#julytour

8 days, 8 shows...  Over the course of the last two weeks Thomas Warren and I went out  in support of our latest release, Buffalo EP/Kettle & Crow DVD.  By all accounts this tour was a success.   The shows all went off without a hitch, the car and trailer made it, and we arrived back home in good health.  It was exhausting, exciting and like many of our other tours, it rained for the majority of the time.  Although the rain was a nuisance at times, it provided a lot of shade from the hot sun. 

Over the last five years, we’ve traveled many miles.  We’ve met many great people along the way, and have made even more memories that will last the rest of my life.  I want to thank the ones that made this trip such an enjoyable business venture:

Thomas Warren  - Thank you my friend for all the hours you drove the old tour bus.  Thank you for all the help loading and unloading the trailer.  Thank you for great conversation and thank you for being such a great travel companion.  You made the tour easier!  I look forward to many more tours with you.... rd4l.

Mike Creager (Capture Music Inc.) - Thank you for the support and help that you provided us before, during, and after the tour.  You are a great friend and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate being apart of the CMI family!  

Nelson Wells, Bill Benson, Alyssa DeHayes, Shil Patel, Steve Hendriksen (Team Clermont) -  Thank you all for your help and support. You have helped us reach so many people with our music and you guys continue to provide support and friendship.  Team Clermont holds a special place in my heart... I greatly appreciate being apart of the Team Clermont family!

Eric Smith (Killer Meteor) - Thank you my friend for performing in Lexington with us and providing us with a place to stay.  I thoroughly enjoyed our conversations and getting to know you and your brother.  I look forward to working with you in the future.  You are such a great talent and I was honored to share the stage with you.

Alias Records - Thank you for the free place to stay while on the road.  I enjoyed meeting you and getting the opportunity to check out the farm, horses, and bamboo!  Thinking about Charlie, Timber, and the other dogs provided many smiles along the way!

Sara Leah Pihakis - First of all, it was so great seeing you again.  I still can’t believe how long it had been since the last time we saw each other.  You continue to be a great friend and a beautiful human being.  Thank you for your support and thank you so much for providing us with a place to sleep!  Thank you for all the new music you gave us for our long drive to Richmond!  My favorites so far are Akron/Family and Megafaun.

Allie Weiner - Ohio just wouldn’t be the same without seeing you!  Thank you so much for all of your support.  I look forward to seeing you again next time we are in your neck of the woods.

Josh Eagle and The Harvest City - Thank you so much for all the work you did to make sure our show in Cincinnati went well.  I couldn’t have done it without you and I greatly appreciate it.  Hope to see you soon!

Mac Rowe, Dave Watkins (Dogs on Main Street/ Dave Watkins) - Thank you for all of your help in making Richmond a memorable evening.  You guys are extremely talented musicians and I was thrilled to be on the same bill with you.  I look forward to more shows together!

Daniel Beckham, Slade Baird (Pullman Strike/ Old Milwaukee) - Thank you so much for all of the work you did to make sure our night in Charlotte went well!  I look forward to more shows together and I wish you both the best of luck with all that you do.

Christina Nunez - Over the years you have become such a good friend.  Thank you for all of your support, help, and friendship.  Thank you so much for providing us with a roof over our heads in Charlotte!  I enjoyed the late night conversations and the Tequila Sunrise... I look forward to the next time we get the opportunity to hang out!  Please tell Sgt. Pepper hello for me.

Adam Klein, John Gladwin (Adam Klein and The Wild Fires, The Last Tycoon) - Thank you guys for all of the work you did to help with our Athens show.  It was a fantastic evening and a great way for us to end the tour!  I hope we can do it again real soon in Athens, Birmingham, or anywhere else!

Alia Ghosheh -  Thank you for your continued support!  Thank you so much for your patience as well.  Athens was our last stop on the tour and the show was slow to get started.  I greatly appreciate you and your time... I hope to see you next time!

I would also like to thank everyone who contributed to the tour, the ones of you who followed our progress on instagram, facebook, twitter, and the other social media platforms.  Thank you to all the venues and bookers who helped us piece this tour together, and a special thanks to all of you who came out to support us... we couldn’t have done this without you!

The Venues:

Barley’s Taproom - Knoxville, TN

Green Lantern - Lexington, KY

Baba Budans - Cincinnati, OH

The Camel - Richmond, VA

Tipsy Teapot - Greenville, NC

The Cave - Chapel Hill, NC

The Chop Shop - Charlotte, NC

The Flicker Theatre - Athens, GA

I look forward to seeing you all again real soon!

JP

Battlegrounds

Battlegrounds 

The foot of fog stands over burnt land

Scattering images of dismantled silhouettes

And photographed shells in tents

Elbows crying to break the bloody soot

Plastered to my cheekbones and dog tags

A class of ripped metal

No breeze to transport death and disaster to far away places

So it stays

Surrounding us and engulfing our minds

Eyes still in sockets glance

Around at the dying

Moaning for more time

Or less

I have slowed in an accelerated moment leaking

The sky has turned a shade of beige.

(JP 2011)

"I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill"

--Mahatma Gandhi

#NoFilter

#NoFilter

Trails lead to stables of crop and canvas.  

Hay for the horses

I step out on the porch overlooking fortune

desperately dressed in dust

Drenched in dust

Depression is great

within the bowl.

Scarecrows, candy men, and the American Mythology

live in the middle of nowhere

Seasons of planting, irrigating hearts

trying to patch up overalls

Dogs run without leashes

much like your mouth.

-JP 2011

"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music"

--Aldous Huxley 
.

The Vinyl Canvas

.:Click to Purchase:.

Since I was a child, I dreamed of hearing my voice and song rising from the resin of a vinyl record.  The scratch of the needle settling into a groove, the hiss of the cushion comforting the waves, and the final pulsing of a completed side ordering my excitement to dream.  Sitting cross-legged on the carpet with headphones to my ears listening to Springsteen’s Nebraska, I knew that somehow I would achieve my goal. 

October 04, 2011 is a day that will live within me until my time expires.  Not only was I able to achieve my goal, I was able to do it with a group of extraordinary musicians and artists that happen to be my closest and dearest friends.  A perfect example of reality being more beautiful than the dream.  

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Buffalo Bio

Written beneath the chill of winter....

Buffalo.  Harmony and balance.  Purification observing the healing of vision.  The grass of relations drains fast into the inheritance of borrowing.  Let the Black Hills be approached with one mind, one heart, and as one people.  A starting point.  Stemming from mistakes and little victories.  Carbon spinning with footprint control.  Movement for progress.  Rebuild and thrive from lessons woven delicately in our past.  There is always a line.  Instruct the merriment of symbolism to misplace the baggage of claims.  For we are all connected to the Buffalo.

The Buffalo recordings take shape over the course of an extensive touring schedule and personal events unforeseen.  We press on... Negatives become our twist.  Situations in shift.  Stacks of concrete bookend the prairies as time marches.  But where? On is abstract. 

Jesse Payne stems from a soil deep in the Southeastern region of the United States. He nests in scenic views of trees and mountains blending into valleys of skyscrapers and barns. Canvas for his yellow shade of timeless polaroids transposing over lake and swing suggests an inheritance of owls and their nocturnal solitude. His sound and sight each born from a landscape of heavy cotton hands and autumn chairs.

Upon returning to his home in early 2007, after a couple of years of touring the eastern coastal region, as far north as Boston and as far west as Chicago, Jesse Payne delivered the EP, “Beyond the Leaves.” The EP earned him a spot in The Big Takeover’s Top 40, alongside Band of Horses, Death Cab For Cutie, and Willie Nelson. His song, ‘Thief Among Us,’ also found its way on national compilations that included artists such as Ryan Adams and Sondre Lerche.  Jesse Payne released his debut full-length album, Nesting (Capture Music Inc.) on November 10, 2010.  The album reached #3 in California on KDVS radio and stayed in the College top 30 across the United States for weeks at a time.

His latest, Buffalo, releases October 04, 2011.  Buffalo is an audio-painting of expansion and reservation.  Patents and assembly lines.  Light bulbs versus alternating currents.  Phonographs threading impact factors busy documenting waves genetically modified to roam.

Jesse Payne’s team of sonic painters include, Thomas Warren, Mike Creager, Noel Johnson, Mason Boyd, Dave Crenshaw, Stephen McCollough, and The Chad Fisher Group.

Buffalo has synchronization capabilities with the Kettle & Crow DVD (out October 04, 2011).

--See jessepayneonline.com for instructions on how to synchronize vinyl to DVD--

(Kettle & Crow DVD directed by Jacob Falls and edited by Jason Schuck) 

-JP 2011

“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”

--Michelangelo

Elegant Shivers

Elegant Shivers

She curses salvation

I know

send me home

Give me your devouring donations

I have aches, so I've heard

I try to crawl

I saw dying stars

on a rheostat

I’ll be holding my lungs in a deep embrace

Let down with bandaged whispers

Come take these elegant shivers

and detach their gentle key.

-JP 2011

“Conviction without experience makes for harshness.”

--Flannery O’Connor

My Mechanical Skull

My Mechanical Skull

Thoughts grind teeth

climate and elevated gears

My fatal ribs

gasp through black lung

Scraped feathers are modern

pilots hatching

In my skies

convict the hollow

troops drowning

with gifted dawn

Each wearing their crooked knuckles,

warm winters and cardigans

useless grass and truthful material

breathe within

the clutches.

I hate you with every supply left ethical

The shape of my nesting wing lacerated

fleeting blood and a smoking farewell

Silent guns of a strategic home

make believe an overthrow

dust, from peaceful stomachs

Order with burning

air climbing walls

love will rot

my gut

Pollution in words

spreading through chimneys

unfiltered truth. Hell is a napsack

on genocide shoulders

Television witchhunts, wiretapping broadcasts

the genes of entitlement open...

unlike the parachute you so elegantly packed

Limbs have broken

Indiginous fingers

grasping for the feelings

in my fingertips

Abstract steps cling

to the heartless, “carve the maps”

let the shoestring cities untie

our consciousness

We will trip over arcades and decades and parking lots

balancing whispers

with diligent devotion

seems amusing at best

But with highspeed humans and industrialized conductors

with Satan and money

and our godly

eyes

Embrace

the brutal science

of chaos

and

nothingness.

-JP

2011

"A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education." -- George Bernard Shaw

Seasonal Attic Lights

Seasonal Attic Lights

I swear you understand

the height of water

nothing more than a needle

the voice is a vessel

To hear the faces in the glass

curious terms to the purchase

I urge you to push through

I will go to the ripple of echos

as sound expands to nothing

Absorb the mention of the moment

with the largest of wealth

Resting on each laugh

Descending from our mouths

Attach us to the track

knowing if we get loose

we will be coming for you

Yield the hands on deck

as to destroy the sorrowful

Think through your continued contradiction

and act.

Walt Whitman is ahead in the fourth quarter.

I hold random acres with cinematic apparatus

while windows reflect a steady breeze

of aprons catching overflow

Resting on each laugh
Descending from our mouths

towards seasonal attic lights

-JP

2010

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart. Wishing you happiness.-- Helen Keller