Across Blue Mountains: New CD

(View From Isle La Motte- Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
acrylic on canvas, 2007)

I'm pleased to report that I've just about finished my new solo CD, ACROSS BLUE MOUNTAINS: SONGS AND SOUNDWORKS. It features lots of atmospheric steel guitar and some intimate vocals. I think it's my most personal collection yet; a journey into inner and outer landscapes. You can listen to some of it here:

http://www.jukeboxalive.com/music_listen_1959081.html

I'm also excited to announce that we've just finishing mixing the new Rusty Romance album. It's being mastered as I write this. More to follow soon.

October Sunset, Lake Champlain

October Sunset, Lake Champlain

(painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor on paper, 2008)

Migration

Migration (Monoprint by Kevin Macneil Brown, papers and black paint, 2007)

Sparrow and Fog

Poised at the edge of
seasons changing
or two weather systems
crashing together,
the white-throated sparrow,
in migration, begins to move now
south-east through heavy fog.

(Or perhaps that poise,
that pause, this fog, that waiting,
those seasons, those systems,
that moving, those directions

are only for us
are only pale
August perceptions…)

There are some questions,
I have found,
For which the best answers might be:

Call notes of birds;
Thick white silence.

-Kevin Macneil Brown

August, 2008

Still Point

Still Point;
Light Across Water

(Paintings by Kevin Macneil Brown, acyrlic on board, spring 2008)

Bright orange glow
(5:15) at

the point of soon-to-rise sun

Within that, blue cloud striations
and, just above: darker, almost black.

Further from this center, to the
north of east, a muted
peach-colored gleam; soft, and
brightening into that orange as
the eye follows

Toward the point of rising light;

The Virgin Point (Merton’s term)
and I feel a yearning toward—no, an attainment of
such a place, a feeling

By this, I mean
the moment, the locus
of new beginning

Where all that is not
necessary falls away into
an open, loving void

(as though swallowed
complete, by
bigger ocean!)

Wave upon wave
love returns to itself,
its strength-- already
considerable--gathering,
felt and
known

that magnificent
blue-green roar!

-kmb, May 08

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I'm excited to announce the publication in one volume of my two poem cycles NORTH COAST DREAMING and LUMINIST DIARY. Here's more information, and a way to order a copy:

http://www.lulu.com/content/2152993

It's also available at Bear Pond Books, in Montpelier, Vermont.

And more news: I'll be showing some of my paintings as part of the Montpelier Art Walk this June. Here's more information:

http://www.lazypear.com/art_gallery/art_walk/montpelier_art_walk.html

Eagle Dreams of Open Waters

Rock, Water, Sky
Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown
(Acrylic on canvas, March 2008)


-------------------


Breathing hard beneath
first spring sun

running, wide-striding
along mud of the river path


after the long winter, from inside I can only
make rough outline
of the joy of
all of
this.


Better, then, to describe
up there, the eagle:

high in clear blue sky.
lifted by warming
earth through cool winds,

he's been dreaming
for a while now.


But today it's real
to see and sense:

the fast-moving truth of open water.


-kmb, April 08


------------------------------


Sun today, and clean fresh winds. But last week it snowed, and I was feeling under the weather. Thanks to Rusty Romance's stellar soundman, Glenn Howland--aka Mr. Coffee, aka Treeline Stringband-- I was able to record my way out of the blues. Glenn loaned me a fine mic and pre-amp particularly suited for acoustic music and I spent a day recording some pieces I've been working on for a few months. (How did Glenn know they were finished? Hmmm...)

One of the compositions I recorded was this piece for acoustic guitar-- a small-bodied Epiphone-- and acoustic steel-- the cool little 5 dollar Silvertone that John Goss made into a lap steel and gave to me.
I just finished mixing the piece today, using compression and echo to add texture, space, and motion around the notes. It's sort of an impressionistic acoustic slide guitar gamelan thing, maybe:
http://www.jukeboxalive.com/player/player.php?sid=1959093&method=play

New Harbor, Maine: Three Morning Views, Three Shoreline Transformations

(Paintings by Kevin Macneil Brown- acrylic on canvas, summer 2007)

It is becoming more and more clear to me that making all of this-- words, music, images--is simply a way to hold on for a long moment to the things that matter to me, before they pass through my hands, my apprehensions.

And now, a re-posted link to some contemplative water music:

http://buckyb.jukeboxalive.com/music_listen_1638551.html

Winter Light: Image and Sound

January Dusk

Kevin Macneil Brown, winter 2008, acrylic on canvas

And, in the same spirit, here is a long ambient/liminal piece I began in January and just completed yesterday:

http://buckyb.jukeboxalive.com/music_listen_1716973.html

Thank you for looking and listening.

You Are My Horizon

You Are My Horizon 1, You Are My Horizon 2

Kevin Macneil Brown, summer 2007

acrylic on canvas