Next week I’m headed to Denver and Boulder for some Once Was Lost events, a little ahead of official release date. It’s like my out of town opening! I’ve also updated my calendar with more details about Cincinnati and Tennessee. Right now, my widget thingie only seems to be showing about a month’s worth of events, so there’s stuff coming up you can’t see, such as Dallas, Houston, and Austin events the last week of October, culminating in the Texas Book Festival. Yeehaw! Here are the details for CO:

Tuesday, September 22, 7 p.m. - Tattered Cover Highlands Ranch – Denver – 303-470-7060

Wednesday, September 23, 7 p.m. – Barnes & Noble Crossroads Commons – Pearl Street – Boulder – 303-442-1665

P.S.! If you happen to be in Joliet, Illinois (the town, not the prison), I’m doing a virtual visit to the public library (I’m sorry I don’t know which branch – the YA services person’s name is Andrea, perhaps that will help) at 1 p.m. Central.

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I’ve been very good about uni-tasking on my blog lately and focusing on single-topic posts. But, to make this post interesting to those of you who are not in Colorado, I thought I’d throw in some music-related stuff since it’s been awhile. I mean, what the hell, it’s Friday.

Some stuff I’ve either recently acquired or recently been listening to over and over and over:

The New Pornographers: Challengers This might be my favorite TNP album to date, at least for straight-through repeated listening. It’s a bit more subdued and controlled, and I like that. Which maybe means I am getting old.

Crowded House: Time on Earth Even though I’ve been a CH/Finn fan since, oh I don’t know, late eighties? and have seen them and Neil Finn and the Finn Brothers live many times, somehow I waited like a year after its release to get this. I don’t love every single thing Neil does like some of his more rabid fans, but, man, you can’t deny he’s a hell of a musician and songwriter, The more I listen to this album the more I hear a lot of really cool, intricate details that make this a great addition to the CH catalog.

David Mead: Sara’s Best Of I’ve assembled the perfect playlist of David Mead, taken from six different albums, and it’s my go-to writing music lately. It’s become Pavlovian for me—I start the first song (Indiana) and my fingers just start moving across the keyboard until the last song (Queensboro Bridge). Like magic. Okay not really. Actually writing is always hard. But I do enjoy listening to DM while working.

Need more gym songs! My gym mix has been lying fallow for a couple of months, because in the summer I’ve mostly been exercising outside and like to hear the birds and squirrels and speeding cars before they run me over. But it’s too dark out that early now, and I’m back to the gym. Recently added to the playlist: Fat Joe’s Get It Poppin’, and You’re Supposed to Be My Friend and You Made Me Like It by the 1990s. What’s new and good for making 45 minutes of cardio fly by as if you were watching an episode of Project Runway?

Have a good weekend. Hope to see you in Denver or Boulder next week.