July 2026: "Comin' Home (PNW)"
Hey y’all,
Here’s the Austin B. Sweeney newsletter coming in hot for the month of July. I put these out once a month to keep you updated on upcoming shows, what I’m listening to, general musings, lyric breakdowns, and much more! I hope this newsletter will provide value for you, if for no other reason than it may introduce you to music you haven’t heard before!
Let’s quit wasting time here and jump into it, here’s what I’ve been listening to in the last month:
Song: “The City of New Orleans” – Arlo Guthrie
Album: “Until the Sun Explodes” - Sublime
Artist: Sublime
I’ve got a new live album, “BE HERE NOW (Live in the PNW)”, recorded at The Artichoke in Portland, OR and it’s OUT NOW, everywhere you get your music! Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, etc.
If you’d like to support me monetarily, you can purchase the album – and any of my albums - here
Also, if you want to read any past newsletters, click here
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“Comin’ Home (PNW)”
“You can’t buy that beauty with all the rich man’s money,
I miss the fields of home so bad that it ain’t funny,
I want the rain, the trees, and a drop of that local honey,
Stars above me, won’t you love me”
Those words are the chorus to my song, “Comin’ Home (PNW)” which was on my live record I just released, “BE HERE NOW: Live in the PNW”.
It was the first time in a long time where I was awoken with lyrics in my head. We were parked here in Oregon last summer after our Honeymoon Tour and I was enjoying all the nature that I had grown up with. The evergreen trees, the river, the sights and sounds of the Pacific Northwest, and above all, just how damn green it is everywhere around here.
A big difference between Arizona and Oregon is the visual presence of life.
There is much beauty to be found in the deserts of Arizona and I will love it and consider it my second home for the rest of my life, however, it’s brown in the valley for much of the year.
When you arrive in Oregon, you realize how alive this little pocket of the country is. Forests around here can be so thick that you can hardly hike through them. There’s a reason why they say Bigfoot is still out here in these woods, it’s easy hiding. When my Arizona friends came up for Laura and my wedding, that was what they mentioned most. How green and alive it is around here, everywhere you look.
I never realized how much I love my home state until I moved to Nashville in 2015. Once I began living in a landlocked state, all I could think about was how much I wanted to be near the ocean. One night I couldn’t sleep and I didn’t have work the next day at the bookstore (where I worked while living in Nashville; I even sold a book to Ricky Skaggs one afternoon), so I threw a few items in a bag around midnight and began driving south.
I drove through Alabama and Georgia and on into Pensacola, FL just so I could see the ocean. It took about 9 hours. I pulled off the road somewhere in Alabama to take a one-hour snooze around 4am. The ocean makes me feel connected, and after six months of being away from it, I needed to reconnect.
While in Nashville, I consumed movies, books, and music that reminded me of home as well. I read “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed about her hike along the Pacific Crest Trail, I watched movies set in the Pacific Northwest, I watched snowboard documentaries that reminded me of my favorite ski days on Mt. Hood and Mt. Bachelor, I listened to the Grateful Dead’s Sunshine Daydream ’72, which was recorded in Veneta, OR. It helped me reconnect with my vision of home.
Some of it was homesickness, to be sure. I was alone in Nashville, playing open mics and dive bars, and just yearned for something that reminded me of where I grew up. It didn’t matter that the ocean was in Florida and not the (far more) wild Pacific Ocean that I had always known. The ocean is the ocean, and it felt like home.
Some of it, however, was my realization of how much I truly loved and appreciated where I grew up. The rain, the trees, the farmland, the Pacific Ocean; they’re all in my bones.
There’s a great Sheryl Crow song where she says: “You gotta get away, to ever want to go back home again.”
It’s true.
But then I moved four years later down to Arizona, where I would live for the next seven years. This is a testament to how great the state of Arizona is; not only the beauty of the state itself, but all the lifelong friends I made there.
However, now, we are officially in Oregon. I flew back to Arizona a couple weeks ago and packed up our storage unit to drive a U-Haul back to Oregon. I’ve driven the California stretch of I-5 three times in the last month and I’m ready to be done with it for a while. It is a huge stretch of nothingness.
It was bittersweet to leave Arizona behind. I think of all my friends and bandmates who are there. I look forward to returning and playing shows with them again.
Laura’s family all live in Arizona, and I’ll always be working on repaying her for being willing to make this move with me. Her whole family are tremendous people and we will miss them, but plan to see them as much as we can.
So, now we’re in Oregon. It’s beautiful, lush, green and surprisingly hot for the month of June. We’re still working on our house as I mentioned in last month’s newsletter, but we’re slowly making progress.
Honestly, I thought I’d have more of a thesis for this month’s newsletter. Something about the importance of home, family, our roots, yada yada yada.
Usually my newsletters have a point.
But the last few days have been filled with taking care of my sister’s three kids while she and her husband are on vacation. They’re four years, one-and-a-half years, and six months old. Laura and I love my sister’s kids, but man, they’ve given us a crash course this week in having children.
As you all know, Laura’s pregnant and due in late September, and taking care of the three kids has been taking up all our time this week, my mom’s as well. The last two nights we’ve gotten little sleep. Last night we were woken up every thirty minutes by the six-month old. She’s teething and not having a fun time.
However, as Laura would get up to hold her and gently rock her back to sleep, I got to see a vision of our future. I saw a mom-to-be become, briefly, a mom, in that moment. She was so gentle and kind and patient as the baby cried and wriggled around. I knew it before, but I really know now, how great a mom my wife is going to be.
We (spoiler alert!) have no idea what’s coming to us when our baby boy arrives. We are a little nervous, as all soon-to-be parents are, but I knew in my gut after watching Laura take care of the baby last night, that we are going to be just fine. Sure, I’m decent with kids, I love playing with them and think of myself as a pretty solid uncle to my sister’s kids, but Laura gets it. She knew exactly what to do and watching her handle the situation with grace and patience gives me tremendous hope for the love and care our son is going to receive.
It did give us pause though. We want more than one kid, and we’re so impressed with the ability my sister possesses to take care of all three kids by herself during the day. However, could we handle 2-3 children running around? We brought this up to my sister and she reminded me of a story from the movie “Holes” – which is a very memorable movie in the minds of most millennials (jeez, what deft alliteration in that sentence.)
I don’t remember exactly how it goes, but essentially a boy must carry a pig up a mountain. When he begins, the boy is small, but so is the pig. As the pig grows, so does the boy’s ability to carry it. By the end the boy is much stronger and able to carry the full-grown pig up the mountain.
This was her metaphor for raising children.
We start with one small baby boy and that will take all our efforts. But as the boy grows, so will our ability as parents.
God bless those folks who have twins and triplets to start out. What a feat.
Alright, I guess this month’s newsletter did have a little bit of a thesis. But we’re a long way from where we started. Long story short, Oregon is beautiful, we’re happy to be back, and we’ve got a long road ahead of us, but we’re very excited. Laura is going to be a tremendous mom and we can’t wait to see all of you out at a show and for y’all to get to meet our son.
But not in July.
July I’m hitting the road with Drew Cooper.
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Here are the shows that are coming up in the month of July. I’ll be on the road with Drew Cooper for most of the month (sometimes opening the show, sometimes just playing lead guitar for Coop), but if you’re around on July 3rd, come on out to the St. Paul Rodeo. I don’t have all the details yet for the tour shows, but that’s classic Drew Cooper. I say this with love.
· 7/3 – The Tack Room at the St. Paul Rodeo, 3-5pm (St. Paul, OR)
· 7/4 – The Long Branch (Ennis, MT)
· 7/5 – The Pony Bar (Pony, MT)
· 7/8 – TBA (Shipshewana, IN) (supporting Reckless Kelly)
· 7/9 – TBA (Berwyn, IL) (supporting Reckless Kelly)
· 7/10 – Music Box (Rockford, IL)
· 7/11 – Law Office (Yorkville, IL)
· 7/12 – Blue Ridge Boat Club (Springfield, IL)
· 7/16 – Country Thunder (Wisconsin)
· 7/17 – TBA (Jacksonville, IL) (supporting The Wilder Blue)
· 7/18 – Box Cars (Beloit, WI)
· 7/19 – Country Thunder (Wisconsin)
· 7/25 – TBA (Denver, CO)
If y’all are in the area for any of these tour shows, make sure to contact me or Coop to confirm that I got the details right before making the drive.
Check out Drew Cooper’s music here, he’s a great artist and tremendous friend.
Stoked to see y’all soon.
Austin
Listen now!
https://open.spotify.com/artist/433eTr5V5LEv1VtP1ejbkt?si=Jlzl5oz8RvulN-ocxrGqyg
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