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.