Two of my Original Songs on KPOO Radio! Thursday March 24, 2016 from 1:00-2:00pm 89.5-FM

Posted on March 22, 2016 by Kathleen Dunbar

KD, ON AIR

DATE: Thursday 03/24/16 TIME: 1:00pm-2:00pm WHERE: 89.5 KPOO-FM
You can also Tune in ANYWHERE on phone/desktop w/ the KPOO app at this LINK.

I am excited to support the making of Adriana Marchione’s latest documentary film entitled The Creative High, a film about artists of all kinds submerged in and emerging from the addiction process. She will be interviewed on KPOO about what’s happening in her current process of creating this documentary, and she’s generously included playing two of my songs as part of the show: Half of You Good and Joytown, both off my upcoming CD Liars, Cutthroats and Dames! My fab partner Joseph Feusi is the film’s Producer. Thanks Adriana! You can read more details about her awesome and important project and follow the links to it by looking at the article directly below.

Meanwhile, please check out this Free Download of my song Hung Him On A Tree. It’s not yet mastered, but it’s one helluva cool sneak preview to my upcoming NEW CD “Liars, Cutthroats and Dames” which will be out SOON! To get a taste of my new album and this song, click this link: http://kathleendunbarmusic.com/downloadofhunghimonatreefree

KPOO

Here is film-maker Adriana Marchione’s statement about her upcoming documentary The Creative High: “Through art-making, I want to show the emotional depth and search for meaning that accompanies the struggle to recover from addiction. We need artistic role models who have made the passage to the other side of addiction to give hope to those who are still in the throes of addiction. This film will delve into the addict’s challenge to maintain equilibrium before and after recovery, and showcase the ways that art can be a guidepost. I have witnessed the creative process expand in recovery as well as diminish; experienced the dependence on the addiction as a muse that fuels a continued well-spring of altered art-making; and been awed by the abundant inspiration that art produces – allowing a ‘high’ to reveal itself through the sheer presence and attention to the present moment.” Here’s the link to the film project: The Creative High

The Creative HIgh

Coolio Links for Kathleen, Adriana and Joseph

Find Singer-Songwriter Kathleen Dunbar’s music at: kathleendunbar.com

Find Filmmaker Adriana Marchione and the process of her new documentary-film-in-the-making at: thecreativehigh.com

Find Producer & Professional Mentor Joseph Feusi’s info at his website: motivational mentor.com

Coming Into Town

Posted on December 25, 2015 by Kathleen Dunbar

A Benton Store - Version 6 Here I am, working on my Western novel, and we find The Rifleman as he rides into a town as a young man

I arrived in Dillardtown on a fine evening
having crossed a stony river
lined by cottonwoods
and provided with a sturdy bridge.
I came into the town downstream of a recent flood
for the main street gave evidence of the uppity nature
of the river which had left its banks and poured through the town
leaving great runnels and gouges drying into what should have been a thoroughfare
and instead was a mess.
Horses and wagons clunked and sucked through the street
men swore
one had lost his boot to the powers of the mud
and further on was his stocking.
The collection of financial establishments
was compressed into five blocks on either side of the mud.
Money changed hands between them at a furious pace.
Countless rough men struggled back and forth through the riverbottom
so that the mud covered every flooring in the town.
Here were assayer’s office, bank, saloons aplenty,
whorehouses fancy and plain, hotel, restaurants and chophouses;
there was the smell of mud, horses, food, shit, laundry steam,
piss, perfume if you paid for the parlor ladies,
and if a fellow saved enough after that grand round
he’d have himself shaved, might dip into a tin bath,
resupply at the drygoods and grocers his pans and shovels and vittles and ammunition,
pick up his horse or mule from the livery
and go stick it once again into the earth
who heaved her rocks and stones and broke his back if he was unlucky
or let him into her inner gleamings which he stole with both hands as fast as he could
and came to talk about it loudly in the town.

Here’s a poem set to music, another western-with-a-twist, on my CD The Storm in Our Head. It’s called “Snake Charmer.” Find it on Bandcamp or on my website, www.kathleendunbarmusic.com

Photo by Kathleen Dunbar

Japanese Tea Garden

Posted on October 20, 2015 by Kathleen Dunbar

Japanese Tea Garden

I spent many years going to the
Japanese Tea Garden in
Golden Gate Park, writing poetry
and observing people. Over the
years I wrote down some of the
interesting things I heard people
saying—the quotes in the poem
are what people actually said!

The girl says, “I need sugar.”
Her mother in a loud voice says,
“You don’t need sugar. You want sugar.
You need air and water and food.”
“And sleep,” a smaller girl says,
a little sister.
“Yeah, you need sleep.”
I watch the furrow of the brows
in this family
from larger woman to smaller girl,
a field of worry.
I say to myself,
“You need love.”

Parents in the tea garden, to children:
“You can’t make too many wishes at once.”
“You don’t want to play in old water. It’s yucky.”
About the fortune cookies:
“There’s a little story inside.”

As a child I was frequently in trouble
for playing in water,
yucky and clean.
I immediately want to make “too many wishes.”
In fact I have begun long ago,
am always in the midst of them,
they are as familiar as prayer beads.

Two middle aged ladies are served
tea and cookies.
Their eyes light up!
The plump lady
leans conspiratorially into her friend’s shoulder.
“If you break it, all the calories fall out!”
They laugh out loud
having lived enough life
to let their laughter be heard.
Her friend smiles.
I like them.
They are two reasons to get older.

A couple pauses as they cross the stone bridge
deep in conversation,
then they stand in front of the shrine that rises
in orange and black above the plain garden of stones.
She is even more in earnest
contemplating the wooden tower to the gods.
Who doesn’t try to make sense of it all?
She says, “You remember the tomato?
She married the tomato’s older brother.
He was a brilliant physicist.
He really lost it and became a monk.”

A little family at the tea garden
sitting on the “front row” –
just above the pool –
throwing wish pennies in
the father says to the son,
“Do you want to be superman?”
The son says,
“Nah,
that’s not a job.”

Now the Russian boy sings happily
in a thick accent,
“Oh, we had bad luck!”
a far away country melody
as they fish his sister’s purse out of the goldfish pond.
His aunt climbed right over the counter
and perched on the base to the awning pole,
leaned over the waters
and pulled it out.
No one fussed in that family.
An accident.
Much less worse than some things
that happened
back in the old country.
The father patiently squeezes the water out of everything.

A woman is saying to a man
next to me:
“I gave you a hot bath
when we lived on Taylor Street.
Where the spirit lived.
After that party.
I came home and made you a hot bath.
I poured you a glass of beer
and the spirit made it shatter.
All those beautiful glasses that they don’t make anymore.”

A small wriggly boy
leans far over the counter
and says excitedly,
“You can corral fish, you know.”
A fish cowboy in the Japanese Tea Garden.
His mother moves his teacup away
just in time.
“Tell me about it,” she says.
I sigh.

A student with glasses
and an impossibly long orange scarf
says to her friend,
“I’ll go home and make some pudding
and have that soup and do my notes.
I’ll put some more chili in that soup!”
That simple.
They are very young.
They leave.
The stools emptied of them
fill with an old couple.
He waits for her to sit
before he does
as he has unnumbered times,
a habit of kindness.
They look out at the pond
and she says,
“It’s going to be our anniversary.
What are you going to give us for our anniversary?”
“I don’t know.
It’s going to be forty-eight years.”
They eat the cookies
and drink the tea
and say not one word more.

A woman to her child,
“My fortune says
‘If your desires are not extravagant
they will be granted.’”
Her little girl has pink socks
with sparkles
and stars
and frilly lace.
Her mother has sensible shoes.

Man to child, “You like adventures?
I like adventures too.”
For a moment
they are the same age.

My heart has filled up
like the pools
with all that these people
are seeing and saying
and wishing
and feeling.

Why do I ache so much?
I have frequently been known to make too many wishes,
throwing them ahead of me
into the extravagant mess of life,
the clear and the yucky waters.

I have been naked without love.
And I have been loved—am loved,
so that when my beloved
hears my yelped ouch
as I grate my tender fingertip
along with the carrots
he calls out from the steamy bathroom,
“Are you okay?”
and I know
that I have already
won the Lotto.

Before I go back home
I see another one of us:
That child is going to make a wish.
There is the wish-posture!
Everything in her being is expectant.
There is the holding of the breath,
the choosing—which side of the bridge
to throw the penny from,
which pool more lucky?
I know the upraised urge and launch
as the sudden metal bone of the wish
goes splashing into the pool,
the pause after – it’s done.
Seriousness,
then the smiling.
The moment after
the world is different:
it is wished in.
Will it come true?
We are all already nibbled on by the fishes.
She walks away looking back,
ripening a little.

We throw ourselves
ahead of ourselves
all the time,
our hearts sing a song
beyond us
not so much about
health, wealth, love
(the usual culprits)
but really about the more extravagant stuff—

the attempt to keep
being here
in the messiness,
the yucky
clear
magnificent
stumbling
miracle.

Photo by Kathleen Dunbar

Kathleen ON THE RADIO Monday May 25 Labor Day 3:30-ish on SF Community Radio

Posted on May 21, 2015 by Kathleen Dunbar

RADIO INTERVIEW: Kathleen will be interviewed on Blue Lew’s SFCR Radio show this Monday, May 25!
WHEN: Monday, May 25, Labor Day
TIME: Somewhere between 3:30 and 5:30!
SHOW: The Blue Lew Show
INTERNET RADIO: To listen to the interview and music from my current and my upcoming CDs here’s how ya do it:
1) Go to this link: http://savekusf.org/shows
2) On the right side under the banner entitled Listen to SFCR click on the link that says, Launch Live365 Player. You can see what it looks like in the picture at the top here.
3) A screen will appear and you’ll immediately be tuned in! You can see what it looks like on the picture below.

Upcoming Gig May 16 at Bill’s Barn!

Posted on May 7, 2015 by Kathleen Dunbar

Bill Cook is hosting me, Kathleen Dunbar,
and my band The Better Devils in his “Barn”
I’m putting on a really cool show down just South of Pescadero in
Bill Cook’s Barn. Bill has turned his barn into a premier venue showcase. It has a state of the art sound system. Plenty of room for dancing. A fire pit outside to talk to friends and cook marshmallows. Lots of parking. Beautiful countryside. And this show comes with a free turkey dinner prepared by Bill with all the fixin’s!!!
4pm dinner; 6pm showtime!

Go this link for all the info: Info For Kathleen’s Saturday May 16th Show

Or, let me tell ya about it right now:

DATE: SATURDAY MAY 16th
TIME: 4pm/dinner 6pm/show
WHERE: 10350 Cabrillo Hwy, Pescadero ½ mile south of Bean Hollow Beach, East Side, American Flag marks the driveway
DINNER: Is DONATED by Bill!— TURKEY DINNER with FRESH LOCAL VEGETABLES And you are invited to bring a small potluck fav to share
COST: $20 donation to the band suggested, but if it’s not in your budget… Please come! Your attendance is the best contribution!!!
VENUE: Plenty of comfortable seating, room to dance, great sound! Outdoor fire pit to toast marshmallows in! The sunset over the Pacific Ocean! Beautiful countryside!

ABOUT BILL’S “BARN”: Bill has transformed his “Barn” into · A beautiful large premier performance & dance space with a great sound system · Bill’s Barn sits on a beautiful piece of property where you can dance & listen inside · Hang outside in the glorious countryside & watch the sun go down along Highway 1 · Sit around the fire pit in the evening · Partake of his famous Turkey dinner with all the trimmings · Plenty of free parking · Feel free to bring family, friends and a bit of food or drink to share! · KIDS WELCOME! No RSVP necessary

ABOUT ME: San Francisco Singer-Songwriter Kathleen Dunbar Webpage: http://www.kathleendunbarmusic.com
Hear me on Pandora! My band and I have delighted audiences at Peri’s, The Uptown, Rudramandir, Underground SF, Mutiny Radio and numerous local house concerts. I’ll be performing original songs in the Americana tradition from my first two CDs as well as my upcoming CD Liars, Cutthroats and Dames, all produced by multi-instrumentalist and recently touring guitarist for Mickey Hart, Gawain Mathews.

ABOUT MY BAND: I’ll be accompanied by my smokin’ hot band The Better Devils: An amazing trio of topnotch touring and studio musicians:
GAWAIN MATHEWS Most recently he’s been the touring guitarist for Grateful Dead’s Mickey Hart
KEVIN HAYES Drummer for Robert Cray, including on Cray’s Emmy-award winning album Take Your Shoes Off
PAUL OLGUIN Bass player for the likes of Bob Weir, Elvin Bishop, Maria Muldaur, Huey Lewis, & more

DIRECTIONS FROM SF–THREE DIFFERENT WAYS:
To Take Hwy 1: Take a relaxing scenic drive along the coast of California on Hwy 1 down from SF
To Take 280 + Hwy 1: Zip down 280 to the cutover on 92 then down Hwy 1
To Take Skyline: Take Skyline/35 down to Alice’s restaurant and cut over on 84 past La Honda to Hwy 1
DIRECTIONS FROM SANTA CRUZ:
From Santa Cruz Come on up Hwy 1

Live Video of Kathleen Dunbar and The Better Devils

Posted on December 14, 2013 by Kathleen Dunbar

I had a great time performing at Peri’s in Fairfax on 11/24/13 with my awesome band, The Better Devils: Thanks and Big Hugs to Gawain Mathews on Guitar, Paul Olguin on Bass, Jon Arkin on Drums, Joseph Feusi as Sound Tech and Videographer, Tamarind Free Jones for her love and Album Photography, and Jennifer Cortright for her love and a fab Green Room! Rock on! Here’s my original song, Lilah!

Please have a listen to me on this video!

Let Me Take You On A Journey!

Posted on October 8, 2013 by Kathleen Dunbar

Who is Blue Lilah?

Imagine being taken on a journey in the dream language of a medicine woman, with luscious percussion, backwards guitar, a whale’s voice, a thunderstorm . . . and that’s just the first song!

Let Blue Lilah take you with her through sea deeps, windy deserts and wild jungles. She casts her enchanting spell for you from the healing dreamtime! Her magical vocals ride on the rhythms of ancestral drums, gorgeous guitar tendrils and big-heart-beat bass.   Your invitation is awaiting . . . join her in an adventure in her wild world! Blue Lilah—enchanting, entrancing: new age-ambient-trance-journey music.

Bio

Blue Lilah’s music is my offering to you to celebrate yourself in the dance that is the connection of all life. It is a gifting of my music, voice, energy, and sounds for your pleasure. It is my invitation to you, my listeners, to dive into a healing journey. Please use it in whatever forms “move” you!—Dance, meditation, journeying, relaxation, movement exploration, yoga, birthing, healing!

The inspiration for Blue Lilah arises out of my many years of exploration in healing work as both practitioner and recipient, as well as being a recording and performing musical artist. By healing, I mean those practices that transform us through awareness into more whole beings. Healing, for me, is the idiosyncratic and courageous willingness to entertain with as much compassion as we can muster all the guests that visit us daily: joy, fear, pain, love, boredom, anger. We heal when we are able to sit at the banquet and honor it all: Savor what is wonderful, weep for what is sad, laugh with delight and then clean up the plates and glasses and get up in the morning and do it all over again: cook, wash the dishes, play, create, work, dream, love—experiencing all of this makes us alive!

To fully participate in one’s lived life, I believe that consciousness asks us to simultaneously open heart-and-mind to wider perceptions while at the same time grounding the wide-flung doors to the awesome in divinely practical and magnificently ordinary acts of our bodies: being with the sensations of our bodies, using our hands to help and hold and express, using our legs, arms, muscles and hearts to dance, work, laugh, kiss, and joyously sing.

Some of the ways I’ve personally explored healing and transformation as a recipient and as a guide are: shamanic practices, biodynamic cranial-sacral work, Jungian and archetypal exploration, energy work, dance, experiential psychotherapy, trauma work, Mind-Body Integration, sand tray, wilderness quests, Continuum movement practices, and lots and lots of Music! I honor the riches I’ve received from all my teachers and all my lineages. They are present in the music I make and I thank them!

A “word” about my language in the songs you hear! I am a storyteller. I’ve made poems since I could speak—please check out my blog at kathleendunbarblog.com. In the Blue Lilah project, instead of telling a story with English words, I was drawn to listen in to what tones, vibrations, emotions, and expressions wanted to be sung, and to channel the Sounds themselves into the story they wanted to tell. Using such a “language” you are free to intuit your own meanings and bring your own associations. I want you, my listeners, to make up your own stories to what you hear, so that you are drawn in to your own discoveries and explorations. The songs are deliberately long enough for a hearty journey.

The “songs” came to me in a variety of ways. There were nights at home at 1:00 A.M. pouring out my numerous voices into Garageband as a rough draft, later working it out and practicing with my little Oxygen keyboard, and finally polishing it up in the studio. Other sections are inspired live jams in the studio with my awesome multi-instrumentalist producer and guitarist, Gawain Mathews. His creative hand is, literally, in all the instruments you hear: guitars, bass, drums, keyboards, shakers. In this particular album he makes his debut at professionally whistling into bottles—he enthusiastically granted my whim, filled up a root beer and a fancy water bottle with the right amount of liquid to get two perfectly pitched notes, and “played” the thus-made instrument superbly as accompaniment to my singing. Such inventiveness and humor inform our creative adventures. Being a good sport, before embarking on one new track, Gawain agreed to let me lead him on a guided meditation. He lay comfortably under a soft blanket on the rug in his cozy kitchen as I drummed on my hand drum (which you will hear in the song) and his journey washed him up on a mythical shore where some tribal acoustic folk welcomed him into their musical circle. He was happy to join them, provided they allowed him to play his electric guitar, and do it his way. It is our good fortune that they agreed. At the end of Gawain’s journey we had a proper cup of tea (he is British, and so are my grandparents) and embarked on the song, Medicine Journey. Go spirits! Gawain and I have known one another through many years of musical adventures in another genre. This album is my dive into my inner world to manifest it for you all and take you with me on my musical adventure. Gawain is a prolific producer, multi-instrumentalist, dear friend, amazing musician, and not surprisingly, the current guitarist for the touring Mickey Hart Band.

Another “back story.” The few words I use in “English” that begin Who Holds The Power were given to me in a dream when I was in my mid-twenties—I awoke remembering the words, and also the invitation that came with them—I knew the verses were a riddle and an answer to the riddle, though the meaning was deliciously elusive and has been a guide to me to dive further into myself to understand it. The riddle for me has pointed to a way of life, a work in progress, a trajectory for Kathleen! I invite you to dive into your own riddle and all the wonderful messiness, high artistry, and joy of living that is wonderfully, idiosyncratically you.

who hold the power
to turn the key
that opens the three stones
who holds the power?

standing in the shadow
my cupped hand holds darkness
turning to the east
I bend my shadow low

Why Blue? My ancestors were The Blue People—the Picts and Scots who painted themselves blue. I have been known to be blue from head to toe, inviting my friends to celebrations at Ocean Beach. I did this “back when”—I was blue way before The Blue Man Group and Avatar got popular.

The smile on my mouth right now is the beautiful flower of the feeling I have in gifting you with these songs. It is the expression of my beating heart, my breathing lungs, my outstretched hand. It is strengthened by love, watered by tears, nurtured by touch, deepened with receiving, and widened by giving. Here, my loves, is an offering of my songs for you to journey with into the ever-creative expression of yourself in this wild life!

Links
bluelilah.com
facebook.com/BlueLilah
youtube.com/bluelilahmusic
Kathleen Dunbar’s Blog
Gawain Mathews Music Studio
Cover Photo by Lorene Garrett
Album Photos by Tamarind Free Jones Photography

A Horse Is A Horse, Of Course, Of Course . . .

Posted on June 4, 2013 by Kathleen Dunbar

A Horse Is A Horse . . .

This is an actual dream I had many years ago just before I got licensed as a therapist. I found it in my journal while looking for old bits for the Western I am writing:

I’m in a store that’s kind of half sunk into the ground, with lots of tables and shelves full of knick knacks, clothes, housewares. It’s all in one big room. All of a sudden down the entry steps into the store comes a horse! He makes his way, very businesslike, from the front door to the side door. Everybody is scared to see a big horse in the store. They’re afraid he might go wild. Pretty soon he gets to the side door, near me. I move behind a table, in case he starts bucking. But I helpfully pull the table to one side, so it’s easier for him to get to the door and go out.

Now, the door is open, but the horse stops in front of it. I can tell he wants to go out, but he can’t go through the door. He just stands there. I say, “You can just go on out.”

The horse says—it’s a talking horse, of course, “No I can’t, there’s a wood gate there. I can’t go through.”

I look at the open door and reply, “There’s no gate, it’s open.”

“Well,” says the horse,” I see a gate and I can’t go through a gate when I see one that’s shut.”

So I go stand in the doorway and say to the horse, “Now if there was a gate could I stand right here?”

“Hmm,” says the horse.

So I propose an experiment. I say to the horse, “Why don’t we try something? How about I stand here, and you could just come and stand next to me for a minute and see what it’s like.”

So the horse comes and stands next to me and says, “Now I see that there is no gate! You know,” the horse tells me confidentially, “I came here to get therapy from you. I could always get into places but I could never get out, and it was a problem. I always saw closed gates.”

“How did you know I was here?” I was surprised.

“Oh, there was a sign on the front of the store,” says the horse. Then I remember seeing a flyer posted outside the store, offering therapy, one with those little tear-off tabs on the bottom. It was stuck up with a thumb tack at about reading level for a horse. The horse had seen the word therapy and being down on his luck with the gate problem trusted that this was where he would get some help. He came on in and went right to the door, expecting this time to find someone to help him find the answer, and I just happened to be there. “Well,” says the horse, “Thanks.” And he’s out the door and walking off up the street.

And so, I wake with a horse’s epiphany before breakfast!

I consider the possibility of hanging a horse shoe in the good luck position above my office door—a unique sort of therapy shingle to advertise my services.

I look out the window where morning is painting itself in bright colors on the fence, and flowers are blooming everywhere. As it is my dream, I am, of course, the horse, the shop, the therapist, and the door. Which sounds like the opening line of a good and silly joke, or a wonderfully lively dream, or the life of a woman who is finding herself. Fortunately she has got some horse sense.

Photos by Kathleen Dunbar. Horse painting by Leland Holiday.

For a dreamlike song, try this one from my CD The Storm in Our Head. It’s called “Cello Song” and you can find it on Bandcamp or on kathleendunbarmusic.com