Mmm, I’m having a summer flashback. In our trip to southern France, we ate at home several times. One of the highlights of those meals was Jenny and Daniel searing a demi-lobe of foie gras, with salad, a lovely Gigondas wine, stinky cheese, French bread, and ham. That was lunch.

Jenny was perpetually photogenic as she cooked. Nicely framed by the kitchen window, I snapped this Vermeerish picture.

OMG! Greg Brown (the fiddle player in this photo) just sent me this picture. It is the Yahara River Valley Boys, a bluegrass group I played with from 1972-4 in Madison Wisconsin. The photo looks vaguely like the Flying Burrito Brothers. Are these wholesome lads or what?

L-R: Roger Bourland, Ed Fyffe, Jamie Shelton, and Greg Brown.

We spent a week in North Andover, MA last week. The day before we left we got socked by a big snow storm. As the snow began falling, I raced out and snapped this Christmas card picture of the back yard. The beauty of the snow was beautiful. I don’t miss the 2 degree weather.

This is a very old map outside the Los Angeles Courthouse. Sometimes maps age and need to be replaced. In this case, it has, in my view, become a work of art and no longer functions as a map and therefore needs to be replaced. It seems like a symbol of our world today. As beautiful as the old one is, the current map isn’t working and needs to be replaced.

[Photo: © 2007 by Roger Bourland]

I just picked up Daniel Levitin’s new book “The World in Six Songs.” A thrilling read and is truly coloring the way I think of music nowadays. Quite refreshing.

I had grown tired of listening to our local classical radio station playing Vivaldi and Telemann all the time, and news just makes me nervous these days, so I was thrilled to find that my new car had XM Radio in it. Zillions of channels of music for whatever you are in the mood for. And, unlike most radio for the past 20 years, you can actually find out WHO the artist is right there on the screen. My unit only shows part of the longer titles and I have to guess the complete titles. If I can’t figure it out, I whip out my iPhone, turn on Shazam, sample a chunk of the song, and it sometimes will tell me who it is and let me purchase it right there at the stoplight. Scary huh?

What I have loved, is that it is such a marvelous way to get to know new music that you might never have heard of. It’s such a hoot that people like Bob Dylan have regular shows that he narrates and picks songs for. His banter is almost poetry sometimes. You hear the blur between his singing and his speaking.

I can flip the channel and hear spa music for days. Float on soft synth music, meditation music, druggy music, trance music, and so on. And then FLIP and you are hearing close harmony from the 40s, FLIP metal music FLIP news FLIP Christian enthusiasm FLIP twelve channels of classical music FLIP I’m in the mood for folk these days. I get to hear so much early to modern “folk” music. It’s a music that resonates with me and it’s a joy to find it.

My point in all this, is to celebrate XM radio in opening even college professors to all kinds of new music. I used to think it was a luxury. Now, I’ve discovered a lot of music, AND it’s deductible.

Later this month we will be having a little vacation before school begins with two dear friends whose portraits I share here.

Composer, Mark Carlson

Musicologist, Mitchell Morris

On 8/8/2008 three month old Bohdan became our youngest guest. That’s a winning smile!

One of my loves is taking photos. I make no claims to be a great photographer but I find it rewarding and an excellent complement to composing. I am putting up many of my sets/shows on Flickr and are I hope you’ll take a few minutes and flip through them. It gets a bit confusing on the internet with my name and photography, as my father has a photo blog and there is a commercial photographer in Santa Barbara with the same name. So on Flickr, I use my complete name which is Roger Bourland III, or rbourland3, to differentiate myself from them.

Michael William Lafferty died this month after a long struggle with various life threatening illnesses. I photographed his marvelous apartment before it was taken down. You’ll see a special person reflected in the things he’s collected. The music is from the FOUR LAST SONGS of Richard Strauss sung by Jessye Norman.