Bad Kreuznach, Germany
June 30, 2005

It’s Thursday, June 30, which means I’m a little over halfway through with this year’s German tour. Back at home in the mountains of North Carolina, my wife Deanna is dreaming through her last couple of hours of sleep. It takes a six hour time zone change for me to wake up before her, I’m afraid.

Görlitz - pretty cool stage, huh?

The tour has been great so far, in spite of the fact that I had my wallet stolen at the very first show. I was in Görlitz, which is a town in Eastern Germany that looks over the river into Poland. Except for one person there, Görltiz treated me very well. I had a lovely concert outside on the main square, charmingly interrupted by tower bells on the hour. I just played harmonics in time with the bells until Quasimoto’s song was through, then went back to my own. It was my first time in former East Germany and I look forward to going back. It launched the tour beautifully.

It’s my fifth tour here in Germany, which makes my continued ignorance of the German language particularly egregious, but I’m picking up a few things here and there. Cultural notes, too, of course. There’s so much I love about Europe, wonderful food and drink being pretty high on the list. Great wines and cheeses and breads and beers, and I happened to be here this year during the strictly regulated asparagus season. It’s only ten weeks long each year, after which farmers are forbidden by law from harvesting more asparagus, which apparently can damage the plants after a certain time of year.


the noble knight, armed with his french fry and fork

On a slightly less nutritious culinary note, I also have enjoyed the fact that there are entire restaurants in Germany dedicated to french fries with long, long lists of optional toppings. Under the “traditional toppings” menu, you’ll find curried ketchup, mayonnaise and thai dipping sauce. We need not go into the less traditional options. I’m not idolizing the European way, though - there’s also the utterly inexplicable cultural norm of eating said fries with a tiny fork! I was gently reprimanded by a chef in Görlitz, in fact, for using my fingers. In an effort to be less uncouth (more couth?) I gave it a go with the tiny fork, but they were shoestring fries and chopsticks would have been easier. So back to the fingers and chalk up one 'ugly American’ point for David.

Jonathan and his rose

I’m catching no culinary heat from my godson, Jonathan, who I’ve had a blast hanging out with in recent days (yeah, his parents are cool, too). He’s five months old now, and is honestly the happiest baby I’ve ever known. He grins all day. The picture above was taken just after a street vendor inexplicably came over and gave him a free rose. Said street vendor also recognized me from the paper, so we all felt pretty special. So here's how good Jonathan's attitude is: he actually got a vaccination the other day and stopped crying almost immediately because he wanted to play with the doctor’s stethoscope. I take all the credit, of course.



It’s also been great being back in Bad Kreuznach, where my friend Kenny and his family live. Kenny was the one who first got me touring in Germany, and has done a ton of work organizing tours for me here over the years. It’s a significant plus that his wife Renate has a huge organic garden in the back yard where most of the family’s food comes from. Das Leben ist schön.

Also thanks to Kenny, my tour is sponsored once again this year by a European car maker. This time it’s Isuzu, who are providing me with a cool Renault van (which has an Isuzu engine). My last van in Europe was an Opel, which we dubbed Hans der schwarze Transporter (Hans the Black Van). Since this one is a Renault, though, we’ve named him Pierre. Pierre, incidentally, is blue, but don’t mention that to the German Polizei, as I’m driving without my driver’s license, which was naturally in my stolen wallet). I’ve never been pulled over in Germany before, which after all holds a certain disdain for speed limits, and I’m hoping I can keep up my streak.

I’m also hoping I can keep up the streak of the quality of venues for the rest of the tour. I have six shows in the next eight days, and if just one of them is as good as the one in Bad Zwestern the night before last, I’ll be elated. I played in an old church with two sets of wrap-around balconies and exquisite acoustics. I had a sound system, but barely used it. The church, after all, is twice as old as my country, and in those days they factored acoustics into their designs much more than we do today. The room was packed with the single most enthusiastic audience I’ve ever had in Germany to date. Between the sales in Görlitz and in Bad Zwestern, I’m concerned that I may run out of several titles before the tour is over, but given that that’s only eight days from now, there really isn’t time to ship more. As problems go, this is a good problem to have.


playing a sold-out show in Grefrath

After the dense week of shows ahead I’ll be heading to Nice in the south of France where Deanna will join me and my folks in celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary and our first (well, our second first - we had two weddings, so this is anniversary 1-B). That’s a lot to celebrate adequately, but we’re going to give it our best shot. We’ll be there for a week of vacation with no shows, then home across the ocean.

When I get back to the states I’ll be turning my full attention to fall touring and plans for the next record, which I’m very excited about. More on that soon. I’ll also be working with the video guys on editing the concert DVD, and hoping to get that out in time for the shows with America in October. In other ‘stuff’ news, after over a year of investigating publishing options for the children’s book version of S.S. Bathtub, we’ve decided to publish it in-house and found an excellent Canadian printer who can print it on paper with post-consumer recycled content. It will be a thirty page hard-cover book, and we’re checking out the possibility of including a CD of the song S.S. Bathtub in the book. My hope is that this will also be out in the next six to eight months.

Oh, and speaking of cool new books, check out www.findingasheville.com, where a new book from my friends Cecil Bothwell and Betsy Ball is just coming out. Finding Asheville is a hip underground guide to Western North Carolina, and has a lovely bit on yours truly in it. Thanks, guys.


a pic my friend Chris shot on a day off in Dusseldorf

Thanks for taking the time to browse a little here. Back on the autobahn, yeah, yeah, yeah...

David