I spend a lot of time staring at my calendar. Next week, next month, the month after, next season, next year, it makes no difference. I look at those days where a concert is booked and I imagine myself there. I brood on the blank dates as if somehow trying to wring water from a stone. The long strands of consecutive concerts I gaze at with a sense of fulfillment. Those are the best parts of the calendar.

It's a bug, and I got bit a long time ago. I remember pouring over maps of the United States with high school friends in the mid-seventies. We'd lay the maps out on the living room floor, lie on our bellies and chart imaginary road trips across the lower forty-eight. Just the shapes of the states are provocative, and each name held a mystery: Indiana, Montana, Louisiana, New Mexico… We'd try to imagine what the people were like, and what we'd encounter along the way. School sure wasn't teaching us that stuff. In the years after school the old Sissy Hankshaw* hitchhiking thumb kicked in and I could go anywhere I wanted to, and I did. I pretty much lost track of my friends. I left. I was gone. I was bit by the bug, and I had to find out if what we had wondered was true.

In twenty-five years this sense of wonder has not disappeared. It shows no sign of diminishing. I have long loved the image of the "Inland Sailor" that songwriter Brooks Williams introduced to my understanding years ago as the title of his fourth album. There is a wanderlust that only seems to be satisfied out on the flat and wide. For me, west of the Mississippi is best. Though there are lovely stretches and curves through the mid-east and south, there is nothing like North Dakota, Utah, or West Texas as a balm for wanderlust. The mythical sails in ones chest swell and billow with warm air and from sunrise to sunset - the wheels roll.

The past few months I've been gigging within a day's drive of home whether it's been Massachusetts or North Carolina; and that's ideal. On some level I envy those musicians who can make their living near home and be close to their families. My family seems to be wherever I visit. I seem to develop relationships with places as much as people. I'll return to a bridge, a wayside, a diner, or a particular scene and feel a connection that transcends the moment. I'll rejoice in the returning to a venue and the folks who run it whom I haven't seen in a year or two: the proprietors of the islands on the inland sea --outposts of the post-modern Chautauqua.

Though it's only late August it feels as though summer is coming to an end, especially since Sather has gone back to school. This past Friday night I played at a cool new venue in Cary only 15 minutes from where I live called the Six String Music Hall. Its proprietor, David Sardinha, got bit by a bug of a different sort. He was working in the high tech sector when he fell in love with clubs like The Gray Eagle and Birchmere and decided that was the life for him. He quit his day job and became a concert promoter and Café owner. Well God bless, we need more like him around here.

A musical aside - I've taken much pleasure in recent weeks by pressing the repeat button and lolling in the sheer beauty and narcotic intoxication of Gillian Welch's new CD, Time (The Revelator). I'm afraid that people aren't going to like this CD as much as Revival or Hell Amongst The Yearlings. That would be a big mistake. This one is more nuanced, subtler, and ultimately just as rewarding as Revival. The tone of this album is almost defiant, and seems to challenge the listener to go on the journey with them. There are no lyrics in the artwork. One needs to work at this one, but for me that's the pleasure.

Tonight in Raleigh the cicadas and the crickets are raucous in the dark, and thunder is brewing in the muggy night. I can tell my dog misses Sather's company, as I do. I think a road trip sailing west of the Mississippi would do us both some good now. But that'll have to wait until November. Meanwhile there are wonderful concerts coming up in North Carolina, Virginia, and back up to New England in October. Visit the schedule page for details. Hope to see you soon.

Peace - Dana

* Read Tom Robbins book "Even Cowgirls Get The Blues"