“It is still unproven as to why the moth is driven to light – but the best hypothesis is that the moth navigates by lunar light. In the absence of moonlight, the moth moves to the next best thing: man-made light.” -Avia Venefica

It wasn’t rare for an assortment of outdoor creatures to find their way inside my former home, a meekly insulated, oddly renovated, magical barn in Mount Clemens, Michigan. It felt at times like a permanent camping trip.  A good-sized family of industrious bees filled the walls with a sense of community. Well-fed groundhogs kept watch in the garage, and very cute mice munched on our crumbs in the kitchen.

Every song on Porchlight Tragical was written in or on that barn.

I found a small brown moth in the shower on a sweat bead of an afternoon last summer. She was wrestling for her existence in lue of the sub par water flow. Her legs were shaking like wooden maracas on the Day of the Dead. I took her in my hand, (and like any good little exhibitionist would, ran straight from the shower to the backyard) and returned her to the sky.

Showering with that moth was pretty significant for me. For a while I had been waiting to become a butterfly (see discography, Cocoon Stew: Songs I wrote as a Caterpillar), but it just wasn’t happening. I didn’t feel bufferlyish at all.

I think it hit me around then that I hadn’t become a butterfly because I simply wasn’t meant to. It was my calling to be a moth, a moonlight navigator, sensitive and subtle, and chewing holes through the finest cashmere I could find!

I leave two moons from tonight, for a seventy-day solo tour.  It will make a large loop around the Northwest and this blog will act as a tour journal. Porchlight Tragical is the title of the new album. It thrills me to know that (with the help of very talented, kind souls) PL has fully transpired and will join me in a drifting devotion to the craft of music making. I’m gladly accepting suggestions and recommendations for audio books, albums, wilderness survival tips, hallucinogens (just kidding mom), and any other advice that could be helpful.  These are a couple goals I hope to achieve while on the trip:

• bathe in salt water
• touch a buffalo
• learn to square dance
• spend two days in silence
• yodel in the grand canyon
• put fifty dollars on red
• jump off a diving board (cuz I’ve never…!)
• hug my grandma

[Warning in advance] Driving for long stretches, along with numerous nights of wilderness camping may cause me to wig out. Let’s not hold me accountable for anything I post.

Chat soon.

emily