When I’m getting ready for a big show like yesterday’s, I wonder what an introvert like me is doing in a place like live music. But I soldier onward - change strings, replace batteries, load gear and head out for sound check - because there’s nothing more worth doing than a good live show.

‘You’ve internalized, Bob Dylan - his spirit comes right through and we all feel it,’ says a Dylan fan gesturing toward rows of chairs recently filled with hushed listeners AKA noisy clappers in Fairview Park’s Meeting Room A.

Libraries, we are told, are no longer meant to be quiet zones.

There's not enough value on the web for the artist to spend much precious time there. Information is useful in context, interpreted, magnified by understanding. Wouldn't a writer be better off in a wireless cottage, sequencing ideas dug out of mad interior play?

Michael Chabon. 

I pictured you a lumbering older man with wide, surprisingly nimble fingers I’ve seen on guitar players from time to time. I thought you’d be a little arrogant, just the kind who suffers no fool gladly but suffers the children to come unto him. I considered this a plus. 

January is resolution month, when self-contol and discipline are trendy. Grunting and groaning, in vogue for a few weeks, send our guilty pleasures packing.

When Dad showed me the program from his brother Ted’s funeral, I was about to ask him if he had a favorite hymn or two he’d like us to sing at his memorial. But I brushed aside my curiosity and strong organizational bent because there never seems to be a good time to imagine a world where your dear father is no longer here in the flesh. 

Muscle and Bone ventured out on slick and splattery I-480 last night with a car full of gear, heads full of lyrics and shoulders taut with wonder. As in, ‘wonder if anybody’ll show up?’

(Bob Dylan’s) uncanny relevance comes from reaching as deep into empathy as he can. -- Kurt Gegenhuber

I just spent a week with elders down near Asheville, North Carolina. Here on my own back porch again, the tree house that folds out into green leaves and bird song, I’m impressed by how this place restores my artist heart.

What you say to your audience between songs is an art in itself. Walter and I don’t want to break the spell of Dylan’s lyrics with stray patter in our Muscle and Bone shows. So this story, though umbilically melded to Queen Jane Approximately for me, is better essay than segue.