Tour Journal :: Days 25 through 40

Events are adding up to the sum of a load of experiences that really should contribute to an improved life. In other words spring has spring, the clocks have jumped ahead, and nature is actually going along with it all. It is all a bit tricky in this neck of the woods. Calendar readings never correlate with reality, but somehow while Northern California is under a flooding rush of water, we are enjoying remarkable sunny, crispness that constitutes amazing natural phenomena.

The yard is looking really great, how about a shot of it taken last year in May, it’s blooming peak.

I’ve got wisteria growing up two Hemlock pines, rising about 70 feet in the air, blooms tumbling down earthwards like ripe grapes in Tuscany. Rhododendrons and similar shrubs which I can not readily name are shooting out blooms of countless sizes, while the camellia bushes are showing rose like flowers in such abundance that they only last a couple of daze. It is so wild out there that it makes me kinda horney.

Gotta get my mind off that line of thinking or I will spill more than the beans. Hey, how’s it going with the music? Glad I asked………….in my never ending pursuit of autobiographical lyric content I spent the day up in the Mountains on an expedition for agates, jasper and fossiled rock, as well as a hike up several peaks and a couple of hours in and around a riverbed. While my hiking pal, Thor was amusing himself in his waders, I reclined on an enormous log, complete with lounging area and wrote page after page of the same song. Every new poem started with the same line….I am the 12 String Surfer and then I would start to tell the story of my life and career. It may turn out to be a three parter, sort of like the Godfather except with more vendettas and shots though the eyeglasses. There is nothing like getting it out or in my case, on paper. I am getting close to what I really want to tell my audience.

Now I sit with Guitar in hand putting words to music, first using themes that I am totally at home with and then looking for some new and not so used forms. I really do not care what style these tunes turn out to be in. All I am looking for direct communication to the listener.

Meanwhile, in Germany, I am getting news that Summer tour 2006 is shaping up really great, as a matter of fact, some of it is already up and running on my sheduale page. Thanks to the never ending efforts of Volker, Dagmar, Wolle, Rudiger and countless others, I can return in triumph year after year. Hopefully with new recorded product this year.

You’ll be the first to know.

March 22, 2006 Lake Stevens

Damn the rain, not that I mind the steady rhythmic pattern that lets me sleep late and piss off carefully planned agendas and high profile lunches, PM meet and greets, and even sound checks, what I really hate about the rain is the inevitable destruction it brings to my garden in the form of snails and slugs. Those bastards surf right in over a stream of slime and proceed to munch @ the new growth budding forth from the earth without prejudice or regard for the fact that just yesterday, while I was yawningly stretching my middle aged paunch in a semi Yogic contortion in the wee hours of the morn, reaching over to free a sprout of Hostes from the winter debris, I was actually exposing this delicate fingerling to the hungry jaws of Spring’s first predator.

Especially in the Great North Wet. Long before the bi-peds have returned to the limbs and boughs a–twitter with the news of southern climes, these survivors of frost and sub degrees creep out from under God knows where to feast on fruits of my labor.

Usually, I’m strictly Live and let live, but lately upon observing the amazing orgy of life in my garden, my support is slanting towards the helpless newly born and freshly sprouted.
But damn the rain anyway because we just had three daze of beautiful bleu skys and orange orbs, what gives?!
Europe was sublime on many levels this year.

Yes, fellow journal revelers and friends of the musical aspirations of said Dave Lee Howard, I know I am back from a lengthy hiatus of sorts. Last journal entrée was in September and I don’t give a damn about that either. It is just that absolutely nothing happened in those months when I returned from the road and vegetated away in Television bliss, hoping for the inspiration to write my life’s opus and kicking myself aft side on a regular basis from not motivating myself enough to increase my output. Tuff!
Truth is, I was in Limbo. Neither here nor there nor! What little I did was the minimum needed to survive financially and yet not expose myself emotionally to the truth of my personal plight. Just like those snails and slugs…….now I get it, these morning encounters with nature are full circle residual acts of self loathing. Far from that, too. This self analysis reeks of elitist pandering and it is bad enough that my new writing style borders on bad grammar and grade school psychology, but I have just started and already written myself into a freshly painted corner,
And I don’t give a damn about that either, so lets get on with what was and what is in store for both of us presently in the near and far future.

Europe was sublime alright, froze to the toes and fresh tracks in the snow daily. Berlin Music Messe was Arctic outside and extremely successful inside, so Summer tour 2006 will be a record breaking event.

On a personal note, after spending 5 weeks at the hospital bed of my Mother, Gisela, she passed on February 15th. She gave me a couple of winks of the eye as if to say “Everything will be alright” and made for the pearly gates to join my Dad and Thomas. Her presence returned to me almost immediately in the form of a great peaceful quiet and immense patience and beautiful stillness, such as I had never achieved before, and Lord knows I have tried through meditation, Yoga and Est training. Such was her last gift to me….the power of all encompassing peace. I am so thankful and grateful, though I know they are the same but I need both to express the grand scale of it all.

Thanks Mom, your final gift will stay with me until I am able to pass it on to someone much more worthy of it than myself. What a grand dame she was, drove her own car up until her hospital stay, maintained a household and great circle of friends, planned and executed several trips and excursions yearly and played golf with me like a champ just last year.

So these past 8 weeks in Europe were spent saying goodbye and taking care of the loose leaves of a life well spent. I also managed to polish off two bottles of Sierra Majestica Tequila with my Backgammon buddies in respectful remembrance.

Now back @ home with the slugs and the domestic responsibilities. I have approximately 8 weeks to go before the 22 of May when the summer tour begins. During this time I would really like to get in the studio and flesh out some new material, record it or just document it would be just fine. I also need to write some more4 stuff, especially songs that reflect this new state of mind as well as autobiographical. Optimistically enough I already entered the title “Roots” on my new promo postcards as new CD 2006, even though only two songs have been recorded, smurf, smurf, yes, I think it’s a hoot and it should drive me to completion. With that in mind, kids, I am off to work. Love you all and especially Elly and Lenny