Happy Veterans Day to everyone.

If you are, ever were, or ever plan on being, in our nation’s accomplished military, please accept my humble civilian thanks for your service to this civilization, to this nation, to my family. If you are currently serving overseas, or are putting yourself in harm’s way, may your name return answered with every roll call. Blessings and utmost safety to you.

We are grateful for every single one of you.

On the southwest corner of my front yard stands a double-forked black walnut tree. Its height of some forty-feet is ample enough to cast a belly shadow across the front porch of the house in the peak of summer. For that I am exceedingly grateful. By early October however, if not sooner, it becomes a skeleton of its formerly buoyant self. Its alternate compound leaves will have, by-and-large, fallen to the ground along with the slender brown tendrils to which the leaves clung, brittle and piling up like a Milton Bradley game of Pick-Up-Sticks on the droopy fescue lawn. The tree, I suppose due to summer drought, becomes awkwardly and prematurely barren of most vegetation with the exception of its enormous quantity of fruit dangling overhead like a million blunt swords of Damocles. Living beneath the tree this time of year is an equally precarious, if not epic, affair.

Mowing the lawn, I run the risk of getting pelted in the head by cascading walnuts. Often, they fall in single, lonely thuds to the ground. Other times, they fall in rapid-fire clusters. Occasionally, and thankfully less often, they fall on the roof of the house with a clumsy rap. But if the wind picks up, or scrambling squirrels jostle the branches just right, a series of green golf ball-sized fruits plummets to the ground and pavement below as if in an embarrassingly poor juggling act. And that’s when things get dangerous for perusers like me. With each ominous pass beneath its boughs, I am certain that I will be knocked unconscious by one of the blunt spheres, waking up to find that several Rip Van Winkle hours have passed with only a tender knot on my skull as proof of any botanical villainy.

Aside from any Newtonian peril, walnut trees entertain the natural world with a biochemical process known as allelopathy, a method of Darwinian survival. The tree secretes chemicals into the earth that prohibit other plants and trees, even its own kind, from growing near it. Essentially, it monopolizes the ground it inhabits, and, in that respect, I am no different.

Much like my caution beneath raining walnuts, these days I find I am afraid of most everything involving the unknown, the future, and anything outside my domain of control, which is to say, everything. It is no simple fear, instead, a near-paralyzing comedy of capitulation, that although lonely, cold and brittle, is vital enough to cast its own belly shadow across the sphere of my shrinking world. I discover inside me anger — at the world for being the liar that it is and always has been, and at myself for believing those terrible, fear-mongering lies.

In my own version of allelopathy, I have for years fended off the deepest demons by pretending the space I inhabited was, and always would be mine, a gift I believe I rightfully deserved. I kill off any honorable Christ-inhabited humility by decaying the Root from which it springs. I fend off those who try to care, those who seek to lean in, those who invade my world, by poisoning their atmospheres with my own defense mechanisms.

Christ, where is there hope left to pluck from the living boughs? Pray, reveal yourself before this fool has claimed an entire realm as his own. There is too much poison, too much anger, too much sadness, too much listless memory to pulse through the veins of a single soul. Beneath the burdened branches of this far-fetched, far-reaching, irrepressible hope, be merciful, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and remind the Living inside me that the sweet birds will one day return to nest, to roost, to sing and play in the boughs you created so long ago.

This is a photo sent in by Stacy Schmelzel of Chicago, IL, that great host city, not of the 2016 Olympics, mind you, but of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Seen here, Stacy shows off Chrome for the Bean.

Remember, Patron Saints, if you’ve got a great photo of you and your Chrome, feel free to send that in to info(at)ericpeters(dot)net.

David Van Buskirk (graphic designer of Chrome) offers us Chrome wallpaper with which to beautify our boring computer screen desktops. David, we tip our hats in your general direction.

I mentioned this in passing in an earlier post (Interview Heaven or Hell) but I feel it warrants further close inspection and its own beloved place in the post queue.

I’m pleased to announce that I’ve written a tutorial for all 11 songs on Chrome. In the form of a podcast, it details the specifics of why I wrote each song, my thought process(es) behind them, and sheds some light on my enigmatic, ofttimes abstract way of writing. I hope it will help you decipher some meanings and shed a ray of light from my cloudy brain to yours. Go here: Rabbit Room Chrome podcast

Hey folks.

Chrome is now available for purchase on iTunes. Download to your delight, and please – if you see fit – leave nice comments/reviews so as to interest more folks. Continue to spread the word. Many thanks for the support.

‘Tis the season for interviews. There have been several of late, which I’m quite grateful for, but I understand if you can handle my interview skillz only for so long. If you’re keeping track – or having trouble keeping up – here’s the complete list of Chrome interviews so far, including those soon to be published:

Saving The Set List
Under The Radar
The Blue Indian
Laughing So As Not To Cry: A Rabbit Room Interview Part I (Host S.D. Smith)
Laughing So As Not To Cry: A Rabbit Room Interview Part II (Host S.D. Smith)
Relevant Magazine: “Storytelling with Eric Peters” (Host Chris Rule)
The Rabbit Room Chrome podcast (detailing all 11 songs)
Blake Tommey Interview (Coming soon)

I hope I’m not forgetting any. Please let me know if I’m missing any, or if you’d like to do your own interview. I work cheap.

I am eager to put together an extended Chrome Tour late this fall, in winter and spring 2009-10. And once again, I need your help. If you find yourself even mildly interested in hosting or bringing a show to your town, to your church, into your backyard, I would love to hear from you. Since 2009 continues to be whatever it is, booking a show in your area is as easy as it will probably ever be. I would much rather be out playing shows than sitting at my dinner table-desk composing interesting posts like this one. So please drop us an email and ask for the Chrome (For My Hearth) Tour: booking@ericpeters.net.

Thank you for supporting the album. I do hope you are enjoying it if you’ve already purchased a copy, and might be willing to continue spreading the word via your personal blogs, websites, Facebook stati. If you’ve already happened to write an album review, we would love to know about that.

P.S. Have you discovered the liner notes yet?

Photo courtesy: J. David Ruff

Beginning Friday 9/11/09, Under The Radar (The Best Music You’ve Never Heard) will begin airing an interview I did awhile back with these kind-hearted folks. Host, Dave Trout, is one of the good eggs within the music biz industry, and I’m thankful for people like him who allow me the chance to be heard. Another reason I enjoy Dave is because he’s willing to join me in partaking of greasy sandwiches at my favorite Nashville sandwich eatery (sandwichery?).

The UTR interview features three songs from Chrome: “Reality Came Crashing Down”, “Run Down”, and “Chrome”, as well as “Long Road To Nowhere” from my 2006 album, Scarce.

Check out the September/October 2009 issue of Relevant Magazine (the one with Jeff Tweedy of Wilco on the cover). Flip the cover page, and voila, a mighty big ad for Chrome.

Many hatfuls of thanks to Larry of Hoboken, NJ for making this happen. The man buys me primo ad space in a major magazine – two pages, full color no less – then treats me to dinner and a beer while he’s in town on release day. I, in turn, hand him a $2 copy of Chrome in return. A weak trade, if you ask me. Gifts are hard to accept, especially when you know you can’t afford an equal or adequate one in return.