We got a little carried away. What with all this Wednesdays at noon livecast Double Americana nonsense, and all this Rumbly Tummy food blog every first Wednesday silliness. We forgot, with all these self imposed deadlines and goals and new projects and release dates and what's nexts, to stop, look around, see where we are, and say "Hello."
Hello!
We are in the middle of it all. A little past the middle of the year, sitting in the middle of Wisconsin in the middle of the country, in the middle of the week, in the middle of a few plates spinning.
Scott is busy these days trying to clean up our Spotify and Youtube pages, in hopes that enough people will subscribe so that this little folk band can take more control of our digital property (hint, hint). He also spends some mysterious nights with headphones on and his laptop open, mixing some ambient songs he has shared with no one, yet, and seeming happy doing so. He's in the middle of reading The Kite Runner and occasionally exclaims "This is so sad!" and "Why do you do this to me?" to Mallory, who has been nudging the book toward him for years.
Butter has been gnawing on deer leg bones and has been perpetually shamed out of stealing her sister's bones, too. She goes to the dog park when her parents let her, but pays for the play time in limps for days afterward. She's happiest when we are all together. She is needing a little extra help getting in and out of the truck and camper.
The camper (AKA "Campy" or "Dave") got a bit of a facelift. Or rather, just a lift, as Mallory's dad removed the axle, rebuilt it, welded it back together, and put it on to give an extra 7-10" clearance. The first step is now a doozy, but we are no longer leaving scrape marks across every driveway in America. It's good to have those can-fix-everything parents.
Mallory has been excited about tomato season and is between books, with a stack she mulls over by the side of the bed. She's been taking more photographs (film, not digital), and winding down her year of taking an Instagram from every place we wake up (digital, not film), and is plotting the new album cover. She's also been doing a bit of difficult, necessary writing at her blog, Quartz from Pallets. She's been a little sad each time she helps lift Butter into the truck, but happy to be with her family in the middle of it all out here.
And then, there's the Pud. Pud likes to tell hilarious jokes, like when she gets her tail stuck under the bathroom door and wags it while Scott or Mallory are showering. She also occasionally rolls like a horse in the summer grass, but then gets too excited while she's on her back and starts gagging. She's great at playing fetch until she gets too tired, and plays with her sister at least twice a day. She's been getting frequent baths on account of her puppy mites (not contagious) and on account of her incredible ability to find the one mud puddle in all of this dry land and sink her paws into it. For this reason, we also call her "Little Captain Black Boots."
And while we post all the time how excited we are, we are truly really excited about what we are doing right now and so far. Here's a brief synopsis of our year to date, in case you've missed anything along the way:
1. We broadcast every Wednesday at noon EST for a show we call "Double Americana," in which we learn a new folk song and play it and talk to you while you tune in, too. While those episodes disappear after two weeks, we've started to upload song-only videos to our Youtube channel so you can watch them until the internet breaks.
2. We've announced a new record called We Made Ourselves a Home When We Didn't Know that will be released in January 2018. You can find more on that here.
3. Along the lines of the new record, we released a music video for our song "Baggage" that you can watch here.
4. We were featured on our friend Kelsey Pray's series, Simply Songcraft. You can watch that here.
5. #4 is the beginning of #5-- we are writing a children's album with our pal, Kelsey! More to come on that.
6. We are occasionally throwing free tracks up on our Bandcamp page to keep us on our toes and you with a little treat. We call the online album Odds and Ends for the End of the World, and-- oh, look!-- we just added our track, "If I Was a Hippopotamus" that we recorded with Nolan Rossi a couple years back on there. You can go here to get a free download and see what other mischief we've compiled.
7. We are still out and touring and likely in a town near you. Go here for our tour dates.
We hope you are in the middle of a good, healthy summer with plenty of friends or alone time or whatever it is that you need. Get enough sleep. Have an adventure. Be safe. Be kind. See you soon.
Love,
The R&T
(Mallory and Scott and Butter and Pud)