lights - where the fence is low

corey smith in boston, and some georgia reminiscing

"Carolina" by Corey Smith shuffled, fittingly, on my iPod right after I drove across the South Carolina border on the drive from Georgia back to Amherst, Massachusetts for my junior year of college. It marked the end of the best summer of my life. On Thursday night at his first sold-out show in Boston, Corey opened with "Carolina" and I was right back on that road.

To make a long story (sorta) short, when I was on a road trip home to Seattle two years before, I was told by surfers in the Outer Banks to visit a "swamp hostel" in southeastern Georgia. I did, and ended up living there on staff for a month, hanging laundry, feeding chickens, meeting people, helping paint a mural and enjoying the sticky sweetness of a lazy Georgia summer. I was 19.

Helping paint a mural inside a drum circle; Chickens and guitars on the hostel porch

After just a month I was hooked on Georgia... I still love nearly everything about it. The place I lived and people I knew were unpretentious, laid back, kind and fun. For the next two summers I returned to live on nearby Saint Simons Island, serving coffee, slinging barbecue, pouring beers and living at the beach in between. Along the way I fell in and out of a relationship, made amazing friends and learned how to fit in somewhere new. I first heard Corey Smith play to a small but rowdy crowd at a bar while I sipped a sweaty pint of Sweetwater 420 after a long day of waitressing.

Bartending at the pub (also a coffee shop and BBQ joint); Me and Nikki,  my close friend and partner in crime on SSI

How my days looked in between my barista shift and my bartending shift

Of all the twangy southern alt-rock that passed through the island those summers, his drawled, drinking-infused lyrics stuck with me and became the soundtrack to my time there. The Good Life has soothed a lot of anxious wanderlust and made me excited for any chance we may someday find ourselves living down south.

On Thursday, Mike and I went out for barbecue and then headed to Brighton Music Hall, where the Adam Ezra Group opened with a few original songs, an awesome acoustic cover of Ke$ha's "Tik Tok" and segued into a riotous "Country Road" before Corey stepped on stage to greet his sold-out crowd.

The show was phenomenal. So much energy radiated from the audience onto Corey, and he bounced it right back to us with a huge smile under his trademark baseball cap.

Mike, who usually doesn't like any country music (except when Kenny Chesney sings specifically about sailboats) remarked right away that Corey "seems like he's fuckin' giddy. He's so pumped by the audience. He loves this shit! Hell yeah... I like this guy." There was something about the energy and appreciation throughout the crowd that made this show really special... because he isn't yet played on mainstream radio up here, it felt like all four hundred people shared a connection through Corey and his long, steady rise as an independent artist.

While we were finishing our beers after the show, Corey, his bassist Mike and Adam Ezra came out to chat with some fans. I said a quick hello, thanked him for the show and turned to leave just as Mike mentioned how long it had been since I'd seen Corey in Saint Simons. We chatted about that show and this one for a few minutes before he was informed that a a line of whiskey shots were waiting for him at the bar.

I was so happy to have somewhat awkwardly introduced myself, since Corey was exactly how I expected him to be... surprisingly soft-spoken, friendly and as personal as he comes across in his honest, often heartfelt journal posts. Aside from loving his music, I like that as an artist Corey is constantly revisiting old work, considering his talent and honestly critiquing himself.

Adam hooked Mike up with their new CD and we walked out into the dark, rainy Boston night, but the whole ride home feeling like I could have been back in coastal Georgia (although with a much brighter skyline.) I'm not sure how to share all the tracks I'd like to here but I recommend listening to Carolina, and if you like that, you can stream Broken Record (my new favorite), Dahlonega, Maybe Next Year, Beautiful Things and The Wreckage on his website.

in a world that gets lost in making plans

I heard the very beginning of this song as I was walking out the door of my gym the other day and fell in love. I stopped in my tracks on the side of the road to Google the last lyric I heard, found the song, looked up the artist on Spotify and immediately streamed it for my jog home. It wasn't exactly fitting for a 20 degree run through South Boston but it still did the job. I've been playing Green River Ordinance in my studio almost nonstop since then.



Pretty cool huh? They have a folksy, rootsy sound that makes me think of a combination of Old Crow Medicine Show and The Fray. My other favorites are Where The West Wind Blows and GRO's cover of The Weight by The Band.

ever since the beginning to keep the world spinning

The last few weeks have been a blur... saying I work harder and longer since becoming self-employed is more of an understatement than ever before. My days start when the sun (and occasionally jackhammers on our street.. ugh) wakes me up and ends around 2 or 3am when all emails are replied to, all artwork orders are packed and ready to be walked up to the post office, all paint is cleaned up and everything else is checked and reordered and planned and done. It's exhausting but in a really good way... I can't imagine a more perfect use of my energy right now.

Outside of commissioned work, I haven't been painting as much as usual but I've been stoking the creative fires in my head often. I plan on taking a short break from painting after Christmas to create with some other materials and thoughts I've been collecting and dreaming about recently.

Things that have been inspiring me right now...

 

Self Portrait by Regina Pagles.. no explanation needed.

Still feeling that wanderlust I couldn't satisfy last summer.

Star Trails Over Boston by Nimay Shah

I started running in October and still do 2-3 miles once or twice a week after dropping art off at the post office if it isn't too cold... my favorite route to run is from my apartment to the Seaport and along the waterfront because it takes me right where this photo was taken. It really is this gorgeous at night.

"Vancouver" for EF International Language Centers' "Live The Language" campaign

(Sydney and Beijing are pretty cool too! and make me very disappointed that I didn't travel abroad in college.)

Spring Swatch dying over at Scout & Catalogue
also these tips on creating natural dyes on the Free People blog


"1st Round Compilation" by The Beauty of a Second

Doing a compilation like this would be a really cool way to record special events or a year of life/work.

Charmaine Olivia's workspace


"One Day Like This" by Elbow... you'll like this but you might have to click the link to watch it on YouTube.

 

My own Appalachian road trip journal in progress... also Miranda Lambert's new album, Four. I don't know how to embed it but you can listen to the first track "All Kinds of Kinds" here.

Have you found anything good lately?

december sounds

Pandora was killin it in my studio last night... every song I already love and every song I had been waiting to find came on in the perfect order and helped make last night one of the most productive painting nights in a long time. I didn't create a lot, but what I did create was magic - something that has been lingering on the tip of a paintbrush for weeks and finally put itself down on canvas tonight.

Here's what tonight looked and sounded like in my tiny brick corner of South Boston...

Though it was 65 degrees and sunny yesterday, it seems like Boston finally got the hint that it's December. It's so grey and rainy outside... makes me want to just shut all the blinds and hibernate. I have a lot of "business" stuff to do today (the sad truth about the holiday rush) but hopefully I'll get some painting in there too and have something long overdue to share in a few days.

flying horses

On Saturday, we went to see Dispatch's reunion tour with a group of friends at TD Garden (where the Bruins and Celtics play) in downtown Boston... we bought some very cheap, bad seats originally, but amazingly, a friend was able to get us seats in the center of the front two rows about ten feet from the stage. I had never heard of Dispatch until moving to Massachusetts for college, but I remember someone playing them the first night I moved into my freshman year dorm and have loved them ever since. They broke up around 2004 and I thought I'd never get to see them live, so being front row in a concert of 80,000 people was extra special.

My camera's battery died after taking the first photo, but I got some okay ones with my iPhone.

"Flying Horses" by Dispatch - Silent Steeples EP

This video was on the Dispatch website-- you can see Mike (light blue shirt) and I hugging and dancing in the second row above the two empty seats :)

They were so good! They played every song I was hoping to hear and some new ones that I loved, and just had so much energy... at one point they went out into the crowd dressed in Bruins jerseys and did some impromptu rapping and dancing and other random stuff. I even caught a drumstick at the end of the show. The band played for three hours straight and it was one of the best shows I've ever been to... it's so great to go to a concert or any kind of performance and really see people loving what they are doing. So inspired!