Out in the world
...and on the Mystery Ride
A butterfly on the trail seemed like a good omen. We were walking one of our neighborhood loops through Jean Sweeney Open Space Park, site of my regular birding ‘patch,’ which to my dismay has been leaning more city park of late than open space. There’s a playground now with two bike paths running through it, several pieces of public art, a picnic area, a native plant butterfly garden, and a once unruly border full of trees, shrubs, berry bushes and grasses that usually attracts a lot of migrant birds who are just passing through. In late June, the city started mowing and clearing much of the underbrush, a fire safety measure I couldn’t really argue with given the threat of wild and not-so-wild fires here in the west. The mowing and clearing work was also part of a long-planned community garden project.
In the wake of the mowers and trimmers and backhoes, the park’s resident birds, unsurprisingly, have gone a lot more quiet, and I’ve been visiting the park much less. Nonetheless, it’s the closest place to home that is unpaved, still has trees, and as yesterday proved, still sees a lot of non-human traffic. The finches and sparrows seemed to be reclaiming their customary territories and more than one butterfly was in the air, or, like this one, smack in the middle of my path.
Hold up!
We stood a moment, watching it, moving its wings slowly, but seemingly intent on the ground. I flashed on a fascinating excerpt of Butterflies of the Bay Area by Liam O’Brien in Bay Nature that I’d read a while back about various butterfly behaviors. Was it basking? Absorbing moisture? I’ll have to do some reading. In the moment though, the mystery was enough, the beautiful insect a welcome interruption, taking me out of my head to consider how some other bit of life was moving through.
Who exactly was it, I wondered? It looked familiar, but I’ve neglected to remember names of resident butterflies much beyond the showier Monarchs and Swallowtails. A quick online search (keep-i-real pro tip, add -ai to your searches to avoid the monster) now led me to a butterfly and moth finder on a native plant site, Calscapes where I learned it was the Red Admiral, a widespread and migratory species.
If you are walking through a park on a sunny day or working in your garden you might have encountered some of these brightly-colored chaotic fliers flutter past you and even land on your clothing – these feisty but people-friendly butterflies are one of the most common species seen in North America and across the world. —USDA
Speaking of mysteries and walking around Jean Sweeney Open Space Park, Kwame and I in our Bay Station Band form, are releasing a new 10-song record Mystery Ride, on August 21, and the title track is built around a lyric I wrote after a walk through the park. We’ve been co-writing for more than a decade now, a process that continues to morph and change. The songs on this record all came out of a writing practice meant simply to keep us both connected and creative, period, not necessarily to make a finished project. He travels a lot for work. Amid one extended trip, we thought it would be interesting to exchange lyrics each day and have the other person come up with the music and send back a voice memo. A very Beat-poet, first-thought-best-thought exercise, it wasn’t so much about being perfect or getting too attached to outcome. We wrote lyrics about walks through the park and hotel rooms, cake recipes and climate change, being sick with Covid and dreams of the past, desert canyons and childhood, and the periodic bird (of course). Anything went, and it turned out to be a lot of fun…and we liked a lot of what we started to come up with. After several bouts of exchanges, we collated what we’d created and assessed what we thought to be the best or most viable songs and songlets of the batch. After more back and forth and refining, we started a similarly leisurely recording process. Now we’ve got it all packaged up and ready for ears. Art for art’s sake, made with our own very human minds and internal cues, hands and eyes and ears, a record of the times we’re in and how we move through this world.
We’ll be doing a series of live performances featuring the new songs over the next couple months. Come take a listen, and pick up a CD, or follow Bay Station on Bandcamp or wherever else you get your music, and be the first to hear it when it’s first out in the wild on August 21.
BAY STATION LIVE DATES
Sun, Jul 26 @ 12:00PM Alameda Art & Wine Fest - Community Stage Alameda, CA
Thu, Aug 20 @ 5:00PM — 7:30PM Thursday @ the Avenue Alameda
Sat, Aug 22 @ 2:15PM Palo Alto Festival of the Arts - Webster Stage Palo Alto
Sat, Aug 29 @ 2:00PM — 4:00PM Down Home Music Foundation Down Home Music Foundation, El Cerrito
Fri, Sep 18 @ 7:00PM The Monkey House The Monkey House, Berkeley, CA
Sometimes, you have to stop looking at someone else’s map so you can write your own fucking map. — Jami Attenburg’s Craft Talk