A Chance Counsel

            There are places where something usually happens that maybe you don't realize happened until after you've left because you're in the middle of it & it just seems like the normal tactical survival strategy.

For instance, you drive in ahead of a monsoon, like you, also trying to sneak in, to a desert hotel with a dayfall lounge & nightlight club. By 3AM, you're still entertaining or being entertained by 1 to 20 revelers in your room & there's a knock on the door & it’s the hotel manager merely being fully accommodating with a date of their own & a bottle to share.

When you check out late-morning, the manager is nowhere to be seen as if they evaporated in the bubble of the moment. The sky is clear. You drive on, cleansed by poison & abandon. That's the inspiration anyway of — A Chance Counsel.

            The guitar & drums of the album version for dents and shells were recorded in 2002 as a duo with His Majesty of Tom-Toms King Coffey. The Human League was playing in town that night & both of us really-really wanted to go, but sacrificed our dream in the name of . . . well, I don't know what to call it. Some right decisions come with tinges of regret.

This EXTRACTIONS version of A Chance Counsel that I submit for paid subscribers was recorded on my phone in my attic a few days ago. I thumb-strummed a 1934 "Palm Beach" Harmony Supertone resurrected by a talented luthier with two carbon fiber rods in a reset neck with a bone nut & new frets, a hand-made bridge with a bone saddle, and a new x-braced skeleton ( the guitar, not the luthier ). The guitar itself was gifted to me at my last pre-pandemic show in 2019. Thanks again, Barry!!!