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we hope you like the van gogh brothers’ new home. after 20+ years of johncate.com we finally got vangoghbrothers.com. as those of you who have followed us over the years know, the band has coalesced over time, especially since I returned from California a few years back. i feel like we’re firing on all cylinders now and we’ve got some cool ideas that we’ll share with you in the months ahead.
and just how is it that you can find a place you’ve never been that feels like home? and not just for a second, but always and every time you return? i have a few places like that in my life. some are ideas, like the van gogh brothers, or the various businesses i’ve helped create. some are people or places. london is like that for me. i always feel at home in london. and new york. I always feel comfortable in new york. new orleans has started to feel like home. but nowhere feels more like home than malibu. maybe it’s because malibu is a place and an idea for me. it’s a place I drew pictures of as a child- from my imagination- long before I ever lived there, and the pictures turned out to exist. i’ve been gone for five years now, but it feels like i never left—every time i return. and, of course, vincent’s feels like home, and has from the first time we played there almost 20 years ago. donna recently memorialized vincent’s for (all of) us in her van gogh-inspired painting (above). we are thrilled.
i returned to malibu last week after about 15 months away and was reminded of the importance of staying connected to the energies that feel like home. interesting things happen when you plug into your psychic centers. i found that my health improved as well as my outlook. as i felt the flow of energy, i became aware that i had been resisting my own karmic pull. i noticed that i began to consciously deflect negativity when it appeared, rather than ignoring and internalizing it. these are subtle things, but they are important to experiencing a good human existence, and to maximizing our personal psychic power.
while I was on the west coast, I met the all-new crew at our long-time publisher and tried to give them a condensed history of our 25+ years together, and let them know we were still at it! it’s nice to see a young, inspired group leading the company into the future, and i hope they were inspired by my pitch. i was also able to attend the composer breakfast club of malibu’s weekly meeting, now at “dreamland” which is the former malibu inn. dreamland is a super cool space—more like the old malibu inn with exposed beams, 2 stages and a great sound system. the presentations were amazing as always and big thanks to pal richard gibbs for carrying the flag for 10 years! I got to hang out with a bi-coastal east coast friend, newly situated in malibu, who I introduced around to my local buddies. there was much more, but the icing on the cake was the surprise invitation to use a friend’s beach house as home base while I was out, which is a couple of houses down from tom petty’s place, now for sale. so cool.
i got back in time for our monthly vincent’s show, and what a show it was! it must have been the valentine energy, or maybe it was having vincent and nicole in the house, but the night exploded over and over from start to finish.
we return to vincent’s on march 11 and april 8, and add a barn show at magical moon farm on april 29th. interspersed with all this are more studio dates and forays to points south and west.
it’s been an unusually mild winter in the northeast and the days are growing longer, and the sun stronger. we look forward to seeing you, or you can reach out to us here. see you soon!
love,
jc