In the Shadow of the Evening Trees

October 6, 2024October 6, 2024

Episode 57: The Live Fast, Die Old Generation

If you listened to our last show, we talked about either starting a new podcast or reformatting this one, and we settled on … reformatting this one. By which we just mean that we’re going to expand the topics we talk about.

With that in mind, this week’s episode focuses primarily on the music we’re listening to now. I Jennifer’s case, it’s Lollapalooza sensation Chappell Roan, and in David’s case its Jesse Malin, who suffered a rare spinal stroke in 2023 and is working his way back to the stage.

Along the way, we talk about an interesting phenomenon in music these days, namely: older artists reflecting back on their lives and contemplating where they’re headed now. We’re used to the live fast, die young mentality, but were we prepared for the live fast, die old generation?

You’ll have to listen in to find out more, but we have to give a shout out the the Jesse Malin benefit album, Silver Patron Saints, featuring 35 artists collaborating with him on 27 of his best songs, including Bruce Springsteen, Lucinda Williams, Elvis Costello, Cait O’Riordan, Susanna Hoffs, Billie Joe Armstrong, Spoon, the Wallflowers, Graham Parker, and Alejandro Escovedo. Read more about it here, and please consider supporting Sweet Relief.

Side note: If you’re listening to this on Apple Podcasts or other podcasting platforms, check out our website (intheshadowoftheeveningtrees.com) links to the artists we talk about on this week’s show.

We hope you enjoy the show, please feel free to follow us on Instagram (@jenn_and_dave), and tune in to our next episode for a discussion of the great Netflix documentary, Will and Harper.

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September 23, 2024September 23, 2024

Episode 56: Reformatting

On this episode, we talk about reformatting this podcast or possibly starting a new one to supplement this show. Either way, the emphasis would be on the three things we talk most about in our day-to-day life: Music, food, and politics. And we plan to let the expletives fly.

Kidding aside, all three topics are connected in many ways and all three provide more than enough to fill a lifetime of shows.

And on that note, this episode also delves into the relationship between politics and music, including several interesting music documentaries that either have been released or will be coming soon. In keeping with our usual focus on LGBTQIA+ issues, we also talk about Will and Harper, the documentary about Will Farrell’s longtime friend Harper who came out as trans. We’ll have much more to say about that in coming episodes.

Finally, related to the topic of food and “wellness,” as they say in corporate-speak, we talk about the fairly successful healthy eating and exercise routine we adopted — and more importantly, stuck to — over the past year.

We hope you enjoy the show, and please feel free to follow us on Instagram (@jenn_and_dave). Until next time!

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August 23, 2024August 23, 2024

Episode 55: Olympics Recap

Welcome to Episode 55. The Sammy Hagar episode. IYKYK, as the kids say.

This week, we talk about Bruce Springsteen returning to Europe next year (not Ireland, sadly) and the PBS Passport show “Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska: A Celebration in Words and Music” (not, as we say on the podcast, the upcoming feature film based on Warren Zanes’ book, Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska) (oops).

And we talk about planning an epic 30th anniversary trip somewhere warm (also not Ireland, and we probably won’t be dropping in on Sammy Hagar in Cabo either).

But mostly, we talk about the Olympics. Specifically, we talk about the events we watched the most (swimming, gymnastics, diving, track and field, cycling, and … competitive walking?!), the controversy over Olympic breaking, and the things we enjoyed the most — Snoop Dogg being everywhere, and Flava Flav saving the US Women’s Water Polo team … which leads to a conversation about the remarkable love Black athletes and fans showed for America, a country that does not often return that love.

We also talk a bit about the 2028 games in Los Angeles, and then we turn to the dark side of the Olympics, including:

The Federation Internationale de Gymnastique’s (FIG’s) bogus decision to strip US gymnast Jordan Chiles of her bronze medal (and the equally bogus ruling from the Court of Arbitration for Sport upholding FIG’s decision); and
The ginned up, transphobic and likely defamatory attacks on Algerian boxer Imane Khelif.

We hope you enjoy the show, and please feel free to follow us on Instagram (@jenn_and_dave). You can also follow us on the site formerly known as Twitter, where our joint account is @JennandDave1 and the podcast account is @itsotetPodcast. Until next time!

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August 8, 2024August 8, 2024

Episode 54: Revenge of the Normals

Well, the weirdos finally did it. They made us talk about politics for real, and we’re not too happy about it.

We start our conversation with Donald Trump’s train-wreck interview at the National Association of Black Journalists conference in Chicago last week, and … let’s just say he certainly hasn’t modified his behavior since the incident in Butler, PA, in July.

As Shakespeare would say, he’s full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Except, of course, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and toxic paranoia.

We also talk about the other major story in politics: Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race and the ascension of Kamala Harris (note: we recorded this before the Vice President chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to be her running mate). Though the President probably did the right thing — and it probably won’t have the disastrous results many of us worried about — that doesn’t get journalists, pundits, movie stars, and other assorted scoundrels off the hook for the ageism and ableism they displayed over the past month or so.

Finally, we touch on the Democrats weaponizing the Trump/Vance team’s weirdness against them and why it’s such an effective strategy. After all, every campaign needs a little Dennis Rodman from time to time. You’ll just have to listen in to find out how the Worm fits into all this.

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July 30, 2024July 30, 2024

Episode 53: There’s Always Time

On this week’s episode, after discussing certain issues we have with Jeopardy! that are best left to another imaginary podcast, we turn our focus to passion projects like playing instruments, writing, making art, and creating content on blogs and social media. Inspired by a colleague who cowrote Empire: The Musical, a show that is now running at the New World Stages in New York, we contemplate how it is that some people are able to maintain their creative passions despite working full-time jobs, raising kids, and dealing with all the other stresses of everyday life.

Spoiler alter: One of us has had considerably greater success in maintaining their side interests than the other … but you’ll have to listen to find out who that is and what insights she has in to making it work.

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July 19, 2024July 19, 2024

Episode 52: Major Milestones; America Needs an Anger Translator; and Not Everything Is Political

This week, it dawned on us that we crossed a major milestone. Since our youngest graduated from college, we are officially done with back-to-school. No more beginning of the school year cookouts. No more back-to-school shopping. No more curriculum nights and teacher conferences. And no more moving kids into and out of dorms and college apartments. Which is sad, in a way, but also a pretty major accomplishment.

On the upside, we still have booze left over from our daughter’s college graduation party, but we’re not exactly mixologists over here. Which leads us to a digression about Jon Taffer and “Bar Rescue” and how great it would be if we had someone talk to our politicians the way he talks to failing bar owners. Kind of like the Key & Peele bit about Barack Obama’s anger translator, only in reverse: America needs an anger translator to confront … certain political actors who shall remain nameless.

And that leads to an discussion that should probably have taken place on our imaginary political podcast: We talk about how to spend election night without watching television or following election returns, how political polls work in modern times when very few people have landlines, and how polls fail to measure the truly irrational reasons why people make political choices. It’s not always about the economy and foreign policy. Sometimes it’s about who’s taller, how a candidate looks, or who the candidate hates.

If that’s not enough stress for you, we then turn to climate change and how it’s affecting the weather this summer, with record high temperatures in some parts of the country and crazy, end-times-y storms here in the Chicago area. Which, in turn, leads to a discussion about how we’ve politicized things that are fundamentally not political. Like, you know, science. Climate change, global pandemics and other assorted public health crises exist regardless of your or our politics, and they require nonpolitical, nonpartisan solutions. Especially because things like climate change are not going to stop without taking action and things like COVID may fade away for now, but we know another major pandemic will come along eventually. But if we politicize everything, we’ll never come up with real solutions.

Case in point: After the 1918 flu, we had a hundred years to come up with nonpartisan ways to protect ourselves from airborne viruses, but we were still essentially blind-sided by COVID. And then COVID became completely politicized (mostly by people who didn’t want the government to tell them to wear masks and cut back on going out). So, it’s unlikely that we will ever have an adult conversation about what we got right and what we got wrong. Which means we’ll never develop workable, nonpartisan plans to deal with the next one. So that’s cool.

Anyway, we hope you enjoy the show, and please feel free to follow us on Instagram (@jenn_and_dave). You can also follow us on the site formerly known as Twitter, where our joint account is @JennandDave1 and the podcast account is @itsotetPodcast. Until next time!

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July 12, 2024July 12, 2024

Episode 51: Time Warp

Hey, we’re back already! After a less-than-consistent podcasting schedule, we’re posting an episode for the second week in a row. Which is pretty remarkable, all things considered.

This week we talk about using people’s preferred names. That is, everybody’s preferred names. Not just trans and nonbinary people. It’s a sign of respect and you should get in the habit of doing it.

On a sort of related note, we talk about the term nibling, a gender-neutral collective term for nieces and nephews, which is particularly useful if you have nonbinary relatives with that relation to you. Again, it’s all about treating people with respect.

And because we’ve been inconsistent with posting lately, we talk about trying to record and post more often and suggest that you might be interested in some of our earlier episodes, including Episodes 49 and 50, in which we talk about our recent trip to Ireland to see Bruce Springsteen and a host of other things.

That leads us to revisit our recent impromptu/informal high school “reunion” and how we reconnected with old friends. We also spend some time talking about maintaining lifelong friendships and how valuable they can be for your mental health. And we talk about surprise parties, which are somehow related to this topic. You’ll just have to trust us.

From there, we recap our past couple of weeks, including walking in the Chicago Pride Parade with Lambda Legal, a fantastic organization that advocates (and litigates!) for LGBTQIA+ individuals and people living with HIV. We did an awful lot of walking that day — and struggled to find parking, as you do in Chicago — but it was a great time.

Finally, we talk about our youngest daughter’s college graduation party, living in a swamp, and the curious (and annoying!) morning time warp. Which is an appropriate way to wrap up this episode!

So, we hope you enjoy the show, and please feel free to follow us on Instagram (@jenn_and_dave). You can also follow us on the site formerly known as Twitter, where our joint account is @JennandDave1 and the podcast account is @itsotetPodcast. Until next time!

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July 4, 2024July 4, 2024

Episode 50: Ireland, Part II — Improvisational Travel

Well, we finally made it to fifty episodes! And then we waited nearly two weeks to post Episode 50. But life is kind of busy, so here we are.

Anyway, in this episode we answer the question we left you with at the end of Episode 49: Where do we want to retire, if, God willing, retirement is in our future?

Kinsale, County Cork, Ireland. Gateway to the Wild Atlantic Way. That’s where. Is it any wonder why?

Beyond Kinsale, we continue our recap of our latest trip to Ireland, including some hidden gems in Cork City: Thompsons Cork Restaurant & Microbrewery, and a bar called Sin É, where we listened to a wonderful singer and guitar player named Tony Milner.

And we talk about another pleasant surprise we discovered in Cork: a Mediterranean/Turkish restaurant called Nosta. Modern Ireland is far more diverse than you might expect.

We also spend a good part of this episode discussing the virtues of not over-planning vacations, which we call improvisational travel.

And speaking of improvisation, we talk about our wild weekend of June 7 and 8, which included our local PrideFest, a tribute concert for our old high school jazz band director on the occasion of his 80th birthday, and reconnecting with friends we haven’t talked to in quite a while.

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May 31, 2024May 31, 2024

Episode 49: Twenty-two Songs, Seven Encores and the Power of … Maybe?

In our first episode back from our vacation hiatus, we begin our recap of this year’s trip to Ireland, a country that is near and dear to us. We briefly talk about our visits to Dublin and Cork, using GPS to navigate, and the many (many) modes of transportation we used.

But we spend most of the episode talking about Bruce Springsteen’s fantastic show at Croke Park on May 19. Bruce’s 2023 show at Dublin’s RDS Arena was great and will always be a special experience, but this year’s show was really something. In front of 80,000 adoring fans from Ireland and around the globe, Bruce had a renewed energy, a strong voice, and a seemingly invincible spirit. The 2023 show, while uplifting and life-affirming as always, had somber, introspective moments that simultaneously made you feel glad to be alive but appreciate how fleeting it all is. This year’s show, on the other hand, convinced us that Bruce and the rest of us will live forever.

Figuratively, at least.

Some highlights from his twenty-two song, seven-encore performance in Dublin:

Opening the show with “Lonesome Day” from The Rising, a pleasant surprise in its own right, and following it immediately with “Night” from Darkness on the Edge of Town, a diehard fan’s favorite.
Bringing back “Darlington County” from Born in the U.S.A., a song he might have left behind because of its comical (obviously pre-9/11) reference to the World Trade Center.
Giving Nebraska’s “Reason to Believe” a full E Street Band/ZZ Top-inspired treatment.
“Wrecking Ball,” the only song he played off of that album, which the crowd always goes crazy for.
“She’s the One.” Nothing else to add here, really. It’s simply one of the best songs ever recorded.
“Nightshift” from Only the Strong Survive, Bruce’s 2022 album of soul covers. This song lets the E Street Band’s great backup singers step into the spotlight.
A rousing, emotional “My City of Ruins,” a song he originally wrote for Freehold, NJ, that became a New York City anthem after 9/11.
An incredible set of encores featuring “Land of Hope and Dreams/People Get Ready,” “Born to Run,” and a cover of the Isely Brothers’ “Twist and Shout” (Dublin did not cut the power half-way through, unlike London when Bruce and Paul McCartney sang it at Hyde Park).
And the emotional crescendo of the evening: closing the show with a cover of the Pogues’ “A Rainy Night in SoHo” as a tribute to the late Shane MacGowan. We knew it was coming, but that did not lessen the impact.

We then talk (half-jokingly and half-seriously) about the power of saying “maybe” instead of “yes” or “no.” You know, we really might be onto something here!

And finally, we think we found the place where we will ultimately retire (God willing). But you’ll have to tune in to our next episode to find out where that is.

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May 10, 2024May 10, 2024

Episode 48: Civil Rights Galas, College Graduations, Kind Words, and Bruce in Ireland

In this week’s episode, we talk about Lambda Legal’s Bon Foster Civil Rights Celebration at the Art Institute of Chicago, for which Dave is on the host committee. It’s not too late to make a donation to this fantastic organization, which has been fighting for LGBTQIA+ rights for more than 50 years.

Then, Jennifer gives a recap of her fun but very hectic trip to San Antonio last weekend, we talk about our youngest’s college graduation this weekend, and the importance of sharing kind and supportive words … even if it doesn’t come naturally to some of us!

Finally, we spend some time talking about our upcoming trip to Ireland to see Bruce Springsteen (again!), Bruce’s European tour opener in Cardiff, and his (first ever?) performance in Belfast, a city that could use a lot of love.

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