About a week ago, the javelina biker gang I call The Biebers broke into my studio through the doggie door, knocked down the heavy cabinet I had moved in front of the door to stop their entry, breaking almost everything connected to it, or sitting on top of it, including a sentimental bottle of 2007 reserve Grace wine. Those aggressive little Bastardos!
We're working on a saloon feature for the next issue of True West. Of course we're featuring the legendary Palace Saloon on Whiskey Row in Prescott. We're running this photo of us filming a segment for the Westerns Channel. That's Ken Amorosano giving me his direction on how he wanted the shot to go and a local re-enactor at right who was in the scene.
Just finished reading Neil Young's "Waging Heavy Peace" early this morning. I'm also reading "On The Road" by Jack Kerouac as well on Kathy's Kindle. Don't really like the Kindle experience. Can't tell where I'm at in the book. I prefer the tangible and tactile over the electronic. Interesting to me that both are basically road pictures, or in this case, road memoirs. Inspired this heatwave phenom memory from my youth on old Route 66 when you'd meet a car floating on the horizon.
And, of course, saw many storms on my many trips across the desert. Violent colors and cloud patterns inspired this "patina" painting from last year:
So many of the roads we traveled on when I was a kid have been abandoned. When I drove up to Choc Hamilton's funeral in October I went the back way through Seligman, Truxton, Peach Springs and on into Kingman I kept spying old roadways, long abandoned, that I remember we used to travel on. There was a garage in Kingman called "Old Trails Garage" and now I get it: Old Trails.
I've seen some magical scenes in my life but the one that takes the cake was the rain storm in Monument Valley last year. Lucinda Amorosano snapped this pic of me setting up for another shot on our Westerns Channel shoot (ironically shot the same day as the Palace Saloon photo, above).
"This two-lane with the faded yellow line is soothing somehow, although the roughness of the surface harkens back to smoother times."
—Neil Young, page 458, "Waging Heavy Peace"
