Just got back from the first real “road trip” I’ve taken in a while – and believe me, we were on the road a lot! I’m definitely a city boy. And it has been some time since I've been that far up North.  I was in Pine Plains, New York, for a close friend’s wedding, which was one of the most beautiful I have ever attended, and Randolph, Vermont, for my grandmother’s memorial service. Along the way, I was able to reunite with some old pals, family and also meet some nice new friends, as well as encounter a few missteps.

I had booked my room some months at the Beekman Arms/Delamater Inn, in downtown Rhinebeck (which seemed like a million miles from the wedding site, but whatever – it was the number-one recommended accommodation for the guests). When I arrived to check in, during a rainstorm no less and having driven all day from DC, I was told by the front desk that some one had “cancelled” my reservation. I really didn’t see how that could be possible, and I was able to get a room for one night, but let me go on record and say the Beekman Arms/Delamater Inn has got have one of the screwiest managements ever. Book with caution, I’m serious. Other guests had problems too. I was not impressed at all.

In Rhinebeck, I was supposed to meet with various wedding guests at a nice joint called the Terrapin but most people were still on the road and did not get in until way early in the morning and the rehearsal dinner was a million miles away in Pine Plains and lasted late. So, all alone - and its remarkable how much my confidence boosts when I'm away from stoopid status-driven DC - I made do and befriended some locals, in particular this amazing young married couple, wife is a sculptor/metalworker and husband is studying at the culinary academy, and was up until the wee hours chatting with them at their awesome, huge Victorian house up the street. As they say... when in Rome… err, Rhinebeck.

On the morning of wedding, visited the FDR house/library in Hyde Park, which I had not been to since I was a kid, and where my father had worked as a dashing young ranger; went to a brunch another million miles away in another town; back to Rhinebeck to fetch my stuff from the dreaded Beekman Arms/Delamater Inn; up to Pine Plains to see the most beautiful and moving wedding ceremony ever; proceeded to over-indulge (a week-long of vistually starving myself to look slim for the event did not work in my favor) at the amazing reception; and solved my lack of accommodations by crashing on a couch there, to wake up, not quite fresh, for the morning after brunch. Then off to Randolph, Vermont!

I won’t go into the memorial service because its way too personal but I will say it was moving and allowed me a certain amount of closure. The family reunion was wonderful – so many relatives I had not seen in years assembled to pay tribute to my grandmother, who grew up in Randolph Center, Vermont, in the house where my great-uncle still lives. The familial assembly was not without its pratfalls on my behalf, but lets just say we have always been a quirky, idiosyncratic family and these get-togethers – especially funerals – are never quite easy. I’m just a mess these days, no?

I do want to give a shout out to the excellent Shady Maples Bed & Breakfast in charming downtown (?) Randolph. Wonderful hospitality especially after the Beekman Arms/Delamater Inn disaster; lovely, warm family-run place and they make an excellent breakfast!

So I’ve been back in DC a few days, surveying the damage and pushing forward with my next move. Jeez, its muggy today – I guess I missed Spring – and I’m spending the day looking for fresh employment.  It is daunting to re-invent oneself professionally after four years, no matter how generally demoralizing the experience might have been.

As an escapist respite, and in the interim – like I always say, what is a post without some Feist love? Here is today's nugget from the New York Times; Feist discusses what she has been grooving to as of late. Of note, she mentions she listens to a lot of the Smithsonian Folkways field recordings and in fact, when I met her a few weeks back, she was convinced there was a museum in DC dedicated to the library and was determined to visit it between her Tower appearance and Black Cat performance. I sadly had to break the news to her that was no such fabled place in DC. Feist also mentions M.I.A., whose incendiary debut I have been grooving to in my wasted attempts to have a good time lately; Apostle of Hustle – fails to mentions she appears on their awesome Folkloric Feel; and my fave Lhasa, whom long time readers might know I exhibited a similar crush on some time ago.

Text version of NYT Feist piece after the jump:

June 5, 2005

A Torch Singer With an Ancient Sound

By FEIST

After a decade of playing in rock bands, the Canadian singer Leslie Feist, who goes by her last name only, has been reborn as a chanteuse. Her second album, "Let It Die," was recorded in Paris, her adopted home, and released here in April by Interscope's Cherry Tree imprint. Speaking recently with Joel Topcik, Feist discussed what she's been listening to and why:

M.I.A. (Maya Arulpragasam)

I met Maya Arulpragasam about four or five years ago in

England

when I was on tour with the rapper Peaches, who was also my roommate. We stayed with Justine Frischmann, from Elastica, and she and Maya were roommates. Maya wasn't making music back then; she was making clothes and videos and art, spray-painting jackets. A couple months ago, I was at the South by Southwest Festival in

Austin

, and I saw her onstage, and it was just amazing. I can't stop listening to her new album, "Arular" (XL/Beggars U.S.). "Pull Up the People" is a song that's always rotating through my head. I didn't know I needed sunshine-dancehall-booty music until I got her record.

Apostle of Hustle

I've been listening to their album "Folkloric Feel" (Arts & Crafts) for the past year, though it's only been out for a few months. The album has a Latin-edged, moody, sexy, dark feel with these epic songs. A lot of it uses old drum machines but they're layered over a live drummer, so it's percussion-heavy with these minor key moods.

Willy Mason

Willy Mason is another one I saw at SXSW, at a party on the 17th floor of a hotel. I walked into this conference room with folding chairs and bright lights, and there's this scruffy guy up onstage who looks like he just woke up. I don't think I moved for the next 45 minutes. It was just him and a guitar. He's got an album out, "Where the Humans Eat" (Team Love). I've got the lyrics to "Hard Hand to Hold" stuck in my head: "It is tempting to fight/ When you know that you're right,/ It's hard to lie down/ When you don't trust the ground."

Lhasa

(

Lhasa

de Sela)

I listen to a lot of field recordings, stuff from Smithsonian Folkways and the Library of Congress. The thing that's so hypnotic about them is the repetition of phrases and rhythms that puts you into this deeper state of your mind.

Lhasa

taps into that. Her melodies are hypnotic. She's Mexican-American, but she's lived in

Quebec

for a while. She sings in Spanish, French and English on her most recent album, "The Living Road" (Nettwerk). It has a lot of organic-sounding percussion and natural sounds; you can hear the size of the room it was recorded in. And there's something about her voice: you can tell her feet are planted on the ground, and she's not even moving - maybe she's just holding her arm out in front of her - and she's just singing from the marrow of her bones.

Poni Hoax

The French band Poni Hoax is not the kind of thing I'm normally drawn to. I like things that are a little more broken and falling apart, something that's catching itself and sewing itself back up all while you're listening. Poni Hoax is really sewn up already. They have a record called "

Budapest

" coming out on a French label called Tigersushi (it'll be distributed in the

United States

in July through Forced Exposure). "Dark disco" is the only way I can describe it. They put a disco beat against dark minor-key melodies. They often have guest vocalists, but most of their stuff is instrumental, with live drums, a baritone sax that does a lot of the bass lines, organs and chicka-chicka rhythm guitar soaring over the top.

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[Donald]

But won't employment interfere with your life of leisure?