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Ok so it's a Historic moment. Anyone who thought history finished in the year 2000, oops.

With my eyes open and without any reduction in the potential seriousness of where we are at, as a species, on this little blue ball, I am...

not freaking out.

I live on a street where the noise starts at 6am as the rat runners bypass the major roads, one after another, until i can barely leave my street.

Where the flight path for Sydney Airport seems to favour us with the sound of thunder every 8 minutes, when the wind blows from whatever direction it is that necessitates the wheels grazing our rooftops.

I bless every traveller these days.

For the past week or so, the sounds of planes and cars has retreated.

Things move more slowly.

For 'reasons', I am feeling calmer than I have in a long dang time. That's a personal journey thing and will only ever show up in the stuff we write.

After all, to write is to confess.

As my favourite Toltec priest says to me, 'the message is in the music, everything else is extraneous'. 

It's fascinating to find that those messages are often unknown messages to self, as if you have to externalise it in order to hear it.

Ok so from a practical physics perspective, that's true. I was still kind of in symbolic land tho'. 

Ahem.

So. 

As I look at writing stuff, I've seen a few videos and songs about OMG OMG OMG ZOMBIEESS!!!

Although I get it...I'm not feeling it.

Since we have been back from the tour, I have been walking my way through the words, looking for the right stuff. It's hard to describe but you know it when you find it.

Like a clear bell, it rings when touched.

I am ok with dispensing with lesser work, and oh boy, lesser work is easier to do; but that's like a burned bit of toast.

It's acceptable to scrape it, but...there's always a tinge of burnt.

i'm not in a hurry to start writing happy songs about rainbows and bunnies...although....(the minute I wrote those words Mr Wizards psychic sense started twitching, he has some concerns about my love of Cute, although given his embrace of all things japanese and Kawai...I digress.)

Ahem.

I have 4(ish) songs to finish from the US tour, plus other stuff that's still in development. We write from our surroundings and influences. The stuff I have yet to finish belongs to the Clarksdale piece, so it has it's own set of logic which I am trying to maintain. Challenge accepted.

Beyond that, why current circumstances aren't factoring in to my thinking is a curiosity. Things seem genuinely turbulent.

Nonetheless, it's not what's on my mind. Not what I want to write about.

Go figure.

I can't explain it and I have four other songs to finish. 3 other songs? Anyway. Maybe once those ones have finished cooking we can expect Songs For The End Of Days.

Or maybe not. Maybe I'll still be calm and it will be something else.

Mr Wizards in self isolation right now and he's got more work coming out. 

It's a good time to be in the stormcellar, it's a good time to be doing what we're doing, even if it seems like it's bonkers in the outside world.

As Friend of the Band Mr 'X' says, 'stay frosty'. Come join us here when you need some calm time.

I have been trying streaming on and off for a while.

Our attempt to stream live from the recording of Rogue State & Safe Harbour didn't work due to data failure.

In fact I had a few failures on the way through.

Totally normal.

Aaaaanyway, so now it's all 'hey let's do the streaming' which we were aiming to do in April, just, well, cos.

It seems, thanks to pandemic, that these plans may have been accelerated.

Testing begins again next week. 

Many things to address, I'll blog it here, as the actual work of doing it may be as entertaining as doing it.

As we collectively work out what to do to keep the species alive, it's time to take a pause from gigging.

The first venue to cancel just confirmed our 28th of March show is off.

My assessment is that more will follow.

I would not be too surprised if this lasts a little longer than we have contemplated.

Nothin' to do but put your feet up and chill. 

Big thanks to Fox for getting ready, bummer to miss the show, we really like playing music live.

to people.

That's (correctly) not gonna happen for a while. In public at least.

Why?

SCIENCE!

Yessss! good old Science.

For some reason, every now and again, we forget we flew to the moon, knocked over polio (mostly) and do INTERSTELLAR STUFF and instead we start thinking about Flat Earth and Science Denial.

Oh humans.

Plague means No More Gigs for a while?

OK!

This is gonna suck, and it's gonna hurt musicians economically.

Venues and Muso's

Ouch.

This has the potential to be a fundamental, societal shift. Bless my cotton socks for the optimism to hope that it leads to something better.

Meanwhile, practicality supersedes philosophy.

Wait, be safe, do the right stuff. Social Isolation does not mean Isolation.

Call someone. Email someone. Stand outside the window and post to placards. No don't do that.

Ok. Here's another tip, use common sense rather than believe every suggestion on the internet.

I'm not gonna be surprised if a whole, some, or all our gigs shut down over the next while.

That's the right thing to do. I'll complain about it after we survive it :-)

I'm not gonna advertise any of our upcoming shows for a little while and I'll post it if they cancel.

People coming out of my local IGA Supermarket said 'there's food in there!'

Yeah, there is.

Society has not broken down. It's taking a pause.

And we could do with one.

Since the internet took off like a rocket and we all wound up with hand held devices, we have been interconnected to information at a fast pace.

This hasn't all been to our benefit.

Now, in the face of a fact that cannot be denied we have found that spinning the truth into what suit ratings, or opinions, is just bad news.

Not fake, bad. Malevolent even.

It is as much a virus to be feared as COVID.

Panic is infectious, and so are we.

So without minimising the reality of risk, we can at least manage it in a survival minded way.

Listening to actual Doctors and experts, making changes in our behaviour.

For Cellar Dwellers, this makes some sense.

We've always been a retreat from the tempest, as we are now. 

I'd say it's likely that we will see some gigs cancelled. Quite likely, even if only from an abundance of caution.

We have been working on a streaming idea for a while, more shortly. It'll be a bit of fun and you can join in safely, remotely.

Writing and mixing are still in progress, slowly.

I have higher hopes for the work and it's taking me some time to find something that suits how I feel about it. No rush. Comes when it comes.

We'll be streaming some of that work too, as we work on it.

Practising some simple precautions, staying calm, using the tools to stay connected even when we have to be a little further apart, all of these things will help us still be here, when this stuff has passed, together.

Friend of the band, Record collector, Blues Historian and My Dude, Mr D-Dog shares his private stash to spread some original vintage muddy waters: