a Piggly Wiggly shirt that I liked her shirt. And then later I told a dude with a huge silver handlebar mustache that I liked his mustache. which restored my faith in humanity in general and my own humanity specifically.

here’s a hipster Piggly Wiggly stuck to a lightpole in Brooklyn.

No time to write much today. Instead I invite you to check out this interview of irascible American treasure Ed Asner by Kliph Nesteroff. The Guardian newspaper calls Nesteroff’s blog “a portal into a previously unseen world.”

While you’re at it, stop watching this “Game of Thrones” crap and check out some “Lou Grant.”

At breakfast, I listen, I nod, I murmur “mhm.” I don’t have anything to say. I usually don’t. Ray tells of a vision quest, of wise talking animals, how flaming stars vanished in a sky of India Ink. Time to go. I become a child in the few seconds it takes me to clamber into the backseat of Mom and Dad’s car with the old panting dog. Her body is warm between my legs. Her eyes are dying stars in a dark grey sky.