I am weary and grateful. Just finished two holiday shows at Blue Rock Studio with the inimitable Terri Hendrix and Lloyd Maines. Our new journal, The Blue Rock Review, Volume 3, is finally here as well, featuring creative contemporary voices of songwriting and visual art. You may discover these things and more at www.bluerocktexas.com.

Dodee and I will see family this week and have a traditional Christmas except for the smoked turkey from The Salt Lick BBQ.

I wish you wonderful surprises these holidays, the suspension of disbelief, the rekindling of imagination, and the abiding peace and joy that live at the heart of this season of lights.

Safe travels,

Billy

So we must say goodbye to Pavarotti. It hurts. I wish I was in Modena, Italy to stand among the thousands outside the cathedral this morning. His face was remarkable - such fire and intensity when singing those aerial passages, as though the whole universe was depending on him. Then his eyes would soften and his smile would envelope an entire soccer stadium, as if Love itself was singing and smiling.

Two years ago, my wife Dodee and I were able to see and hear him in Dallas. I will always be grateful to friends Jamie and Danna for getting us tickets. There was Pavarotti. We were there, as I see it now, to verify the fact of him. His voice was an effortless miracle, even if his high notes had become less available. And something about his generosity of spirit was no less miraculous. Yes, I know he had critics and was even banned from the Lyric Opera House in Chicago for cancelling too many appearances. So be it. But on a summer night in Dallas, we felt what the world has felt - that he was singing FOR us. I mean Pavarotti was singing OUR hearts out. His voice seemed to carry the joy and the longing of the whole world.

Last night Dodee and I drove home from the Austin airport to the sound of a recent Pavarotti CD, inexplicable tears streaming from our faces. It’s odd how hard it is right now to say goodbye to a friend I never knew. But I feel profoundly grateful too.

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Ah, the crazy news - Turns out we have to say goodbye to Madelien L’Engle too. The writer of the classic, A Wrinkle in Time, and many compelling books on faith and art has died this week, too. I have long admired her and appreciated her articulate sense of the interconnection of the creative life with the spiritual one. She seemed to appreciate, even in her eighties, the high art of being a child. Adieu - and with heartfelt thanks.

I have enjoyed hearing from many about the new album. My favorite response has been from a friend, Laura, who said the CD takes the aggression out of her daily commute in Austin. Some of you are learning and playing the pieces, too. Does me good.

Dodee and I are headed to Memphis this weekend to attend the International Folk Festival. This will be a first for me. It looks to be sheer madness - seems everybody with a guitar and some little round glasses is on the roster. World class songwriters will be there and lots who are gifted and unknown. They fill up a hotel downtown and have “official” and “private” showcases that go pretty much all day and night for five days. I am not planning to play but we are going to enjoy, see friends, and scout a bit for Blue Rock Studios (our place in Wimberley, www.bluerocktexas.com).

So what is happening in folk music that captures my imagination? This whole genre is almost totally under the media radar. Attention is not paid. Except it is - in private house concerts, coffee houses and listening rooms, summer hillside festivals, by avid fans doing their word of mouth grass roots thing, and once a year in some hotel in Memphis where it seems the whole world runs on the energy of singer songwriters. Something is going on here largely missed in the culture of broadcast media and product placement. It’s as though the songs themselves are “compelling” the audience - a movement from the bottom up. Maybe you hear Beth Wood sing “Little Hands” or Pierce Pettis’ “Black Sheep Boy” and it feels so unfiltered and necessesary, you get on your blog or a flight to Memphis!

So, here’s to courage and art for the sake of love. You have my attention.

-BC

The new CD and music book, Passages, is now shipping. You can preview tracks and place your order by clicking on the album cover. And a blog to boot! Leave a word via the “comment” button at the end.

Hello! Thank you for finding your way here. I am so glad to have some new music and the chance to connect with you again, or maybe for the first time.This project was recorded in the cavernous underground spaces of the old Sears, Roebuck and Co. (built in 1910) in Dallas. Now a haven for art and artists, this building called to the music and seemed a perfect match. With beautiful timing, Charlie Steele, Director of Arts, invited me to participate in a residency there. Amid this inspiration, Passages was developed, rehearsed and recorded. To raise the stakes a bit more, my friend John Wynn brought several beautiful hand-made Rozas Spanish guitars for me to play and we were granted the use of Gordon Garrison’s vintage Neumann microphones.

Writing Passages was far more personal. Several years ago during a period of extended silence, music began to change for me. My words (and song forms) became less resonant and the sound of a timeless Spanish guitar much more so. I found myself in communion with this instrument and somehow understood by it. New melodies have now emerged between the two of us (the guitar and me) and by this I am being delivered through a period of deep and quiet change - a passage. “The water is wide,” says the old folk song. I am sailing a wooden ship with a mast of ebony and six long ropes that ring in the wind. I expect I am crossing over to a new place.

Writing and playing this music has been a daily meditative practice for me in the last several years. It is a kind of whistling in the dark, I think. After a lengthy creative engagement with institutional religious faith, I am listening more and endorsing less. The quietness has been life-giving. My hope is that you will, in the hearing of this album, be reminded of the wordless ways of the heart, of midnight voyages on the water, and of the simple gifts of old architecture and strings on wood.

The new album contains a group of pieces called “Mission Suite,” for the five 18th Century Spanish Missions in San Antonio. These first churches and outposts of western culture still speak of the high hopes inspired by the New World and the scars and sadnesses brought in the attempt to tame it. When I walk the Mission Trail, I find myself thinking about who I am and what it means to live in the shadow of these stone walls. Somehow, we who tread upon history must listen to the story within the story to find our own hearts and voices. I’m grateful for your resonance.

I wish you well,

Billy