Last week, I published my 750th column.

It wasn’t really a celebratory affair in my head. In fact, “in my head” is a pretty good description of how it turned out – it was a naked exploration of my own mental issues, set to a soundtrack of raging punk and hopeful anthem-rock. It was very difficult to write, and even more difficult to put out there. One of the reasons I went ahead with it was my perception that, among my friends and co-workers, my silly music column isn’t very well read. I figured number 750 would come and go, like all the others.

But I underestimated my friends. One of them, Javi Terrazas, designed a jubilant piece of art with my column title, my name, the number 750 and a spinning vinyl record on it. Then 20 or so of my friends made that their profile pictures online, and shared the column. At last count, just from Facebook, more than 1,300 people have seen it. I got more than two dozen really nice messages from people going through similar issues, people opening up and talking about their own depression and mental health – in some cases, for the first time, with anyone. It was really lovely.

I make my living with words, and I can’t find any that describes the warmth and wonder I have felt over the past few days. You all took what started out as a very difficult experience and made it not only worth it, but extraordinary. Among the best few days of my year. I’m grateful. Even more than I was a few days ago. It’s a good life, and I’m thankful for it.

So you’ll forgive me, after the emotional roller coaster of the past seven days, if I take it relatively easy this week. The music gods saw fit to grant us a week without many notable new releases – there’s a new (and unremarkable) Spock’s Beard album, and that’s about it. So I’m traveling light this week. Don’t expect much. If you’re new here, this isn’t our usual fare, and I’ll be back to offering long-winded thoughts on new music next week.

This week, in keeping with the running theme of looking forward and embracing life, a bit of a look ahead. We stand on the precipice of six of the greatest new music weeks I’ve ever seen, six weeks that will hopefully leave my soul as full as they will leave my bank account empty. It all starts Friday, with new albums from Beach House, Yo La Tengo, Foals and the Weeknd (yes, the album that includes “Can’t Feel My Face”). I’m particularly interested in the Beach House, since the first single finds them going full-on shoegaze, and the Foals, since they’re one of the most interesting and underrated bands out there right now.

September 4 is a prog-metal extravaganza. We’ll get the sixth album from Polish proggers Riverside, called Love, Fear and the Time Machine. We’ll get the fourth act of the six-part opera in progress from the Dear Hunter, called Rebirth in Reprise. But best of all, we’ll get The Book of Souls, the new album from Iron Maiden. A double album clocking in at more than an hour and a half long, The Book of Souls looks like it will handily continue the momentum Maiden has built up since reuniting with Bruce Dickinson 15 years ago. Every one of their new-millennium albums has been a classic, and early reports on this one are more than positive. I can’t wait. Up the irons!

Speaking of metal, we get a new Slayer on September 11, called Repentless. It’s the first since guitarist Jeff Hanneman’s death, and since he wrote much of the band’s key material, it will be interesting to see how they do without him. The new Ben Folds, called So There, will be out that day as well, and it includes Folds’ first concerto for piano and orchestra. (The songs I’ve heard have been pretty terrible, so all my hopes are pinned on the concerto right now.) Duran Duran’s new one Paper Gods will also hit stores, as will new things from Low and Craig Finn. And believe it or not, I’m pretty interested to hear the new Jewel, Picking Up the Pieces, which she describes as a sequel to her still-unmatched debut, Pieces of You.

Then along comes September 18, with new albums from Chris Cornell, Battles, Glen Hansard, David Gilmour, Telekinesis and Leigh Nash, as well as the first of a trilogy from Geoff Tate’s new band Operation: Mindcrime. (Yes, he left Queensryche and then named his band after Queensryche’s most successful album. I’m still jazzed for it.) Then along comes September 25, with new things from Disclosure, Chvrches, New Order, the Dears, Silversun Pickups, Patty Griffin, Los Lobos, the Dead Weather and a project from Bat for Lashes’ Natasha Khan called (for real) Sexwitch.

And then! October 2 brings us the first new pop album from Joe Jackson in seven years, called Fast Forward, and the first new album from Squeeze in 17 years, called Cradle to the Grave. Plus we will get new ones from John Grant, Editors, Blitzen Trapper and Deafheaven, and the new Queensryche album, Condition Human. Yes, that means I get new things from Geoff Tate and his old band within weeks of each other. It’s a good year to be an old-school prog-metal fan.

The rest of October is similarly great, with new efforts from Duncan Sheik, Coheed and Cambria, Maritime, Here We Go Magic, Young Galaxy, Sharon Jones, !!! and (at last!) Joanna Newsom, who will follow up her triple album Have One on Me with a single-disc affair called Divers. And sometime this fall, we’re going to get the fourth Mutemath album, Vitals, although I will admit to being much less excited for it now that I’ve heard the first single, “Monument.” Coming soon to a terrible car commercial near you.

But I refuse to be disheartened. Not with so much to look forward to. With any luck, you’ll get nothing but joy from me for the next few months. As the man once said, music is the best. I definitely still believe that.

Next week, Beach House and Foals and maybe a couple others. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

A couple of weeks ago, I took a trip with a bunch of friends to Nashville. We saw some great music, hit some delightful local landmarks, and generally had a tremendous time. I wrote a column about the trip, and you probably thought I’d told you all about it.

Here’s what I didn’t tell you. Sometime on Saturday night, the first night we were there, I got inexplicably sad. The voice in my head – the one that’s always there, the one I’m often successful at drowning out – took a few missed conversational cues and began telling me that no one really wanted me around, and that it would be better for everyone if I just stayed quiet. So I did. The conversation mostly continued around me, and I got silent and still.

By Sunday morning, the feeling had blossomed into full-blown depression. I was sure my traveling companions didn’t want me there. I had attempted to spend the night alone in my car, but two of my friends tracked me down and refused to let me do this. They’d seen this before from me, you understand. It doesn’t happen often – only a few times a year, and usually sparked by some emotional distress – but they were rightly concerned that I’d started digging my way into a tunnel of despair, and they weren’t going to let me be alone while I did it.

Yes, I know this should have contradicted my thoughts – if they didn’t want me around, they’d have let me go off by myself. But depression, even the intermittent kind that envelops me on occasion, isn’t logical. Talking my way out of it is difficult and painful work. I know that on Sunday I clearly annoyed and exasperated my friends, as they watched me silently mope about, trying to be happy and failing completely. It took me hours (and a good nap) to wind my way out of it. You can trust me when I tell you that this depression is a lot better than it used to be. When I was younger I could be desperately sad for days on end, not trusting any social interaction, certain that people were happier without me there.

This voice in my head has been with me most of my life. There’s a real danger in listening to it – it’s only a few short steps from “no one wants you around” to “the world would be better off without you in it.” I’ve only tunneled that deep a couple times, but it was intensely difficult to get out. Most of the time, the voice manifests as a low self-image, or a self-deprecating manner. (I’m pretty bad with compliments.) It’s there all the time, like a dull buzzing. Here’s the thing, though: most days, I’m fine. I’m generally able to be happy, I’m energetic, I throw myself into my work and my friendships. Most days are good days.

I expect the only reason I haven’t been diagnosed with chronic depression is that I haven’t seen a doctor about it. I don’t know what keeps me from therapy, honestly. Whatever my resistance has been, it’s crumbling. I’ve been trying to figure this out myself, to quiet the voice down completely, and I haven’t been able to. I take solace in a couple of things: talking to friends who go through the same thing (this is invaluable), and music. Music has been my life jacket for as long as I can remember, and if I am sometimes obsessive in my pursuit of it, it’s because I’m clawing my way back into the light, and this is one of the ways I know how to do it.

Much like I am drawn to people with similar mental health experiences – I have a support group who helps each other when we’re down, because we know what it’s like – I’m drawn to the music made by those people. Elliott Smith has helped me wallow for more than 15 years. The Cure’s Disintegration remains a favorite, and probably saved my life in high school. (If there’s a finer poster child for manic depression than Robert Smith, I haven’t found one.) I love hearing people struggle and work things out in song – Taylor Muse’s battles with his faith and his own self-worth on Quiet Company’s last few albums, or Ari Picker’s thoughtful and deeply felt examination of life after his mother’s suicide on Lost in the Trees’ monumental A Church That Fits Our Needs. It’s good for me. It reminds me that everyone struggles with something, and the fight is worth it.

Lately, I’ve been immersed in two new records that came along just when I needed them. (That’s usually the way it happens. Brian Wilson’s SMiLE showed up after the worst few months of my life, for instance.) Truth be told, I was always going to buy Titus Andronicus’ The Most Lamentable Tragedy just for its ambition and scope. It’s a 90-minute rock opera from a band known for taking a traditional punk template and building skyscrapers on it. Patrick Stickles is a frontman with a particular sense of abandon – his lyrics are as raw and unvarnished as his voice, and that voice often sounds unhinged, clinging to sanity by the barest of threads. Most importantly, this 90-minute rock opera is all about Stickles’ manic depression, diving deep into his psyche and capturing some eerily accurate snapshots of how I’ve sometimes felt.

The Most Lamentable Tragedy is, like the band’s name, a direct Shakespeare reference, so naturally the album is divided up into five acts. The first two are mirror images of each other, the first depression and the second mania. The Titus template is generally simple songs with amps on eleven and Stickles on emotional overload, and that’s what you get here. This album is also full of references to prior Titus works, and in some ways it’s the Rosetta Stone that explains the band’s entire catalog. “No Future Part IV: No Future Triumphant” hearkens back to its three predecessors while offering a window into the depressed mind: “Some days start with an earthquake, the bed shakes until it breaks and I hate to be awake, most days start with a dull ache, enough weight to crush my face, and I hate to be awake, both ways are about the same…” Stickles spends most of Act I wallowing, hoping to be left alone. It ends with a song called “I Lost My Mind,” which is self-explanatory, and a quick finale called “Look Alive,” the hook line of which is “I look alive but inside I’m dead.”

Act II begins in the exact opposite way, with a brief intro called “Lookalike” introducing Stickles’ manic doppelganger and a cover of Daniel Johnston’s “I Lost My Mind,” just to drive the symmetry home. From there it’s ginned-up positivity. In “Mr. E. Mann” Stickles concludes that “looking on the bright side’s all right,” and on “Dimed Out” he gives in to his own excess. (“Dimed out” is a musical term for cranking everything up to 10, which this song does.) He ends that song by acquiescing to his manic twin’s proposal to let everything buried come to the surface: “Whatever’s inside let it climb out, that was his plan and it’s mine now…”

And it does. Act III is about letting the darkness within take over, Act IV about love and loss (including a great cover of the Pogues’ “A Pair of Brown Eyes”), and Act V about the aftermath. And while I found that I couldn’t relate to the horrid fantasies of songs like “Fatal Flaw” and the incredible “(S)he Said/(S)he Said,” Act V hit home with me. Near the end of the lovely piano ballad “No Future Part V: In Endless Dreaming,” Stickles appears to choose death as a way out: “You’re at peace when you sleep, why not an endless dream, you’re at peace when you sleep, enter the endless dream…” Suicide songs have always left me with chills and an empty pit-of-the-stomach feeling, and I didn’t expect this one. “I heard about a way out, and all you really do is open your mouth…”

I could almost kiss Stickles for the way he chose to end The Most Lamentable Tragedy, however. “Stable Boy,” a title that can be taken a number of ways, is a clear Daniel Johnston pastiche. It was recorded on cassette, just Stickles and a pump organ, as a tribute to Johnston, an artist who also suffered from manic depression, and its conclusion moved through me like a warm wave: “I am your brother, you won’t let me sleep forever, and you are my sister, I won’t let you sleep forever, no never, no sleeping forever…” Listening, I’m overcome with thoughts of my own support group, my own brothers and sisters who won’t let me sleep forever. It’s beautiful and I’m grateful.

And while the earned grace of Act V of The Most Lamentable Tragedy is powerful, it does require me to go through the wallow to get there, and sometimes I just can’t. Which is why I’m also grateful for Frank Turner, England’s patron saint of hard-won positivity. That’s never been more true than on his latest album, winningly called Positive Songs for Negative People. (That, folks, is the album title of the year.) It’s the opposite of Titus’ elaborate work – 12 simple songs in 40 minutes, recorded as close to live as possible, and skipping directly to the therapeutic reassurance that only appears at the very end of Stickles’ epic. There’s something to be said for the direct approach, and often, it’s exactly what I need.

Turner is a brash, Billy Bragg-esque anthem writer, and he’s at his most stridently uplifting here. “Get Better” is a mission statement that speaks right to me: “So try and get better and don’t ever accept less, take a plain black marker and write this on your chest, draw a line underneath all this unhappiness, come on now let’s fix this mess, we can get better because we’re not dead yet.” “The Next Storm” is a rollicking metaphor for depression, Turner declaring, “I don’t want to spend the whole of my life indoors laying low and waiting on the next storm.” That’s what it feels like – you wait for it to pass, and then you worry about when it will rise up again. And like Turner, I don’t want to live like that.

Most of Positive Songs finds Turner broken and battered, but standing up, pausing only to offer kind words and support to others (“Glorious You”). “Love Forty Down” takes the tired sports metaphor and breathes life into it, Turner asking the crowd to pray for him “to turn this one around.” “Out of Breath” lives up to its title – it’s a breakneck sprint about living life to the fullest. “Demons” pivots on this line: “At this truth we have arrived, goddamn it’s great to be alive.” And “Silent Key” is quite a thing, using the final minutes of Christa McAuliffe’s life as a springboard for a “hang on to every second of life” message. Every time Turner sings “we’re alive, we’re alive, we’re alive,” I can’t help but sing along.

The heart of Positive Songs comes at the end, with the sparse live recording of “Song for Josh.” Dedicated to Josh Burdette, manager of Washington, D.C.’s 9:30 club (where the song was recorded), who took his own life in 2013, “Song for Josh” is full of guilt and pain, and again makes me think of my own support group: “I too have stood up on that ledge, and I know you’d have pulled me back from the edge, and I let you down in your darkness, I wasn’t there…” The finality of “Song for Josh” puts the entire album into perspective. Life is about getting better, and you can’t get better if you’re dead.

There’s nothing I want more than to get better. I have a lot to live for, a lot of things I’m proud of. This is my 750th column, for example, which means I’ve been doing this for almost 15 years, and I’ve met some amazing people through this endeavor. Among many other things, it keeps me going, keeps me moving. I’m not there yet. But there’s still hope. There’s still help. Life is so beautiful, so precious, so worth it.

No sleeping forever.

We can get better.

Because we’re not dead yet.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

This is not a review of Kevin Trudo’s Water Bears Vol. 1.

Truth be told, I can’t review it with any objectivity. I’ve known Kevin for going on 10 years now, and consider him one of my best friends. We met almost randomly, introduced through mutual friends at an Ani Difranco concert, and I was flabbergasted to hear that he was a fan of this very column. A few nights later I went to see him play with his trio, Meathawk, and came away suitably impressed. We’ve been friends in music and life ever since.

Kevin was the first legitimate musician in my adopted hometown to want to work with me as a musician, and I’ll forever be grateful for that. I sometimes think he likes my piano playing more than I do, which is nice. We did a couple fun covers together – you can find them on YouTube – and when I started working for internet news company Patch, I made him a part of things. He was the star of my Patch site’s welcome video, and I somehow convinced my co-workers that he could write compelling and fun songs each week about the events happening in our coverage area. That feature was called Kevin Sings the News, and it’s still one of my favorite things I got to do as a journalist.

Kevin’s a songwriter. He’s a good one, too – he’s without a doubt the best lyricist I personally know, and one of the best I’m aware of. For the past dozen or so years, he’s been writing a set of songs that he plans to record as a trilogy of albums, and when he finally bit the bullet and started laying down tracks, I was beyond happy to get the call to be part of it. Recording Water Bears Vol. 1 was more fun than I think I’ve ever had making music. Most of the sessions ran from 9:00 p.m. to 2:00 or 3:00 a.m., and though there were some knock-down drag-out arguments about arrangements, the sense of camaraderie was incredible.

The guy at the center of all this is remarkably generous, playing very little on his own record – he made room for spontaneity, gave most of the plum instrumental moments to his friends, and fostered a sense of freewheeling fun. This is an album entirely about the songs and what worked best for them – an out-of-the-blue backing vocal line from Jay Olaszek that is now an integral part of “Gemini,” one of my favorite Trudo songs, for instance. Or a ripping guitar solo on “Part 1” by Noah Gabriel, or the striking tinwhistle work on “Parable” by Matt McCain. Kevin even let cellist Chris Bauler and me completely reinvent “Gemini” for piano and strings, and included the result as the final track.

Make no mistake, though, Kevin is the star of his album. His voice anchors the whole thing, no matter how diverse it gets, and on songs like “Older” and “Polaroid” and “Memory” and of course “Gemini,” he proves his mettle as a writer and a storyteller. Water Bears Vol. 1 can get a bit filthy – “Parable” is about realizing you hate someone half a second after having sex with them – and a bit sad, but it’s a set of songs Kevin is proud of, and rightly so.

But this isn’t a review of Water Bears Vol. 1, for obvious reasons. Instead, I thought I’d just list off a few things I like about it, and let you know where to buy it. So here goes.

I love “Gemini.” It’s a song any writer could be proud of, and the sweet acoustic version that opens the record is pretty well perfect. The cajon work by Matt McCain is a highlight.

I can’t tell you how much I love the zipper choir that opens “Great Liberation While Hearing During the Liminal State.” (Yes, real zippers, attached to real pants.) And the handclaps, and the bizarre mid-section, with its lumbering gang vocals.

The line that anchors “No More” is one of my favorites: “Nothing that will hurt us or help us will ever do either for long.”

“Older” is basically a Paul Simon song, and that is high praise coming from me. The lyric is like a sharp yet gentle knife.

I love how many different instruments sit side by side on the raucous “Parable,” and how it all sounds like a drunken tale told at a bar, which is the point. The opening lyrics still make me blush a little.

Every once in a while, I get a certain moment of “Cold” stuck in my head. Specifically, the wide-and-deep harmonies on the phrase “accidentally right on target.” Listen for it.

The vocals on “Polaroid” might be my favorite thing on this album. The song itself is a bare-bones valentine, but the arrangement makes it. Jake Mack on guitar and Ron Donavon on banjo, intertwining beautifully.

Justin O’Connell’s drumming on “Mathematics” is beastly. The final third of the album is the loudest, and Justin is the backbone of this song. He’s matched by McCain on drums for the Mellencamp-ish “Fear and Trembling,” played live by another Trudo-led band, Small Shiny Things. These songs are what Kevin sounded like when I first heard him.

There are so many things I like about “Memory,” the de facto finale of the album. There’s the backwards-guitar intro, the prog-rock riff that opens and closes it, Kevin’s unpredictable and crazy solos, and what I think is the best line of the album: “Old men shouldn’t write songs, when all we’ve got left is advice and regret…”

And finally, Chris Bauler’s cello parts on the reprise of “Gemini” are exactly right, subtle and moving. Kevin’s cracked and breaking vocal is perfect – when he sang it in the studio, everyone was deathly silent, and when he finished, we applauded.

See, I can’t even talk about it without bringing up the process of making it. This is not a review of Water Bears Vol. 1. But you should hear it for yourself. It’s just been released by Murmur Entertainment, and you can get it for $10 here. I’m very biased, but I think it’s worth your money. I’m proud to have been part of it, and I’m looking forward to Vol. 2.

* * * * *

This is a review of Lianne La Havas’ Blood, and it’s another that I think deserves your time and attention.

Many of you are probably already aware of La Havas’ work – this is another train I am late for. It was Aqualung who brought me here. I’m practically obsessed with 10 Futures, the great new record from Matt Hales’ alter ego, and La Havas sings on “Eggshells,” one of the album’s best songs. Hales has partnered with the 25-year-old La Havas – they write songs together, he produces, she plays and sings – and that partnership resulted in Is Your Love Big Enough, her fine 2012 debut record.

I completely missed it, of course, but I’m on board for Blood, her excellent sophomore effort, and in many ways the superior of the two. La Havas has a strong and soulful voice, and she finds new contexts for it here, working with producers like Paul Epworth and Jamie Lidell and Di Genius. If you think that spells pop, you’re mistaken. Blood is an album even more steeped in old-school soul music. Just listen to opening track “Unstoppable,” co-written with Epworth. This is straight out of Motown, complete with strings and horns, and La Havas sings the hell out of it.

Blood is a more diverse piece of work than her debut. La Havas’ own nimble guitar work anchors “Green and Gold,” a skipping piece of soul-folk, before she deftly switches gears for the straight ‘50s piano-pop of “What You Don’t Do.” (The latter song bears Hales’ stamp most noticeably – he co-wrote and produced about half of these tunes.) She goes for the heart on “Wonderful,” a sad goodbye to a broken relationship, singing softly over ambient guitars and pianos, and then kicks into high gear on “Midnight,” the record’s most extraordinary bit of horn-driven soul-pop. If there’s a song here that should be a massive hit, it’s this one.

“Grow” is similarly extraordinary, its whiplash drumbeat crashing in over finger-picked guitars and strings as La Havas sings with all she has. The chorus of “Never Get Enough” is another surprise, distorted guitars and vocals ripping through the delicate mood set by the verses. The album is full of these ear-catching and unexpected delights, but even when she plays things straight, as she does on the haunting album closer “Good Goodnight,” La Havas is captivating. Blood is a fantastic, confident album from a real talent, and I hope it signals a long and wonderful career ahead.

Next week, punk and positivity. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

What did you do last weekend?

OK, I admit it. I don’t care that much about your weekend. I only asked that question to prompt you to ask it back, because I had an adventure and I wanted to tell you about it. I know, that was selfish of me, and I’m sorry. Please. Tell me about your weekend. I’m serious this time, I’m really interested.

You did what? That sounds like fun. Oh, no way! Hilarious. I’m glad that happened, and I’m sorry that other thing happened.

What’s that? How was my weekend? I’m glad you asked.

So I’m a big fan of Nickel Creek, as you all probably know. Their new album, A Dotted Line, came awful close to my top 10 list last year, and the band’s mandolin maestro, Chris Thile, is all but guaranteed a spot on this year’s list with his other band, Punch Brothers. Thile gets a lot of the attention (even from me), but I’m also over the moon about his Nickel Creek bandmates, Sean and Sara Watkins. And when I heard that the siblings would be touring with a veritable who’s who of outstanding musicians as the Watkins Family Hour, well… you can guess my reaction.

I wasn’t alone. Several of my group of friends here in Illinois felt the same way about possibly seeing the WFH, but when we looked into tickets for their one Chicago stop, they were already sold out. So we did the next most logical thing – we bought tickets for their show at City Winery in Nashville. And then four of us clambered into my car and drove the eight hours down to Music City, met up with five other friends (two from Nashville, two from Illinois and one from Georgia) and saw what was one of my favorite live music experiences.

So let me tell you about it.

We started our drive on the Saturday morning of the show. We would have left on Friday night, except Hall and Oates were playing my home town on that night, and I didn’t want to miss it. That’s almost another story in itself – they were really good. They had a top-notch band with them, and they performed for more than two hours, playing nothing but instantly recognizable hits. When you can open with “Maneater” and “Out of Touch,” and then close with “Rich Girl,” “You Make My Dreams,” “Kiss on My List” and “Private Eyes,” all in a row, must feel amazing.

So anyway, there was that, and then about five hours of sleep, and eight hours of driving, so I was a bit bleary-eyed when I walked into City Winery. But I quickly woke up. The venue is absolutely beautiful, and because we had bought early, we were right in front of the stage. I don’t mean we were up front and yet some reasonable distance from the stage. I mean a few of our party could lean on the stage without getting up from their chairs.

If you’ve never been to a City Winery, they’re extraordinary places to see live music. They treat the performance like the work of art it is – they ask for silence, and demand you shut your cell phones off. Flash photography is also frowned upon. The venue in Nashville was full-table seating, with a full menu and delicious desserts, and the acoustics were to die for. It’s a place that appreciates the importance of live music, the reverence of it. It treats live performance like the one-time magical act of creation that it is.

The Watkins siblings have been playing as the Watkins Family Hour in Los Angeles for more than a decade. (“We’ve been doing this show for 12 years,” Sean Watkins said, and without missing a beat, his sister quipped, “This exact show. We’ve really zeroed in on it over the last 10 years.”) Their musical collective includes drummer Don Heffington (known for playing with Emmylou Harris, among others), bassist Sebastian Steinberg (former Soul Coughing member and longtime session player) and piano wizard Benmont Tench (of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers). Yes, I was only a few feet from Ben Tench, and yes, I took full advantage, watching his every roll and solo. He’s awesome.

Oh, and then there’s Fiona Apple. She’s certainly the thing-not-like-the-others in this group, and it’s almost hard to imagine how she hooked up with them all. (Steinberg played bass on Apple’s latest, The Idler Wheel…, but that’s the only obvious connection.) At our show, Apple looked like she was on a day pass from the mental hospital, wearing grungy clothes she might have slept in and sporting freshly drawn magic marker tattoo sleeves. But man, that woman can sing. Early on, the band performed Skeeter Davis’ 1961 hit “Where I Ought to Be,” and Fiona just nailed it.

The whole night was full of interesting surprises like that. Sean Watkins took lead on a song he introduced as one close to his heart – “Not in Nottingham,” a lament written for the 1973 animated Robin Hood film. (Yes, the one in which Robin is a fox.) The Family Hour’s performance of it was subtle and lovely. Traditional song “Hop High” was a highlight, Tench and Sara Watkins trading off piano and fiddle solos. (Watkins is a wonder on the fiddle, playing with fire and grace.) Apple sang lead on a couple old-time murder ballads, then put her distinctive stamp on the Grateful Dead’s “Brokedown Palace.”

And then there were the guest stars. As I understand it, the Family Hour picks up different special guests in each city, and man, I’m glad we went to Nashville. I was introduced to the Secret Sisters, a strong-voiced duo with a pair of fine albums – their original “Bad Habit” was a dark and delightful ride. And I got to see Buddy Freaking Miller play guitar and sing on half a dozen songs. Miller is a long-time Nashville guru – he’s played on a million records, made a good number of his own, and produced some of the biggest names in town. (Most recently, he was part of Robert Plant’s Band of Joy.) His voice is fantastic, his playing even better, and hearing him do “That’s How I Got to Memphis” was one of the undisputed high points.

After the show, the band (save Fiona) just hung out, ready and willing to talk to anyone. The whole thing had an intimate family feel to it. I bought the collective’s self-titled album, because of course I did, and found it to be just as enjoyable as the show. Like the concert, it opens with Robert Earl Keen’s “Feelin’ Good Again,” on which the Watkins siblings harmonize like angels. Pedal steel god Greg Liesz was part of the recording band, and he shines on the old-school country songs included here, like “Prescription for the Blues” and “She Thinks I Still Care.” “Not in Nottingham” is here, as is “Brokedown Palace,” and “Hop High” provides the clear highlight, Ben and Sara stealing the show.

What else? While in Nashville, we visited the Johnny Cash museum, and Third Man Records, and the Opryland Hotel and Gardens, where I fell asleep near a waterfall. We visited Robert’s Western World, home of the legendary BR-549. We had drinks on a rooftop overlooking downtown, and lingered outside several honky-tonk clubs, taking in the music. Then I drove another eight hours home. Adventure!

In summary, it was an exhausting weekend, and I’m grateful for good friends who shared it with me. Nashville is a fun place to visit, and City Winery an incredible place to see a show. And as for the Watkins Family Hour? If they are anywhere near your hometown, do yourself a favor and go see them. In fact, you should do that even if they’re nowhere near your hometown.

Next week, someone I know and someone I just met. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.