Hello hello Reader -

I began this newsletter a few weeks ago, from a room with a lovely spring view. Jacob was on the couch working on a novel, Arcadia was under the table having a Chinese lesson, and I was feeling mighty grateful for trees, family, and Jordan Hamlin's MOXE Studio.

For once, I'm not here to tell you about tour dates (though I'll be at Blissfest in July, and we have some fall/winter dates in the works). Instead, I've got:

• Multitudes III registration, and thoughts on what makes Multitudes special
• Updates on recording in Nashville and California
• Some inspiring climate solutions stories I got to hear & talk about
• A miscellaneous list of helpful things

Multitudes III, September 10-12, New Braunfels TX

​Registration for Multitudes, the retreat I co-host with Alex Wong, is open!

This year we're at the beautiful Hacienda del Rio, a boutique hideaway nestled beside the Guadalupe River. Some room types sold out in the pre-sale, but we've still got several room types left. For those on a budget (or anyone who likes rooming with/making a new friend!) we have shared rooms that you can book a bed in. For those who'd rather splurge, we have spacious suites with separate living room and private patio.

Multitudes began three years ago with a question: What if we hosted a retreat to get to know multi-faceted people who connect to our music? Alex Wong and I have always been struck by how thoughtful and interesting the folks are who follow our work. Y’all really ought to meet each other!

So...
What if we could hang out over multiple days and nights - not just briefly after a show?
What if Alex and I presented multi-sensory, possibly-overly-ambitious dinner events to spark new ideas and connections, because that’s our love language as much as music is?
What if you brought your passions to an open mic/Powerpoint party: butterfly chrysalises, British naval technology, your own version of “Where I’m From”?
What if we belted out Broadway tunes and 90s not-so-guilty pleasures together, crowded around tiny lyrics on someone’s phone?

What if, in announcing Multitudes III, we still struggle to convey what exactly these gatherings are, and what’s so magical about them?

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I guess we embrace that the hard-to-explain-ness is a feature, not a bug. The people who come to Multitudes somehow always understand the assignment, even when it’s this vague. Openhearted curiosity. Generous playfulness. Co-creator energy. More than anything Alex and I plan or present, that’s the secret sauce.

If this speaks to you, I dearly hope you'll join us.

Recording travels

On that recent Nashville trip to MOXE, I recorded several songs that aren't on any album yet: some old, some new, some solo, some not, some indoors, some outdoors. Dear friend Karen Shih came too, snapping lovely photos as we went.

Soon after that, I hopped over to my hometown of Saratoga, California, where at age 16 I wrote a song about another student's piano improvisations. (This may have been unrequited-crush-fueled songwriting.) That student, Trevor Garrod, went on to become the keyboardist and songwriter of beloved jam band Tea Leaf Green. Meanwhile, I dropped the tune occasionally into live shows, and people started requesting "that jazzy song about the boy at the piano."

Now, 30+ years later, I thought I'd finally record it, and asked the (no longer) boy at the piano himself to record it with me. Fortunately, he was game - and as sparkling an improviser as ever. You can read more of the story, and watch one of our takes on Patreon:

Where's all this music going? Well, I thought it was one EP of rarities...but it's a full album of 'em now, or two EPs, or three. I'm working on a "proper" new album in the meantime, too, though those songs are a much more primordial state. Come hang out on Patreon if you'd like to weigh in on tracklists, and/or hear works in progress as I figure it all out! Pay what you wish, come and go as you like.

Inspiring climate stories

On my California trip, I also got to catch a San Francisco Climate Week event hosted by Grist, showcasing vivid stories of climate solutions. I was particularly struck by Yurok tribe member Amy Bowers Cordalis' story: she and the tribe worked with the utility company*, the sport fishing community, the EPA, and many others to remove all four dams on the Klamath River. (*After successfully suing and creating business case for dam removal, that is.) It was the largest river restoration in U.S. history, completed ahead of schedule and under budget. Biologists predicted the salmon would take several years to decades to return. They began appearing upriver within days.

New organization WHEN Justice also intrigued me: they crowdfund legal action to hold polluters accountable, identifying cases where just a bit more funding is what's needed to prevail. And free solo climber Alex Honnold described how the Honnold Foundation and its partners are getting solar power to people who want and need it most, especially Indigenous communities stewarding vital ecosystems around the world.

I brought these stories to my parents' home, where I was staying on this California jaunt. "Keep 'em coming," my dad said. "We only hear about what makes us despair. We had no idea that there's news like this too."

Recently I had a great conversation on The Tie-In, a podcast showcasing climate solutions in arts & entertainment. The hosts, Zena Harris and Mark Rabin, do incredible work in the entertainment and cleantech industries respectively, and they've done episodes on the creative people greening a 36,000-person music festival, using battery power on film shoots, and authoring the climate optimism novel Fairhaven. My conversation with them covered lots of ground, including my approach to writing "sustainability" songs, and how going deeper with individual music fans can help them make an outsize difference on climate.​

You can listen to/watch my full interview here:

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Other helpful things

​Patreon CEO and musician Jack Conte shared some excellent thoughts on AI and what it means for creators. It's well worth a listen to the whole thing. (Some things that stood out: artists deserve a system of consent+credit+compensation for use of their work in training models. Meanwhile, we've scratched the surface of AI-enabled art forms about as far as when film cameras were first invented, and every movie was a single camera pointed at a theater stage.)

​Nora Cooks' chocolate cake has already filled our cake pans three times this year - pretty much every birthday that's come up. Hooray for recipes that everyone raves about, that just happen to be vegan (and easy to make gluten free as well).

​Focus For Democracy has been a great place for me to learn where my donation dollars can go furthest for protecting democracy in the U.S. They do regular calls to share the latest info, including which organizations are most effectively implementing evidence-based strategies. (Thanks to the Patreon member who referred me!)

​LingoBus, an online 1:1 Chinese tutoring program, has done wonders for helping Arcadia feel confident learning and speaking Mandarin. Thanks to Patreon member Ken Fine of tigerba.com for the recommendation!

Finally, Carsie Blanton has truly written a folk song for the ages in "Little Flame." My politics aren't exactly the same as hers, but it doesn't matter. The elemental fire in these simple, profound lyrics - and Carsie herself, who postponed a tour last year to join a sailing mission to deliver humanitarian aid - is one to warm my hands and build my courage by.

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Wow, you read all the way down here! Thank you. Here's a video of my sister and me lip-syncing an amazing conversation between our kids. Happy Mother's Day weekend.

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How are you doing? What floods your heart, weighs on your mind, gets under your skin? As always, I'd love to know.

Love,
VT