Hello there Reader,

Another newsletter mere weeks after the last one? I'm know - I'm surprised myself. But it's because I have exciting news about an event that's booking up quickly...

PRESENTING MULTITUDES: A GATHERING

For years, Alex Wong and I have tossed around the idea of hosting some kind of intimate, multi-day gathering together. This year, thanks to our fabulous co-producers Amy Cox and Leah Light, our scheming has come to fruition. We're thrilled to present: Multitudes!

This September, over three nights and two days in a 20-bedroom cabin in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, Alex and I will show up as their whole, many-faceted selves - and we invite you to do the same. In addition to performances designed just for this gathering, there will be collaborative music-making (no music background required), capoeira class, social change nerdery, and more - with time reserved for you and other guests to lead sessions of your own. Come reflect and relax, forge new friendships, and get inspired to show up more powerfully in the world, as only you can.
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​As of this writing, there are five cabin rooms left - our respective Patreon communities got early access last Friday, and it's booked up fast! We're going to have a fantastic group of folks. I hope you'll join us.

​MULTITUDES: A GATHERING
SEP 25-28, 2024
Gatlinburg, TN​

What’s included:

• Lodging for 3 nights
• All meals
• 3 nights of music, including:
  • Alex’s multi-course listening & tasting dinner experience Permission Parties
  • Preview of Vienna’s never-before-seen multimedia stage show Inheritance
  • Additional live experiences designed especially for this gathering
• Additional daytime and late-night sessions, including:
  • Collaborative songwriting
  • Stretching and capoeira with Alex
  • Tabletop games and climate action with Vienna
  • Plus more to be announced

Cost:

• Single bunk (shared room with shared bath): $800. **SOLD OUT**
• Queen bedroom with private bath: $1,800 ($900 each for 2 persons) **SOLD OUT**
• King bedroom with private bath: $2,000 ($1,000 each for 2 persons)

Additional info at https://quietvoice.betterworld.org/events/multitudes​

OTHER UPDATES

We've started booking up a busy fall for touring, both in support of getting out the vote and around the release of my song-triptych "We've Got You"! The first show to be announced & on sale is in my hometown of Saratoga, California, at Montalvo Arts Center on Friday, September 13.

Heartfelt thanks to all you lovely folks who came out to the shows these past few weeks, and who made the pre-show Civic Happy Hours such a success! We wrote over 80 (!) letters to overseas voters with Vote Forward & Center For U.S. Voters Abroad. We raised over $3,600 (!) for election-related organizations like Listen First Project, Campaign Legal Center, Climate Cabinet and Swing Left. And we even registered people to vote right there in the lobby of a music venue. (PSA: 17 year olds who will be 18 by Election Day can pre-register!) I am newly convinced of the motivational power of stickers and Instax photos, and of making this stuff festive in general.

Extra special gratitude goes to the audience of Night 1 at the Word Barn, who only got four songs from me before I had to end the show with a rapid-onset case of laryngitis. (I did a throaty "Blue Caravan," "Homecoming" a la Tom Waits, a whispery "Lost Words Blessing," and "Harbor" as a piano instrumental.) The kind proprietors of the Word Barn offered a refund to everyone, of course. But I'll never forget people standing up to applaud as I left the stage, their generous love washing over me even as I desperately wished I had more to give. Nor the folks who wrote back to the refund offer just to inquire whether I was OK. (Miraculously, an otolaryngologist in nearby Portsmouth saw me the very next afternoon, prescribed a corticosteroid, and Night 2 went just fine - caffeinated, even. Amber winked at Bob during my set: "I kinda like Vienna on drugs.")

And I am so very grateful to have a life where I can cross paths with the likes of Jean Rohe and Amber Rubarth. What a thrill to play on Jean's "What Will We Tell Our Children?" and on Amber's "In The Creases", and to join the mesmerized listening to their stories, both within songs and between, about farming and teaching and falling love with wild birds and that time their dad started a biker gang (of sorts). I hope it won't be long before we join up again.

As always, more to come.
As always, thank you for reading, and listening.
And as always, I'd love to hear how things are with you.

Love,
VT