Over the holidays Katy and I flew from Mexico to San Francisco. There was a car waiting and an itinerary planned.
Spend a little time in San Francisco, eat good food, tour the coast, drink House of Shields dry. I wasn't able to empty all the bar of its bottles, but it put me in a way after drinking back a handful of the best sazeracs and an old fashioned or two you could hope to have.
During our annual trip to Palm Springs for the holidays to see the family, drink and not golf, we had a chance to head over to the Salton Sea. Katy's pops picked us up with his wife Lisa. They'd packed a nice little picnic, and we were off. The sea is only a short 30 minute drive from where we stay in The Springs, but it felt a world away.
As with any tightly developed resort and retirement style town in the middle of a desert (Vegas!), once you hit its outskirts, it just disappears. Malls, car dealerships and endless rows of restaurants turn into sparse gas stations and truck stops.
Here are some photos from the trip, but the real story and more photos are featured as a part of Lifetime Collective's On The Road series on their blog. Read it here.
This EP by Wake Owl just came out today and it's been on repeat a few times around here. The title track and album opener, Wild Country is the front runner after the first few listens.
Born and raised in California, Colyn Cameron of Wake Owl now calls Vancouver and Portland home. It's good to think that much of these songs could have been written while experiencing the mix of city and wilderness in British Columbia, our old home.
“With this EP I was really focused on just creating recordings I could be proud of and felt connected to as a group of songs. I wanted to capture and represent, in all its instrumentation and arrangement, what those songs mean to me.”
It looks like, at least for now, the whole album is available to stream off of SoundCloud. If you don't already subscribe to a service like Rdio (or Songza, GrooveShark, Spotify), do it. Rdio is just about the best thing to music discovery and listening that has happened in ages.
If you're on Rdio, come find me.
Check out Wake Owl's Facebook page, or learn a bit more about them with their bio on Vagrant's site.
