May 24, 2007
The Trail Dust Inn
Sulphur Springs, TX
Dan the Tan Van mileage: 293,193

I checked in to this hotel about midnight last night, having driven the first seven hours of my trip home. There are press photos of many road musicians who have gone before me hanging around the lobby - Eddie Rabbit, Waylon Jennings, the Judds. I've got to be careful which room I stay in - it might change my music.

I've been in Texas for a little over a week, doing several shows and a couple of writing workshops. It's been a lovely trip. The wildflowers seem to be covering every unpaved surface and the weather has been uncharacteristically mild. I've had good visits with some old friends and made some new ones. Strange that after shows in Florida and North Carolina in the next couple of weeks, and two weeks in Guatemala, I'll be back in Texas for the national Restorative Justice Conference. That time I'll be flying in, though, which at the moment sounds pretty good. I have 900 miles left to drive today, which should take about fifteen hours. At the end of that drive, though, lies my own front door.

Texas wildflowers

I'm driving the wrong direction from the Kerrville Folk Festival, of course, and that's hard. Each year I make a pilgrimage to that festival to reconnect with some close friends and spend a few days sweating music and singing ourselves cool. It's an eighteen-day festival, and people start camping a week before it starts, building the elaborate camp set-ups that have evolved over the years. Like any big city, the festival population has divided itself into smaller communities over the years, and my friends at Camp SingKerrNicity have become an important extended family to me. This year I only got to spend about thirty hours on the ranch, and that before the festival started. Still, it renewed me. The reason I'm missing the festival is worthy of much celebration, though. My dear friend Caroline, who is on the board of PEG, is marrying my friend Allen, who actually knew Deanna before we got to know each other. So it will be a festive weekend in North Carolina, too.

I've been staying pretty busy driving and singing and teaching, but there have been some small, delicious respites too. Deanna had her spring break in late April, and Mother Nature decided to pick that weekend for the last gasp of winter, killing off the South Carolina peach crop for the year with a vicious cold snap, and shriveling the new hastas in our North Carolina mountain yard. On the Thursday night before Deanna's last day of school I looked at the forecast on the computer and looked up at her and said "How 'bout we go to Florida when you get out of school tomorrow?" We called some good friends in St. Augustine, loaded up the Mini and took off the next day as soon as she was out of school. As spur of the moment decisions go, it was a good one.

a snowy egret gathering nest material in St. Augustine

I took a lovely half-day off on my birthday in late April, too. I was lost in my laptop for most of the morning, and realized around lunch time that there was nothing I was working on that couldn't wait until the next day, so I packed a lunch, grabbed my camera and a book (Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father - highly recommended) and drove up on the parkway. I wandered in the woods and took pictures of the newborn Spring for the afternoon, then picked Deanna up and went out for dinner.

spring springing in the mountains...

 

In music news, I recently got word that my song "Crawl Inside" from the latest record, Change, won the Runner-up slot (Second Place) in the 2007 IAMA contest (International Acoustic Music Awards). The album has won a handful of awards from other contests, but that was the first for that song. Thanks much to the organizers of that contest for their recognition.

...

June 2, 2007
Sarasota/Bradenton, FL

"Ricochet in time to the music
Just pick a day and I'm in a new destination"
- Shawn Colvin

Yesterday morning I woke up in Raleigh, NC, caught a plane to Florida by way of Atlanta, and did a show in Bradenton, Florida. I woke up in my hotel there this morning and headed back to the airport. Now I'm on a plane to Atlanta. I'll be playing in Chapel Hill, NC tonight, then home Sunday and Monday nights, then flying to Guatemala for some work with PEG.

The Guatemala trip should be a lot of fun. I'll get to visit schools in Tzanchaj and Chimaltenango and celebrate the completion of projects in each location, as well as launch a music program at a school in El Tejar, and check out a potential new school building project in Chacaya, near Lago Atitlan. Deanna and I will also be spending some time in Antigua, where I'll do another week of language school and she'll do *five* weeks. It will be a treat to have a resident translator around the house when she gets home.

It will be my fifth time back in Guatemala, but the first time that Deanna and I will be there together since our honeymoon. Another thing that makes this trip especially significant is that my parents are going to come down for a week and visit. They will get to see three of the schools we're working with, and I think that will be a treat for all of us.

Your support of PEG continues to amaze and overwhelm me. To date, people have donated over $40,000, and in Guatemala that's a lot of resources. It's deeply inspiring to witness so much generosity, and to get to follow it every step through, until I can sit on the floor of a school in Guatemala playing with children and quizzing them on what they've learned in a school that didn't exist two years ago. That's how I spent Valentine's Day this year.

So the advenutre continues. Baggage claim and rest stop, picks and cables, poetry and phone calls. The guys at the shop in Black Mountain shake their heads and chuckle when they see me pull in for a 3000-mile oil change - having just gotten my last one the week before. Thanks for making it worthwhile.

Peace,

David