Back Home Again

Just got back from tour and it was a good one! I started out in Taipei, Taiwan with the Migrations Music Festival. A lot of really good international acts from places like Hungary and Japan, Crete, India. I got to jam with a classical Chinese lute player. Most of my stage sets were paired with a poet named Yongfeng. Although I don’t understand the language – he speaks and write in Mandarin – I trust his poetry because of my interactions with him on a personal level. And he has translated a few of his pieces for me. He writes about the farmers and the economics of their lives in the face of the WTO. Yongfeng was instrumental in stopping a dam project that would have flooded the homes and fields of thousands of people in and around Meinong, a village in the countryside. Anyway, the way we did it on stage was that he would describe the story line of the song I was going to sing and then he would read a poem. Then I would sing my song. Back and forth like that. It’s a little disconcerting at first – you don’t have the luxury of building up a flow – but it works and its an honor to be enfolded into another culture’s language like that.

The festival took place at a park in Taipei, in a large amphitheater. Christoph was the sound engineer so the sound was good. Christoph is from Germany and we have worked together several times. He does most of the sound for the festival projects that these people put on – “these people” being the production company in Taiwan. They are called Trees Music and if anybody is the head of it that person would be Shefong. And she is one smart organizer. Shefong believes that a festival should not just have music and entertainment for people but also cross cultural intelligence, political contents and so on. And so there was the other half of the festival that took place at the Culture Park a few blocks away in a converted brewery. There were music workshops, and also films. While I was waiting to do my own workshop I walked in on a screening of footage from Iraq. The woman who was hosting it was from Japan – that is a different language and so she spoke mostly in English which was lucky for me. I stood in the back as the renegade Yank and saw her explain what should be obvious to everybody by now: the insurgents come from the victims. America blows up a bunch of families and the relatives get mad. Anything unclear about that?

I wish our festivals were more like the one in Taiwan. I think that over time they will be.

My last gig there was in a town called Chiayi, in the Experimental Theater. Again I shared the stage with Yongfeng. Afterwards we all went out to eat traditional Taiwan food – which means lots of it. I flew out the next day.

Slamming into San Francisco with one day to stumble around in a lag state and then hooking up with Citizens Band for our west coast tour. Citizens band is from Olympia and they are Grace, Harry, Jim, and Eliza. We started in San Luis Obispo at a party for Harry’s mother’s 80th birthday. It was at the library and there were tons of people there. Then we went up to San Francisco where our original gig had been cancelled due to personal difficulties on the promoter’s end. At the last minute we had been able to substutu5te a house concert at Faith Petric’s place. Thank you Faith! Then up to Ukiah for another house concert at the home of John McCowen. That was one of the best house concerts ever.

And if you don’t know… A house concert is just what it sounds like, a concert in somebody’s house. No middle, no music business. No Clear Channel. And most of the time no sound system. They are the best of all possible worlds. Anyway…

Next stop was Muddy’s Hot Cup in Arcata, up in Humboldt County. That was a coffee house, and a good one too. We set up the sound gear but didn’t use it. It put too much distance between the performer and the audience. In my experience there is a size component, a line you cross where a sound system is necessary on the larger end and a determent on the smaller. Muddy’s was right in the middle and we decided to go acoustic. Good call.

Out next morning early for a trip up to Oregon and a place called Takilma. If you look at the map and follow the road that goes from Crescent City, California, to Grants Pass, Oregon, you will see a town right in between them called Cave Junction. Takilma is just off the road from that. It’s too small to make it on the map. But its huge in other ways. Takilma was founded as an alternative community in 1970 or there abouts and now thrives as one the best and most constructive intentional communities I have been to. They have their own radio station with internet broadcasting and their own school and community center. We played in the Dome School, which really isn’t a dome anymore, but the people came out and we put on a good show for them. Next morning Harry and I went on the radio to play live on Space Man’s show. Then we went over to Patrick’s place to see the photo’s that his uncle had taken all those years ago of the jazz greats – Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonius Monk, Billie Holiday, and on and on. Great photographs, real important historical stuff. And for me there were his 75 Lightnin’ Hopkins records, all the great big vinyl things like the ones I used to carry under my shirt as a teenager riding back from the far flung record stores trying to build up my collection when most people had never even heard of Lightnin’. All in all it was wonderful morning.

The last gig was up in Corvallis at a coffee house called The Interzone. Again no sound system, though this room was a bit weird. Something about the geometry of the place made it swallow certain frequencies so that even thought it was small you had to sing and play louder than you thought you should. But sing and play we did! With a great improvisational rip at the end of it.

So I’m home now, taking it slow for a day or so before getting back to work. And looking forward to more gigs and more travel.