Year Of The Shepherd's Bush Dog

I’ve waited a long time to see Iron & Wine live.
Too long probably.
I’ve turned down paid work to keep this evening free.
My expectations are running high. Too high. Unrealistically high.
Thing is, from where I’m standing,
the delicate melodies and the fragile vocals
feel altogether smothered by the full 8-piece band.
The proscenium arch isn't helping matters either.
It’s a mere 31-feet wide. The stage itself a scant 30-feet deep.
And there’s a capacity crowd of 2,000 in attendance.
Thing is, on a night like tonight,
with me in this frame of mind,
that feels like one thousand
nine-hundred
and ninety-nine people too many!
These lonesome tales of redemption, resurrection
and regret need space. Space to drift. Space to infect.
Open air to vibrate sweetly along.
Deserted dirt roads and coiled steel wires to chime against.
Arroyos and floodplains and sparse chaparral.
Closing tight my eyes, I allow my totem animal
to lead me in my sockfeet through the soft smoke
to a place far-faraway from this claustrophobic safe-house.
Sam Bean is instead stood waist-deep
in the last windswept cornfield before
sunbaked terracotta borderlands take hold of the country.
There are vapour trails in the darkening Big Sky overhead.
The grackle birds are cackling in the eucalyptus branches.
Scent of bloodweed. Scent of catclaw. Scent of candelilla.
I’m sat on an old moth-bitten couch
abandoned in an empty pot-holed parking lot
illuminated by the flickering bulb of an interstate motel sign.
I’m drinking Tennessee whiskey straight from the square bottle.
A sweatheart waits for me on a bare mattress nearby.
Who says I’ve been reading too much Cormac McCarthy?