Yesterday's North Dakota Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Medora was a swell time and the first time I performed there as a "headliner." My favorite cowboy singers in the world, The Larsen Brothers, played directly after me.

Tamara Kubacki, Programs Coordinator for the Western Folklife Center in Elko, NV, gave the keynote address. She and I became friends last year at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko. Hana and I had the pleasure of showing Tamara around Dunn County this morning.

Before yesterday's show, Hana and I explored the southwest corner of North Dakota, in particular the ramshackle town of Marmarth. Marmarth is to NoDak what Terlingua is to Texas--a dusty, half-deserted, ghosty place where eccentrics, outlaws, and misfits go to escape and/or create. My people.

Happy 90th Birthday Grandma Julia Viola Sullivan Herak!

I'll be one of the headline acts at tonight's at the 24th Annual Dakota Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Medora, ND. Show starts at 7:30. $10, I think.

Congrats to the Roll Out, Cowboy crew who just won Director's Choice Gold Medal for Excellence at the Park City Film Music Festival last weekend!

The next big festival for Roll Out, Cowboy will be next Saturday at Seattle's True Independent Film Festival. It will screen at 7:20 p.m. at the Northwest Film Forum. For more info, please visit: http://rolloutcowboy.com/news/.

This is just my opinion, but I think that if you combined Roy Rogers, Will Rogers, Jimmie Rodgers, Carl Rogers, and Roger Staubach, you'd have a five-star cowboy.

I've been up on Killdeer Mountain the last couple days helping Dad sheetrock. With the rain we've been getting--two inches just last night!--I've been finding large puffballs in the meadows. These taste good sauteed in butter and mixed with onions, garlic, and tomatoes.

The beaver dams are overflowing.

Hana and I found a rotting beaver corpse. We placed its head on an ant mound. Within a couple days, all that was left was the bare skull.

Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad!

For the folks' 41st wedding anniversary last night, Hana cooked them a gourmet chicken supper, and I contributed dessert (huckleberry pie).

Dunn County is at the height of vernal lushness this week. Lilacs, puffballs, calves, colts, and thunderbolts. Yes! This is my favorite time of year except, maybe, for autumn. Yard sales are popping up. For fifty cents, I just bought the self-titled Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose LP. Can't get enough of it.

Due to Blogger breaking down on me, I never had a chance to report on the last days of the "2010 Me & My Brother Tour"--nor, for that matter, the world premiere of Roll Out, Cowboy in Marfa, TX. In brief, the tour with Nima ended great. Our final shows in Montana and Spokane were varied and rewarding. Thanks to Anna, Joe, Jeff, Joanne, Sharokh, and especially Emilie for all the support.

Performing in the Morrow's rustic barn (above) for Joanne's 50th birthday was fab, 'though I'm embarrassed to say that I almost burned it down doing a stupid stunt with a match during one of my raps.

Earlier that day, in the Morrow's bunkhouse (left), Nima helped me record several songs for my next album. You can listen to one of the tracks here: "Miss Rodeo Montana."

On May 1st, my last day of spring troubadouring, many great things happened. For one, I reunited with my sweetie, Hana. It'd been three months since we'd last seen each other in Orlando, FL. (She'd flown on to Syria to learn Arabic, and I'd flown to Boston to begin the tour.) For another, the May Day concert with Nima was our tour's grand finale! He mentions it here, in his blog.

Nima also writes of our appearance that day on The Persian Radio Hour. Here's the link to listen to his hour-long interview, hosted by DJ Sharokh Nikfar. Besides being a wonderful radio host, Sharokh is a great chef. After the show he cooked Nima, Hana, and me a mouth-watering Iranian dish.

The midnight supper with Sharokh was an auspicious and joyous end to Nima's and my trans-American, cross-cultural, fence-cutting, genre-smashing, most excellent 2010 spring adventure. It was just the ceremony we needed, and it was fitting to have Hana there, at last.

Nima and I had begun and ended our odyssey on ol' Interstate 90. February 'til May. From Massachusetts to Washington State--coast to coast, more or less. And now it was time to part ways.

Early the next morning Nima gunned west to Seattle, and Hana and I boomeranged east to Billings to catch our flight south to Marfa. We had a dusty little film festival to attend.

Just returned from what felt like an epic long haul into eastern Ontario. Picked up and unloaded three full loads of fish. I'm spent. The next two days will be filled with carpentry projects with Dad on Killdeer Mountain.

Soon I'd like to focus on writing. Songs, journaling, letters to friends . . .

Blogger picked a nasty time to switch its format. I've been blogless for the last two weeks, just when I wanted to share all sorts of good news regarding Roll Out, Cowboy. Big thanks to Josh Tokle for helping me get this journal working again.

I'll be trucking for the next four or five days, and will play catch up then. Meanwhile, please check out my Twitter page. It will fill in some of the gaps.

Or good old Facebook.

Or better yet, Roll Out, Cowboy's Facebook page.