Lifestyles of the
Itinerant and Boneheadular
September 4, 2002
Northern Virginia
So it's OK, I got the guitar back,
and the van.
...but I'm getting ahead of myself.
The summer has finally come to
a close, and I'm back on the road. I took life pretty easy for
the last three months or so. Still performing, but mostly closer
to home, and with plenty of time factored in to work on building
a deck on my house and hanging out with my girlfriend, Deanna.
It's been pretty lovely, but it does feel good to be back on
the road, too. I played in Philadelphia on Thursday night, joined
some friends to celebrate their marriage and give a small concert
for their friends and family in Princeton, and headed south on
Sunday. I arrived at some friends' house here in Falls Church
last night just in time to see their beautiful daughter Katie
stand up by herself for the first time. No kidding, about two
minutes after I sat down in the living room. Amazing.
Katie and me celebrating the standing up trick
A good friend of mine in a Sydney
band called Jigzag wrote
a song that seems to pop into my head a lot these days. The chorus
contains the lines "Living an ordinary mystery/ Leaving
a small but sacred history."
Yup.
So about the van. Remember that
children's book about the country mouse who goes to visit the
city mouse? Sometimes I feel like that in big cities. And I guess
no matter where I am I tend to be a bit absent-minded. Like for
instance when I left the club in Philly with an empty guitar
case. My Taylor spent the night at the club and I picked it up
the next day. But that's not the wild part. When I went out to
the van the next morning to get a couple of phone numbers I found
that the the van was missing. I had come home late with my friends
and, as in all cities, we drove around the block a time or two
to find spots for our vehicles. I parked where they pointed and
we all leaned up the sidewalk toward beds. When I came out the
next morning, though, I found that the van was gone. I examined
the curb next to the spot where it had spent the night and found
no broken glass, but did find a metal pole sticking out of the
sidewalk which held a sign which read 'No Parking.' Bummer. Towed.
Until the city said they didn't
have it. Hmmm... stolen?
I was to meet a photographer friend
of mine, Robert Corwin,
for lunch and he tracked down the relevant numbers for the city
towing yard, etc., but he encouraged me to take one last walk
around the neighborhood before we went any further with our investigation.
Sure enough, there was Dan the
Tan Van, undisturbed, a block over from where I thought he was.
The big stone church I had parked across from seemed a good marker,
but there is no shortage of big stone churches in that part of
town, and I had just been off by a block. Embarassing, yes, but
it sure was good to see ol' Dan sitting on the corner.
So Dan and I got to Vienna, Virginia
last night in time to play a show at a great new club there called
Jammin' Java, then head
down to Roanoke, where I'll give a concert to benefit Adult Literacy
Volunteers of America at a small auditorium there. After that,
home for a few days. The next couple of weeks will hold shows
in NC, SC, GA and FL, then off to Germany for a three-week tour
there. Kenny, who handles my booking in Germany, has lined up
a beautiful run for me, and I'm really looking forward to a little
more time there. It will be good to see friends on that side
of the pond, and share some music, fellowship and bröt und
kase. I had some truly magical times over there last year.
Living an ordinary mystery.
My European tour last year was
scheduled to begin on September 14, and was delayed until the
seventeenth due to the attack. Of course, the whole tone of that
tour, as the whole tone of all of our daily lives, was radically
changed by world events. This year world events will color that
time again, I'm sure. It was amazing to be overseas at that time
last year and experience the goodwill and sympathy of the world,
just because I'm an American. I've traveled overseas a fair amount,
and had never before experienced that. This year it will likely
be harder, given that our behavior as a nation in the last year
has not given the world much with which to sympathize. Still,
this presents an opportunity to open up some dialog, and to present
some views that Europeans may not be hearing out of the U.S.
on their nightly news.
Leaving a small but sacred history.
At least I'm less likely to lose
a plane than a van. I've noticed they usually keep them at airports.
In other things to celebrate, Rachel
just passed the one year mark of running Lower Dryad Music, or
Dave Central.. I'm so grateful to her for the time and energy
she's put in, and she's doing a great job. If you want to drop
her a note to say thanks, she's at booking@davidlamotte.com
I've got a new song that I debuted
Saturday night. Chris Rosser
and I co-wrote this one, and I'm really happy about it, and
honored to be writing with Chris. For now, at least, it's called
"Chances,"
and if you want to check out the lyric you can click on the title.
I think we'll edit the lyric a bit more, but it's getting close.
It's a love song, and a groundbreaking one for me, in that it's
the first love song I've ever written that doesn't have an element
of humor (not counting post-love songs). It's good to have humor
in relationships, I guess, but it's also good to be able to be
serious sometimes. This one is (in spite of the fact that it's
about weather patterns, isobars, plate tectonics and probability).
Speaking of new songs, several
people have written asking for the chords to "What
I Said," and even more have asked about getting
a recording, so I've put both on the site here. Feel free to
download the song and burn copies for yourself and friends (though
I greatly appreciate your not duplicating/uploading the rest
of my music). I was in Seattle playing three weeks ago and got
to pop by Evan Brubaker's
new studio. He produced my CD Corners,
and he offered to put down this new one for me. He's adding a
cello part, and we'll put that version up for downloading here
soon. Special thanks to Evan.
I hope our paths will cross somewhere
soon and I'll get a chance to play these new ones for you in
person. I'll be touring out west in the Fall after returning
from Germany, back through Missouri and Arkansas, then home a
bit in December. The tentative plan is to get back in the studio
in January to work on a new record (which will hopefully be out
by April or so), and to head down to Florida in February. California
in March, New England in April, Texas in May (where I'm booked
to play the Kerrville Folk Festival!). Check the tourdates for
details, and if you don't see anything near you, or you want
to fill in a free date with a show, feel free to get
in touch with Rachel.
Thanks, as always, for taking the
time to listen, and for checking in here.
Peace,
David
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