Hi there - a practice posting...

Today Henry is very vocal, giggling in reverse and shouting at me all morning long. Very distracting, as it should be, but it hasn't kept me off line.

I'm working on a review of two recent ethnographies - both of which are very, very good and challenging reading. Today that project led me to Aaron Fox's excellent homepage at aaronfox.org, and the music there led me away again to habittrail.org to see if Dave had posted some liveness from our last show at Hank's. Alas no, and he's in Nashville where I should be.

All this will make much more sense with an introduction. I am an academic/anthropologist, and my ethnographic work in Northern Australia increasingly dovetails with my interests in music (particularly country and rock musics both in the US and in Australia) and its various technologies.

Habit Trail is a NYC country band that I play in, or have played in when I have the time. Truth be told HT is a project of my friend Dave Novak, but my participation has played its part in putting music performance back into my life.

And Henry is our new son, now just 8 weeks old. He's more than beautiful, and after a particularly scary surgery he's laughing and talking with only (all too brief) breaks for eating and sleeping.