MIGHT CRASH! I grew up in the swamps of Massachusetts, wandering the woods, a free agent, running from cops and neighbors with frogs and lady slippers (Cypripedium calceolus) in my hands. Despite the known existence of classically trained musicians in my family, I didn't pick up the guitar until age 15. I attended Marlboro College in Vermont as a creative writing major, but didn't take well to structure--only to my guitar and songwriting. I left college after a year, working on various farms and eventually ended up on small island called Naushon off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. On Naushon I met world renowned ethnomusicologist Ralph Rinzler, who discovered Doc Watson and started Folkways Records. Ralph asked me to play a song for him, and then took it upon himself to give me a lesson or two. Later, he hired me to drive his private collection of priceless Blues cylinders from DC to Ojai, California. Along the way I went through New Mexico and was completely taken by it's strange beauty. EAST OR WEST Soon after, while working on a hay wagon on Naushon I fell into one of Einstein's wormholes and ended up in Santa Cruz, California studying sustainable agriculture, permaculture, horticulture and organic gardening. I started an organic farm in Sebastopol in 1994. After a year or so, I found myself lured back to New Mexico. In December of 1999, after five years in Santa Fe, I moved back to Massachusetts to dedicate my life to music and songwriting. After five years in Boston, landing on a European label and winning Boston's Best Male Vocalist Award, I decided to leave it all on a good note and returned to New Mexico. Back in the Land of Enchantment I continued this musical dream, along with buying an off the grid farm, planting an orchard, getting married, raising two free-range kids, being Mayordomo of the valley, being an arborist and touring Europe every two years. DEEPER PURPOSE This dream continues with one of the greatest undiscovered bands of all time, the Mighty Salt Licks. I have been told by fans that we saved their lives, helped them heal, performed the best show they have ever seen in their life and one fan even went as far as to say Boris, if you make me cry one more time, I'm gonna have to kick your ass. My music draws from simple everyday life and it's strange cast of players; and compels and asks to find a deeper purpose in it all. THE STUDIO AND THE SONGS I arranged in October 2011 to go back into the studio and try to knock out some new songs the band and I had been kicking around since the Spring. We had tested the new songs out at the Moab Folk Festival, in Holland, and at various New Mexican venues and had settled on some long-tried and tested arrangements. From the beginning of Fall 2011 I had been completely overcome by the season's tone, it's light and intensity. It really struck me in a way that I had not felt in a while or maybe ever. My wife and I had been struggling for years to raise our kids in a remote, off the grid valley and really not making ends meet with her schoolteacher salary and my musician's chump change. It was all really coming to a head and the Fall just brought it there quickly in a raving yellow sea of aspens. MIGHT CRASH TAKES SHAPE One of the main songs to be recorded that weekend was a song entitled Might Crash. It was a song that began as a joke, to bring some lightness to the dark mood of the times. I was feeling regretful and worthless and when I saw one of our dogs dining on a diaper in the melting snow, I turned and asked my wife if we had turned into white trash. How did our ideals morph into this gruesome image? Babies crying, broke, stuck on the mountain splitting wood in a snowstorm. Why were we here, what were we doing? The song became Might Crash, the title track of the new album. A song that in the end, sums up our New Great Depression. How do you know when you might crash? Is the dog eating diapers on the dying lawn? Do your lips not reach her before she leaves? Is she wondering where the fun has gone? Finally, the morning came to meet with t
