I recall an eventful week in Southern California with lots of milestones and folks that show up.

I drove through tent city on the Fourth of July and couldn’t get it out of my head. The SoCal run, the anxiety, and what happens when you start doing the math on your own life at a red light.

This week on Duwali Bottoms :

A mother knows when to talk and when to just hold on. A father shows up with ribeyes and an agenda. Things are about to get complicated in Duwali Bottoms.

I take you through the particular fury of modern travel, the quiet rage my father carried like a second engine, and what my wife accidentally revealed about the distance between the two men. Also: what Enya has to do with any of it.

This week on duwali Bottoms Texas

Three people. Three mornings. One small East Texas town that keeps drawing everybody back whether they mean to come or not. Season Two of Duwali Bottoms Texas is rolling, and the ground is shifting beneath all of it.

Join me in Denver while I recount an adventurous three days of travel with the family. I've also included bonus footage of one of the Fort Collins shows where I'm telling the Harry story on stage for my original Reckon Crew.

I got the opportunity to interview Pulitzer nominated poet, author and publisher Charles Clifford Brooks III. It’s a lively conversation about writing and a short dive into the majesty of Faulkner.

Back in Duwali Bottoms,

Carl Sr. has a plan. Alana already knows about it. Two young men from Houston who came to Duwali Bottoms because a hurricane left them no choice are about to find out that sometimes the storm knows where you need to be.

A hundred episodes in and I’m still figuring it out in public. Tonight I talk about the way music finds you through a crack you didn’t know was open. Keep your receptors open.

In Duwali Bottoms Texas, Sheriff Garza gets his first real look at what he inherited in Rusk County, Carl Sr. takes the boys fishing on Lake of the Pines, and Matt Swindon reminds everybody exactly who he is.

History’s been lied about from both directions and I’m tired of it. Edison, Ford, and Diamond Jim Brady none of them are who you think. This week on Duwali Bottoms, Tony and Dusty get out of jail, Alana shows up, Dave Tilton pays the sheriff a visit, and somebody comes flying around a curve on the two lane who has no business being there.

This week, I talk about two days in a row when the world said no, and I kept going anyway, a flat tire in the rain, a camera on the concrete floor. I’ve been asking myself ever since whether the thing in me that always chooses the harder path is strength or scar tissue. I don’t have an answer, and I’m starting to think that might be the point.

A hard call. The fella in me who ain’t a friend of reason wanted to hoist the black flag. The wiser part asked me to slow down and do right by the folks counting on me. This one’s about knowing when to swing and when to walk away clean. Two wolves. Both still in the room.

Back in Duwali Bottoms,

A fog-thick morning on the Bong Song plain, 1966. Carl Sr. hears something in an empty village he can’t unhear, and the choice he makes there will follow him into the dark. Back home, a jail cell, a swollen eye, and a Papaw with a foot of beard and a full head of steam.

Some lines get people killed. Some just keep us small. From the Driftless region of Minnesota to a joint that’s legal on one bank of the Mississippi and a criminal act on the other, JW walks through the imaginary lines men drew with rulers, and the smaller ones we draw inside ourselves.

Plus a new episode of Duwali Bottoms Texas. Sixteen hours out of a flooded Houston, Tony and Dusty roll up on Duwali Bottoms in the dark, and the homecoming Tony spent a decade trying to aviod is waiting for him on a farm road.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​