march 2025: year 40
Hi ,
I turn 40 next week! Aging is weird, but I’m learning to embrace it.
Anyway, how are you? Any tips for aging gracefully? Do you look forward to each decade of life?
Last week, my therapist had me reflect on how my 30s went, and we noticed it was a lot of doing new things.
Ovef Ow started in 2015 and I went from having never really sung lead in a band before (aside from a very brief project called deerwolfbear) to co-fronting a really fun band with the most creative people I’ve gotten to write with.
I got a passport and traveled outside of the country for the first time. Now I have a few stamps from a bunch of cool places.
I got promoted at work (woo!) I learned how to manage my money and budget like a responsible adult (rather than hoping for the best every time I ran my debit card). I paid off two loans and three maxed out cards, started an emergency fund and a retirement fund.
I joined CHIRP and did a bunch of stuff — interviewed bands and edited them for the podcast, organized outreach and street teaming, joined the softball team, met a lot of cool people — including Matt! I married him!
Oh, yes. I got married. I never thought I would. But when you finally know, you know, ya know?
I learned how to DJ. I didn’t want to try for the longest time because I found all the buttons overwhelming. But thanks to Matt’s encouragement (and being totally okay with me crying in the DJ booth on my first day of him training me), I get to do it all the time and it’s so much fun.
I made friends in new and old places. I joined an online trivia team with cool people in Minneapolis, a monthly ladies who Euchre club, and reconnected with old friends from Las Vegas and Phoenix. You’re here, and you’re on this list, and I appreciate you so much.
Oh, and WE SURVIVED A PANDEMIC. Barely. That’s a big part of my late 30s. There was loss, there was hard stuff, of course. And I still grew from that, too.
I know I have a lot to look forward to in my 40s. I do feel like I’m just getting started.
It’s Ovef Ow’s 10th anniversary! In February 2015, we were invited to record our cover of September Gurls. Nick joined to help fill in on guitar and kept jamming with us. We wrote six songs, recorded them, and played our first show.
90+ shows, 2 EPs, 1 LP, and so much that we’ve done together as a band.
OK, quick story: One of the first shows we played at the Empty Bottle was opening for Yuck. Their direct support who was touring with them was Big Thief. This was about a month before Masterpiece came out so no one knew who they were. Yuck mostly ignored us, but Big Thief were really nice. Adrianne Lenker had her arm in a cast because at their last show she was trying to do some stunt on a chair and fell off. She told me about how she felt weird that she wasn’t playing guitar and had to do the show just singing. I thought she was kind of a weirdo because her bangs hung over her eyes and she kept looking down at her cast and swaying around while she talked. But their set was great, and they told us they liked us after our set. After the show she gave me a flexi-disc of their new single and a couple of CDs of old songs that she and Buck Meek did. The next times they rolled through town were sold out shows at Thalia Hall and then headlining Pitchfork.
Next Ovef Ow shows:
March 28: Dekalb, IL at 7th Street Space w/Babe Report (cool Chicago Pixie-ish indie rock)
April 25: Chicago, IL at Cole’s Bar w/MINKA (Philly yacht rock)
This book is dumb and way too long. I am going to finish it because I already read the two other sexy fairy books in this series.
March 24: Yasuaki Shimizu (of Mariah, who released the excellent Utakata No Hibi in 1983) at Thalia Hall
March 27: Michael Rother playing NEU!, Harmonia & solo works at the Empty Bottle
March 29: KRAFTWERK at the Auditorium Theatre (50 years of Autobahn, in 3-D!)
April 17: FACS & Circuit Des Yeux at Thalia Hall
April 26: W. Kamau Bell at The Den Theatre
May 2: Japanese Breakfast 🧡🧡🧡 at Salt Shed
Found this in Cebu. I have the original KRS comp and usually see that one around, but it was the first time I found this volume in the wild. Good stuff from Helium, Team Dresch, Rancid and Kathleen Hanna, among others.
