Somehow it's 2026. How did that happen? So much has been going on this year that it's been hard to keep up.
December, Ken spent several happy days in Marion IL, where at the invitation of the Marion Civic and Cultural Center, he was a roving fiddler for the city's holiday market, and played pop-up sets for a holiday movie marathon (and where he got to share his Jimmy Stewart poem and play Buffalo Gals before the showing of It's a Wonderful Life). Ken then drove north and west to spend the last three and a half weeks in rural New York Mills MN. There, he was a visiting artist at the New York Mills Cultural Center, mainly holed up writing, but he also played a show, led a workshop, and offered an impromptu program for seniors. It was fun, productive, frigid, snowy.
November? Oregon to Colorado by road, then to North Carolina and back to Colorado by plane, and then back in the vehicle to visits/meetings in Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. After a few gigs in southwest Pennsylvania, it was Thanksgiving Week in North Carolina.
After an early October gig in Salt Lake City to celebrate THE NOMAD litmag at Utah Humanities Book Festival with co-editor Rachel White, there were Oregon October events, including a milestone birthday show/book release at the White Eagle Saloon in Portland, followed by a quick trip to Louisiana to enjoy Blackpot Festival activities with friends. Before that, late September, Ken enjoyed a good, busy three days in schools in eastern Oregon's beautiful Wallowa Valley followed by a fourth day working with home-schoolers and then doing a public event at the iconic M. Crow. Prior to that, a conference in Milwaukee WI and visiting friends up and down the I-5 corridor.
The second half of August Ken had two fine weeks of gigs between Fairbanks and Anchorage, where he also made sure his Now Entering Alaska Time novel was restocked and he played the Alaska State Fair with Anchorage pals. Earlier this summer Ken had festival hangouts in Washington state, West Virginia, North Carolina and Indiana (including seeing good friends Ken hadn't seen in years), a conference hangout also in North Carolina, meetings in Virginia, Ohio, Colorado and amazing hospitality from friends in Colorado, Missouri, West Virginia and North Carolina (where Ken even played an impromptu house concert and met a bass player who was in grad school in Fairbanks back when Ken was there in the 80's--wow to that). Mid July, Ken drove to near Cleveland, Ohio to pick up copies of his four new books (officially out in October), mailed copies to his Kickstarter supporters as well as to a few select reviewers, and even found time to scamper down to Spartanburg, South Carolina, vacate his storage unit, and move approximately 35 boxes to a Durham, North Carolina shed.
May highlights included five days, with gig, in Clarksdale, Mississippi (see this video!), then twelve days in Austin where Ken shopped for, vetted, and bought a new used vehicle and made big progress on the four books he later picked up in July. April highlights? Gigs in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Washington again, in that order--shows (some solo, some with accompanists) in arts centers, art galleries, libraries, clubs, plus eight school visits, plus various workshops, and there was a festival too. The busy month was how he paid for the van.
January-March was also really wonderfully full, mostly in Eastern Time Zone, but with a trip in Los Angeles and a big literary arts conference there.