Towns Filled with Sin...30 songs in 30 days...The Smurfs

Belly is filled with sugar and suppers big and dinners small. Wine is always in front of my thirsty face. I hope to the skies and beyond that everyone had a magnificent holiday, filling themselves with whatever makes them all smurfed up. Smurfed: this is a new expression I have been using. I heard my giddy gal Kelly say it on out recent New Years trip to the Red River Gorge. I'm not even really sure if I am using it in the correct context, but it sure sounds like a bubbly word. It makes me smile as I say it! If it's wrong, well, fuck it cause it makes me happy :) <--- SMURFED!

IN VEGAS VISITING GRANDFATHER
Las Vegas is difficult: Difficult to live, to stay sober, to maintain a cancer free body, to feel like a real cowboy, to breathe like a Yogi, to get around, to avoid Spanish speaking call-girl pushers, to eat well, and on and on and on. I now know - much more than ever - what Gram Parsons was singing during his lighted slurred, sedated tune, "Oh Las Vegas" ....Oh Las Vegas/ain't no place for a poor boy like me/Every time I hit your crystal city/ I know you're gonna make a mess outta me." Now I am getting a head of myself because the outskirt of tinsel town USA are budding with delights: Hoover Damn (new bridge!), Red Rock Canyon, Mico Brewers, the desert of Nevada is filled with pleasantries... NO gambling(!)

I am writing 30 songs in the month of January. I am calling the process "30 songs, 30 days". It sounds like a late teenage romance movie soon to be right around the corner on Judy Garland Street...very innocent yet fetish-able. Some ideas might not be as involved with me as others, but that is besides the point, really. The point is to lay out the brain and heart to create melody and lyrical character as a foundation- a starting line. The focus is to make sure

something new is written everyday. It has been fun to pull stuff from olde recordings summer '03-Xmas '10), to see what can be done and how the mind-of-me from 5,6, or 7 years ago can meet up with a mind-of-me today. The Harvest City and I will then dissect them like a science project. Some will be soft and easy skin to cut into like a traditional frog, or others more like wild boar with it's overly tough exterior. It is after all, Rock and Roll and not always easy.


Cincinnati heart throb/brilliant songwriter Dusty Bryant is releasing his full-length record, "Wasted Midwestern Town Blues", this coming Saturday (1-15) at Mayday in Northside. It is The Harvest City's pleasure to open up the show for him. Watch out for some of Dusty's tunes, they are right to the gut, good.

OTHERS
*Recording our 2nd Album (out in spring)
*Playing Acarya's CD Release at Northside Tavern Jan 21st
*Cbus and Dayton and Kent Shows


Cheers.

Be TOTAL,

Josh