Air Miles

An airplane is a strange space.  It is one that we seldom occupy.  I am speaking from a personal perspective as I know that there are people who spend large blocks of their lives engaged in air travel.  That said, by this time in my life I suppose that counting my years in the military I have racked up a pretty good record of air miles.  It has been sporadic however and these days I may go a few years at a time when I don’t see the inside of an airplane.  A little while ago I took a moment to look out the window where I am sitting.  The truth is that I’m unsure where in the world we are exactly, only that we are someplace on the northern part of the planet.  I was looking out over a blue ocean with the sun reflecting off of it and I could see large pieces of ice floating in the water.  About 20 miles away I could see some land.  I always find a view like this to be simply amazing.  I think we are nearing Greenland or environs.

The planet is an amazing  place and you don’t have to get on an airplane to know that.   You can plant a garden and watch the plants grow, see the seasons through their perspective, or visit a forest and just sit on the ground for a 15 minute period watching what is around you.  The airplane gives you a different perspective.  It is unreal, and at the same time surreal.  At one time you are looking down on a part of a planet where you have lived for all of your existence, and on the other hand you are looking  at a piece of the planet that you would never see in any other circumstance except maybe a documentary film, and even then you probably wouldn’t remember that little piece of the planet that you saw out of the plastic window of an airplane.

Several years ago Kristi was having “salons”, and one of them was on environmental issues.  Through that I was taught that the principalsources of CO2 generated by humans were airplanes, and ships.  On the trip over  was reading the magazine that is always in the seat in front of you on a commercial flight and I read that the plane I was traveling on held 25,000 gallons of fuel.  I haven’t done the math to know how much fuel that would be per person on the flight, but I’m guessing that it would account for much of their fuel allotment for their year. 

I recall a conversation with a friend about flying that I had several years ago.  I’m sure that I’m expected to forget most of what I hear, and indeed I’m sure that I do, however, this stuck with me.  I’m pretty sure that I was waxing self righteous about our treatment of the planet,  solutions, behaviors etc. and my friend made an out and out declaration that she would never give up air travel under any circumstance, that it was her right and she was having it.  When I hear something like that I know that it is an unspoken perception of modern reality that I am hearing.  I know that there are many other humans who share her perspective and I have heard people speak many,many times about their travels around the globe like they had accomplished a great deal simply by getting on an airplane and traveling  across the planet to a destination, staying in hotels, or being waited on hand and foot on their cruise ship,  describing the beach in Mexico, or Thailand,  etc. like they were Captain James Cook discovering  part of the planet for the first time.

I would like to take just a moment here to point out that most of the residents of this planet will, and have never set foot on a commercial airliner, or any flight conveyance.  In that regard we must accept the fact that being in a position to travel in this manner is an indication of some privilege in this life, although I believe that most of the people in the western world, by this time, take commercial flight for granted.  As long as there is enough petroleum to supply fuel for these machines humans who can avail themselves of this privilege will feel that it is their right to travel where they desire when they desire.  We see that airlines, lenders, and myriad tourist businesses are piling on to make travel more available and make people feel like they are really missing out if they don’t visit other parts of the world.

I give myself reasons not to visit certain places.  We don’t really go all that many places far away.  When we do it is mostly by automobile.  I don’t know how long it has been that there have been people challenging the status quo where air travel is concerned.  I haven’t read a great deal about it, but I’m sure there are people who are starting to think that perhaps so much air travel is wasteful, and in the long run quite damaging to our planet.  Assuming that people on a large scale start to see air travel as enough of a liability to the planet to stop indulging in it, what will be an event that is high enough priority to justify a long flight?  These days some people fly across the country to visit family on a bi annual, or more basis.  At Christmas time the air terminals are full, and it can be difficult to get on a flight if you don’t think far enough in advance.

I have thought a bit about whether we are justified in making these long journeys to the UK.  By this time we actually have something of an audience there, which is gratifying after all these years of playing there.  We have had the privilege of playing some prestigious folk festivals in the UK, and if I may reiterate, we have met many really wonderful people and made fast friends.  I have always wanted to think, but in a real world I'm not certain that Kristi and I are in any way exceptional.  There are always many more people who think they want to do what we do than there are available  bookings.  I say people who “think” they want to do what we do because I know very well that most of the folks who say they would like to travel with us would bail the first time they found themselves stranded on a lonely road with an automobile that wouldn’t go anymore, or the second night in a strange bed in a strange house with people they don’t know.  In the past I’ve got to say that our habits have been extremely frugal, and even at that strained the limits of our meager existence.  This trip has been particularly rewarding as people have come out to see us at almost every venue that Kristi and I played.  They have been people who have seen us before, bought our CDs and are genuine fans.  It is not the case that Kristi and I have any kind of industrial sized audience.  The number of people who are fans is very modest but they mean a lot to us.  Does this justify flying across an ocean, renting a car and driving to hell and gone?  We must use up much more than our share of the fossil fuels on the planet and that puts me in a moral quandary.

Do we really justify  our use of fossil fuels when we acquire the admiration of our fellow humans?  In terms of the value of “art” in our society what makes one artist worth millions while another languishes in obscurity?  Does the generation of income justify the squandering  of  fossil fuel?  Does the fact that we end up paying for the privilege of being a touring

Artist make us irrelevant?  Should I ask myself such questions? 

From Kristi.

Dexter Gordon recently asked what constituted highlights and low moments of our careers in music.  The question was too big to answer quickly but I can speak specifically of this trip.  Hartlepool’s Folk Club surprised me this time as a highlight.   I’ll set the stage first for you with a description of the place, which is not atypical of British pubs.  The only one that in any way compares in Tacoma to it is the Parkway.  These pubs are between a hundred and eight hundred years old and have numerous rooms in them, with passageways and doors separating them.  I’ve since learned that their uses have in the past been similar to ours; entertainment.  They lend themselves to quietude while others coming in to drink don’t want to stop socializing with their pint, to be an audience for an act. So it was at the Foggy Furze Folk Club in Hartlepool; a Victorian-era pub with a room possibly the size of moderately large parlor in an ordinary house.   The “club” members squeeze into bench seats lining the four walls, with a few small stools eventually filling up until the place is packed almost cheek to jowl.  This lends itself to an appealing intimacy we employed with our performance, talking easily with the audience.  We’ve performed for these people in years past in different buildings but this was by far the best for us.  The clubs are in most cases populated by robust singers who pride themselves in learning a new chorus of an appealing song by the second time it comes around.  These people were prepared for us in a big way.  They sang along with numerous tunes Steve wrote, including his most serious anti-war songs.  The big payoff came afterward with a surprise.  When we talked as usual with our audience we found two fans who actually remembered many of the tunes on two of our CD’s having exchanged them with each other and listened repeatedly to them.  One was a Scotsman who had a very fine voice.  He made my day and possibly my month.  He told me five times that my version of the Irish tune “Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye” (otherwise known as the Irish Rebel Song) was the best he’d ever heard bar none.   That pleased me at several levels. Firstly I hadn’t sung it in a couple of years so to hear someone who had  kept it in mind after so long was a big shot in the arm.  Secondly I’m keenly self-conscious of appropriating a dialect when I perform in the neighborhood of it’s origin and always hope I’m not stepping on toes with my acting efforts in mouthing each vowel and consonant.  He told me he listens to our recording of it over and over again.  Such small moments of gratification redeem all the rest of the stress of the trip.

I had vividly envisioned the last three days of this tour again and again since long before leaving home.  Such is the stress of being the booker and manager of these trips.  My trepidations were not without reason.  The last booking in Southampton was well worth the ten-hours of driving the length of the island from Scotland to the south coast below London.  Our performance at the Foc’s’le Folk Club went well and our reception was a great pleasure.  Here’s a quote from a member of the audience,   Paul Clarke:  "Great guests, with some interesting new songs (and a few favourite old ones). Afraid the pint of beer looks bigger than Kristi, which isn't far out! :-)"

Then came the last leg of driving.  We had spent much of the day carefully getting rid of accumulated groceries and re-packing our belongings to fit all into the tight spots of our small luggage.   So we were ready for this airplane when we hit the  road after the gig in Southampton at 11:30 pm, to drive what should have been a little over an hour on the motorway (read freeway in American) to London to spend a few hours of rest in a hotel before catching this plane.  But the M3 threw us off it’s beautiful, wide, welcoming four lanes for the last thirty of the sixty miles, for road construction.  So we wound around the old London Road through the neighboring towns south of London, stopping at numerous lights and roundabouts as the traffic increased.   We kept following detour signs hoping in vain to get back onto the motorway.   We drove directly to our hotel off the ring road, arriving at around 1:30 am.  Our plane was due to leave today at 11 am so we threw on our clothes at 6:30 am and made a mad dash for the car rental and then the bus, loaded up heavily with instruments and backpacks, arriving as planned, three hours early.   All three hours were necessary with barely a moment to spare to get to this plane and on it.   Heathrow interestingly has a very thorough security system, staffed mostly by people of color, not the least of whom appear to be Muslim as evidenced by the turban.   That sort of diversity was uplifting to me.   Being inspected was not. The first security officer asked us quite a number of questions in the vein of how much we enjoyed our trip and what was best about it.  I suspect she had more serious motives than small talk though and never really understood what she was fishing  for.  We were probably too nervous in any case.   The luggage security check-in took a full half hour.  All five of our carry-on items were completely eviscerated by the polite man.  He did give me the option of re-packing my own dirty underwear though which was a small relief.  The biggest relief and the final scene that in anticipation had replayed itself in my imagination a dozen or more times since I booked this tour, was getting on this plane.  We have an hour left and I feel the small comforts of home already, exaggerated in my homesickness.  Fastening my seatbelt and stowing this now.

Leave Her, Johnny Leave Her

Kristi at the home of John and Angela Montague - "Put me in coach"

"A-rounding third and heading for home, a moment in the sun.  It’s gone, and you can tell that one goodbye". – John Fogerty,Centerfield

Not gone yet but feeling mighty good about the game, we are.  Just four more days and three more gigs and we’ll be outtahere.   It seems in each case our gigs put us in a position to cherish more connections we’ve made in past years.  Fiona Lander and Paul Mason did a brilliant job setting us up to perform at Baafest Sunday, complete with wristbands reading “VIP”.   Indeed our treatment went along with the initials.  A friendly volunteer helped tote our instruments to the stage, and we got the requisite sound-check.  The audience seemed a perfect match for our selection of songs, with plenty of responsive faces and applause, plus an encore.  The emcee, Ian, told the audience that Steve's song, "Angels of the Road", made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.  What more could we ask for?  CD sales?  Oh yeah, that went very well too.  As well we ran into another friend, Richard Ridley, who was performing there.  We tenaciously fondled our wristbands throughout the day, savoring the notion of our very importance for that wonderful hour.  In fact the reconnections on this trip have all reaffirmed what I cherish most about our travels.  At Stortfolk, Monte’s Acoustic Club, Lincoln Folk Club, and Sutton Cheney we’ve made new contacts as well as renewed old ones.  I get a particular charge out of seeing a face, be it familiar or unfamiliar, singing along on Steve’s song, “Wish You Were Here”.  

I remember in 1998 when I was writing a column called "Shop Talk" for the Victory Review, I interviewed Mike Freeman who tours U.K. folk clubs and festivals with his wife Tanya Opland.  One question I posed was, what were the the highlights of the experiences? His reply was a bit puzzling to me, as Steve and I hadn't done this yet at the time. We had only toured Alaska, Canada, and Washington State in a different market.  Mike said his favorite times were sitting in parlors of the homes of the hosts in the folk clubs after the show. He loved just sharing talk around libations.  I get this now.  Our years of doing this simple thing, talking with hosts and friends here, that involves hearing their takes on music, family, community, politics, et al, adds up to being vital to our accumulated treasure of social life that has it's own magic as we move along these roads again and again.

I asked Kristi to start this one so she did.  I would like to point out that everyone at the festival, volunteers, performers had a VIP wristband.  I think that is Kristi's special sense of humor.  Very funny Kristi.  That said I agree with her that the audience was wonderful.  After our radio Norfolk interview we left BAA Fest feeling the glow of success.  Success is a very slippery term and has different values in play for each person who uses it.  I would say that so far I have more or less accepted that if we don't have financial success it is OK.  That would seem to be some kind of self prophesy at this point.  

About this time in each tour I quietly sing Paul Simon's "Homeward Bound" to myself.  Certainly we have had nights where, "each town looks the same to me, the movies and the factories and every stranger's face I see reminds me that I long to be Homeward Bound . . . and all my words come back to me in shades of mediocrity, like emptiness in harmony, I need someone to comfort me."  Well, Baafest was none of that.  There was nothing the same about it and we felt great about our songs and our performance, and the audience recognized that.  It was great to make people laugh as I told them that sometimes someone will ask if we're Canadians.  For a moment we think, look quietly at each other in these days of the Donald and exclaim, "Yes, actually we're from Montreal merci!  We are in Harlepool and we play at the Hartlepool Folk club tonight.

Alex Warwick and John Montague "We're ready to play today"

Another high point was playing Monty's Acoustic Club with John Montague and Alex Warwick playing with us.  We have known John for a very long time and Alex played with us last year at Sutton-Cheney, and Monty's Acoustic Club.  It is always risky with elements of the ensemble that are improvised.  It was never predictable what Alex was going to play, but it was predictable that he is a very able percussionist and would play something cool.  John likewise has a lot of experience playing with different people.  He is a very tasty guitar player knowing how to make his instrument sound great.  He's also a very funny guy.  He kept us fed and watered for the time we were with him.  He always has great guitars for sale as well.  He had one sitting out that was a real temptation for me but I realized that if I bought a nice guitar like that I'd have to start taking better care of at least that instrument.  It might just look like another used guitar after I'd had it for a month.  At any rate I have no way to take two guitars back to the states with me unless I could get Kristi to leave her treasured Fender Mustang bass guitar with John. She was "no sale" on that one.  The Garrison guitar that I currently play is the best working guitar I've ever owned.  Apparently I'll keep it.

Alex with his electronic drum kit

Did I say we're in Hartlepool?   Last night we went to dinner with our dear friend Val Monteith-Towler.  It was a very nice Indian restaurant in Sunderland, a place in the Northeast where the only time we've spent has previously been to do our laundry.  Val texted a postal code to us and we followed the GPS to the restaurant.  It is interesting being guided by satellite as you never have any idea in a real sense of what kind of terrain you are going to be driving through.  Val drove down from Blythe and we drove up from Hartlepool.  

Salty Hartlepool Resident                                             

 It was a lot of laughs and memories to spend an evening with Val all to ourselves.  We had spent a little time with her at Belden's in N. Shields but it was with a lot of people around.  It wasn't the same as having an evening alone with her.  It was a bit funny as the waiter obviously looked to me to be the leader of the pack.  I don't know if it was because I'm a male or because I was the first part of our party that he encountered.  It seemed to me that he didn't consider Val and Kristi to be real people. He was very good otherwise.  Kristi and Val didn't seem to take it personally. They had a huge menu.  I think we could go back to that restaurant for a few months every week without having the same entree every time.

Steve with Kristi and Val

We actually have a few days left.  I don't see myself having time to blog during the time we have left.  Tomorrow we're in Dunfermline. The next day we'll be driving all day to Southampton.  I might have some time on Friday before we play at the F'o'c'sle Folk Club.  If I do I guess you may find out about it.  After we play on Friday we'll be driving directly to a Heathrow Airport hotel.  The next morning we will just have time to turn in our rental car and get on the airplane home.  We will be back in Tacoma by Saturday afternoon.

We are really looking forward to all of the bookings we have left as we have friends at all of them and that is a really valuable spinoff of doing what we do.  It is wierd that we may be gone for years and we only see them on Facebook but the familiar faces bring a smile to mine as I remember the good times, and good cheer that we have shared.  We cannot say for certain that we shall return whatever our intentions.  The years do not speak to us from the future.  We can look at the experiences of others and have some idea of what is in store, but certainty?  I don't think that there's much of that anywhere these days.  Death and taxes I suppose would be the kinds of things that you can predict for certain.  Life is good for now and we're doing our best to enjoy these years.  Keep the home fires burning- we'll be home soon.

                     

Driving . . . Driving . . . on the Right Side of the Road

Our Skoda

One of the comments that is repeated and repeated in the USA when we mention the UK is driving on the right side of the road is a terror.  I don't think of it like that.  I believe that I only thought of this difference in driving as a terror for a very short while, and it felt more like personal incompetence than terror.  Of course often those things are interchangeable.  We rent an automobile for these tours.  I have pointed out in a past blog that we travel with enough gear that it is important to have some security that is only available traveling by car.  It is also an enormous inconvenience to carry two guitars, an amplifier weighing in at a minimum of 40 pounds, and two roller bags as well as a camera  bag and a bag that we keep the computer, movie camera, and adapters via public conveyance.  It's a lot of stuff.  It's especially a lot of stuff when we are getting on and off of airplanes.

We have noticed that the motorways are becoming more numerous, and they are wider than they were when we first came here.  On the other hand we have driven all kinds of roads in the years that we have been traveling here.  My little joke is that the road system that you travel here is often the remnant of Roman engineering.  The first time we were in Edinburgh we had a rough time with their plethora of one way streets, and a grid system that doesn't have a grid.  If you make a mistake it could take you miles to wind your way out of it or so it sometimes seemed.  On the other hand we have driven for miles on a one way track through farmers' fields, through tiny villages where you wind through the streets with automobiles parked filling up half of what is already a narrow lane.

Then there is the experience of riding with a seasoned UK driver through the streets of Leicester, Southampton, or the country roads of Cambridgeshire where you understand how a human can indeed acquire instinctive comprehension of time and space.  I remember quite clearly having a conversation with a truck driver in Tarbet, Argyll, Scotland in 2001 and having him explain how he drove the country road down to Tarbert with mere millimeters between him and oblivion.  Once again in Scotland this year we met up with an old friend who we had first met in Tarbert those many years ago.  Scott was talking about how tired he would get driving at night as a musician after his gigs and the challenge of the narrow roads in fog, snow, with fatigue as his very close friend feeling the shadow of the man with the scythe stalking him in the deep, dark Scotland night.

What about that first experience?  You get off of an airplane from the USA.  You have been on it for 8 or 9 hours with very little opportunity to sleep.  Even say you have had a opportunity to sleep your body is telling you that it is 8 hours earlier than it is where you are.  You have jumped the fence and are on another planet.  Your body does not function here like it does back in Tacoma.  Your reactions are slowed and the places that you find yourself have reference points that don't necessarily make sense.

We hopped in our rental car and headed south from Heathrow.  This was in the days before GPS was in common use.  I don't remember what kind of map Kristi had,   but she must have had a map.  Before we had driven for an hour I drove into a curb and popped a tire.  We put on the spare and continued on our journey to play our first folk club.  I made a wrong turn and pulled off the road to turn around and discovered that I didn't know how to put the car in reverse.  If I'm not mistaken I pushed the car and got it turned around and jumped back on the road to retrace my steps and damned if there wasn't another car coming right at me on my side of the road running like a bat out of hell up a hill around a corner.  My first reaction was to notice that he was on the wrong side of the road.  My next reaction was that I was on the wrong side of the road.  I made the necessary correction and headed for our B n B.

There was room for our little rental car at the Bn B parking lot but it didn't look like it to me.  The proprietor calmly got behind the wheel, showed me how to put the car in reverse and parked the car for me in the "impossibly small space".  Things improved quickly as we recovered from our jetlag and got used to driving there (here).

The truth is that these days I quite enjoy winding up the little engines in the rental cars and pushing them around the country corners as fast as I can make that little jackrabbit run.  I do have to make an effort not to get distracted as even with GPS it can be a challenge to find your way through the maze of roundabouts, narrow roads filled with cars half parked in your lane, onto the motorway, off again into the Green hills of Durham, Scotland, Wales, or the warm lush forests of Cornwall.

I've only found myself on the wrong side of the road a couple of times this trip.  Both times it was Kristi who pointed out the error of my ways.  It seems that I remember a car coming at me both times as well.  I think that both were at the very  beginning of a journey.  I really don't find the roads to be scary anymore.  I drive comfortably most of the time but I'll admit that it does take some attention to keep everything running smoothly.

One night on this trip we blew out two tires in one fell swoop.  There was a drain cover that was misplaced and was like a little steel arrow sticking up out of the road.

It was a dark and stormy night with an entire busload of people not more than 1/2 a mile away who were in the same predicament that we found ourselves.  It was 3:30 am before we got back to our B and B and in the light of the next day we got new tires and all was well with the world.  There is more to the story.   With some help from our good friend in Syston, Mr. John Montague we managed to repair all of what needed to be repaired.  If you drive enough miles, and I believe I have, you will eventually have something happen on a dark road.  I hope for your sake that there are others on the road that night, or that there is a cellphone tower close enough to your proximity to remedy the situation via cellular communication.

Caution -  Squirrel Zone

For all of that consider that by now we have spent an entire year in the UK.  I don't know how many miles we have driven,  but be assured, it is a respectable number.  Any difficulties we've had with driving have been minor enough to have a sense of humor about them.  The differences here make the journey more interesting than they would otherwise be.  This country, like the rest of the world, is in a constant state of change.  There are apparently more vehicles on the roads here every year, but like in the US there is a large contingent of young people who do not, and apparently will not drive.  I believe that a person can do that here much more easily than in parts of the US where it is virtually necessary to have a vehicle.

Scottish Highland Humor

I think I have time for one more blog before we get on an airplane and come back to the USA.  If you think I don't consider the cost to the planet for our journey, you'd be wrong.  I really do question whether we should be traveling like this.  I try to justify it with my own personal goals.  I'm not certain that that actually works.  I'm sure that I'll have more to say about that in the near future.   In the meantime, keep the home fires burning.

15 Years

Steve enroute from Bellingham

From Kristi: Last night we toasted a celebratory drink to 15 years since first we set foot here on British soil.  I vividly recall the day, September 11 2001, as we ventured forth from Heathrow to our bed and breakfast in Lincolnshire.  My worldview was rapidly evolving.  I looked upon the carefully groomed greenery and thought about all the years of cultivation and repeated survivals of two thousand years of invasions, occupations, and wars coming from various directions.  I thought of the queen’s Victory Garden and how she valiantly set her own example for sustainability.  I suspected that if we were surrounded on this island and cut off, her people would find a way to survive.  Then the news came later in the day that no planes would be leaving the U.K. for the U.S.A. for any time in the defined future.   I once  again made a quick decision that I could adjust to living here.  I could support myself with some help from Steve and this benevolent-appearing government.   That probably is still the case, but after 15 years I’m still a bit puzzled by the nature of the welcome mat immigrants are so desperate to find here.  Time and time again we hear folk songs about loss of jobs in the varied fields of fishing, mining, and the rest of the production trades.   I’m not clear on what are the great opportunities they see here.

But the wind never seems to stop.  Wind generators have made their way into fields seemingly everywhere, since we first came 15 years ago.

I don’t love travel here.  I love getting to yet another endlessly interesting place.  A song lyric keeps coming to me:  “we may never pass this way again”.   In fact some of these places feel quite familiar to us by now.   What I love most of all is the familiar and welcoming faces of those comprising this widespread-yet-small community of people who glue it all together with their tireless work and heartfelt support of music.   They make us feel a sense of a home away from home from time to time in our travels.

I have since I left home envisaged a keen image of the last big cross-country dash to our booking in Southampton followed by a late-night drive to the airport for our flight out the next day.  It’s coming soon.  Home beckons.  Sometimes I book a pretty hectic trip.

The photo here is from Bellingham, Northumberland (pronounced bell in jum), wherein we performed yesterday at the wonderful festival aptly named BAAFEST.  The duo and married couple Landermason, being Fiona Lander and Paul Mason, invited us back for that pleasure.

Down the Road We Go

Kristi in the Pitts driveway 

We are currently at the home of Roger and Patti Pitt.  I love staying with Roger and Patti.  They are some of the most proficient gardeners that I know.  I'm not even certain how they have the time to do all of the things that they do.  They make wine, chutney, jam.  They have three small greenhouses and a large hoop greenhouse that they grow things in.  Peeking into one of the small greenhouses I saw that their tomato plants were carefully pruned and supported both vertically with a pole and horizontally with with string.

Solar panels at the Pitts

They have chickens, and bees.  It was great to listen to Roger talk about their exploits with bees.  They collected a swarm of bumble bees from a local farm and transported them to another location where the bees, and the humans would be more comfortable.  They are often called when there are bees swarming somewhere locally.  They are quite generous with information about all of their activities.  They were out singing Handel's Messiah last night.  We stayed here and I took care of some business that needed to be done.  After rehearsal they dropped by to pick us up and take us to the local pub where they go every Wednesday night after choir rehearsal.

In previous years Patti was a school teacher, and Roger a draftsman.  Now they are both retired, but interestingly enough, they are still engaged in their most intense life interests except that now they travel more than they did.  Their home is in a rural location.  I believe that Roger said they've lived here at "The Mill House" for 38 years.  Indeed, it is an old millhouse with a few remnants of it's former existence still lingering.  Roger detailed for us some of the different modifications that they have made to the old house over the years.

Did I mention that they have a dog, a cat, 9 chickens, and a local population of wild creatures that frequent their property.  There is a heron who doesn't understand that he is not to eat the fish in their fishpond.  They keep a screen over the top of the pond to discourage him.  There were a couple of large hares grazing in the grass when we returned from the pub last night.

We came here from John Montague's.  We were at John's for a couple of days.  We actually were at the local Ibis Hotel which is very reasonably priced.  John fed us bteakfast on Monday and Tuesday.
We had arrived on Sunday night after a long drive from Scotland.   He fed us supper on Monday and Tuesday as well.  John's wife Angela works during the day and John works on his myriad musical projects during the day and many times late into the night.  They are very hard working, generous people.

Portrait of John Montague

Just a quick note here.  We have been coming to the UK since 2001.  We have visited people with whom our acquaintance ranges from 2001 to 2014 so far.  We've known John, and Angela Montague since 2002.  I think we may have met Roger and Patti the same year.

We left the Pitts day before yesterday.  It is now Saturday and we are at the Travelodge near Blyth.  We left Bishop's Stortford yesterday just after noon.  We had a nice visit with Geoff and Jacqui Leeds.  We stayed with John and Hillary McNamara.  Everyone gets around to asking about Donald Trump eventually.  My understanding is that Trump's favorite world leader is Vladimir Putin, for all intents and purposes a dictator.  Telling.

We went out to the Lincoln Folk Club last night.  Kristi had had a conversation with the organizer before we went which made us a little uneasy.  He had insisted that she couldn't bring her amplifier to the folk club.  I can tell you that he plays melodeon a good deal louder than Kristi would ever play the bass guitar in such a situation.  I found it difficult to enjoy playing some material without the bass guitar.  Before we left we had figured out what works and what doesn't.  We were invited to come back sometime and get paid for it.  It was about 45 minutes each way to get there.  We crossed a toll bridge.  It cost 40 pence each way.  It was a good deal cheaper than the Narrows.

I feel pressed for time.  It seems like I never have enough time to write what I want to say, and sometimes I just don't feel like I have the right head space to write what I'm actually thinking.  It isn't a good idea for me to just write any old thing, which I'm doing right now.  I could actually be saying something.  I could be telling you how we went for a walk while doing laundry on Thursday.  I could tell you about purchasing a map of the UK to augment our GPS and the map app on our tablet.

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Kristi here.  It has been fifteen long years since we first came to the U.K. and from my ethnocentric eyes a few things appear to have changed.  A number of things have grown cheaper, namely groceries, dry goods and lodging. No longer are the few lodging opportunities in B & B's.  Hotel and motel chains have proliferated and are reasonably priced.  The Travelodges still don't have ice machines or refrigerators but they're clean, roomy, quiet and comfortable.  In fact there seem to be a new crop of B&B's owing to Air B&B, but many people here have never heard of that phenomenon.   Radio 4 BBC reported yesterday that automobiles are becoming more unfashionable while it would appear to me that there are more of them on the roads.  I guess that may be chalked up to population growth.  In any case there are a myriad of reasons not to drive here, and I have spoken to one young woman who has no desire ever to get her license.

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You never fly with the cockpit open
You never drive through the rain with the top rolled down
You always drive on the large safe roads
You never get too far from town.

You never smelled the burning rubber
Never rushed through all of the gears
You never ran for your life through the tundra
You stacked up a big pile of years

Canal through downtown Bishop's Stortford

We are looking at bookings back in the states nearly every day.  Kristi used up all of her phone time so I suppose we'll get her some more today.  We both have as phone now.  Kristi has pointed out how handy phones can be when we wander away from each other in a crowd, or a grocery store etc.  This is the first time we've been here and actually had someone recognize who we are.  Last night a gentleman approached me and asked if I was me, said he recognized Kristi, but not me.  Have had someone suggest that I've changed my look.  I stopped dyeing my hair is about all I've actually done other than accumulate a few wrinkles.  That guy had seen us at the very same folk club about ten years ago.  We were visiting Lincoln that day and just happened to see a flyer with our picture on it.  Now I haven't let this story get out as I don't want anyone to get the impression that Kristi and I are not reliable.  This is the first and only time it's happened.  We found out on the flyer that we were booked at the Lincoln Folk Club that very night.  Serendipity doo dah.  We were a bit shocked that we had acquired a booking that we didn't make a note of anywhere.  All's well that ends well or so they say.

Kristi wants to go down to Greggs for a sausage roll.  I'll leave this here.   We're coming into the last legs of our tour.  Keep the home fires burning.

Kristi's note:  We ran into two people we knew within 8 hours of our arrival, the duo Fool's Gold Acoustic.  We also ran into Deborah Walton at Hobo's Retreat Club who followed us after having seen us 12 years ago in Conwy.   I guess we have different sets of definitions about  familiar people we "run into" in our travels.

Busker,  Bishop's Stortford

Scotland, Travel, Video and the Barrow Band

Greeted @ Eastfield Farm

We are in Scotland visiting old friends and being a bit of tourists as well.  We came directly to Eastfield Farm, home of Malcolm LeMaistre and Mary Gajenka, our good friends of many, many years.  We met them in 2001 in Tarbert, Argyl.  It was our first UK music festival gig.  I was talking with Malcolm at what was essentially a cast party for festival participants and he invited us to come to Gowanbank.  That was where Malcolm and Mary were living at the time.  I think they were pretty surprised when we actually showed up.

It is good to see folks who we have long term relationships with based simply on a mutual interest in music and performance.  Their most intense project at the current time is the ongoing “Barrow Band” which performs Malcolm’s songs about fruit and vegetables.  Wednesday morning Kristi and I helped with a video shoot to raise money for a new “Barrow”.   You can see the  barrow in this picture.  If you were to see it live you would notice that the kiwi fruit sing, the oranges jump,  and the broccoli dances.   I’ll send you all a link to the video when it is finished.  They are mixing it in Malcolm’s bedroom as I write this.  I have a couple of cameras that shoot video with me so I was an auxiliary cameraman on this shoot.  Kristi ran the clapper,

Colin and the Barrow

Last night we spent with another Mary and her husband, Davey.  They are Mary and Davey Stewart.  We stayed with them in 2014 when we played the Kirkcaldy Folk Club.  We enjoyed their company so much that we looked them up to have another visit.  They took us out to dinner after driving us what turned out to be just 25 miles up the coast.  We stopped in Lower Largo, and had a fine dinner in Anstruther.  We stopped in St. Andrews, which is where Davey grew up.

Mary, Kristi, Davey

We got a lot of Davey's personal history and it is an interesting town with a castle ruins and also a cathedral ruins.  It is a walled town with a university and is the home of their primary golf organization which makes all of the rules for golf in the United Kingdom, and I guess a lot of other places, but not the USA.

Cathedral Ruins @ St. Andrews

I am thoughtful, and somewhat bothered by exactly what travel means, and how I interpret what I am doing.  I have referred to these "tours" in the UK as sales trips.  I read a biography of John James Audubon many years ago.  I was taken by the description towards the end of his life when he would visit England and sell his paintings door to door.  I was impressed by the fact that he didn't let his past in which he created this body of work and did few sales deter him.  He didn't allow himself to be stopped by bad odds, but just pushed onward.  We still remember him very much today.

You may, but odds are you don't know that I was approaching 40 years old when I quit my day job at Todd Shipyard in Seattle to play music, if not full time, at least as my main source of a living.  I didn't start playing music (at all) until I was 24 years old.  Kristi and I joke that we were beginners together,  but that is far from the truth as Kristi grew up with a family that sang barbershop.  She had guitar lessons early on, and in fact has some considerable talent as a musician.

As for me I started late and was discouraged by what should have been mentors at every stage of becoming a musician as someone who was without talent and would meet with certain failure were I to pursue music at any serious level.  There is a good deal of anxiety attached to my music and there is a certain stiffness in my persona that I think is at least partly due to the bad start I had with music.  Don't get me wrong.  I instantly loved playing the guitar and singing.  I literally played my first guitar until my fingers bled.

By now you are wondering why I am taking you down this long, winding path with many dark places, and places where one might stumble and fall.  The truth is I'm not certain why exactly but it is in the pursuit of some truth.  I am looking for the reasons that I feel the way that I do about traveling.  I seldom travel "for fun".  I seldom think of it as "fun".  It isn't that I don't get some satisfaction out of my journey.  Kristi was quoting a friend today who pointed out the traveling can be a springboard to personal growth.  It isn't all work by any means, but the work defines where we go and the tourism that we may experience is an out growth of the working journey.  We have days off, and often we are taken by the people who are kind enough to host us in this great country.

There is an arrogance born of the working journey.  I suppose it is the same arrogance that I am guilty of criticizing in others who work hard for a living and don't see the invisible wires that allow them to succeed at what they do outside of their hard work.  The arrogance of implying that you "pulled yourself up by your own bootstraps", which is nearly always, if not always a myth.  I'm not certain why I don't seem to be entertained by idle travel.  Maybe it's simply because I have not participated in it to any great extent.  Our first trip to Europe was largely a vacation, although we did make our first forays into playing music over here.  It was all budget travel though mostly the kind of travel that most of my contemporaries would not entertain taking part in.  And there you go . . . there's the kind of arrogance I'm talking about.

On the other hand (four fingers and a thumb), we have played for a lot of older people many of whom have nothing better to talk about than the latest cruise boat journey that they went on.  For the most part it speaks to how much disposable income they have but if you listen to them you would think that they were on serious voyages discovering the rest of the world for all mankind while they are waited on hand and foot.  Personally I find them boring and I'm slightly offended that they are so taken with themselves over what is essentially spending the excess cash that they have.  One of the reasons I'm writing this is that I'd like to hear what people have to say about this subject.  When flying over here I saw that the airplane we were on was carrying 25000 gallons of fuel.  Just an idle comment.  By the way, when we travel over here we have two guitars, and a bass guitar amplifier to travel with which does mean that we don't use public transportation much and we don't stay anyplace that doesn't offer some kind of security for our gear.

I'll have to get back to this later.  It's too late to really think about anything tonight.  Suffice to say we are heading into deepest, darkest Scotland tomorrow on a mission to assist in a wedding that The Barrow Band is booked to play in it's truncated version.  We are going to a place called Strathyre.  I have no idea how one pronounces that.  I'm sure I'll find out tomorrow.  Don't you wish you could come with us?  Tonight we visited Scott Macdonald who we hadn't seen since 2001 in Tarbert, Argyle.  It was a wonderful reunion.  Scott is a fine singer-songwriter.  Definitely download his songs.  You'll love 'em.

Steve, Kristi, Scott

Today we went to the wedding.  It was definitely to hell and gone.  It took us about an hour and a half to get there.  It was a lovely drive past lochs, farms, and through a forest into the mountains.  The Barrow Band was great as usual.  We played three songs altogether.  We had to play "Would You Hold My Hand" twice.  I'll tell you more later.  Keep the home fires burning.