Sometimes I get to thinking that it’s a mistake to think of time as being a queue of moments. After all, we certainly don’t think about the other three dimensions of spacetime in that way. Whatever the nature of objective reality, our brains are certainly best suited to digesting time in small, consecutive morsels indexed by one-dimensional well-ordered real numbers. So be it. On to Part 3.

I spent the 2019-2020 winter break in Bell County, recording most of our 29th studio album with Jarrod, Uncle Dale, Dave, and Julian. Shortly after the beginning of the spring semester, Bullshit Empire was completed in Louisville. I already knew this was going to be my last ride as a professor of mathematics (I had given my notice on 7 January); what I didn’t know was that the stats lecture I gave right before spring break would be the last time I saw my students in a classroom.

See, there’s this thing called the coronavirus. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. In any case, we finished off the semester virtually and the opening salvos of the 2020 pandemic are understandably a major theme on album 30: Grave New World was again recorded partly in Louisville and partly in Middlesborough, this time featuring the talents of young Julian, Uncle Dale, Brandon Fuson, and guitarist/percussionist Justin Collett.

We’d never done three in a year before, but the time was right: Leaves and Balloons was a pure Louisville affair, reuniting Julian and myself with Phil, Pat, Bob, Dan Paul, and John Arstingstall — and throwing in three new collaborators to boot! Bassist Ben Ewing joined vocalists Lynne Forst and Priscilla Richards to swell our ranks up to a decet. A month or two later, Dave came up to visit; he and fellow percussionist/keyboardist Tabitha Ramos joined Julian and me to make Now or Never, and 2020 was in the books. This, our 32nd original album, also marks the start of our Bandcamp archive, so if you want to listen along, it gets very easy from this point forth! (If you want the older stuff, hit me up.)

Four albums in one year! How does one follow that up? By making eight the next year, natch. 2021 kicked off with The Journey, a duet by myself and Julian (who by this time had established himself as a singer-songwriter with his own style, all before the age of ten). Tech enthusiasts take note: album 34, Out of Bounds, was our last using the faithful and wonderful Korg 16-track (it still works; I gave it to Julian for his personal use) and also our first using my current machine, a Tascam 32-track. Again the young’un and I did it all ourselves, except for “Forgotten Love” which features guest appearances from Jarrod and Skully.

Up next was May’s Sighs Matter, very much a quartet effort from me, Julian, Bob, and Dave. More life changes occurred by July: Life in the Tens Column (featuring me, Julian, and Bob, with one song co-penned by Bob’s old bandmate Paul Bowling) included our last recordings at the house on Hess Lane in Louisville, as well as our first here at Foxwoods in Hawesville, Ky.

Tabitha rejoined the three incumbents for The Ocean and then stuck with me and Julian for Change the Rules. By now it was late October, and I was itching to get back to the holler. On my way I stopped off in Louisville to see two good friends, guitarist Dan Colon and keyboardist Kim McDaniel. I had the mixer with me anyway, right? We cut a few tracks and then I went on down to Bell County, cajoling Uncle Dale, Brandon, Jarrod, and my old pal Scott “Barrell” Halcomb (guitarist par excellence) into being a part of #39. Then it was back to Louisville, where Julian and I finished off the appropriately titled Dr. Nobody’s Down Home Travelling Show. Dale and Julian and I had enough residual material from these sessions to make up a 40th long-player; Adventures in Flyover Country was in the public view by early December.

Phew! I won’t go on record as saying we’ll never make eight in a year again – as I write we have 6.5 this year and are thus slightly ahead of our 2021 pace – but I will say that 2021 was the first year I’ve devoted to Fextonia full-time, and 2022 won’t be the last. One last burst of sessions in Bell County at the turn of the year, plus some additional work back in Hawesville, gave us enough to start ’22 with A Taller Hill (featuring self, Julian, Tabitha, Dan Colon, Kim, Dale, and Brandon) and X K P (me, Julian, Dale, and Brandon).

Both as a musician and as a human, my major role model has always been my grandfather, Everett Verlin Money (1925 – 2022); I was fortunate to spend nine of his last twelve days with him, and you can hear how I processed that on albums 43 and 44, Fort Peace (just me and Julian) and So Long (me, Julian, and Tabitha).

On my way back to Hawesville I grabbed a book I’d seen a million times but never read. This was Backfire (1982), by Loren Baritz, which tells the story of how the Vietnam War was lost because of bureaucratic incompetence, then goes on to predict that the same weakness is going to cost Americans the whole ballgame (specifically, our education system, which I’d spent a decade watching crumble). This got me thinking; soon after, Julian and I had cranked out #45, You Can’t Beat the System.

Part 3 of my account of our long journey as recording artists must end with Questions are Better than Answers (again featuring me, Julian, and Tabitha), as it’s our most recent record. I can’t write Part 4 yet – the future is like that, at least to our limited brains – but rest assured it’s coming. Thank you for caring. I hope Fextonia isn’t just a monument to Chad Money’s obsession with writing and recording; I hope it helps you.