Brianna Lane

Hey y’all -

I’ve been talking about this forever but now the time has come!  We leave tomorrow, bright and early, from Milwaukee for the Long Haul Bike Tour.  The talented and adventuresome Peter Mulvey headlines this tour and I’ll be opening all the shows.  showdates and milage are listed below.  Peter has a parlor sized guitar on the back of his bike and I’ve got my banjo in my saddle bag…we’re set.

I’ll be audio-blogging from the trip daily or maybe more than once a day.  No written blogs since I won’t be carrying a laptop.  But I’ll update my site when I can.  I’ll post cell-phone pictures to my Facebook regularly as well. In fact, I’ve already posted some pics already from my training rides and my writing time at the cabin in Sheboygan.

Follow along:

~ audio blog… http://howwastheshow.blogspot.com/

check the side-bar for past blogs

~ facebook for pics… www.facebook.com

~ check out the charity… www.bolderoptions.org

a portion of all my CD sales will be going directly to Bolder Options

~ be in touch, ask questions, send the love… briannalanemusic@gmail.com

THE LONG HAUL BIKE TOUR (w/ mileage to show) ::

Peter Mulvey & Brianna Lane to pedal and perform

joined by three fellow cyclists

Wed, Sept 9:  Wealthy Theatre 1130 Wealthy SE, Grand Rapids, MI =40 miles

8:00 PM ~ $10-$16 ~ 616-459-4788 ~ All Ages

Thu, Sept 10:  The Strutt 773 W. Michigan Ave., Kalamazoo, MI =50 miles

9:00 PM ~ $10 ~ 269-492-7200 ~ 21+

Fri, Sept 11:  The Creole Gallery 1218 Turner St., Lansing, MI =76miles

$12 ~ stpconcerts@gmail.com ~ All Ages

Sat, Sept 12:  The Ark 316 S. Main St., Ann Arbor, MI  =65miles

8:00 PM ~ $14 ~ 734-761-1451 ~ All Ages

Tue, Sept 15:  The Ninth Ward/Babeville 341 Delaware Ave., Buffalo, NY =305 miles

8:00 PM ~ $8 ~ 888-223-6000 ~ All Ages

Fri, Sept 18:  Nifkin Lounge SUNY-Marshall Hall, Syracuse, NY =152miles

7:00 PM ~ open to SUNY campus community only

Sun, Sept 20:  Caffe Lena 47 Phila St., Saratoga Springs, NY =141miles

7:00 PM ~ $14 mbr/$16ga ~ 800-838-3006 ~ All Ages

Thu, Sept 24:  Lizard Lounge 1667 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA =171miles

8:00 PM ~ $15adv/$18dr ~ 617-547-0759 ~ All Ages

Fri, Sept 25:  Club Passim 47 Palmer St., Cambridge, MA

7:00 & 10:00 PM ~ $18mbr/$20ga ~ 617-492-7679 ~ All Ages

Sat, Sept 26:  Iron Horse Music Hall 20 Center St., Northampton, MA = 101miles

7:00 PM ~ $14adv/$17dr ~ 413-586-8686 ~ All Ages

Saturday, August 15th

The Music Box Theater

Minneapolis, MN

doors at 8pm

Equal parts send-off party and fundraiser with Brianna Lane & The Navigator’s Club, and special guests including Javier from HUD, Saturday, August 15 at The Music Box Theatre.

Local singer/songwriter Brianna Lane is about to join Signature Sounds recording artist Peter Mulvey to pedal their bicycles 1,100 miles from Milwaukee, WI to Boston, MA.  The two will be playing a dozen dates at theaters and clubs alike, in an effort to promote health and wellness, and two-wheeled adventures, as well as raise funds for organizations that promote the same.

The Farewell & Bicycle-Tour Benefit Show will give Miss Lane the push she needs to embark on this leg-powdered tour and send her off with big Minneapolis love.  All proceeds go to Bolder Options, a local non-profit organization, which focuses on mentoring youth through running and cycling. For more information, visit www.BriannaLaneMusic.com. To learn more about Bolder Options visit www.BolderOptions.org.

I was recently asked to write a piece for State of Mind music magazine’s monthly column entitled “Song in My Head”.  This section comes to readers by various songwriters musing on one of their favorite songs.  I was immediately drawn to “America” by Paul Simon but realized that past month’s writers also loved Paul Simon songs.  Here’s what I ended up with… (slated for print for the June 2009 issue)

Greg Brown’s voice breaks my heart right in half and soothes me as I look for the glue to paste it back together again. His lyrics send me spinning through memories of love lost and time spent traveling and searching for god knows what. He often sings of simple things…watermelons, preserves, cars, and my homeland, the Midwest…romanticizing daily life with a sense of gratitude and grace. Brown sings fearlessly about women with both gentle love, like that of a Paul Simon song, and gritty lust, think Tom Waits. He doesn’t paint himself to be a good man but I still want to believe that he is decent and simply battered down by loving too much and walking through life with deep desire.

There are so many Greg Brown songs to choose from as he edges on having 30 records to his name. “China” was my introduction to his music at summer camp in 1997, found on a mix tape littered with Ani DiFranco and Dar Williams’ songs. “Hey Baby Hey” has extreme sentimental value to me and I’ve been known to cover that as well as “Lord I Have Made You a Place in My Heart”. I always come back to the lesser known, “Brand New ’64 Dodge” one of his most simple songs which is found on his 1994 release The Poet Game.

“Brand New ’64 Dodge” is a snapshot of a small moment in a boy’s life when everything was so damn simple yet so close to being complicated by his imminent adulthood. Lyrically Brown touches every sense…the visual of the quintessential sixties family in the car together, the new car smell and the smell of autumn leaves, the sounds of the asphalt and the gravel crunch and kids playing football. Brown also lets you in on small and intimate details of each of these character’s lives without bogging the listener down with emotion and without even getting close to telling you how you should or could feel about this family. This boy has a girlfriend, the girlfriend has a retarded brother, his sister gets car sick on occasion, and his father is a stoic man. Greg Brown so cleverly signs… and dad looks like he might smile.

The melody is true to the lyrics and stays so simple, never reaching any epic moment of raw emotion. More melody can be found in Bo Ramsey’s four note guitar riff that is so tastefully placed at the end of each verse, acting as a refrain. There is no chorus, no real story line, and the rhyme scheme is straight forward. The power of this song lies in its abundance of simplicity.

When I fall in love with a song I fall hard and with grand loyalty. I know that I am in love with a song when it makes me pay attention to the way I breathe and forces me to play it over and over again. The sense of nostalgia that “Brand New ’64 Dodge” gives me makes me breathe more easily and I typically smile, just a little bit, upon each listen.