Episode #42: USAF Avionics Tech Abe Partridge

In this episode of the Operation Encore podcast series Soldiers, Stories and Songs, Guy Jaquier and Adam Rossi get to visit with Abe Partridge.  Abe is an amazing songwriter, story teller, visual artist, documentarian of serpent handling Appalachian gospel music, podcast host and just fun dude to talk to.  His music sounds like John Prine and Meatloaf had a child who was raised by Paul Thorn. Abe is also USAF veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, currently serving as a reservist C-130 Avionics Tech with the 403rd Maintenance Group, stationed at AFB Keesler in Biloxi, Mississippi. With over 17-1/2 years of service in Air Force, Abe balances his reservist duties with an active tour schedule of live performances across the US and Europe.  During this episode, we will hear Abe’s songs:

“Love In The Dark”

“Young Love (Alabama Skies)”

“Alabama Astronauts”

You can check Abe out at : https://abepartridge.com/music

If you would like to support Operation Encore and this show, you can learn more and donate at: https://operationencore.org  

Support OE and this podcast at  http://www.operationencore.org/donate 

Transcript

SPEAKER_06 0:05

Hello and welcome to the Operation Encore Podcast Series, Soldier's Stories and Songs. I'm Guy Jacquier, and I'm here with my co-host Adam Rossi of AR Audio. Hey Adam, how you doing? Good morning, guy. How are you doing? Doing fine. Now, in this episode, we have the pleasure of introducing you to an amazing songwriter, a storyteller, a visual artist, a documentarian of serpent handling Appalachian gospel music, and we're going to want to talk about that a lot. He's a podcast host himself, and just a fun dude to talk to. Now, before we bring him on, Abe Partridge is also a U.S. Air Force veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. He's currently serving as a reservist, C-130 Avionics Tech, with the 403rd Maintenance Group stationed at Keisler Air Force Base in Bloxy, Mississippi. With over 16 years of service in the Air Force, Abe balances his reservist duties with an active tour schedule of live performances across the U.S. and Europe. Now that I got all that out of the way, hey Abe, how you doing? I'm doing good, Bud. And just for our audience, where are you talking to us from uh today?

SPEAKER_03 1:18

I'm staying with a fr uh at a friend's house in Mount Holly, North Carolina, just outside of Charlotte. And why are you in Mount Holly? I think I'm about two weeks into a tour, bud. I've been I've been uh playing uh up and down mostly the east coast and uh for a couple of weeks and then I'll be headed out toward toward the Midwest here in in a few days. About how many shows do you do a year? 'Cause you're out there a lot. Well, twenty twenty-four was over two hundred nights on the road. Uh twenty twenty-five wasn't wasn't that extreme, but uh it was still a lot. And this year's probably gonna be a bunch, you know. I d I don't really count 'em up so much, but uh, you know, just always out here trying to find another place to play, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Yeah. You seem to be working on on so many different projects at the same time. Is that do you kind of have to put everything on a hold when you're on tour, or do you kind of continuously work on material when you're on on tour?

SPEAKER_03 2:25

Yeah, I mean I'm I'm juggling a bunch of bunch of things, but uh mostly when I'm on the road, my days are consumed with uh traveling to the next town and playing the show and then finding a place to sleep. Um Right. But yeah, I I try to do my other stuff when I get home as much as I can.

SPEAKER_06 2:45

So now we're gonna play some of your music and and the audience is gonna discover that you have a very unique way of songwriting and storytelling. So before we play some of your music, uh we gotta get into the head of Abe Partridge. Like how the how the heck did you come up with some of this stuff? So if you don't mind us going back a little bit, um where'd you grow up and tell us a little bit what it was like being young Abe Partridge running around the summer?

SPEAKER_03 3:10

Uh well my my childhood home was in Sims, Alabama. My parents uh split up when I was seven, and my dad stayed out in Sims and my mom moved into Mobile. I kind of split up time between 'em, you know. And uh I don't know, man. Summers and when I was a kid were awesome, you know.

SPEAKER_06 3:31

We uh was this sort of typical where you, you know, you cut off your your winter pair of jeans that had holes in the knees and turned them into cutoff shorts and got to run around catching fireflies and that kind of stuff, or was it a little more suburban?

SPEAKER_03 3:44

Well, you know, I mean in Seams, Alabama, it was I mean, it wasn't ultra rural, but I mean it was rather rural, you know. We had a creek down the road and we had our own little fishing hole in the woods, and you know, me and my buddies used to yeah, run out through the woods and stuff. But then whenever I'd go stay with my mom after my mom moved into Mobile, you know, it was much we we lived in apartment complexes and stuff like that a lot. Rental houses and things like that and neighborhoods. So I yeah, I kinda had a mixture of things when I was growing up.

SPEAKER_06 4:15

We're gonna hear, you know, you have heavy sort of gospel influence on your music knowledge. So growing up, talk about that a little bit. I mean, was it you know, church every Sunday, Sunday school and all that?

SPEAKER_03 4:27

You know, we went through different churches at different times and sometimes, you know, it wasn't as frequent. But then whenever I was eighteen I started going uh to the independent fundamental Baptist Church and uh I kind of went down uh you know, got swirled into the deep in on that one for about nine years. Tell us a little bit about how you got into the church. When I was younger I was uh I don't know, just looking for something that was uh that felt stable, you know, and uh something that that felt true. And um I stumbled into a church when I was about eighteen years old. Uh maybe late seventeen, I can't remember, but um it was somewhere around in there. I stumbled in this independent fundamental Baptist church and it it seemed it made a whole lot of sense to me. And then uh it was time for me to f figure out what I wanted to do for college, you know, and so I figured I'd just go to a independent fundamental Baptist school. And uh I went to the first one and then they about uh they didn't you know, it didn't go so good 'cause, you know, I I was raised in public school and all that. I d I was coming from a different spot than most other kids there. And then uh then I went to another Bible school up in Tennessee and uh didn't do so good there and then so then I went to a third one and I finally started settling down in there and then uh they was about to kick me out too, so then I went to a fourth one. It was uh it was a long journey, but uh then then I finally, you know, settled down in northwest Georgia and got married the day after I graduated from school. I married a woman named Kathy, and uh we've been married now for almost twenty-three years, but I married her on the day after I graduated and we started having babies. Yeah, then I took a pastorate of a church when I was twenty five up in the mountains of eastern Kentucky and uh it didn't really go the way that I foresaw it going, and it took a really bad turn and kind of sent me into a place of of uh mm of introspection and I I finally decided it was time for me to depart and and push the reset button on life, you know. But I was twenty-seven years old by then though, so it was you know, it was it was a little late in life to be doing stuff like that, but there was no choice at that time.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

You know, this is the first kind of weekend I spent going down the Abe Partridge rabbit hole. I listened to a lot of your music this weekend and I have so many questions, probably too many for this podcast, but why don't you talk about the first song we're gonna play and tell us a little bit about it and then we'll we'll get a little bit into how you ended up in the military.

SPEAKER_03 7:09

Uh this song Love in the Dark was the uh title track off of my last record that came out in twenty twenty-three and uh it's it's basically a prayer. It was uh it was me writing about the place where I came to after I uh departed from the ministry and everything. And it's uh yeah, it's like a it's like a song I wrote to God.

SPEAKER_01 7:33

Well, let's give it a listen. It's called Love in the Dark by Abe Partridge.

SPEAKER_05 7:57

On a revival hill, a center's delight as I begged my heart to steal, and I walked out into the night on a teenage thrill, I never meant to close my eyes till your light grew dim, and now Lord, I ain't asking for a brand new start. I just need your direction on finding love in the dark cause I'd went out to disciple to set the mountains ablaze, and I had every answer I knew just how to be saved. I thought I wanted to be a preacher. Maybe I just wanted a stage cause I was called to the floor and I didn't have nothing to say and I used to clench my candle. I used to pray for a spark, but now I'm just content in the struggle of finding love in the dark my youth, it was a waste on the ancient scrolls when I decided not to hang on the great unknowns. It ain't that I've been looking toward the grave. Lord, I look to hope. I'm just praying that the rivers of grace do downward flow. Cause your light it ain't always shin, and I've never figured out my heart. So now I'm just feeling through my midnights, finding love in the dark, and I'm gonna go ahead and get a lot of people.

SPEAKER_06 11:50

Is that when you joined the Air Force? Or talk to us about the decision to go from ministry to avionics tech?

SPEAKER_03 11:59

So when I was twenty-seven I had given all of my educational years and and my young adult years to this church that I was uh leaving. And so uh I put everything in my in a U-Haul and I moved back down to Mobile and moved in with my mom and was I I didn't really have any plans at all. I quickly found out, you know, that uh my unaccredited Bible school education amounted to nothing in the in the private sector, you know. And so I was trying to find a way to provide for my wife and we had two children at that time. Uh I couldn't seem to find anything, and so uh I turned to uh I went to the military recruiters offices. I went to the the Navy and the Army and the Marine Corps and the Air Force, and at that time in my life all I was worried about is what skill am I going to obtain from my service. And the Army didn't have anything that appealed to me whatsoever. And the I kid you not, the Marine Corps recruiter, he said, the only job we have in the Marine Corps is killing people. That's what he told me. And I was like, Okay, I'm out. He must have reached his uh quota that month or something. Then the Navy, the Navy had something to do with um with submarines that I thought was, you know, pretty technical, uh that I could, you know, might actually um transfer out, you know, into the real world as a skill set to leverage to get a job. But um then I went to the Air Force guy and and I learned about avionics and joining straight into the reserves, they allowed me to pick my job. So I chose avionics because and the Air Force because it seemed like it would it would have the most uh uh application uh in the in just the regular job market, you know.

SPEAKER_06 14:04

And hey, we're gonna want to talk about your deployments overseas, but before we do, I mean, was music playing music and writing music, was this now a part of all this journey through your ministry and through you know, the first part of your your military service, or tell us how that sort of came about.

SPEAKER_03 14:23

When I was 18 years old, I was a student at this school in uh in Chattanooga, Tennessee, uh a Bible college. And I had a friend in the dormitory that lived there from North Carolina who was picking a banjo and I just what thought it was the I had grown up listening to Nirvana and and uh Sonic Youth and stuff like that. I mean I was into rock and roll and growing up.

SPEAKER_06 14:51

As most Baptist ministers would, yes.

SPEAKER_02 14:54

I didn't get into the church until I was eighteen. So yeah, this was also a large part of the reason why I got in so much trouble while I was at uh shocking, shocking.

SPEAKER_03 15:07

But uh I grew up listening, you know, just I just grew up listening to to punk rock and and stuff like that. And then whenever I got into the independent fundamental Baptist Church, they did not allow any type of music that was not church-based, uh gospel-based. And so I didn't care for the music in the churches that I was going to, but I really liked this fella that was in my dormitory that was playing this banjo. I thought that was really cool. So I went and bought this eighty dollar Korean banjo at a pawn shop after my classes was over. I got a book called Um You Can Learn, I think it was called You Can Learn the Five String Banjo. It was written by Earl Scruggs. And I'd sit there and I would play and I would and then after that one semester, I ended up going up to Knoxville, Tennessee to attend another Bible college for a coup that was the one I attended for a couple of years. And and Knoxville happens to be located in a in an area that is just uh saturated with uh bluegrass and old time music. And so I used to just go around the different festivals and stuff, and there was a music store in Powell, Tennessee, called Ciderville Music. And uh I think it was Tuesdays or m it might have been Thursday nights and every every Tuesday or Thursday they'd have all these old timers, they would just get around and pick in this store and they'd play in banjo and fiddle and mandolin and guitar and they'd always be an upright bass or two and and they would just kindly took me under their wing and you know, I was I was the youngest guy there by 20 years probably, you know, and uh and uh I learned how to play music there. You know, after I learned a banjo, then I kinda took an interest in guitar and all that. And then when I was in Kentucky several years later, uh and my church was crumbling along with uh my faith and a lot of different things, uh a lot of introspection and a lot of uh depression and going through a lot of uh it was one of the darkest times in my life. One of the one of the ways I escaped was I discovered right songwriting. And it wasn't I wasn't writing songs uh to to perform, I was writing them as almost like prayers, I guess you could say. I mean in hindsight I see what it did is it enabled me to say things that I couldn't say out loud. Sure. Uh and so it was uh cathartic and uh it helped me find myself and and then finally get the courage to break ties with uh what I was in you know, what it was a very cruel system that I was involved in at that time. And uh and but it you know it took a long time to do that. And songs were always that for me. So even when I joined the military a few years later, I mean I started writing songs when I was about twenty-five, twenty-six years old. And uh they were always just a part of of who I was, it was the way I dealt with things.

SPEAKER_06 18:18

And did you bring a banjo with you when you deployed for um Operation Iraqi Freedom or any of that?

SPEAKER_03 18:25

No, I didn't take a banjo or n or anything, but there was a guitar that was in the tent that I worked out of. I worked out of a tent on the a flight line at Al You Deed Air Base. And there was a there was just like a community guitar in there, you know. So you weren't doing any writing during your time in the service? Oh yeah, no, I was writing all the time. I wrote songs over in the desert too, yeah. I've been writing pretty much nonstop since since I was in my mid-twenties. I've I've only been playing 'em now about ten years, about since I was thirty-five.

SPEAKER_06 18:56

Well, tell us a little bit about the next one we've got teed up here, Young Love, and Alabama Skies.

SPEAKER_03 19:02

Yeah, that's uh that's a love song about a girl I dated uh what about 26 years ago or something. And uh before the internet, you know, in the olden times. And uh I've looked for her on the internet and I can't find her. I hope she doesn't listen to Operation Encore podcast. I'm joking. No, but no, I'm I mean, yeah, it is it's just uh it's like a love song. Well, good.

SPEAKER_01 19:27

Let's take a listen. It's called Young Love, Alabama Skies by Abe Partridge.

SPEAKER_05 19:45

But we were young and in love in Alabama, but it wasn't Burmin Ham, it wasn't mobile, and so we were nowhere, dreamers with a blank stare, running lost eye ways through the cotton fields. You'd slide over on my bench seat and make a joke and poke fun at me. Just because I kept a Bible on the dash of my truck. It ain't that already much. It was really just there for love. And young love on lost time, you know we needed the love. Cause it's an it's something. Young love can turn the night. If you had a little distance, time passes by So I said, Let's get affectionate. Like it says in the New Testament, and we were laughing at tomorrow and grinning through the night. Do you remember when we'd wander? Go floatin' down the escape. We wasn't really doing nothing, but passing time running from the knowledge, you were soon to leave for college and splashing on the crap. Cause it's the next something. A young ones can turn the nothing. If you have a little distance, and time passes by, it's the shape we had to grow up, and couldn't stay in the morning. When our days were long And our passions were high Well I helped your daddy move ya into the dorms and touch colours You better not forget me You whispered in my ear I couldn't smile so I faked it We both knew I'd never make it Even if I found the money to come to see you up here something How young love can turn the nothing If you had a little dead dance Time passed by But always will remember the summer that we spent together And then minister tonight Snake Alabama skies Okay that was Young Love Alabama Skies.

SPEAKER_01 23:16

So Abe, why don't you tell us about your transition from military life to civilian life and where you ended up after your service?

SPEAKER_03 23:24

So I'm still currently a reservist in the Air Force Reserve. I've been in 17 and a half years now. Uh I balance my reserve duty with uh a skip my tour and schedule and uh And how is that balance going? Well, I mean um they haven't kicked me out yet. But uh No, they you know I'm I'm I've actually been in my in the same unit all seventeen and a half years. So it's uh yeah, I've I've been there so long that I've all the people that I came in with are now like the bosses and everything. I'm kind of hanging out where I want to hang out. I'm an uh I'm a tech sergeant. Um I work on the C one thirties and I do a lot of training of of the new personnel that are coming in.

SPEAKER_06 24:13

And just to just to put into perspective, how old are these C one thirties you're working on? Are they older than you?

SPEAKER_03 24:19

Uh there are C one thirties that are that are older than me and the fleet, but uh the these particular ones were I think the oldest were built in the nineties. And there were some like even in the early two thousands. So we have the J models here in Keysler.

SPEAKER_01 24:34

Yeah. Well, I want to transition into this next project that you had been working on for quite a while. Uh you call it a gospel record for the southern misfit. Um, and it's called the Satan, you're a liar. So can you can you tell us about that project and how it came about?

SPEAKER_03 24:49

Yeah, so that we made um I'm actually at the house right now that we made it in. Uh my buddy my friend David Childers resides in Mount Holly, North Carolina. He's a great artist and songwriter. And um he's in his seventies and and me and him's been friends for seven or eight years now, and he's been he's been like a mentor to me. And uh we were showing our art together back in twenty twenty three at the uh Paradise Gardens in Somerville, Georgia. That's a play that's a legendary artist named Howard Fenster that started that place. And um me and David were both showing our visual art there and one afternoon after the show was winding down we're just picking around, you know, playing songs and and w we know a lot of gospel songs, you know, because we both have a lot of uh church stuff in our backgrounds. And um we were just singing the old gospel numbers and uh and I s and and it just it dawned on me, I was like, David man, we should we should make a record together, you know? Like a gospel record and like one that we don't care if anybody buys it and one that doesn't like we don't have to tour it, we don't have to we don't have to promote it, we don't have to do anything. We can just make a record and for the sake of making a record and we will you know let whoever wants to hear it hear it and whoever don't want to hear it, we don't care, you know, because it's it's not like something we're gonna do to for li our livelihoods or anything. And so I came up here in 2024 and uh with my son and then David brought his son and his band and uh we just all got together and made uh made music for three days, just whatever we felt like making. And uh we called it the Satan, you're a liar. It's uh that's that's the name of the band. And we printed all five hundred copies of it, and about a month after we recorded it, we found out that uh David actually had um cancer. He had they found can uh stage four cancer in him, and so he immediately uh started going into chemo and stuff like that. And so in January of 2020, as soon as we got the records pressed, we had intended to do it a little differently, but we ended up just going ahead and putting it out into the world. So yeah, it's just like a fun side project that I've had with my friends. How often do you get a chance to do projects like that? I make I make time for them. You know, I also have the Psych Teas, uh the Psych the Psych Teas is uh is my punk band where I just scream and stuff. And uh but I write I write most of those. I mean I wrote all those songs too and uh the other members are are in this band called the Red Clay Strays. They're po pretty popular rock and roll groups. Oh, they're doing really well, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 27:48

And you you you play with them sometimes. I mean I mean open for them, right?

SPEAKER_03 27:52

Yeah, I have, yeah. They're friends of mine. But um yeah, those are my two musical projects that are just uh it's just art for the sake of art, you know. I mean not that not that stuff I do under my own name hitting that as well. It's just that there's no attempt or any type of uh attempt at like commercial or you know, trying to capitalize on the art. It's just art. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 28:17

Well speaking of art, okay, so we've mentioned that you have a visual arts sort of project too. Can you talk a little bit about it? 'Cause you've had some some pretty good success with that portion of your portfolio.

SPEAKER_03 28:27

Yeah, I paint a lot. Yeah. Uh a lot of I do a lot of paintings. Um I've got a show going right now at the Kentuck Art Museum and Tuscaloosa, Alabama, an exhibition there. I have an exhibition with the Alabama Contemporary Art Center. They've they've had my work now for several years.

SPEAKER_01 28:46

Did this come along with your with your songwriting or was it something you developed after?

SPEAKER_03 28:52

I started painting when I was uh when I started writing, right around the same time and I I started playing my songs in public though in twenty fifteen, but I didn't show my paintings until twenty eighteen. Some people think I started painting after I saw started singing, but I really started writing songs and painting back in the mid-2000s. I j it just took me a little a long time to get up the nerve to show people what I was doing.

SPEAKER_01 29:19

I really love the idea of having these side projects where you can do whatever you want and you just have the freedom to create whatever comes out. I just really think that's so important for an artist to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_06 29:34

And it's that sort of approach that probably leads you to songs like Alabama Astronauts, which I haven't heard on the radio yet, but but it it may get there, at least to at least to where I live. Tell us a little bit about that song and what were you doing when when you wrote that?

SPEAKER_03 29:52

Well actually, you know, I had got hit in the head when I was over in the desert and uh and it ended up doing damage into the inner workings of my ear and uh split my my eardrum into two pieces and it did some uh damage inside my my ear canal. So I had after I had come back, I was setting in a lot of lines. You know, the military's full of lines and that I was watching all these uh TVs, you know, they have in the lines, and the TVs were all tuned to the History Channel where they don't really play uh very much history, it's mostly just a lot of shit about aliens, you know. Ancient aliens. I think I've seen that show. Yeah, I was watching all this shit about aliens and and my and my head was spinning because uh whenever you get that kind of injury to the ear, you become the center of the world. I mean the world like spins around you. And so my head was spinning and I was watching all this stuff about aliens and these uh you know government lines and then I was driving home every evening and I was sp and I would pass this trailer park down the road from where I lived, and there was a sign out front it said see Wanda for more information.

SPEAKER_06 31:06

Alright, well that that story explains a lot about this song. We'll just go right into Alabama Astronauts.

SPEAKER_00 31:15

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a grave announcement to make.

SPEAKER_05 31:18

Hey, Bubba, come here and listen.

SPEAKER_00 31:20

Both the observations of science and the evidence of our eyes lead to the inescapable assumption that those strange beings who landed in the Jersey farmland tonight. Jersey, the vanguard of an invading army from this planet farm.

SPEAKER_05 31:32

Man, I would say get down to the. Man, I wish they'd come down to mamma. Well, I was quiet in the back 40 trailer park that night. I mean, there's a few domestic fights and the usual petty crimes, but I was feeling alright. Mixin' whiskey with my sprite and toastin' all those coasts of the lost seven pines. And I heard a lurking in the night, and I knew something wasn't right. And I was covered in the wide of another little eye. And I looked up and beheld a spacecraft from another world. At least that's what I observed. Cause I may learn, but I can certainly confirm. There ain't nothing on this planet ever turned at the angles and the rate of speed at which it's urged. And then I heard my neighbor wanda cursing and slurs as the UFO swirled and her punter trailer converged. And she was scared away in this tractor beam. A horrible scene, her hair still in rollers, her nighty bustin' at the seams, and her scream. And it got all the more extreme. As she flew through the air to this ET machine, and I knew that this wasn't just a dream. Uh, it ain't no dream. Cause I mean, yeah, I know I've been drinking, probably even smoked a little green. But I can't stand LSD, and this would be an hallucination supreme, even obscene. So I jumped into action like a Vietnam era marine. Cause this is gonna be war. You know, I'd seen one before, and I had a stash of ammunition underneath my trailer floor, and I'd heard freaky stories galore from bother next door. And it sure ain't my ass, the malens gonna probe and explore. So I got a 12-gauge bomb in my AR, and my granddaddy's government issued K-bar. Many officer never came here now. Cause this is gonna be why. Cause I've been I've been happin', I've been waiting on the aliens to come. Yes, I've been happin', I've been waiting on the aliens to come. I've been I've been waiting on the aliens to come. So I threw some cover fire and jumped and crawled in my truck. I knew if I was gonna beat these aliens, I'd need distance and love. And then I spit through the mug until I ended up over by the living. I hunkered down in the brush. I started siding in my gear when this little green man appeared, and he looked right through my soul. While in my eyes he stared, and I knew he must have got scared when he saw I had no fear, and I'd smoke his little green ass without shedding a tear. And then he disappeared, and I said, Man, this is really getting weird. And so I ran through that trailer park like a redneck Paul Revere. I said the aliens are coming, and now there ain't no sense in running, boys. Let's take our stand here, y'all. Let's do some extraterrestrial hunting. Cause I'm the I'm just waiting on the aliens to come. Cause stars fell on Alabama, and a lot of other shit has too. But the last thing we're gonna take is being pursued by some alien crew who intergalactically flew through time and space just to land into the back 40 trailer park. And yeah, we made our mark. We beat the maleens back, and we did it in the dark. And we found Wanda, and her only remark was that she kissed they had to abduct her, but in her nightgown. Man, that was just harsh. And I even stole a little space travelin' car. I got it out in the barn, and me and Bubba painted a camouflage, and we're about to embark. An interstellar white trash, Lewis and Clark. We're gonna be the first Alabama astronauts. Cause I've been I've been I've been I've been waiting on the Malians to come as I've I've been waiting on the Malians to come as I've been having I've been waiting on the Malians to come.

SPEAKER_01 36:32

Abe, I gotta tell you, man, just digging into your music was just such a breath of fresh air. You know, some of this stuff sounded like Alan Lomax field recordings and and punk rock and and rock and roll and folk. I mean, you just you do so many things and you do them all so well, man. All so well. Thank you. So why don't you tell us about um I know you're in the middle of the tour right now, but tell us what you got going on, if you got any cool stuff you're working on that you want to talk about. Man, I've always got a a thousand uh irons in the fire.

SPEAKER_03 37:08

What I'm doing right now is I'm touring around the country with my guitar, just me and my guitar playing songs you know, smaller rooms, uh mostly like little listening rooms or folk clubs or stuff like that. I've been doing that now, let's say about two weeks. I'm about to get in a plane and fly out to Kansas City and go from Nebraska to Denver down to Wichita down into Arkansas and back up through Missouri. I'm playing a festival in April. It's at the Standard Deluxe in Waverley, Alabama, called the Old 280 Boogie. It's gonna be a good time. Uh I have a new record that was produced by Steve Shelley from Sonic Youth uh that I made up in Chase Park Studio uh last year. And I'm hoping to be able to have an announcement regarding its release very soon. Um just waiting for all that business stuff to get situated. But um yeah, everything's going uh really great, man.

SPEAKER_06 38:08

A year or so ago when you uh applied to Operation Encore, I remember looking through your application and you know, going to your website, and I I think it was the first applicant we had that listed like for under contact, like, and here's my European tour manager. And like we don't we don't we don't see that uh that often, but um after having listened to a bunch of your music, I mean, what's it like playing around Europe and playing Alabama astronauts and s you know, some some of this music that you're bringing from the hills?

SPEAKER_03 38:36

Most of the time I do better over there than I do. I mean, hell, I'll I'll do better in Groningen, Netherlands than I will in Philadelphia, buddy. I I know it well, yes. When I'm over there they call what I do roots music.

SPEAKER_01 38:51

Do you do that typical run in in Europe?

SPEAKER_03 38:54

Do you go to Belgium and Netherlands and Germany and Yeah, I I've I've done I've done a lot in the UK and uh I've done some in Ireland and I've done the Netherlands and Belgium and and uh Germany. And I've done the Netherlands and Belgium about I think four or five tours I've done over there now. Hopefully it'll be back over there before the year's over.

SPEAKER_01 39:19

I'm it's we're we're still waiting for some things to come through, but uh I hope it coincides with when I we go back there in the fall, uh, because I would sure love to meet you, man. You you got a new fan out in liberal San Francisco. Who loves it?

SPEAKER_03 39:35

Oh man, I've I love uh you know I play San Francisco. What did I play down there? The uh the Hotel Utah. I played there a lot. I did one tour back in 2019 and I just loved it out there. I need to get back, it's just so damn far.

SPEAKER_01 39:55

Yeah, I know. Yeah, we can we can make that happen. Well, Abe man, we appreciate you taking your time out of your busy tour schedule to talk to Operation Encore. We hope to see you out here soon. We hope it's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_03 40:08

You know, again, thank you for including me in all this, and uh, I really appreciate Operation Encore and all that you guys do to help folks like me. And uh sometimes all all we need is folks like you to come down and give us a little push from time to time.

SPEAKER_01 40:24

Happy to do it. Well, you all been listening to the Operation Encore podcast, and that was Abe Partridge on episode 42. And if you like what you hear, you can go to the operationoncore.org webpage and check out what we got going on up there. And if you like what you see, you can go to the donate page and hit the donate button, because it sure is a good cause. So have you all been listening to Operation Encore? And we'll see you next time.