Archive for » 2009 «

Album Review: dave rawlings machine a friend of a friend



Acony Records is proud to announce the November 17 release of the Dave Rawlings Machine record,A Friend Of A Friend. The album features members of Old Crow Medicine Show, Benmont Tench from the Heartbreakers, Karl Himmel, Nate Walcott of Bright Eyes, and of course, Gillian Welch (from Gillian Welch’s Website).

The new album produced by David Rawlings by the band dave rawlings machine titled “a friend of a friend” is sensational.  The majority of the tracks are written by David Rawlings and Gillian Welch and performed by those two as well as musical guests Ketch Secor, Willie Watson, the rest of the Old Crow Medicine Show gang, and many others.  

The album features songs such as ‘To Be Young’ (originally co-written by Ryan Adams and Dave Rawlings) and Old Crow’s ‘I Hear Them All.’

There is a great coming together of talent on this album, and I highly recommend it if you are a fan of Old Crow, Gillian Welch, Ryan Adams, Allison Kraus, Norah Jones, the Wallflowers, and Emmylou Harris, all of which Dave Rawlings has played with and inspired.

Dave Rawlings is the magic-folk-bluegrass-rock;n’roll-man behind the scenes in all these bands.  He found and inspired and backed many of these artists.
Listen to the song “Ruby” here.
Listen to “It’s Too Easy” here.


Merry Christmas!


To: Friend 


From: Bloch Party


Greetings from a snow-filled Virginian suburb (reminds me of Gran Torino)!















I have been talking with my friend Mr. Crawford in Phoenix about how important the Christmas traditions are.  To have a Christmas tree, to sing carols, to put your shoes out for St. Nick: these constitute a fuller and richer Christmas.  Without these traditions Christmas can go one of two ways.  The first (a double bad naughty) way is to not have these traditions and devotions at all: this is a privation of taste and culture, but more importantly they are outward signs which show the proper joy at the incredible and momentous occasion as the celebration of the birth of God.  Therefore, a lack of these traditions is a scrooged mess.  It’s all backwards, it’s the proper vision of these outward signs that insures a proper understanding of Christmas.  The other way (only a venial, single bad naughty) way is to distort these traditions and Hallmarkize them: make Christmas distant by reducing it to a materialistic secular celebration of (albeit good honest virtues) gift-giving, fellowship, family, relaxation, Jesus, baby-Jesus, and peace on earth Obama Prius Recycling Juno Soundtrack Latte Indie Macbook Dreadlock Christmas.


Last night I went to traditional Latin Midnight mass at St. John’s in McLean Virginia. The profundity of the nativity was impressed upon me amidst the beauty of the full choir and orchestra singing magnificent polyphony and chant, amidst the incense billowing out and the old priest struggling to genuflect at the consecration, the incarnation–God becoming man and being among us and one of us.  
The hallmarkization of Christmas allows us to hide and cover up the fact that Jesus was God made flesh and born in a manger (a food trough–oh okay, let’s put the king of the universe in a dog food bowl).  
Without the full effect of these traditions, another Christmas goes by, we loose the magic of Santa coming and there is nothing but either an absence of understanding or a covering up of the meaning of Christmas.  These traditions–having a Christmas tree, giving gifts, caroling, visiting the cresh, lighting the advent wreath–need to be reinvigorated, refreshed.  St. Francis did this when he created the world’s first ever dramatic representation of the cresh or nativity scene.  He did it that the people might know that it was a hardship, a birth in a stable, laying in a food bin on the refuse of oriental hay, but it brought the fact of the incarnation to the people.


So how can we restore the traditions that are so important?  My friend, Mr. Crawford, and I believe that it is imperative that you have a Christmas tree at the very least.

  • Buy a real tree, get a tree if you have a family (bachelors need to get trees too).
  • Get an advent wreath and light the candles at dinner (bachelors need to eat dinner sitting down).
  • Don’t listen to “Christmas Music” until at least a week before Christmas, so that you can still have the energy to celebrate the traditional 12 days of Christmas.
  • Take a chance on Christmas Eve to meditate on this one thought: God (the first mover, infinite Being, and your creator) became like that which he created.  He became man, took on our nature!  The incarnation is something that has rocked the world for 2000 years and caused history to turn.  Just ponder the significance of that for about, I don’t know, 10-15 minutes.
  • Sing traditional Christmas carols when you are with friends.
  • Go to a concert, many churches patronize the arts in the Christmas season, and often put on performances from Handle’s Messiah and other classically beautiful pieces.
  • Eat, Drink, and be merry!  Leisure is the basis of culture, and the feast is possible through leisure.
  • Visit the nativity scene at Church and pray in front of it, realizing that it was a hardship, not a hallmark warm-fuzzy to be born in a stable.
I love you all.  I want to be with you, but I am snowed in.  I do wish you the most festivity possible on this Christmas 2009.  With affection for you and general scorn for the behavior of Kanye West toward TSwift,

            Peter Bloch




Mr. Frost

There’s supposed to be a blizzard here all weekend. I thought this was apropos even though all of you have read it.
Also, this poem reminds me of Pascal talking about the then new cosmology, who points out how humbling and incomprehensible the size of the universe is.

Desert Places
by: Robert Frost
Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it–it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less–
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars–on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

css.php