FEBRUARY 6, 1999, Florida Soon after Christmas, winter settled down on High Falls like the back end of a polar bear. We had pretty much every kind of precipitation possible, but the kicker was the stuff that fell and then froze into a sheet of ice inches thick. We had adapted to the situation, and gotten used to driving and walking over this stuff, but when it came time to pull the trailer out, we were beyond our capabilities. A nice late-afternoon take-off turned into another after-dark departure-- once we found a towtruck driver willing to come out during the half-time of the Jets' playoff game (they were ahead at the half, but not for long). Still, a late start is better than none (and we've been known to start journeys after midnight) so, finally, we were off. Some years we've played gigs on the way south, in Maryland, Virginia, Georgia and the Carolinas. It mostly worked out well, but on many occasions we'd get blindsided by blizzards and other "interesting" weather, so lately we've taken to making a pretty straight shot down to Florida. Whatever Florida's other virtues and drawbacks may be, at least we've never found ourselves making a late night white-knuckle drive in a white-out snowstorm in the sunshine state. Making this straight run to Florida usually means a lot of time on I-95, a road which, south of Richmond at least, we've come to call "the Florida Corridor". (These words actually rhyme when spoken with the right accent, sort of a New Jersey/New York twang that deletes the final "r".) Once you get south of Richmond, most of the license plates are from northern states, and instead of towns at the exits, there are just clusters of motels, gas stations, and franchise eateries. It's kind of a paved tube down which the refugees slide to the land of sun. FEBRUARY 9, Florida The sunshine state has treated us well. The weather's been even kinder than usual for this time of year. We've been able to hit a couple of our favorite beaches, and generally had a fine old time. The shows went well in the Miami/Palm Beach area. Michael Stock at WLRN is one of the longtime stalwarts of the folk world, and it was an honor and a pleasure to appear on his show. We got to the station a little early, and went poking around the neighborhood, one of our favorite road pastimes. Not much happening, just a few urban campers having a meeting in some shade. Found a cheap gas station (something we always look for!) and got in line behind a lady pumping gas into her van. Now some vans do have big tanks, but five, ten minutes later she's still pumping, makes you wonder. Don gets out, starts to go into the store, and notices a strong smell of gas: He slips a little, looks down, and sees a little river of petrol flowing out from under the lady's van, and pooling next to his feet! Instantly he sees visions of disaster movie explosion, and he's back in our van in a blink, ready to flee before the inferno. At the same moment, the crazy gas lady seems to either have realized what she's done, or decided she's got enough gas, because she hangs up the nozzle and drives away. Well, the puddle's not huge, no one seems to be throwing matches at it, and the wet trail that leads to the pump is evaporating, so we decide to pull forward a few pumps and fuel up. Another terrible disaster averted by... not happening. Later that day we got a little time for dinner before the show, and found a little pasta place where we were entertained by the three ladies at the next table doing a perfect, though unconscious, imitation of "The Golden Girls". Our show later for the Folk Club of S. Florida was one of those that keeps us going, great people to play for, and one of those concerts where we feel like we've connected with some fine folks who have some idea what we're singing about. The Luna Star is a great, funky little coffeehouse permanently decorated for Halloween, and we heard a lovely Brazilian singer at the open mic after the concert FEBRUARY 14, Louisiana "An army travels on its stomach"-- Yes, and so does a touring folk'n'roll duo. But nowhere in the country is the inevitable imperative-- "Ya gotta eat"-- less of a burden, and more fun to obey, than in Louisiana and the Southwest. Even in our leanest years of touring, when we almost never ate in an actual restaurant, we couldn't pass through Lousiana without trying, at the rate of one or two a year, to find the perfect Cajun cafe. We were hampered somewhat in the first couple of years because we were looking for this Holy Grail of food around New Orleans; only later did we find out that the Cajuns were mostly much farther west, beyond Baton Rouge, and concentrated in the area of Lafayette. Our first try in that area proved to be a stroke of luck, and we wandered into Prejean's, just north of I-10, in the town of Carencro. A big, high-ceilinged room. full of tables for four or more, red and white checkered tablecloths, and the best prize: at one end of the room a real down home Cajun family band, usually two or three generations worth, playing away on fiddles, accordions, guitars. Grab a beer, and you're in Louisiana heaven. In the years since we found it, the menu's gotten a little fancier looking, and the prices have gone up some, but Prejean's is still the best. This year we happened in on a Saturday night, during the height of Mardi Gras, and had to wait an hour or so for a table: There are very few places we'll do that, but it was worth it, and hey, we could still hear the band while we waited. The next day there was a parade in the little town of Carencro. We've gone to Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans before, and they're spectacular, but this small-town version had a charm of its own. The atmosphere was a little less frantic, nobody was pushing to get in front of us, and we could stand really close to the vehicles as they passed. Of course the floats were much simpler, and there weren't as many, and how interesting is the mayor's car anyway? But the parade was about two miles long, and by the time it had passed we had seen Miss Carencro, Miss Teen Carencro, and Miss Just About Everything Else. We caught our share of beads, and had a good day. (If you've never been to a Mardi Gras parade, one of the main features are the "throws"-- most often strings of beads, but also plastic cups, keychains, candy... It's mostly stuff you'd never buy, but catching it when someone throws it to you from a float gives it value, and we've kept just about everything we've ever caught.) We didn't feel like braving the crowds in New Orleans this year, so the little parade in Carencro was just our speed. Made kind of a nice Valentine's Day too. Later that night we saw the thin crescent moon, hanging just below the bright "stars" of Jupiter and Venus in a long straight line leading us into the west, over the roughest stretch of Interstate we know of, I-10 west from Lafayette-- bouncing, rocking, rattling and rolling our way to Texas. FEBRUARY 18, Texas The mileage markers decrease from east to west on the Interstates, so if you're traveling west, the first marker you see when you enter a state tells you how many miles you have to go in that state until you cross into the next one. Some people find it a little daunting when they drive into Texas on I-10, and see mile 877 or so. If all you want to do is get across Texas, well, it's gonna take a while. The upside for us though, is that we always seem to find good things to do there, whether it's some of our favorite venues, or the extracurricular activities we've discovered, so we don't really mind that we've rarely crossed the Lone Star State in less than a week. It may be almost a thousand miles across Texas, but we know that somewhere in the middle is the great city of San Antonio, and somewhere in the middle of that is the old market square, with one of the best restaurants in the world, La Margarita, with its fishbowl-sized drinks by the same name, and its great strolling mariachis. There's a real heritage of musicianship in these guys, some wonderful playing and singing. We treated ourselves to a couple of songs from Mariachi Azteca, a nine-piece group: violins, trumpets, guitar, vihuela, and guitarron (a bass guitar). They stand around your table and almost blow you away with sound. San Antonio is just about the beginning of the West. After that you go through the Hill Country, and out into the desert of West Texas, which is probably the most nothin' you'll ever see. A Texan friend once said of West Texas, "It may not be the end of the world, but you can sure see it from there!" and that's about right. Imagine our surprise then, in the midst of this huge desert, to stumble upon the oasis of Balmorhea State Park, where a spring flows out of the earth into a big man-made swimming pool. Now, they say in the summer this park gets hundreds of visitors a day, but in February, if you're lucky enough to get a warm day, you get the place just about all to yourself. Not only is it a pool of beautiful, unchlorinated, clear water, but where it's deep, it's actually worthwhile snorkeling! In Texas! It's no coral reef, but there are some fascinating sights nonetheless-- little bright silver fish, catfish a foot or more long, and turtles(!) in the grasses, and the blue underwater light. FEBRUARY 20, Columbus, New Mexico and Palomas, Mexico. We're here to visit friends, Mike and Jane, roving jewelers we met up in Galena, Illinois. They've got a great little place in the desert near the Mexican border, which serves as their home base from which they travel to arts fairs to sell their jewelry. That kind of a craftsperson's life is not so different from our own, which is part of what we have in common. We go over the border twice, for dinner Friday in a great cafe with an indoor fountain, and then again on Saturday morning, for huevos rancheros, and to stroll the town of Palomas. It's actually a much bigger town than its neighbor on the American side, Columbus. We might have thought that the mariachis of the old market of San Antonio had quite a tough gig, strolling constantly from table to table, and back and forth between the two big restaurants soliciting customers for their songs, but here in the little border town of Palomas it's really a hiker's job, marching with their instruments through the four or five blocks of the downtown, in and out of the numerous bars, and occasionally even singing in the swirling dust of the streets, where you're reluctant to breathe, much less sing. Several and various the groups of mariachis stroll the streets of Palomas, from bar to bar it's not very far, there's even a couple serenading a car, as the dust swirls around them in the bright afternoon sun. Accordions, guitars; one man totes a string bass in and out of the many bars. On the main street a woman of the Tarahumara in her colorful skirt and scarf leads her children begging. We eat, shop, wonder. FEBRUARY 26, Arizona. We're camped in the desert east of Phoenix, at the foot of the looming Superstition Mountains. These are great jutting crags, beginning as boulder- strewn slopes that rise to the foot of tall vertical columns of reddish stone, cut and separated by erosion. The land around us is covered sparsely with short desert trees-- palo verde, mesquite, ironwood-- with the great saguaro cacti poking up here and there in all their varied shapes-- a single trunk, like a finger, or the ones with many branches, looking like a creature with lots of arms. There's a fascination with big, remarkable plants like these that have such a specific, limited range: the saguaro, that only grows in this southwestern corner of Arizona, or the redwoods and the joshua trees in California, each in their own little pocket of the world. We, on the other hand, just ramble all over the place, thinking we're pretty much at home anywhere. One of the things environmental writers have been trying to emphasize lately is the "sense of place", because maybe if more people felt that where they are is special to them, they'd take better care of it. Naturally if you think the place you're in is pretty interchangeable with anywhere else, you may get a little careless about it. The full moon lights the desert: you bathe in the silence, until the coyotes. In a tent nearby, country radio playing the whole damn night long. MARCH 6, California. We leave Phoenix for L.A. at sunset, as we might if it were summer, to avoid the heat of day as we cross the desert. This time, though, it's only because we dawdle and do little errands till late afternoon, and then we might as well eat as sit in Phoenix's rush hour traffic. Even though it's a desert it's a shame to cross it in the dark and miss seeing those severe brown mountains and the occasional wildflower. At least there's a nearly full moon to see some of the scenery by. We decide to stop in Coachella for the night, and wander its streets for what seems like an hour, around midnight, searching among its seedy motels along the business route for a seedy RV park. We finally find what may be the only one in town, but by then it's 1 a.m. and the place has an early check out time, is very expensive, and alomost full, so we go back to the truck stop near the interstate. We pick out a quiet spot in the parking lot and spend, finally, a peaceful first night in California. In the morning we hear several voices just outside our windows, and they're not just passing by, but staying quite close, laying blankets on the grass, setting up chairs...turns out we're in the spot where this drug and alcohol recovery group does a car wash every week. First we hustle to get out of their way, but then we notice how dirty our rig is, so we have them wash it. Nice bunch of folks, and they do a good job. Now we look good for our first day in the Golden State. We go back into town and find a shop along the business route that sells organic dates, and we eat our breakfast on the little patch of grass under the palms next to the store. Feels like California. MARCH 14, California. From Coachella west the land becomes less of a desert, as we gradually green on into San Bernadino County and finally L.A. There's a huge wind farm on our way, just hundreds of big turbines ten stories high, standing in long straight rows, spinning in this gap between mountains. The first time you see it, it's stunning, and even now, when it's somewhat familiar, it's still awesome. Seems bigger this year, too, like they've been adding to it. We've been invited to do a special spot at an open mic at a guitar shop and concert hall in West Covina, The Fret House. We get to town in the afternoon and stop in to check out the store (since it will be closed in the evening for the show downstairs). Lots of great guitars, and we try a few of them out, but the only ones that sound as good as Don's old Gibson cost thousands of dollars, and nothing sounds as good as his Guild twelve-string, so there's no serious temptation. The owner, who also books the concert series, seems pretty arrogant,chilly, and indifferent, which is too bad, since the main reason we're here is to try to get a spot in the main concert series, and he's the guy who has to like us for that to happen. We poke around town a little, it's a modest but nice old downtown, and after a Mexican dinner we go over to the open mic. It had been a long time since we went to an open mic: the last ones we played at with any frequency were in New York City in the early 80s, down in the village, where the talent was pretty amazing, people who either were or went on to become significant voices of "new folk"-- Jack Hardy, Christine Lavin, David Massengill, and more. We were not, alas, to be treated to performances of that caliber at this open mic though. The best were passable (with one notable exception), the worst were horrendous (with, again one really interesting exception, a guy who either was-- or pretended to be-- drunk, who simply rambled through whatever musical/lyrical material was on his mind at the time, and who was considered to have finished a "song" whenever he paused to think more than a second or so. This might not sound all that good, but was actually pretty interesting, and entertaining in small doses). The other exception, the most notable performance we heard, was a woman from Denmark or Sweden who was doing a little U.S. tour, and scheduled to open a concert at this venue in a week. She was a competent guitarist with a very good voice and nice material, which all adds up to pretty good, if not great, but in this case the contents were given a huge boost by the immense attractiveness of the package. She really looked good, in a Scandinavian blond sort of way. We might have enjoyed her performance more if the venue owner hadn't decided to put her on right before us, giving us the proverbial "tough act to follow". Her stage presence may have been a bit too slick though, and her reception from the audience was not that warm. Our tunes went well, with Seth joining us for the last one on his new ukulele. We got a lot of favorable response from the audience, added some folks to the mailing list, and sold some tapes and CDs, so it was worth the stop in some ways, but the venue owner remained aloof, never said a word, so we can only guess that he at least was not won over. Can't win 'em all. March 16, California We have a few favorite places around the States. One of them is this little state park up the coast from Malibu, with a pretty campground and great surfing beach. We call this our L.A. hideout, because in the early spring, when we're usually there, it's pretty quiet, and offers a welcome change from the hassles of the big city, yet it's not that far from town. We got ourselves set up on Sunday, after the weekenders had pulled out, and went into Santa Monica to hook up with some friends, and start preparing for the concert we would do there in two weeks. We wanted to do something a little different this time, for a few reasons. Our friends in L.A. have been extremely loyal and supportive, coming to see us play in various venues around the area for years, and some of them are great musicians themselves, so we decided to put on a show with them playing too. We spent the next couple of weeks teaching our songs to them, and learning and rehearsing some songs by our old friend Mark Josephs (see our links page). In the middle of these two weeks of rehearsals we took a trip up the coast to San Luis Obispo, to play at Linnaea's Cafe. It's a small place in the downtown area of this medium-sized college town, with a front room where the food and coffee are served (great desserts), a back room with a small stage and tables or concert seating (we usually go for a mix of both for our shows there), and a garden patio out back. The audience there is a good range of ages and types-- lots of college students, street kids, and some middle-aged folks, artists, etc. It's a casual gig, not big money either, but the crowd is almost always respectful, and we're just about always glad to play there. On a touristy note: San Luis Obispo (or SLOtown, as they call it) is one of the prettiest, cleanest-- sweetest-- towns you could imagine, with one very funky spot, that really must be seen to be believed. Down the alley across from Linnaea's you come to a smaller, walking alley on your right. You notice from a distance an unusual look to the two-story brick walls that line it, but only up close do you realize that the thousands of little dots and strings of color are individual pieces of-- chewing gum! It's huge, there are names spelled out, and one can only marvel at the length of time involved, the history, the surprising lack of odor. March 21, California The L.A. concert went really well, but took a lot more preparation than we usually have to do-- rehearsals, logistics-- even the sound check was hours long. It was exciting and stimulating to work with other musicians though, and worth the extra time; besides, we're all friends. Playing with us were: Seth Haynie on keyboard and electric ukulele; Mark Josephs on mandolin, guitar, and harmonica; Jeff Josephs on guitar and vocals; Mitchell Smith on reeds (we got to have one of our rehearsals on Mitch's houseboat); Stuart Hammond Paul on keyboard. We did the first set as a duo with Seth sitting in on a couple of songs, then began the second set with an extended improvisation leading into "Two Wanderers" in which the other musicians came up one at a time to riff awhile before the song started. Then we all backed Mark up on some of our favorite songs of his, and finished the set and the night with our songs, capped by a sing-along of an old Dylan anthem "Lay Down Your Weary Tune". None of us were weary by then, and we can only hope the same was true for the audience, who didn't seem to be ready for it all to end either. Now we have a little free time to play around L.A. before we have to head east. Sounds good. March 27, California Oscar Night (yes, both capitalized) in L.A. is a lot bigger deal than in other parts of the country. For a reference point of comparison, think Super Bowl Night, though a little less rowdy maybe. Lots of folks have parties that center around watching the televised ceremonies, talking, drinking and eating dip. We, however, are without invitation (none of our friends has the requisite big-screen TV and big apartment), so we go to a favorite pasta joint with a TV. This usually crowded place is half-empty, which is OK with us, and besides getting to catch a few of the awards (you didn't really think we'd sit there all night, did you?) we're also treated to a tableside magic act by a great sleight-of-hand artist, Johnny "Ace" Palmer, a guy with amazing tricks and a charming manner, who manages never to make us feel dumb even though we've got no clue how he does these things. If you get a magician of this caliber at your table while you wait for your salad and pasta anywhere else in the country but L.A., let us know. There are a million things to do around L.A., but one that a lot of people probably overlook is the Museum of Miniatures (maybe because it's so small?). The big Van Gogh show is in town, at the L.A. County Museum of Art, and it's a big temptation, but the crowds are there, and we rarely try to commune with nature or art in the midst of too many people. The Miniatures are right across the street though, and inside there are many marvelous downscale re-creations of palaces (think of the best dollhouse you've ever seen, then add the interior and exterior art of a Versailles or Buckingham); up in one of the tiny salons of one of these mansions, there are beautiful, accurate, little versions of the Van Gogh oeuvre-- the self-portraits (with and without the bandaged ear), the starry night, the old potato eaters, the bedroom at Arles-- and nobody's pushing us from behind to get a better look. There are far too many great pieces in the museum to mention them all here, but among the most memorable are the Roman Forum (liittle tiny people, huge-- relatively-- columns and buildings), a wonderful collection of treehouses, an old English rural village, and the two visiting exhibits: One, a series of American roadside scenes-- motels, drive-ins (actually included one gas station from near where we live!); and the other a collection of urban snapshot-models-- apartments over poolhalls, elevated train stops-- all with brilliant depth, windows you look through to deeper layers, seedy hallways with the payphone off the hook, unmade beds and styrofoam coffee cups scattered next to pizza boxes-- enchanting in a cockroachy sort of way. April 2, California They get called many things: bums, street people, winos, urban campers, the homeless. A visitor to the L.A. area will probably notice that they are abundant, and colorful, and not exactly like in the other cities of the U.S. Some of the men will occasionally remind you of Biblical figures, with their wild hair, beards, and haunted looks, like the ghosts of Jeremiah and John the Baptist wandering through this Babylon, warning of the wages of sin and the downfall of vanity (but just try getting rid of vanity here in the cosmetic surgery capital of the world!) Most will be carrying a sizeable quantity of stuff, and wearing several layers (nights can still get pretty cold here by the sea) but some of the folks have made almost an art form of their possessions. A case in point is a lady in Santa Monica. Now, most towns have seen someone with their wordly goods in a shopping cart, making their way around, but this lady has them all beat cold. She is the owner, driver, and principal engine of a train of some ten or so carts of who-knows-what! One might approach her to ask what is in these vehicles that she worries over so perpetually, but the possibilities of conversation seem pretty slight-- or rather one would be interrupting her already ongoing conversations with, well, no one we can see. These possessions of hers give her no peace, it seems, for she is always fussing over them in some way, and occasionally, in response to some impulse only she can sense, she will undertake a major move with this train, like across a street. This is a study in patience, on her part and on the part of the people trying to drive through the intersection, since somehow the train is uncoupled these days (we've seen this same woman and her carts for years, and they used to be all linked), so she's forced to move only a few at a time across 14th street and up Wilshire Boulevard, going who knows where. April 6, California On a hill overlooking the sea The aroma of sage on the wind Just an old dog for company As the emerald waves roll in Like they have since the world began And the sun is a shower of gold Over the mountains and sand As a few treasured hours unfold Is it only the warmth of the sun Or the magic of old memories And the power they command Or maybe this mighty blue sea That makes this for me Into a holy land (from "The Holy Land" c. D. Haynie) This is an extraordinary place, this California, both the natural land itself, and some of what people have done with it. The sunlight here even has its own quality, a golden-ness that is rare anywhere else, and that may be one of the reasons for the state's nickname. A lot of other people seem to have noticed what a nice place it is too, and on some days they're all out at once, filling the highways, the beaches, everywhere, and helping us find the motivation to move on. Time to bid farewell to the ocean, the nightlife, the unique collection of street people, and our friends for a while. There are many miles of road to cover from here to our April shows in the Midwest, so it's down the coast highway one more time, turn left at Santa Monica, onto Interstate 10 at its westernmost point, and we're on our way once more. High Falls, NY: The Wrap-up. Somehow things got away from your faithful journalist for awhile, but there were a few events worth mentioning from our eastward trip. After we left California we spent a little more time in the desert, and paid our first-ever visit to Canyon de Chelly (pronounced "de shay"), up in northeastern Arizona. It's actually two dramatic red-rock canyons cut in the high desert by the streams that run through them, streams that made them an inviting place for people to settle long ago. They're now inhabited by the Navajo, but long before that there were cliff dwellers here, the Anasazi, or Ancient Ones. The soil is fertile, and there's water year-round, quite unlike the surrounding country. It's easy to picture how pleasant the good years here must have been, though the climb up and down the cliffs to the places they chose to build their houses would have been pretty tough on all but the most fit. No one really knows why they moved on, or to where. We, on the other hand, know why we have to move on-- there are shows on our calendar that we're looking forward to, and spring in the heartland. We hope to return here sometime, because we like the country, and we like to feel the presence of the far and mysterious past. Much of our route parallels the railroad, just as both the highway and the railway probably followed footpaths from people and animals of long ago. We drive along next to trains; sometimes we gradually pass them, sometimes they pass us. We camp and hear them roar by at night. Trains come pounding by, blowing apart the silence, which then grows deeper. We cross the high plains of New Mexico and the Texas Panhandle at the same time as some amazing wind is going the opposite direction. We think the wind is amazing-- coming as a headwind it slows our little rig to about half its usual cruising speed, and when we get out to change drivers it's difficult to stand up and walk around in the blow and the dust-- but the locals don't seem to find it much out of the ordinary. We feel more justified in our assessment of it as an unusually strong wind when we pass a blown-over semi at a highway on-ramp. So we're not just wind-wimps from the tame East. We're reminded of the many pioneers who were driven crazy by the nearly constant wind out here, and you can imagine how it could get to you after a while. It blows day and night, and we just roll on. Gradually its direction and ours change a little, allowing us to make a little better time. At one point in Texas we pass the biggest feedlot we've ever seen, just acres and acres of cattle crowded into pens, waiting for their train or truck to come and take them to McDonald's. We feel a little like spies or secret agents of some sort, we vegetarians passing through this land where meat is the economic mainstay, seeing what looks to us like one of the outer circles of cattle hell, a long, miserable stop before the last bad ride. Speaking of wind, which we were before that little animal-rights rant, we're not only going to the heartland in spring, but visiting Tornado Alley in its high season. All the way from Oklahoma, which is just to our south, up north to the Dakotas, and over east to Ohio and the South Central states, an ordinary thunderstorm can get itself all over-excited and turn into an almost unimaginable weather-fury with little notice. We, in our little traveling rig, are perhaps particularly vulnerable to this sort of bad weather-whimsy, since the trailer where we sleep has no storm-cellar, and would probably make little resistance to those hundreds of miles-per-hour winds. Driving through Wichita we pass a little strip-mall, less than a block long, that was levelled in a recent severe tornado: The twister just came down in that one spot, and everything around it still stands, but that litttle developer's dream is just kindling and scrap-metal now. So, like so many things, it's all a matter of being in the right place and time-- or not. And speaking of right places and times, we're going to one of the rightest, the Iron Horse Concert Hall in El Dorado, Kansas. The venue's moved since we were here last, but they've managed to retain the funky charm of the original, partly at least by occupying a similar space, a former garage, closer to the alley than the street. No, we don't mind playing the occasional plush auditorium or concert hall, but it'd be hard to find one of those with the kind of soul this little hall has. Maybe it's the fact that it's a real shoe-string operation, done just for the love of the music, by folks who hope for not much more than breaking even; maybe it's the motley assortment of discarded furniture; maybe it's the great sound system, or the caring hearts of the folks who run the shows, but something makes this into one of those places and times that remind us why we do this, why we travel all these miles-- just to sing our songs to good folks who came to listen, in a place that feels so right. Our host and the main driver of this Iron Horse, Don Koke, is a musician himself, and joins us on mandolin for "The Great Divide". Don's pulling double duty these days, since his wife, Maryann passed away a couple of years ago, but he manages, coming up with a great soup the night of the show ("Sore Loser Soup"-- imagine!), and a hearty breakfast before we go on our way. Maryann was one of those angels of the folk music scene, like Lena Spencer in Saratoga, or Jean Hewitt in Florida. Probably none of them would be entirely at home with the title of "angel", but they have contributed so much to sustaining this music (and Jean, of course, still does). There are people we miss more as time goes by, not less, and Maryann was one of those. On to Kansas City. The show is a disappointment: somehow even with decent publicity there's just no turnout. We speculate on the reasons, but the fact is this just happens sometimes. We do get to visit good friends, and sing some songs to a few folks. One of the guys running the coffeehouse is a local businessman, and passes on to us some free tickets to a Kansas City Royals game, which we gladly make use of. It's an interesting change: Usually here in the Midwest we catch minor league games; this time we'll see what it's like in the big time. Turns out the differences are mostly superficial-- better stadium, bigger prizes in the between-innings promotions-- the players are not that different at all. Of course, we've come in the middle of a KC losing streak; maybe they're better at other times. We take a brief run up to Omaha for a mid-week show at a great little cafe, McFoster's. This is a place we found a few years ago when we came to town to tape a show for River City Folk, and got stuck in a blizzard (or two or three). McFoster's is kind of a health-food oasis of a cafe, in the middle of beef country. In Omaha we see some spectacular lightning and thunderstorms, and though there are tornado warnings no twister materializes, thankfully. From Nebraska we drive east to do our first show for a coffeehouse in Princeton, Illinois. This venue has been running a few years, though it's new to us, and they know how to do it right. There's a good-sized audience of attentive folks, and they laugh in almost all the right places. It's another of those nights that sustains us, and reminds us why we do this. We go home with the Rehas, the people who founded this series, and camp for the night on their communal land out in the farm country. Maybe surprisingly, maybe not, there are only two "communal" living situations that we know of from our travels: this one, and "The Farm", down in Tennessee. There are, we hear, around 600 "intentional communities" around the U.S., but somehow we don't bump into them. Our own experiences with communal living were pretty mixed, and ultimately discouraging: People just seem to have such a hard time living together-- who knows why? Our host confirms this fact, saying it is a lot of work to just keep everyone getting along, but they do manage to do so, and have been at it for many years. We have the following day, a Sunday, free, so we decide to spend it in one of our favorite ways, just poking around some town. We go to Davenport, Iowa, one of the "Quad Cities" on the Mississippi-- four separate towns (two in Illinois, two in Iowa) that have sort of melded into one metro area. We find a park that occupies an entire island in the big river, and have some much-needed recreation and goofing-off in the warm April sunshine. Monday we go up to Cedar Falls for a live radio show: "Live from Studio One" on Iowa Public Radio. This is the last show on this tour, and while it'd be nice to say it was a huge event, some sort of climactic happening, actually it's rather quiet; except for the fact that it's pledge drive time, and we have to interrupt the show a few times for the requests for funding that public radio listeners have to hear a couple of times a year. These folks at Iowa Public Radio do a great job though-- the pledge requests are less badgering than many we've heard, and the tape of our performance that we hear later confirms that they've done an excellent job of engineering our sound (unlike some horror stories we could tell about live radio performances, when we've wanted to go back and strangle the engineer after hearing the tape later). We have a good time playing, and the show's host, Karen Impola, is one of our favorite interviewers, so the conversation flows easily. It's more like visiting a friend than being interviewed, and the station exceeds its goal for the fundraiser during our performance, so all in all it's not a bad way to end this tour. Now we only have to drive a couple of days and we're home, ready to finish up work on our next album, and move back into our house after four months, some nice shows, and thousands (and thousands) of miles. February 6, 2000, Florida This past Friday we played at a Florida venue which we wish was not quite so unique: That is, if there were a few more venues as nice as The Studio art center around the country, the world (or at least our experience of it) would be a better place. It might be hard to explain its charm; it's sure not fancy, except for the sound system, which they pay a great deal of attention to, and is excellent. The building is just an old one-room on a back street in the mid-size town of Crystal River, maybe a former social hall; the furnishings are strictly dumpster finds, old sofas and stuffed chairs that still have plenty of life in them, though they have reached a state most insurance adjusters would call "fully depreciated"; the coffee's OK, but Starbucks needn't fear the competition anytime soon. and it's not a place we play to make a lot of money either. They do a few of the important things right, though, and this is what brings us back, and why we wish there were more places like it. The sound system is one thing they do right, as well as the stage setup and the lighting, and most of the time the folks that come there listen well; and probably all of this is for the simple reason that they care about the music, unlike a few of the places we have run into over the years. The wall decorations may lean a little heavily on Beatle pictures, but there's other stuff too (including one of our Life in the Circus LP covers (maybe that's why we like this place-- no, couldn't be that), and there are lots of less admirable music icons than the boys from Liverpool that could be hanging on the walls of a music club in a small town in Florida. People settle into the funky furniture, sip a little coffee, and really listen, and it always feels pretty good to play there. We sometimes become listeners ourselves at The Studio, because we often choose to play there as the featured set of an "open mic" night. We've heard some surprisingly talented folks there, including the guy who mostly runs the place, Tom Ellis, a singer-songwriter-guitarist himself. This year we were treated to some distinctive and innovative guitar work from Ken Keepingstill, and some excellent songs, original and cover, from Pete Hennings. As for us, we played the whole set as a trio with our son, Seth, whose keyboard and ukulele parts add some nice touches to our music, when we can work out our schedules to play together. (As he grows up that gets harder to do.) A nice night; now if only there were about a hundred more places like The Studio scattered around the country, we could stay pretty happy. February 17, Del Rio, Texas Parked across from a busy car wash, waiting for our laundry to finish, watching the local boys leaning on their shiny, freshly washed sports cars, wondering if this unusually high number (for a town this size) of expensive- looking cars, owned by young guys, might have anything to do with the reputation Del Rio has now as a drug port? Idle speculation. We've come here pretty directly (for us) from Florida. We have a gig in Texas, in Terlingua, down in the Big Bend area, and we have lazed around and left Florida at about the last possible moment, leaving us little time for any recreation along the way; it's been pretty much just drive, eat, and sleep. In the Florida Panhandle, near Tallahassee, we encountered some wild weather-- wind, and some hard rain falling in sheets, never quite enough to make us pull off, just enough to slow us to 25 or so on the interstate, crawling along trying to see the road through the rain, and not get blown away. We found out later we had been just 30 miles south of some killer tornadoes, part of the same weather system, that had torn apart a town in Georgia. Luck and weather: They're somewhat important to everyone, but on the road you're just more vulnerable to them both, so they become even more crucial. If these pages contain a lot of references to these two factors, it's because out here, they can decide a whole lot more than whether or not we wash the car, or have a picnic; they can decide when we get where we need to go, or whether we get there at all. Since the near-tornadoes in Florida the weather has been benign, really nice. Even though we were on somewhat of a tight schedule, we found time to sample some cajun and creole cooking-- jambalaya, crawfish pie, file gumbo, just like in the song-- one of the best of the world's cuisines; we just can't pass through Louisiana without at least a little. February 19, Cottonwoods Campground, Big Bend National Park, Texas A full moon night, sitting writing by the moon and the laptop screen light. This is an amazingly quiet place, just a little wind, the riffles of the river, an occasional bird, and oh yeah, once in a while the other campers. Ah, well. In the day the cottonwood puffs drift sort of like... snow, maybe, down through the clear air in the desert sunshine. Our time to goof off here goes slowly, and yet too fast. February 22, Texas Terlingua, Texas, is called a ghost town; this is because its first incarnation, as a mining town, came to an end, and for a while things got very quiet, so quiet all you could hear was the Texas wind, and the buildings falling slowly into disrepair and ruin. But life has been returning to this remarkable spot in the desert for a while now, and if Terlingua is a ghost town today, many towns would be lucky to be this dead. The hillsides are dotted with small adobe houses: Some, that progressed too far down the road to ruin, still standing roofless and flooded with maybe a little too much light, but others restored to great little desert homes with gardens and verandas. The mercury mining that first brought people here is over with (though we hear that there is still an operation nearby that mines bentonite for kitty litter!); but with Big Bend National Park here, and the quiet beauty of the Rio Grande winding through the mountainous desert and the stark canyons, things were bound to get busy again. The folks that have been drawn to repopulate this bleached and dusty place are artists, river guides, musicians, entrepreneurs...actually a pretty lively bunch. Any description of Terlingua today has to include the horseshoe court, across from the row of businesses that make up the heart of town, where people gather in the afternoon for some serious competition; there's a thatched shaded seating area for spectators, or those awaiting their turn, a shelter from the sometimes blazing sun. We first came here to take a float trip down the Rio Grande a couple of years ago, and after a beautiful day on the river we came to Terlingua looking for dinner and found the Starlight Theatre (and restaurant, thankfully), one of the jewels among these restored places in the dust. (Check out the photo album page for the Starlight and other pics.) You might not think a day floating through the desert on the fairly gentle riffles of the Rio Grande would work up much of an appetite, but it does, and the Tex-Mex cooking at the Starlight fixed us up right. While we were eating we were taken by the beauty of the room, the care someone had put into making an old hall, originally built to keep the miners entertained, into a club that would look good next to anything any major city has to offer, yet still has a little ghost town funky charm. The ceiling is very high (though somehow the acoustics are excellent anyway), the lighting is soft but not dark, reds and blues mostly, and at the far end of the room there is a huge mural, a scene of cowboys out under the night sky. We decided to try to play there next time we came through, and lucky for us, we were able to set up a date this year. Angie Dean runs the Starlight with the grace of a real Texas lady: She shows up dressed for the evening in black with silver ornaments, and keeps an eye on the room from a vantage point at the end of the elliptical bar in the center of the hall. But she's obviously not averse to work (couldn't be if she put this place together), and when the night gets busy she's everywhere-- behind the bar, washing glasses, helping to keep the tables bussed-- without ever losing a certain almost regal quality. For our part, we get past some initial difficulties with the sound system (with some help from someone who sings there regularly, Steve Fromholz) and have a really enjoyable club date, singing for some appreciative folks, locals, and visitors from around the country like us. We have a good dinner, sing our songs, make some new friends-- it's hard to beat a night like that. Though we're invited to park our rig in the lot outside the Starlight for the night, we have a prior invitation from a friend we met on our first visit, Alice Knight, who has a place a few miles east that she calls The Desert Opry. Alice is many things, but probably near the top of the list she's an artist. The Desert Opry is her home, studio, principal gallery, cafe, and rehearsal and concert hall-- and that's just inside. Outside, it's her garden, not only for the desert flora she nurtures, but there are also flowers, and organic veggies that find their way into the offerings of the cafe. She paints scenes of the desert, does portraits, pottery, sings, writes songs, plays bass, cooks... kind of amazing really. After a great breakfast she and her son Arjuna play us a few tunes, her bass and his guitar supporting their voices: some jazz, country, and originals. The sign on the highway for The Desert Opry says, among other things, "live music", and this is how it usually works here: You get your meal, and you ask "So when's the live music?", and the answer is "Right now". It's tough to leave these great folks, but that's the downside of having a schedule, bookings to fulfill, people to see; but that's what got us here in the first place, so it can't be all bad. February 27, Arizona We left the Big Bend region a little regretfully, and made our way west along the Rio Grande through Lajitas, town of the famous beer-drinking goat! (There were actually four goats in the pen and we couldn't tell which one was the tippler.) We passed through miles and miles of stark, dry canyonlands, until we neared the town of Presidio, where there are acres of irrigated fields, made green by water drawn from the river. At that point the roads turn north, at least the paved ones, and since we could no longer follow the river, we headed up to the Davis Mountains, an area we'd seen on the map but never had time to explore before. There we managed to dawdle away a day doing little of note except visiting the McDonald Observatory (any Stardate fans out there?). The next day we had an afternoon at our favorite West Texas beach(!), Balmorhea State Park, snorkeling with the catfish and the turtles (check out the journal archive from 1999 for a fuller note about this oasis). Thanks to crossing a time line and gaining an hour, we managed to get to El Paso in time for dinner at Forti's, a great little family restaurant in a Mexican neighborhood just south of the interstate. Most of what we know of El Paso is from the interstate, since we've never managed to have any time to poke around there, but even that limited view is striking. We often come into El Paso after dark, when for many miles it is just a huge glow on the horizon; then you crest a ridge and see the vast sea of lights that have been making that glow, set in the surrounding darkness of the West Texas desert. Most of what you see from I-10 on the way through town is the more recent construction, the mile upon mile of franchise eateries, malls, and Wal-Marts, sprinkled with a few regional offerings (mostly places to buy cowboy boots). When the prize for most sprawling city is finally given, El Paso is a very serious contender. Switch the view to daytime for the rest of this quick sketch from the interstate, and you realize that a huge part of the city you see to the south is Juarez, Mexico, because flying above it in the flat, dusty sunshine is a huge Mexican flag, probably the biggest flag in the world. A little farther on you round a curve to the right, and there suddenly before you are vast hillsides of small, dilapidated houses on unpaved, rutty streets; and it takes awhile to realize that the little stream down below is the Rio Grande, and that the dramatic difference in prosperity you're seeing is across the border in Mexico-- as if that makes it any easier to look at. After El Paso, we roll through a strong, dusty southwest wind to Las Cruces, where we tape a radio show for David Brower at KRWG, and play a couple of gigs. One of these, The High Desert Brewing Company, is an award winning microbrewery, and Don does some careful quality control sampling through the night, to be sure they're maintaining their high standards of the brewer's art. They are. OK. On to Arizona. In the waters of Balmorhea, near the surface, there are thousands of tiny, dull brown fish; down in the grasses at the bottom you are thrilled by the intermittent flash of bright silver, and you wonder, what kind of fish could that be?-- but a little time and study tells the tale: those are the same brown minnows, but they have caught the light just so, and turned to something quite beyond themselves; as any of us can. Desert Dreams, March, Arizona There are places that seem so different from everything else you've seen that it's almost like you've arrived on another planet, amid a fascinating, alien plantlife and landscape; the desert can seem that way, even though you're still right here on Earth. In most other places, for instance, the plants-- grasses, weeds, bushes, trees-- fill up every square foot of open ground, but here, because of the scarcity of water, everything has a little space of its own, with the bare, rocky earth between. The plants themselves don't look like the ones you're used to either, with their forms adapted for survival in the long absence of water, and the heat. Most desert plants stay low, close to the ground, which is more efficient for water use. The trees-- palo verde, mesquite, ironwood-- are rarely much over ten feet tall, with the exception of the stately saguaro (if the botanists will allow a cactus to be called a tree). Saguaros tower above their neighbors in the dry landscape, their peculiar humanesque shapes giving the rocky land a populated appearance. It's the saguaro's branches, or "arms", that make it seem like some sort of abstract statue of a person standing out in the sun. These branches, though, can develop in an almost infinite variety of elaborate twists and turns, giving the impression of being caught in the middle of a strange dance. Saguaros, like some other cacti, are formed somewhat like spiny cucumbers. The saguaro's shape is supported by an inner skeleton of woody "ribs", and outwardly it appears pleated like an accordion. During rainy periods, saguaros can store water, expanding and filling out their pleats to take advantage of the infrequent bounty. As well adapted as the saguaro is to its hot, dry life, it only inhabits a specific area; travel far enough in any direction and, though the land looks much the same, this desert giant is nowhere to be found. Temperature and rainfall differences that might seem pretty subtle are enough to define the saguaro's geographical limits to this one part of the Arizona desert. Saguaros can live to be very old, more than a hundred years, and you'll often see the ancient ones, riddled with holes where woodpeckers have hunted, and other birds have later nested; but the saguaro stands through it all. Other eye-catching desert denizens fill in the picture: The ocotillo, whose almost wispy, single stem strands reach up bare and thorny most of the year, and then in spring are covered in little green leaves, and tipped with bright orange-red flowers; and the cholla, mid-size bushes that look almost fuzzy or hazy in their cloud of barbed spines. Not content to just be sharp like a thorn, the cholla bristles seem to have a little hook at the end, to stay with you awhile. It's this ability to grab and hang on to passers-by that gives the cholla its reputation for actually jumping onto folks. Like another planet, sort of, but the desert's just another chapel in which to worship the power of life, in this amazing cathedral Earth. March 13, Joshua Tree From Phoenix to L.A. it's mostly desert, vast spaces empty of human stuff, and even pretty sparsely populated by nature's works, but certainly not barren, by any reasonable definition. And, to the even moderately trained eye, there are changes as one moves west and into California. The saguaros, kings of the southern Arizona landscape, start to appear less and less, and eventually are gone entirely from the view. We've left their range, and something about the desert here is not right for them-- though to us it looks pretty much the same as the desert further east. We roll through a long stretch of land that's mostly rocks and scrubby creosote bushes, finally coming to the Colorado River, the California state line, and the town of Blythe. Maybe it's just the part of town we see, but Blythe has a feel that is very California-- somehow you picture the town as the set of lots of movies, most of them admittedly low-budget and involving dark motives, questionable pasts, seedy motels, and trailer parks. We often stop for the night here, and no one's ever been anything but nice to us, though we always stay in the seedy trailer parks, sometimes even the ones behind the seedy motels (the kind of motel where they usually find the body of the girl who knew too much and mysteriously disappeared from her Hollywood apartment). Have the movies altered our perception when we see a town and think these things, or have they simply told the stories that have happened here, and given us a feel for a town's past? Good question, but somebody else will have to answer it. We camp in our favorite seedy trailer park, across from the Horny Toad Saloon (good biker bar), and in the morning continue west to meet some friends near Joshua Tree. The joshua tree is a plant in the yucca family, a smallish tree that could have been designed by Dr. Seuss (actually he was probably influenced in his drawings of imaginary trees by having seen these unique desert citizens). Like the saguaros, joshua trees have specific ideas of appropriate climatic conditions, and only inhabit a very particular part of California. There is a national park called Joshua Tree (though they don't live in the whole park, but just the part that suits them), and just outside the park, a town by the same name. In a fold of the hills on the edge of the town of Joshua Tree, and completely hidden from sight from the road, some railroad enthusiasts have built a sort of private train park, complete with several full-size cars (we get to walk around in an old caboose, a mail car, an old sleeper) and a big miniature track (about a foot and a half from rail to rail) with a rural station replica (life-size). When the club meets up here they bring their trains up in trucks to run them around. It's like your Lionel set times ten or so. We meet our friends Mark Josephs (see our Links page to go to his web site) and Eileen Brown here. They have a friend who's a member of this train club, and they come out once in a while from L.A. to the quiet of the desert, to sleep in the big train car up on the hill. We cook out, and spend the evening around the fire-barrel playing songs under the stars. This is the first time Mark has heard Don's new Fleishman acoustic fretless bass guitar, and he's so taken with the sound of it he hatches a plan for some recording sessions to lay the foundation for a new album (more about that later). The next day we go up into the national park, to Jumbo Rocks campground, to play among the Joshua trees and some of the biggest, most climber-inviting boulders anywhere, before heading down to L.A., and the western end of this journey, at the edge of the Pacific. March 24, Los Angeles Some people just don't like L.A. There are some things not to like about the area, but it's really too big, too varied, too spread-out for one to have a single reaction to the whole place, love or hate. One can hate certain L.A. things-- the smog, the freeway traffic, the idolization of the Rich and Famous (and the frantic scramble to become R & F if one is not so already)-- but we always seem to find good things to do here, and places of real beauty; and some of the nicest people we know anywhere live in this amazing megacity that sits at the junction of mountain, desert, and ocean. Our first night in town we hook up with our friend Jeff and go up to Westwood, to the Gypsy Cafe. There's a bunch of aspiring comics that he's been watching for awhile, and they're showcasing tonight. Westwood looks unusually busy when we get there, parking's worse than ever, and as we crawl along in the traffic, we find out why: It's a premier night. It's the big debut of Erin Brockovich. There are actually red carpets laid down on the street, limousines by the dozen, and who's that on the little platform, under the bright lights in front of the old theater? None other than Julia Roberts, doing some TV interview for her new movie. It's a real Hollywood moment we've wandered into, and admittedly, really fun. Makes it tough to park, though we finally do, and the show we came for gets held up awhile, but finally starts. The contrast between the heights of celebrity right across the street, and these struggling comics here in the Gypsy, is also a real slice of Hollywood. For every big splashy success there are hundreds of hopefuls. The comedians do their share of jokes at the expense of the successful folks across the street, but the fact is that if things worked out right for any one of them, they'd be over there in the bright light, telling the TV cameras how special their latest project is. The Gypsy Cafe itself deserves a word or two; the food's good, sort of middle eastern/european, but the specialty of the house is the hookah pipes which they will bring to your table filled with whatever their mysterious herbs are. All through the night waiters walk through the middle of the room carrying hot coals to keep the pipes lit at the outdoor tables (nobody smokes anything inside a restaurant in California anymore). The comics are great, as usual, and are warming up for an event a couple of weeks away, where they give each other awards in a satire of the Academy Awards (but as a friend of mine says, "How can you satirize something that's already as ridiculous as the Academy Awards?"). Jeff's been asked to put a band together for the awards show, and we sign on too, Don to play bass, Sheryl to add percussion, and Seth to strum some ukulele. We decided not to do a concert in L.A. this year, wanting instead to take care of mastering the new record, and just see our friends. The idea of a relaxed, loose time sounded good, but was not exactly what happened. Our friend Mark Josephs (see the links page to jump to his web site) heard Don's new Fleishman acoustic fretless bass at our jam in the desert, and soon cooked up a plan to do some recording sessions and begin a new album. (We'll keep you posted here about the eventual release, or you could visit Mark's site and get on his email list.) We only had two weeks in town, so he booked two studio sessions a week apart. We rehearsed for half the record, did a recording session, then the next week we practiced the other half of the songs, then recorded them. We worked hard, and the sessions were long, but the atomosphere was great, just friends working together, and music and sounds came out well, with a wonderful live and lively feel. And we were reintroduced to the lifesaving qualities inherent in pizza. We invited Mark and his brother, Jeff Josephs, along to our mastering session in Hollywood. Our musical friendship with these two goes way back-- further even than Jeff's banjo playing on our Stations album (on "(When I Cross) The Great Divide"). We wanted them to hear the mastering and get their input. Mastering is a crucial final stage in a recording project, a stage some indie producers pay too little attention to. It doesn't affect the music exactly, since by the mastering stage the notes have all been played and mixed, but it has a great impact on how the music gets heard, especially on the radio. A good mastering job can make an indie project like ours able to compete, on a sound-quality level, with projects from the biggest labels; so there's a lot at stake in the mastering studio. We had picked a mastering company before we left on this tour, Precision Mastering, and they had made one attempt at the record in January (back when we thought we could get the album done in time for this tour-- ha!). It wasn't quite right though, due to some misunderstandings and miscommunications resulting from working together for the first time, and over such distances. If we'd had time, we could probably have gotten it right with enough phone calls and maybe one or two more tries, but we had to go on the road, and could no longer evaluate the results by listening to them in studios we were used to. So we decided to just stop in and do a session while we were in town-- it's always best to attend your mastering session if you can anyway, plus it's such a treat to hear your project in those mastering studios on their amazing equipment (they always seem to have the best speakers imaginable); the downside is that you may never hear the music in such optimum circumstances again. Precision Mastering is in an ornate old structure, on a Hollywood backstreet; the rest of the building buzzes with showbiz activity, casting calls and production companies and whatnot, but Precision, on the second floor, is amazingly quiet. We're greeted by the staff, which includes the owner's big Boxer, who follows us around, and turns out to be almost the opposite of the intimidating animal he appears, and is in fact a lovehound. We start to notice the gold and platinum albums on the walls and realize that these folks, who we found through a little magazine article, are some serious players, and have worked on some major hit records. We've brought along a CD, one of the very few commercial records we've liked in recent years, for the engineer to use as sort of a benchmark for the sound we're after, and it turns out, to everyone's complete surprise, to be a record that was mastered there too. The session goes perfectly, and we get the results we needed easily, now that the engineer understands what we were after. It's quietly thrilling to hear our months of hard work playing in that hushed room, in the middle of that buzzing city, a room that is very much a part of that buzzing, yet silent, like a little temple of the art of music, and song. |
