Yeah, I haven’t been around much lately. This is partly because it’s getting increasingly difficult for me to be at the computer when I don’t have to, and partly because I haven’t really had a whole lot to say lately. Apart from an ongoing crisis of confidence about my ability to be any good at all at my job, things have been pretty quiet in my world. I’m not depressed, not at all (although I can sense some weather-induced doldrums coming on, as the forecast for this week has temperatures climbing to the mid-80s in friggin’ April); I’m just not up to much, I guess.

A few things have come up that are worth talking about recently, though. For one, against all recent signs and indications, there is going to be a Twangfest this year. It was a nightmare to book this one, and I don’t even do much booking. (As it turned out, in fact, I didn’t do any booking, though it wasn’t for want of trying.) It’s the tenth year, and we wanted it to be spectacular, or something close. We wanted to bring back some performers from the earliest days of Twangfest, and then also have some totally new and dazzling headliners. A major country artist, say, like Marty Stuart or Dwight Yoakam, or someone totally unexpected but entirely appropriate, like Sharon Jones. But when we started putting out feelers and making inquiries, it was one disappointment after another. One artist who we thought was absolutely locked in got some dates in Europe in June, and we couldn’t even be made at him because we know he makes better money there than he does here. (And because he loves Twangfest, as we love him, and wasn’t trying to shaft us, I hasten to add. He’ll be welcome to play anytime he wants, if there are more Twangfests to play.) Others weren’t touring in June and would have had to be flown in to perform, an expense that our budget couldn’t handle.

In the end, we’ve put together, completely out of our asses, a great lineup that I’m quite excited about, with an array of fine purveyors of American roots-ish music ranging from the Dirtbombs to BR5-49, and much in between. See for yourself in a few days when the lineup is posted on the Twangfest site. And in the end, Twangfest X will be as memorable a musical and social experience as all the other Twangfests have been; I’m completely confident of that. I know the next ten weeks or so will be thoroughly dominated by Twangfest, and I’m looking forward to that (though juggling it with my more than usually heavy workload will be, um, interesting). I’m sort of dead weight when it comes to most of the work that makes Twangfest happen—I don’t really do booking, and I’m even less useful when it comes to finding sponsors, because I am almost pathologically incapable of asking strangers for money. But this is the time of year when I try to sort of make up for my uselessness. I coordinate the Dan Pack (named for our beloved friend and Twangfest supporter Dan Bentele), which allows people to make a small donation to Twangfest and get a good deal on tickets and a t-shirt and poster. (Asking friends and acquaintances for money is apparently easier than asking strangers, I guess.) This year, I’m back to answering the queries that come in to our general e-mail box, which pick up in volume this time of year. I’ll be writing a press release.

And then my favorite part: running the on-site merchandise sales and paying the bands. I love paying the bands, because I’d be too shy to talk to most of them otherwise, but paying them gives me a built-in excuse. (And somehow they always seem to like me. I’m sure the fact that I’m handing them money has nothing to do with it.) Paying the bands means I have to stay sober at the club, which is a good thing, and handling merch means that I get to hide behind a table instead of mingling, so that people won’t quite figure out how truly shy and awkward and tongue-tied and unprepossessing I am. It all works out very well. Twangfest is as social an activitiy as I can imagine, and it’s the sort of thing I’d ordinarily fervently avoid—I’d rather eat dirt than go to SXSW, for example—but somehow when it’s Twangfest, its okay. It’s pretty much the best thing I do all year. It’s almost scary how much of my identity is tied up in being part of the Twanggang, actually. That’s something I prefer not to dwell on too much or too often, though it’s been harder to escape this year because there are questions about the future of Twangfest and about my future with it. More about that if and when it’s appropriate, though.

Anyway, Twangfest fever has officially set in, and that’s cause for a blog post if anything is. There’s more to talk about too—for one thing, the new record by (Twangfest X performer) Scott Miller has been out for several weeks now, and I haven’t even written about it. I’ll save that for next time, along with some other musical commentary.