Monday, Oct.24, 2005
Black Mountain, NC
Approx. Dan the Tan Van Mileage: 240,000

America and Guatemala

This weekend a circle closed for me after twenty-three years. But I should start with the beginning...

When I was fourteen I found an old guitar that one of my sisters and my brother had each owned for a little while and lost interest in. The strings must have been a mile from the fretboard and manufactured early in the industrial age, but I felt the connection anyway. I knew a couple of adults who played guitar and they showed me a few chords and explained those little chord boxes to me so I could start to learn some of the songs in my sisters' Songs of the Seventies for Piano and Guitar songbooks. I recall that among the first couple of songs I learned were John Denver's Sunshine on My Shoulders and America's Horse With No Name, each of which you could play a simplified version of with just two simple chords. Even as a young boy I was moved by music, and the revelation that I could actually produce music blew my mind and changed my world.

That was twenty-three years ago. Through my teens I played in my bedroom with the door shut, but rarely subjected anyone else to it. I continued to discover music as a listener, too, and to gather up a few America albums. I still have some of them on vinyl. In college I started to play some open mikes and Tuesday night bar gigs and after school I started to play out more seriously.

The shape of an independent music career doesn't have many spikes in it. It's a long steady slope, hopefully upward. Gradually, the gigs got better and better. Now I've played music on four continents, including being the headline act at the Auckland Folk Festival in New Zealand, touring all over Europe half a dozen times, playing the main stage at the Kerrville Folk Festival, and this past weekend, performing at the legendary Birchmere just outside of Washington, DC. Friday and Saturday nights I opened for America, the band that wrote and performed one of the first songs I ever learned to play.

Dewey Bunnell, me and Gerry Beckley

The shows couldn't have gone much better. Both nights the audiences were wonderfully welcoming, and each night they broke into spontaneous applause in the middle of my instrumental song Shadows. Saturday night I had a standing ovation at the end of my set. Dewey Bunnell and Gerry Beckley still sound great. The band was friendly, the crew was fun, and we talked a bit about the possibility of doing some more shows together. The coolest moments for me, though, were the ends of each night. Both nights the band closed with their classic song Sister Golden Hair, then left the stage to standing ovations. Predictably, the audience wasn't done with them, and when they came back out they grabbed me to go with them. We closed the show with Horse With No Name. I sang and played on Gerry Beckley's Taylor guitar, and the second night they gave me a guitar solo. I'm still pinching myself.

singing on the encore with Michael, the lead guitarist

Now it's Monday and I'm heading to Guatemala in the morning. The contrast between the rock star weekend and the trip coming up is pretty staggering. Guatemala was hit hard by Hurricane Stan in early October. This came on the heels of weeks of heavy rain, and though Stan was quickly downgraded to a tropical storm, it stalled out over Guatemala, and the deluge caused massive flooding and mudslides. Over a thousand people died, and hundreds of thousands are still homeless. This happened at the same time as the terrible earthquake in Pakistan and India and understandably it hasn't made the news much, but it continues to be devastating to the country. Disease is rampant. Major highways between major cities are still not open. The country is running very low on basic medical supplies like antibiotics. Relief workers have come in from everywhere (including four hundred doctors from Cuba, which is now struggling with the aftermath of its own hurricane) but there is a great deal to do.

playing guitar with a little friend on my last trip to Guatemala

I had already planned a trip to Guatemala before Stan came into the picture, to visit school projects you've funded through PEG Partners (the non-profit I founded with my wife Deanna last summer) and to scout new school projects. Now it's uncertain whether I'll be able to get to the towns where we already have projects, but I've been corresponding with friends in Guatemala who are working on relief efforts, and it looks like we'll be able to plug into that work, as well as deepening some connections with other NGOs there. Most importantly, I was contacted by the regional Presbyterian Church office, which has gathered up much-needed antibiotics for Guatemala. Cecil Bothwell (the Vice Chair of PEG) and I will be taking those down, and that alone is worth the trip. We'll be there until Nov. 3, and I'll get you an update soon after I return.

As if that weren't enough to have going on, I've spent the last three weeks in the recording studio with my producer and long-time friend Chris Rosser, working on a new record, due out in February, 2006. Two weeks ago we tracked all the percussion, played by Atlanta drummer Derek Murphy, and last week we recorded all the cello tracks, done by Stephanie Winters from NYC.

Stephanie warming up while Chris sets up mics

And one last... well, huge thing: The children's book version of S.S. Bathtub will be shipping from Canada Nov. 4. We've been working on this for over two years now, and it's hard to believe it's finally coming to fruition. MJ's been busy taking pre-orders (with free shipping through October) and keeping track of who I need to autograph them to when they come in.

Wow, there's really a lot to feel good about these days. Thanks for being interested enough to read this far, and for celebrating with me. Someone recently pointed out to me that Dan the Tan Van's mileage exceeds the average distance between the earth and the moon. That's a lot of driving, and you make it worth it. Thanks for being such a great boss. Keep in touch,

David