This was supposed to be posted in June, a little halfway through the year peek at what I’ve been doing. In my defense, I did started this in June while on a flight from Detroit to New York for a show, but June was a little whacky.
Books I Read:
Us Against You by Fredrik Backman
The Winners by Fredrik Backman
Normal People by Sally Rooney
The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
My Friends by Fredrik Backman
Booking I’m Currently Reading
Deep South by Paul Theroux
Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick by Zora Neale Hurston
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
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On one of the last days of 2024, I finished Us Against You by Frederick Backman. I KNEW I should have brought The Winners, the last in the same trilogy, but it’s almost 700 pages and I couldn’t sacrifice room in my backpack while we were traveling to Pennsylvania for Christmas and straight on to Seattle for New Year.
I was actually kind of mad I didn’t bring The Winners. I grabbed it as soon as we got home. It was great timing because my friend Emily had just finished it, and told me to be prepared. The text the night I finished it: “I sobbed through the last 75 pages.”
Backman is undoubtedly one of my favorite authors; he writes contemporary fiction that hits my being like no other author. I first read Anxious People; I grabbed it at an airport in 2021 while on one of my first tour dates post-COVID.
Prior to that, I kicked off 2025 by reading Normal People almost in its entirety on the flight from Seattle to Nashville on January 1. I’d never ready anything by Sally Rooney before, and I think this was a great introduction. I had zero clue that she doesn’t use dialog punctation. I really did struggle without the damn quotation marks. Cormac McCarthy famously does without dialogue punctuation too, and No Country For Old Men is one of my favorite books so I had to power through in hopes this would similarly affect me. There were so many times during the flight that I had to close the book and just sit in silence. (I had to do the same thing with all of the Backman books I’ve read too). It is such a beautiful look at young adult hood and what emotional intimacy can look like. It really did feel, well, normal to me.
I also started reading Deep South by Paul Theroux and Hitting A Straight Lick With A Crooked Stick by Zora Neal Hurston. Deep South is a travel narrative based on four years he spent traveling throughout the southern United States, a place I’m obviously in a love-hate relationship with having spend nearly 32 years in this place. Hitting A Straight Lick With A Crooked Stick is a collection of recovered short stories written throughout the course of Hurston’s career. I had to read Their Eyes Were Watching God in high school, and I’ve always wanted to read more Hurston.
I will fully admit that attempting to read both of those two after two contemporary fiction books was possibly not the move for my little pea brain. I’m well over halfway through Crooked Stick, and a handful of chapters into Deep South.
I also crushed Backman’s new book, My Friends, and I got to hear him talk about it with my friend Emily! I refreshed the Eventbrite page for this multiple times a day for 9+ days because it was sold out, and two nights before, I got tickets! This closest I’ll ever get to fangirling is gushing about Backman. I can’t adequately describe how meaningful these books are to me. My Friends is equally as lovely as all his other books. I had to read a few passages out loud to Dan. These are my favorite lines from the first chapter.
Not to brag, but Louisa did have the perfect plan, it wasn’t the plan’s fault that she didn’t stick to it. Because sometimes Louisa is a genius, but sometimes she isn’t a genius, and the problem is that the genius and the non-genius share a brain. But the plan? Perfect.
—
And Louisa? She’s bad at pretty much everything, but good at being angry. Not to brag, but she’s actually world-class at that.
—
She doesn’t like her body because there’s too much of it, she doesn’t like her voice because it’s too deep, she doesn’t like her brain because it always tells her to talk when she’s nervous. Most of all she doesn’t like her heart because it’s always nervous. Stupid, stupid heart.
I was, am, and forever will be a Molly McIntire American Girl Doll girlie. She is 100% where my weird special interest in WW2 came from. I saved this from a TikTok earlier this year; it made me giggle because one of my top five favorite books is All The Light We Cannot See. My friend Taylor told me I needed to read The Nightingale. Incredible.
I’ve been trying to read more non-fiction, particularly because I want to back up with resources and research, the long-held beliefs I’ve had. So I picked up a copy of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States at my library. Possibly not the best time to do that, given the travel I’ve been doing. I had to turn it back in so I snagged the audiobook. Audiobooks count as reading. Fight me.
Things I Did For Work:
Went to Florida to work a festival. Almost got snowed in.
Went to High Water in Charleston for the second time. Smashed the oyster bar again.
Stage managed Ascend Amp for CMA Fest???
PM/SMed for K-LOVE Fan Experience and Momentum.
PMed some Lane 8 shows.
Stage managed main stage for Nashville’s July 4th show.
Went to Asbury Park, Wilmington, and Asheville for some shows.
Started to work on Big Wild tour.
Things I Did for Fun:
Saw Hans Zimmerman live at Bridgestone. Cried during Lion King.
Started making my own tomato sauce.
Found a new psychiatric nurse practitioner and started taking Adderall. (Thank GOD.)
Had approximately 50 brunches and lunches with my friends.
Spent some time in Charleston with my friend Taylor.
Realized that you have to HAND-POLLINATE the flowers on your tomato plants in your Aerogarden if you want to actually grow some tomatoes. (Pea brain.)
Maybe this is for work and fun, but I started digging through two books about rigging because someone told me I didn’t know enough about rigging to PM. I want to prove them wrong.
Started working out, and I actually love it.
Paddle and hiked some.
Grew, maintained, and then killed a sourdough starer; while alive, it made good bread.
Learned how to make sandwich bread. Ruined Wonderbread for myself in the process.
Other Things I Read (on Substack) and other random thoughts
My friend Shelby recently climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro! She wrote this piece on returning to touring after coming back down the mountain. Shelby is a master storyteller when she sits at a switcher directing IMAG for live shows, but she’s an equally beautiful storyteller when she puts pen to paper. She and her fellow climbers filmed a documentary, and she’s now writing about the experience here, too. Learn more about them and the documentary here, and donate if you feel so inclined!
Shelby is truly a gem, and I’m so excited for this project. She met arguably one of the worst versions of Katelyn last summer and held space for me to feel so much anger, sadness, and grief. Fast-forward a year, in July, we were catching up and chatting about what’s been going on in our lives, and I said “That stupid Maggie Rogers song ‘Back in my Body’ is the best way to describe what the last few months have been like… I am very much trying to practice not being angry all the time.” I am eternally grateful that she is one of the very people who led me to those words.
My gen-Z baby Megan has joined the Substack club. She had a kidney transplant last summer, and she’s one of the bravest people I know. She is a constant reminder for me to be afraid and do it anyway. Coincidently, or maybe not, “Be very afraid, but do it anyway” is the chorus to one of my favorite Jason Isbell songs.
Things I’ve Been Listening To
Lane 8 - Summer 2025 mixtape // Apple Music. Youtube. Soundcloud.
It’s not on Spotify, but trust me, it’s worth opening Youtube or Soundcloud to listen to.
Big Wild - Wild Child // Apple Music. Spotify.
New album comes out on August 29th! And then we start tour in Nashville on September 4th! Pre-add the album, listen to the four singles, and come see me on the road this fall!
Larkin Poe - Bloom // Apple Music. Spotify.
If this album doesn’t win a Grammy, I’ll riot.
(The above three artists are competing for my number one played song and artist categories this year.)
My new to me playlist. // Apple Music. Spotify.
Look it’s new to ME, not new to the world, okay. Don’t come at me when some of that stuff is pre-2024. Also I use Apple Music so I had to convert it to Spotify. Don’t hate me.
Tyler Childers - Snipe Hunter // Apple Music. Spotify.
If Purgatory is number one, this is number two.
A Teen’s Fatal Plunge Into the London Underworld. // The New Yorker + Apple News+.
I love listening to long-form articles. This one popped up on TikTok so I found it on Apple News+, and lucky me, it was an audio story. Wild story about a London teenager that will leave you wanting to google even more.
All The Buried Women // The Bible for Normal People + Beth Allison Barr and Savannah Locke // Apple Podcasts. Spotify.
Deep dive into the stories of women in the Southern Baptist Convention. As a reconstructing/recovering (?) Southern Baptist, this one had me punching the air and the wall at the same time.
The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill // Christianity Today + Mike Cosper // Apple Podcasts. Spotify.
Might as well be Southern Baptist adjacent. This one’s about Mark Driscoll. This came out before he got kicked off stage at James River Church’s men’s conference for saying what looked like a male stripper on a pole was the Jezebel spirit. That in and of itself was wild, but Mark has been saying superbly dumb shit for so long. Most recently, he has said that stay at home dads are worse than non-Christians. I’m not kidding.
bye bye for now
I am so grateful that you made it all through my little update. 💙
Sorry to end with Mark Driscoll, but I don’t have anything else to add.