Happy New Year to you. We hope you got through the weekend with a minimum of travails, and especially, no hangover. I always find the awareness of the passage of time to be great for reflection and planning. There are so many things I want to do this year, I just don’t know what to do first. Well that is not entirely true, because my January is booked pretty crazy. This week I head to my tenth MusicFest at Steamboat, as I'll be coordinating the live video streaming from the MusicFest tent on January 6, 7, 8, and 9. Here is the link to watch live, though it won’t be active until Friday from 3:45pm MT as Ragweed former members Cody, Jeremy and Randy take the stage. Sorry, Music Fog isn't making the trip this time, but I will report back for the pages of the Fog!

Actually, I checked the lineup and it looks like Kevin Welch isn’t going to be there this year either. You just can’t be everywhere all the time! Kevin is doing a series of supercool songwriting workshops in the beautiful Hill Country. If you attend one, maybe some of his magic will rub off! We have a tune today from him, a preeminent Americana songwriter. It is as much a statement about the hardships of life, as well as it offers the glimmer of release. Let the light shine in this year. This is “The Great Emancipation,” the original of which is on his 2010 album, A Patch Of Blue Sky. We filmed this aboard the Music Fog bus, at Folk Alliance in Memphis, February 2010.

- Jessie Scott