As I've been diving back into these Lost Horse tunes, I've also tried to listen deeply to a few favorite singers with special attention to their time-feel. It's an odd list: Frank Sinatra, Nick Drake, Chet Baker, Nina Simone, Bob Dylan. Somewhere along the way I fell hard for the old Dylan tune "Tomorrow is a Long Time." Written in 1962, it was recorded by several other musicians before Dylan himself released it. Nick Drake has a demoy version; Odetta knocked it out of the park. Even Elvis sang it. Here is my humble addition to the list.

Keep an eye out for Lost Horse, vol. 2 soon, soon, soon.

I'm hard at work on the remaining movements of Five Drawings by Joseph E Yoakum, and rejoicing in the completion of grad-school applications. (Flattening of being? Referendum on life's path? What a process.)

Another project just around the corner is a small Golconda release. Friends and followers are aware that in 2009 I chased my Master's degree with an artist residency at Joshua Tree National Park, where I lived off the grid in a place called Lost Horse Valley and wrote a pile of songs. A year later, six of these songs became Lost Horse Porch Music. About a year ago I wrote a new batch and made an album called Book of Rain.

I wrote another desert cycle last summer in New Mexico, while I was working outside and leading wilderness trips at a beautiful place called Cottonwood Gulch. That music is still in the works, to be recorded in early 2012.

First, for the end of '011, I have a smaller release. Lost Horse Porch Music featured only six of the twenty songs I wrote at Joshua Tree. I figured the others weren't doing anyone much good sitting silently in old notebooks, so I picked out five more favorites to make a short album, Lost Horse, vol. 2. It'll be on your digital doorstep on 12/24.

Tracklisting:
1. Caroline
2. On the Limb
3. Glacier Air
4. Whispers
5. Pedernales

Ben and I have completed our long-term dream of covering Beck's entire One Foot in the Grave album. The autoharp/guitar double solo in "Girl Dreams" has already surreptitiously appeared at one Chicago-area new music concert.

1. He's a Mighty Good Leader
2. Sleeping Bag
3. I Get Lonesome
4. Burnt Orange Peel
5. Cyanide Breath Mint
6. See Water
7. Ziplock Bag
8. Hollow Log
9. Forcefield
10. Fourteen Rivers, Fourteen Floods
11. Asshole
12. I've Seen the Land Beyond
13. Outcome
14. Girl Dreams
15. Painted Eyelids
16. Atmospheric Conditions