lumberjacks in the north town lagoon

Frontier Ruckus and the Crumbling Porches are swiftly coming into newly warm springtime stages of fruition. We have all returned from our end-of-winter jaunts--Dave returning from some mysterious week in dubious sections of Chicago Town, and myself, returning from an already-fading moment of strangeness in New York City...and as always, we prefer train rails to jetways. I can hardly recall what happened there but I do remember the elevated track over the Brooklyn neighborhoods out to the carnivalLand of Coney Island and while looking down over the crystallized streets of the famous place, singing, "KEEP WARM WHERE THE ROOFTAR IS...KEEP WARM WHERE THE ROOFTOP KEEPS YOU!" I want to sing it soon to others in a song. Then to be dragged backwards on the same track, away from the littered seashore and awesome powder-beaked gulls, back into the horrible city at nightfall! New York City is a tumult of achin'. All the parts and how they connect, living next to each other, touching each other with such indifference, yet such differentiation. Harlem is the blackman's place, the twisting Village, the tall clean homes towering the west and east shoulders of the Park, the darkwaters of the Bronx...I was either there too long or too briefly, I can't tell, to really feel comfortable in the place. Or perhaps people only feel comfortable in such torrents after unconsciously conforming to madness. I'm gonna be mad one day but I don't know if I care for it to be soon, maybe I'll do it there. Jump into that sunshine maelstrom. Only in summer though-- New York City is cold in the winter, and not that bearable 'weather' kind. Remember, however!, no matter what city you are in...there is beauty upstate.
Anyway, catharsis is hopefully soon approaching, with the laying down of our thirteen or so songs onto dispersible format, with the help of Mr. Mike Vasas at Grammy Hall Records and also some friends here at the university with access to recording cans and the like. Smalls is pounding on the drums with wires and Zach! is blowing his lungs out with melodica keys and warbling with singingsaw horsehair. Eli is sometimes hard to be found, but the power is growing in his hair.
Until you can hear my voice,
Matt, Frontier Ruckus
3/24/06--Old House, University of Michigan
3/31/06--International Center, Michigan State University
4/22/06--Campground, Fortville, Indiana