I've been procrastinating writing these summer notes - I've been too absorbed in the season to think about writing down any of it. But while we're on the subject, and you've clicked on this page...

It's late-July, which feels like the peak of the season. The forests in the higher elevations are not as quite green as they were in June. The days have been a mix of lazy blueberry pancake mornings, marathon card games and puzzle making afternoons with the kids, late night rehearsing sessions, and serious weekends of driving from gig to gig to gig. Some days are seriously entrenched in desk work, bookings and chores while others are spent just going to the lake, eating hot dogs, drinking beer, and hanging out in the sun. From here it appears to be a summer as true as any.

Musically, the highlight has been the Summerfest in New Bedford, Massachusetts. I was hired to perform with my trio, which consisted of myself, Lui Collins on guitar and banjo and Keith Leverault on drums. Keith, if I haven't described before, is my favorite drummer in Western Mass. He played on Midnight Salvage and is a member of the band The Blood Oranges. It was a great time - busy - we worked hard the first day playing on four stages, then Sunday we got to relax and played just two workshop sets. The most memorable was a round robin with Kate Campbell, Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer, and Steve Tilston. I was very impressed with Steve, a British singer, and we swapped CD's. I've had his song "Slip Jigs & Reels" in my head near constantly for a month now. I may have to learn it.

My son Sather turned 10 this weekend, which is quite a milestone for both of us. Makes me think of ten years ago and how immersed I was in building my house in Westfield, Vermont and running my bakery/deli business in Newport. I think it curious that when my infant son came along I didn't go deeper into home and being rooted in Vermont, but turned toward taking music seriously and traveling. I am convinced that if not for the things I learned from building my house and business, my marriage and Sather's birth, I would not have the gumption to be playing music for a living.

Saturday before last I drove up to Strafford, Vermont to Dot and Stan's annual music party and barn dance. It had been five years since I'd last attended and it felt like coming home. Again the ten-year theme crept into my awareness. Pete Sutherland brought his "10-going-on-18" year-old son Calum. In the fall of 1991, both Calum and Sather were just babes when I made several five hour round trip drives to Pete's house south of Burlington for banjo and fiddle lessons. Not long after that I asked him to produce Elemental Lullabye which confirmed my direction as a musician. I've long studied Pete's recordings and he has been an important mentor to me. It was good to see him again.

One of the things I like most about the summer are the berries that each ripen in their own turn. First, the strawberries come, then the raspberries black and red. Sather's birthday is in late July and he'll customarily have fresh red raspberries covering whatever cake I'm able to conjure. He's been out daily playing along the stone walls and garden borders around this house eating raspberries off the cane. It reminds me of when I was 13 in the village of Kenwood in Sonoma County, California. I'd cut through the shady walnut and plum orchards, to the dried creek beds near the grape vineyards and fill my buckets with fat, juicy blackberries, all the while trying not to step on the thousands of thimble sized toads that would hop en-masse as I walked along. I would spend hours there, and you couldn't pick all the berries there were so many. It seems primal to me, and what we're most in our hunting-gathering element doing: foraging for berries and harvesting wild fruit off the vines. I haven't even mentioned the blueberries yet! One of the great things about Lui's house is that there are near three dozen mature blueberry bushes that yield an incredible crop each year. It's July and the freezer still has a big bag of frozen blueberries left over from last summer. We're all doing double time on the banana and blueberry smoothies to make room for the new crop.

Sometimes during the summer months in the hill towns after a rain a fog will rise out of the forests and spill into the roads and rise up like a living thing. The air smells good, moist and rich of soil and leaves and clean earth. This past Friday night was like that when I drove down to the Ashfield Lake House to watch Phil Noland's band The Dumpsters play. Phil grew up here and besides working at the local convenience store, he minds the town dump a couple days a week, hence the name. Every town seems to have its namesake band: Northampton has the Lonesome Brothers, Athens, Georgia has REM, well… Ashfield, Mass. has the The Dumpsters. I thought Greg Brown would feel right at home in this hick bar, perched over a hilltown lake listening to Phil's swampy, bluesy, gritty, messy, and rocking songs.

Musically and business-wise the new thing is that folks can now order CD's online with their credit card. I think that's great. Big thanks to my web-wiz Becka for setting that up. I'm slowly beginning to work on recording the next CD, which I hope will see the light of day sometime next year. A session here and a session there, slow and sure will be the rule for some time to come; it's a pace I can adhere to.

I appreciate your stopping in and reading. Keep in touch - the guest book works for that. And of course musi-cal will help you keep tabs on my concert schedule.

All the best - Dana