2003 UK Tour Part 1
Monday, August 18th
The voyage begins with an 8-hour drive up to Northern Virginia to depart
from Dulles where we found the best flight fares. Sue and I arrived at
Andrew McKnight and Michelle’s house where the welcome is always warm, and
spent the night outside around a fire with bottles of beer and Michelle’s
Pina Coladas, trading songs under the stars. I thought it an auspicious way
to begin a tour.
Tuesday, August 19th
A huge Thank You to Jerry Bresee for the lift to Dulles, use of his flight
case for my guitar, and letting us park our car at his place for the entire
five weeks of this tour. It’s friends like this that take the hard edge off
what would otherwise be a long and complex tour. I always seem to fly the
red-eye across the Atlantic, making for awful jet lag. Even if you try to
get some shut-eye there’s such anticipation and excitement of the trip that
it’s difficult to settle down. The late food, the movies, people milling
around, and jet noise doesn’t help either. Though I can recommend
Virgin-Atlantic, as they did not hassle Sue for bringing her banjo aboard,
and the design of the new Airbus Jet was really slick and European, nicer
than the clunky Boeings.
Wednesday, Aug 20th
Heathrow International, 7am. We
shuffle out of the plane, and make like bleary-eyed sheep through
immigration and customs. After a quick coffee, croissant, and water we find
a piece of sidewalk outside under the ‘departures’ sign in the bright, crisp
West London morning. We sat on our luggage as we waited for Steafan
Hannigan, our host, friend and partner in the booking agency, to pick us up.
Cars and trucks zoomed by in a rush of unfamiliar shapes, noise and exhaust
(all on the other side of the road). Before too long a white Mazda with a
familiar shaved head, and the CD player blasting through open windows and
sunroof, screeches to a halt in front of us. As we settle in I notice the
heater is blasting full tilt. Steafan apologizes saying, “The radiator fan
is broken.” I look and see the temperature gauge is redlining. Then he adds,
“This is your car for the tour!”
Thursday, Aug 21st
Today I’m off to the “car breakers,” or
salvage yard to look for a used radiator fan. I think it bizarre that I am
newly in a foreign land with jet lag and surrounded by smashed and squished
cars. I remind myself that fixing the car this way is actually easier and
cheaper than taking the car to a mechanic. I climb upon a pile of these
haphazardly stacked metal pancakes and carefully remove a fan from under a
dented hood of a similar Mazda. Later, back at home Steafan and I work WD40
into the rusted blots and without too much cussing install the new used fan
and voila, it works! Now, we just need to put a little air into the near
bald tires and we’re good to go.
Friday, Aug 22nd
Today, the Bridgnorth Festival is the
first gig of the tour. Besides being reasonably prepared, I really didn’t
think too much about what would be required of us here. Upon arrival,
reading our “artist” package I see we are playing on the “Marquee” stage
that evening. I didn’t realize that that translates to “Main Stage” in the
states. Driving up to the Marquee for sound check I feel a hit and glow of
adrenaline, realizing this stage is the nucleus of the festival. Under this
gorgeous circus tent replete with colorful panels sewn together in some
old-fashioned looking style, 600 chairs sit before a massive stage. Sue, on
the other hand turns white and retreats in fear as a serious bout of stage
fright sets in! Stage fright is a funny thing. It is like the devil’s cold
hand feeding on your fears. We battled Sue’s devil through the evening until
it was time to play. By the time the MC announced our names to sing for
however many hundreds of people, that devil was whooped and we got up and
nailed the set. The sound was crystal clear, the lights were bright, the
applause was loud, and the experience became pure fun. We did our job, and
walked off the stage on a light and fluffy cloud…straight toward the beer
tent to celebrate. Our tour had begun.
Sunday, Aug 24th
These Bank Holiday festival weekends
encompass four days, from Friday through the following Monday. After two
full days at Bridgnorth we arose early and sleep deprived to drive two hours
south to make an 11am sound check at the Towersy Village Festival. Loading
into our Mazda in the quiet Sunday morning air we discovered one of its
tires had gone squishy flat! (Did I mention we had no spare?) Our hosts said
all the air pumps at the stations in Bridgnorth seemed to be broken, so we
had no choice but to creep down the road away from town and hope for some
air pump to magically appear. After 20 minutes driving 25 mph we found our
oasis in a station that hadn’t yet opened up. I knocked on the door and the
attendant turned the compressor on, and “whew!” we were on our way.
We made our Towersy sound check just in
time, and then fell into a groove. With CD’s flying out of our bag we rode
the momentum of where do we go now, and what do we play next. Between
workshops, marquee stages, theatres, and a village hall, we played ten sets
of music in these four days. By Monday night on Towersy Marquee Stage we
were wupped. I think we made it through our last set on pure muscle memory.
My favorite music of the festival was discovering the Irish singer Column
Sands, and we traded songs with Beverly Smith and Carl Jones from the U.S.
Thursday, Aug 28th
Frankly, I can’t remember what we did on Tuesday and Wednesday besides
buying new tires for our loaner Mazda. We slept, walked, did laundry, email,
and a little singing probably. Today our gig was at the venerable Black Swan
Folk Club in York. It’s the quintessential English Folk Club with its 15th
Century crooked floors, and swayback roof. It was nice seeing our hospitable
promoter Roland Walls, and I was quite flattered that Jez Lowe and his “Bad
Pennies” fiddle player Kate Bramley came to the show.
Saturday Aug 30th
Canterbury Whole Foods today. It was out of Northampton in the Midlands,
down the M1 around London’s M25 across the Themes on the Queen Elizabeth
Bridge in Dartford, and onto the southeastern tip of England. Contrary to
most of the tour it was a quiet night, but it was nice returning to this
room with its high ceiling and fine acoustics. It was enough just to have a
reason to come to Canterbury and walk down the narrow streets and be a
tourist for the afternoon.
Sunday, Aug 31st
We ended August with The Herschel Arms
in Slough. (It’s not pronounced “sluff”, or “slew”, but rather to sound like
“ow!” as in ouch!) I requested to return to The Herschel Arms for this gig
because I enjoy its generous proprietor Tom King. Tom, however is very
forgetful, and he did not remember we were coming. No publicity done, and
nobody coming for the show, but also no worries. He handed me my fees up
front, sat us down and said, “have at it”, and “what’ll you have to drink?”
He kept our pint glasses (over) full while we settled into a night of fiddle
tunes and singing. Whenever anybody spoke too loud Tom would shout,
“Silence!” and stomp his foot once perfectly on the beat of the tune to let
everyone know in no uncertain terms what was priority in the room.
Onward to Scotland in “September Notes From The Road”!
Cheers! - Dana