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She passed April 21, 2021. She was home roughly three months from the hospital.
Because I knew she would be gone in a short while, I was able to get a running start
on fixing up the house, setting up Riverlark to be primarily a record company, getting

a proper vehicle and so forth. It's been about a hundred fifty thousand miles on the
road, about ten CDs issued and half a dozen either planned or in the can, a number
of instruments acquired and a number of them sold or given away, keeping the bills

paid, keeping the house safe while I'm hoboing around. I have a house mate now
who takes care of all that, and the dog, when I'm not home, which is pretty often
these days.

Making the record with Bill and Eleanor - I assume you have a copy by now - was
an adventure. It wasn't the easiest time of year, November in Vermont, and we had
just come from Mississippi where we'd done the Mississippi John Hurt Homecoming.

That's another thing, I'm on the board of the MJH (Mississippi John Hurt) Foundation,
one more thing to
keep me hopping.

So, we left on
Tuesday, Oct. 6. I
was also taking

one of my artists,
Dee Robinson,
home to Decatur,

Illinois on the way.

When we got to
Andy Cohen, Eleanor Ellis and Bill Ellis
Vermont finally,
Bill's mother-in-
law was living with them and starting to lose it big time, so Bill and Julie put us up
at a local B & B. I had a gig in Philadelphia, and I brought Eleanor along, but she

wasn't feeling well. She had some atrial flutter going on, which she later had ablated,
thankfully, but it was a bit of touch and go on the ride down. We made it, and we

made it back, and I did my portion of the rest of the CD and went home. Eleanor
stayed with a friend in Montpelier who got her hooked up with a cardiac unit in New
Hampshire to get her fixed. She's not a hundred percent but she's a lot better now.

While she was staying in Montpelier, she stabilized a good deal. She was able to get
over to Burlington to record seven more tunes with Bill, most of which made it over
the finish line. The rest was River (Hartley, the recordist (engineer, Ed) ) and Bill,
futzing with the knobs for a few months till they got it sounding about as good as

they could.

I had Bill do the programming, he's real good at that, and knowledgeable about the
ways and customs of the Music Industry At Large. River is real steady on the dials,

so everything worked out well. We had a little extra work with the cover and the