tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-79757520831636994502024-03-19T17:57:15.379-04:00National Steel Zulu Skies Blues TourRide shotgun with Doc MacLean as the World's Biggest Little Blues Tour storms two continents by land. Keep a couple of extra rounds in the glove box, and keep the tunes cranked up. Before this is over we just might meet the Zulu King.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7975752083163699450.post-19655375112548497882017-01-30T18:08:00.000-05:002017-01-30T18:08:36.605-05:00Thrill of the Road<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Another year on the open road.<br />
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Another year on the River of Life. My 2016, National Steel Zulu Skies Blues Tour was an adventure from beginning to end. Nine Canadian provinces, a bunch of US states, and most of South Africa. A good tour, and one that gives me plenty of ideas as to how my future travels may unfold! My friend James Dean captured this Twin Peaks moment at the recent Canadian, Maple Blues Awards. Deep in the dark woods of the music business, one can never be sure what the next dance will be.<br />
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You can follow the 2016 Tour from beginning to end in the posts found below. I will also publish a link to my 2017 plans here (right here), as soon as I have enough details to print. Hint: I came home very tired this year, so it is likely that some regions won't be visited on an annual basis anymore.<br />
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Meanwhile, Tour goes on! The Media sidebar to the right has all of the most up to date links for authorized promos, bios, pics, videos, interviews, reviews, etc.– as well as links to the previous decade of blogs for the National Steel Blues Tour. You can read and learn for business or pleasure, or quickly find whatever you need to advance or promote a Doc MacLean show.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7975752083163699450.post-28378766278535403002017-01-16T21:08:00.000-05:002017-01-25T11:58:31.011-05:00It's a Wrap! National Steel Zulu Skies Blues TourIf you are here for the first time, you probably want to visit the Sidebar (to the right) to start. That's where all the Info and related Links are found. This side is the Tour Blog, a series of personal posts following my 2016, Zulu Skies Blues Tour across North America and South Africa.<br />
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The Wrap is generally a lengthy post- a conclusion where I reflect on the annual Tour, the lands, the peoples, the state of the Blues, the art, the artist, the business, what it is to live on the Blues Highway, and where it all seems to be going. This one is pretty much all that. Maybe more of a tour summary than usual, maybe less of a commentary on the business. It's personal, in a public kind of way. About a dozen, shorter posts precede this and follow the Tour from beginning to end. I think they read better. Faster anyway! All are listed at the bottom of the Sidebar.<br />
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For this post, pour yourself a coffee, or a glass of red, or maybe a shot of scotch, and get ready for the ride.<br />
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A dozen years ago when I started the Blog, the platform was very popular and my Tour Blogs were followed by hundreds– and occasionally by thousands– of people. I used to post daily: from the first Tour announcement to the final accounting. Today, it's mainly a hard core of fans and followers that track the Blog on a regular basis, the rest having migrated to social media platforms where news is given in smaller, more conservative bites. So I post here less often– giving up the Tour in little chunks as it moves across the world. I'm supposed to be working on a book now, so maybe it's more of a journal, a means to collect stories and to remember where I've been and what I felt in the smear of dates and places. An unvarnished, first hand take on this crazy life. It is a crazy life. I live out of a car between six and nine months of every year, and I've done this for longer than I care to admit. Most days I'm playing a show somewhere: as I've become fond of saying, no place too big, too small, too grand or too humble.<br />
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This year's National Steel Zulu Skies Blues Tour spanned North America and South Africa. My focus in these closing notes is obviously Africa. While communication has made the world small enough to fit into my laptop, it is also big enough to drive across for months on end. I like that. It's a big, Blues Highway, and perhaps it's a bit of a breakout year for the Tour. I'm not getting any younger, and I'm beginning to recognize that there's probably a limit to how many more times I'm going to be able– or willing– to sleep in Canadian truck stops and parking lots. For the first time, foreign revenues greatly outstripped domestic earnings. For the first time I've considered the possibility that there might not be many more touring years. That thought casts a long and melancholy shadow as I wonder about how to best move forward. Hint: I'm liking the idea of doing it on warm, dry roads.<br />
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"Velvet tour," she said. And she was right. What's not to like about forty, mostly sold out, or capacity shows spread across South Africa? My picture in the newspaper, my voice on the drive shows, my image on breakfast television in a million households. A cd release to a new market. My songs on the airwaves. Reception- tour launch concert at the Canadian High Commission in Pretoria. Production sponsorship by profile, name companies. Nearly fifteen thousand kilometres of African highway, self driven, on the left hand side.<br />
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Performances: I don't normally review my own shows, so I'll only say that I've been at the top of my game here. I've had great audiences, and they've enabled me to give what were perhaps some of the best shows of my life. Media reviews– of which I will link a few in the sidebar– reflect a genuine excitement and enthusiasm on the ground. Many of the most important South African musicians have come to my shows– some more than once. Some of us have played music together. Now we are friends. Collaborators.<br />
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So many new friends! The kind you keep and cherish for life. If there is a theme that has played out during this tour, it is the theme of friendship. Many hands and many hearts make these long, solo tours possible. I try to give as much as I receive, but I don't know if this is remotely possible. My heart pounds for this place: for the rain on the tin roofs, for the cry of the roosters and the ha-de-das, for another glass of South African red, for another look at the crazy, upside down stars. The kind of tour one always wants to have: velvet. My little, Sugarman moment.<br />
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I will return. Soon. Repeat engagements offered at all my venues. I'll gladly play most of them again. Significant, African festivals. Collaboration and exchange with some fabulous South African musicians. I should have come here years ago. Africa doesn't puss around. It's flesh and bone. Life and death. Passion. The hustle. I like it here.<br />
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One of Africa's larger music chains, Paul Bothner Music, sponsored my production needs in South Africa. You can visit their link in the sidebar, and there is another pic somewhere down the page of their music education centre in Plumstead, Cape Town, one of the locations where where I presented blues masterclasses. Above are the guys who outfitted me at the Centurian outlet, Jean Village Music. Thanks for the extra power cables– I needed them! I've got to extend a big thank you to all the Paul Bothner staff for helping to make the South African leg of the Zulu Skies Tour the success it was. From the Cape Town head office to the managers and staff of the various branches– it was a real pleasure to be associated with this company. Not only was everybody helpful and great to work with, but the stores themselves were friendly, and full of quality gear, and nice to visit.<br />
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Paul Bothner reminds me very much of my long time favourite North American music retailer, Long & McQuade. A family based business with happy employees. Great customer service to all customers– not just rock stars. Great gear, and locations across the whole country. It's a company that really gets involved with the communities it's stores are in, too. I respect that. So, yes, this is a plug– I wouldn't follow up this way if I was not impressed. I'm proud to be associated with Paul Bothner Music in South Africa, and I look forward to working with them again in the future.<br />
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As a footnote: I had originally approached the Canadian company, Yorkville Sound, about sponsoring a small sound system for this Tour. Typical of so many Canadian businesses, they failed to respond in any way to my proposals. It's not that these companies are too polite to tell you to fuck off, it's that they are too rude to bother. In Canada, most parts of the music business follow this pattern. It's a real time waster for everyone, and it doesn't foster much good will.<br />
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If the Yorkville gear was durable enough for an African safari, it would have been pretty exciting to wave the flag for them at the Canadian High Commission, and then across the rest of South Africa. They do make great gear. When I travel, I network, and it's good for everyone. Yes, the Rand is low, but that doesn't stop German, Italian, and English companies from working the South African market. Allen and Heath ended up doing an amazing job for me, ending my career long allegiance to Traynor and Yorkville Sound. Maybe there's a good excuse. Maybe I'll ask again before the next African adventure. I still believe this to be an excellent sales and marketing opportunity for the Ontario based company.<br />
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Tim Parr is a storied roots and blues songwriter-guitarist who has had a long history in the South African music scene. He's had some high flying records in this market over the years, and he remains very popular and active as a touring artist today. I was pleased to meet him in Johannesburg, and then to have the opportunity to play with him in Cape Town, in Steve Walsh's Lekker Band.<br />
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Charlie King, and Wim Van Vuueren. These folks made my arrival transition so much more manageable. Charlie was one of the people who helped me the most in advance– just knowing she was there and would help answer some of my questions was an encouragement. She's a person who simply goes for it and gets things done. She's been an important organizer of blues people and events in both Cape Town and Johannesburg. I had a really wonderful time hanging out with these guys on their little farm compound, and we had a ball playing a couple of shows together as well. Charlie fronts the band, and Wim drums for a variety of South African blues, roots, and rock artists. After about ten days of being based at their place, it quite felt like home. And I gained a real appreciation for Jack Black beer!<br />
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Cliff Central Radio. Shock jock. American style. I had a ball on South Africa's most popular radio show– and it definitely helped put bums in seats. This station has a multi-racial staff, a multi-racial audience, and a cool take on life in South Africa. Very Johannesburg. I think it points the way for where this country is going: a rainbow. Plenty of talents, plenty of smiles. Modern. Worldly. Edge. People listen to this in taxis. Post show I hung out with the producers of the sex hour, and had some zulu language lessons. Nothing I can repeat here!<br />
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A great backdrop to my stage at the Cockpit Brewhouse in Cullinan. Yes, to Taste under African skies. I could do that. I am doing that. I am tasting many things, some for the first time.<br />
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Cockpit owner, brewmaster, and blues fan Andre de Beer was destined to run a joint like this!<br />
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I got more than fifteen minutes of fame as a result of my appearance on Groot's breakfast television/ radio drive show. Getting up with the roosters, and driving unfamiliar roads to find these paces was a little stressful and tiring– but as I told Warren Gibson, my publicist, I came here to work. And work is good. Did it put bums in seats? Absolutely. And I was recognized in gas stations and grocery stores for a few days afterwards. Above, a photo op with Groot morning man Johrne van Huyssteen. He does radio and television at the same time- and in two languages!</div>
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My digs in Bronkhorstspruit. An African Shack-Up. Sinkshack. Yes, you do have to go outside to use your cell phone!<br />
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Deon is the owner-operator of the Sinkshack, a wild and fun juke joint in Bronkhorstspruit, Gauteng. He's a wild and crazy guy, too. I'll be back.<br />
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One of the many, unexplained things I observed in South African bars. Here– from my perspective, in the middle of nowhere– is a row of clocks showing London, Paris, etc. AND Newfoundland, Canada. I did think briefly and fondly of all my friends in Newfoundland as I contemplated the porkbellie salad...<br />
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Due to my slow recovery from a springtime injury, I didn't run as much as I would of liked to in Africa. But I did get out fairly often for some shorter, rehab jogs. As luck would have it I met several South African ultra runners, most of whom were sympathetic that I had not been able to do the "little" 50 something km, Ocean to Ocean run this year. I'll be back, but I suspect I'll have to make do with a half marathon. I do have to play shows at night!<br />
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The Alternative voice of Johannesburg. Eden Radio. I did the Breakfast Show with Janet Sedgwick, and had a great time. I really do love doing radio!<br />
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Stoep, in Nelspruit. Mbombela. Can you say "Mbombela?"<br />
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Frans Borman provided me with this shot. A quiet moment with a glass of red as I write my set for the Country and Blues Festival at Johannesburg. It was a real pleasure to be included in the line-up, and it was an opportunity to meet and hear many popular South African blues, roots and rock shows.<br />
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Guy Collins was up from Cape Town to perform.<br />
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Black Cat Bone. Jacko and the band were really, really helpful to me. Nice guys, and good players who drive a whole lot of kilometres on the South African blues highway.<br />
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My pal Louis and his partner Charmyn run Mojo's, down in Welkom, Free State. I had a great time playing this very authentic blues joint. Louis is happier than he looks here!</div>
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Here's another great juke, this one outside of Bloemfontein, Free State. Aasvoel Klub.<br />
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Hein built this place. Nothing wasted. Always a wild night out.<br />
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Heading out to KZN. KwaZulu-Natal.<br />
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Caladdi, in the KZN midlands, was a pleasure.<br />
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The House at Zululand, Eshowe, KwaZulu-Natal, was an amazing venue. I came back in the daylight to check out the giant, blue-purple lillies.<br />
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The Indian Ocean. Mine for the first time. Like an old pirate, I anchor my land ship in a parking lot, pace down through the sand, across the roaring wind, to dip my foot in this warm water. It's a different ocean from the others I have experienced. How could you leave an ocean like this one? I'm on the KZN South Coast. The venue I was to play has lost it's presentation licence and had to close suddenly, so some local musicians have scrambled to set up a replacement show for me. I'm here hours early, so I snooze in my car and listen to the murmur of the waves.<br />
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Nearly all of my South African venues met or exceeded my expectations. In the end, there were three venues which proved to be problematic for reasons of closure or management changes. About twice the normally predicted North American percentage for crash and burn, but not a bad ratio for a first venture into new territory. And as it happened, all three nights were quickly filled at alternate venues.<br />
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<span style="text-align: start;">A pleasant evening with local singer-songwriter John Skuy. Sugar cane, pineapples, the soft crash of the ocean behind the stage. Red wine in buckets. Very nice.</span></div>
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Africa's Highway 61. I'm reminded that traveling alone in a car full of gear, lacking a spare, may not be a good idea. It's a rough and tumble road through to the Wild Coast.<br />
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It's market day in the little villages, and the streets throng with people. Speakers blasting, walking into traffic, riding in open bakkies. Pot holes. Too fast. Too slow. There's not much shoulder next to the pavement. If you drop a wheel off the crumbled blacktop you could roll your car. I almost do that. I'm ok. I'm ok. Now I'll hug that centre line like everyone else. I'll take whatever road is available and use it for my own. It all could of ended here, quickly, at the twist of a wheel. A little bit of luck, and a little bit of skill. Sooner or later you run out of one or the other.<br />
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Warren "Dog" Gibson runs Plug Music. Highly recommended to me by several South African artists of stature, he did not disappoint. As publicist for the South African leg of the National Steel Zulu Skies Blues Tour, he did a brilliant job. I told him that I came here to work, and he surely kept me busy– while bringing considerable profile to the Tour. I'm pretty sure he's going to be a permanent part of my team. I enjoyed working with him, and it was great knowing that he was there for me. There is a link to Plug Music in the media sidebar of this Blog.<br />
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Why wouldn't you book a Tuesday night in a place called "The Goat Shed?"<br />
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And now, the Karoo. While I anticipated each new geographical area, the Karoo desert was a place I very much looked forward to experiencing. Deserts, as I have learned, are places to expect the unexpected, places where the strange and unusual are the norm.<br />
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I'm headed for what's been described to me as a "small drinking town with a farming problem." Nieu-Bethesda. I'm feeling relaxed, driving under big skies, my Africa relaxing with me now. There are ranches out here in the endless spaces– or maybe farms, or estates. I'm not sure what they are called, but they are far apart, and seem far from wealthy. A hard life, I'd think. But I've met characters like this before in the American south-west. It takes a special sort, to make a life in an area like this one. Beautiful. Silent. Unforgiving. Deadly. The freedom of isolation. The madness of it all. Over my six hours of driving, I see almost no one. This road is mine for a fleeting time, and I'm comforted by the feeling that I am probably as free and as mad as anybody else under these skies.<br />
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Prince Albert.<br />
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And then, Tulbagh.<br />
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Mr. Cat and the Jackal, a popular Cape Town band performed here last night. They are still doing breakfast on the balcony as I arrive to load in for my show. Persuaded that a little breakfast beer might be nice, I join the young animals for conversation. A musician social. Owner Chris Grobler joins us, and it's a pleasant hour spent before I need to set up.<br />
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But the real buzz today is that Doc MacLean and Albert Frost may play together here. I've heard this rumour myself. A number of people around South Africa have worked hard to arrange this introduction– Chris Grobler among them. Selfishly, they operated on the expectation that these artists would click and create some fabulous music. Doc MacLean, meet Albert Frost. I guess you've got guitars in the car, Albert?<br />
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Really, from my point of view, one of nicest things to come out of the Tour. I can count on one or two hands the musicians that can sit in with me, any place any time, and bring effortless greatness, joy, warmth, and passion to what I do. Albert is one of them. I feel like we have known each other for years. I expect we'll be friends for the rest of our lives. And I'm a big Albert Frost fan. One of Africa's major talents.<br />
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Chris is another guy I felt as though I'd known for ever. I had an amazing day hanging out with him and Albert, playing records, driving around. Chris has a jaw-dropping record collection. Many rare LPs. Somebody was onto the good stuff when the early re-issues began to come out. I was taken back to the massive record collection Colin Linden and I shared many years ago, courtesy of David Wilcox. It was a thrill to see some of these rare albums again, and to play them nice and loud!</div>
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Bound for the Garden Coast, another quintessential South African landscape.<br />
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I was able to spend some time with Marcia Moon, recently relocated from Pretoria to Betty's Bay. One of my favourite contemporary, South African singer-songwriters, she's a tough guitar player, tough singer, and a smart composer. She's got lots of content and knows how to put it across. I think North American audiences are going to like her a lot.<br />
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Gysie manages the bar and the stage tech at the PeriScope Theatre. A true, beard brother!</div>
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Before turning the wheels toward Cape Town, I stop to visit a nearby penguin colony. I've never seen penguins in the wild before. So, ok, they stand around quite a bit. Actually that's most of what they do. And they smell. Not nice. Not smart. She's laughing at him, and he's humping a rock. Penguins. Check. Been there, seen that. Next! Outta here. Where's Cape Town?<br />
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Bill Knight is a storied, South African singer-songwriter. North Americans will know what I mean when I say he reminds me somewhat of Tony Bird. There's not much room for pretenders here in South Africa. People have been through a lot, and often it's pretty close to the surface. Passion. Real stories. Close t the heart. The white bread has long since been stolen and eaten, washed down with blood, or red wine, or both. Guitars are not delicate, nor are the people who play them.<br />
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Bill was one of the people I first talked to when I was developing the Zulu Skies Tour. He's run The Cottage, a legendary Cape Town folk/roots club for many years– and I had it in my sights as being one of the best folk venues in Africa. I was not disappointed. I had a wonderful night, and I loved the room.<br />
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Here's the music education room at Paul Bothner Music in Plumstead, Cape Town.<br />
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That's Albert Frost on the left- dressed up to look like Dave Clarke! Are you folks old enough to remember the Dave Clarke Five?<br />
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My pal Gavin McKeller kindly provided the nicer images of the Alma Cafe seen below. Two, sold out shows here. The Alma, and all of my Cape Town region shows, were quite wonderful. Great audiences, great sound, great hospitality.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "times";">The Flame was a soul and rock band from Durban, South Africa. The band was founded in 1963 by guitarist Steve Fataar, above. I was thrilled and honoured that he came out to a couple of my shows. His original band included bassist Endries Fataar, drummer George Faber, and guitarist Eugene Champion. Eventually brother Ricky Fataar took on the drum throne, and Blondie Chaplin joined as lead singer and guitarist. This combo attracted the attention of Al Jardine and Carl Wilson who brought them to California to record for the Beach Boys label, Brother. Plenty of great soul and rock recordings, and the launching pad for the amazing voice and guitar playing of Blondie Chapman. Eventually Blondie and Ricky joined the Beach Boys, while Steve returned to South Africa. Today members of the band continue to work with Brian Wilson and with the Rolling Stones. Amazing records. YouTube up the Flame, and then Blondie Chapman with Paul Butterfield... I did this and spent a couple of days listening to some great soul records I had never heard before, most of them anchored by Steve Fataar. Steve can still be heard playing shows up and down the coast between Durban and Cape Town. Deep roots.</span><br />
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I took an afternoon and visited Mandela's cell on Robbin Island.<br />
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Albert Frost joined me for a sold out show at Die Boer Theatre in Durbanville.<br />
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Tech set up at the Mercury Club, Cape Town.<br />
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The media campaign continued through every region. I was interested to see that Zone Radio listeners messaged in from around the world during my visit there. As more media is streamed over the internet, one finds that they are sometimes reaching unexpected audiences in unexpected places. I was plugging my Cape Town shows, while listeners in Britain and Holland were asking questions. Did this put bum in seats at my Cape Town shows? All sold out or at standing capacity, so who knows? I also had support from traditional print media.<br />
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And then there's the ragged, crazed, and dangerous underbelly of it all. The invisible Tour of Despair and Determination. The character building moments carefully omitted from the daily rushes to social media. The reckless underpinnings of this impeccably planned undertaking.<br />
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What sort of fool would arrive in Africa all but penniless, with all credit cards overdrawn, and nothing in the bank? After the worst Canadian tour of the past twelve years, I wasn't going to give up on the African leg of Zulu Skies. I'd already paid my airfare, my car, and my South African cell phone on those credit cards! My last act in Canada was to deposit the entire, meagre earnings of the western tour into my credit card accounts. I knew the car hire would be requiring a major damage deposit on pick-up, and I wanted to make sure there was headroom. And so the adventure began.<br />
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Card declined. The bank had not processed my deposit yet. We cannot rent you the car, Sir. Forty-five minutes of international phone time to Mastercard in Canada. They reluctantly agree to raise my limit and put it through. Ten minutes later I'm self-driving on the wrong side of the road– I mean the Left side of the road– flying out of the parking lot onto the busy N-1 highway. Johannesburg. I'll quickly learn about potholes. I destroy a wheel and two tires within the hour. That takes the shine off my potential earnings. Within a day I've learned not to stop for red lights or stop signs. Within a week I've learned how to bribe a police officer.<br />
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None of the South African banks will let me make payments to any of my credit cards, or otherwise wire funds to my Canadian bank. After six weeks the card companies have brought their collection agencies in– guys who phone all day every day. And I'm in Africa! All cards are cut off entirely. My bank has overdrafted me so that my line of credit won't swallow my house. And here, in Africa, I've got a duffle bag with a hundred thousand useless rand in it. I feel like Chuck Berry. Driving around with a car full of money. No bank. Soon I'll need a bigger car with a bigger boot. I have a money problem.<br />
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Then, of course, the Poisoning. After the show illustrated above, I went to my room and drank water to disasterous effect. A harrowing, week long ordeal from the TransSky to a bed in a Cape Town hospital. What would a Tour be without multiple, near death experiences? If I was a cat, I would have been dead a long time ago. As it is, I've survived to tour again. Or at least I haven't died on the Tour. Yet. I'd like to postpone that as long as possible.<br />
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Did I mention that this Tour was, as all my tours are, entirely self-funding? Self-driven. Non-funded. It's been very successful in developing channels for actual cultural and market exchange between South Africa and Canada. As the American border tightens and the EU becomes more difficult, this relationship will be of increasing importance, and may lead the way to other trade and commerce between our two countries.<br />
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A last thanks to everyone involved on the ground. You know who you are! Again, these Tours are always the work of many hands: many small– and sometimes not so small things– keep this adventure rolling. And I never forget that. To everyone else, thanks so much for following along on this landmark Tour. Zulu Skies! I'm back in Canada to attend the Maple Blues Summit and the Maple Blues Awards. Meanwhile I'm making the rounds of doctors and clinics to follow up on my poisoning and subsequent illness, jogging slowly every day, and changing a couple of strings to get ready for the upcoming year. I hope to see you out there on the Blues Highway.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7975752083163699450.post-58045120292759443592016-12-23T22:42:00.000-05:002017-01-13T23:07:03.953-05:00Home<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I made it home. Alive. I don't feel very strong, and I'm tired, but I made it! Toronto, Canada. I'm reunited with The Big Lincoln. She's so fine! All of my gear arrived intact, and quickly found it's way into familiar places. I'm resting for a few days. Seeing a few doctors. Sleeping. It's a quiet town close to some big highways and an airport. The longer I'm here, the more I think about the big highways and the airport. Africa! It was a great Tour, under Zulu Skies. Forty shows! And, of course nine Canadian provinces and over a hundred concerts at the front end of it all. Possibly the longest tour I've ever done. I'm sorry I missed Newfoundland and the Yukon this time around.<br />
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I'll take a couple of weeks to wrap the details of the 2016, National Steel Zulu Skies Blues Tour. Then I'll attend the Maple Blues Summit and the Maple Blues Awards. By the end of the month I'll be announcing my plans for the upcoming year. Expect: recording, writing, and some interesting shows. The Tour will definitely return to South Africa. Details to follow! But first– laundry.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7975752083163699450.post-30065821033140440392016-12-22T23:00:00.000-05:002017-01-13T21:36:30.296-05:00Rough Exit<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The maybe three and a half hour drive from Knysna to Cape Town takes maybe ten hours. I'm stopping and sleeping and trying to drink water. Chocolate milk. Juice. It's all awful. Google leads me into town through a tangled maze of places I should not be driving. Really should not be driving. But I really should not be driving anyway. This is now a haze, a dream-like state. I'm straining to focus on driving. I keep following the blue dot. I've called ahead. Arriving, my world quickly fades.<br />
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I remember handing over the keys to my car. "Don't worry, Doc, we'll take care of you." I remember talking to a doctor. Arriving at a hospital. Waking up on a table with an IV in my arm. "You've had two litres, so far. How are you feeling?" I'm not sure if I had been unconscious, or dreaming, or out of my mind. But yes, I felt better. My mouth felt wet. A couple hours later I felt hungry. In the morning I had my first cup of coffee in a week. My first slice of toast. I had been near death, with all systems beginning to shut down. The hospital wants to keep me, but I've got a PA to return, a car to drop off, a train to catch, and a flight booked to get me home for Christmas. They give me an IV cocktail of antibiotics, a massive prescription, and wish me luck. Rescued by the grace of a friend. Given a few more hours on my own, this tour would probably have ended forever.<br />
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With some difficulty I navigate the summer heat, and return my sound gear to Paul Bothner Music. My small PA feels enormous and heavy as I move it, one piece at a time, from my car to the loading area. I'm reminded of times past when this gear was bigger, and heavier, and I had to load and unload an equipment trailer after every show. I'm glad when the job is done. And very, very tired.<br />
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The Lux, running from Cape Town to Johannesburg. A fine train with staterooms, chefs and white linens.<br />
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It's 10:30 in the morning. Already the state workers in their uniforms have taken to sleeping in the bushes. Soaking up shade wages in the heat of the African mid-summer. Well, what else would they do here in the long heat of the African day? The sheer volume of miniscule tasks will never be done.<br />
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A burning land begging for water. Displacement. Residue of old shelters once built, once lived in, gone now. Broken glass and a few bricks vanishing into the rippling heat. Why would one stop here? What were their hopes and dreams? Was there a hope, a dream, any reason at all? Or no hope, no dreams, just walking, walking, walking, until disappearing away away into the faded colours of high summer. Anyone could disappear here. You don't have to be special. The sun is a great equalizer, and gives no mercy.<br />
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The train is, the conductor says, only about four hours behind schedule. I've written in an extra ten hours between the Johannesburg train station and the airport, so I'm not worried. African time. You've got to learn to gracefully wedge it into other zones, other schedules. Propped on pillows, I drink water and watch the landscape drift past. African rails run over cement ties, so the ride is a little rough and grinding. Rough and grinding. Rough and grinding. I had no idea that the locomotive itself was failing– finally grinding to a rough halt on a desert spur...<br />
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And now, "Oh, Mr. MacLean! We've had a problem with one of our locomotives. We will use an old one to push it to the next station, and get a man to try and fix it there." Suddenly my ten hours have been transformed, and I remain suspended in African time.<br />
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Me and all my gear. The heat rising in thick, shimmering waves outside. Recklessly, I bribe the porter to get me off the train. I should be in hospital, recovering, taking my meds. Instead I'm standing railside with a giant, wheeled bag I can barely move. Inside it: my guitars, my money, my laptop, my material world. It's just 250 km to the airport, and I could still make my flight to Munich. After reaching the nearest road, I begin a series of wild, local taxi rides.<br />
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I arrive at the airport an hour late. South African Airways are very helpful and sympathetic. "We can get you on the same flight in 24 hours, and you can make the same connection. There are seats available, and it costs exactly the same." All I have to do is get my travel agent to call them and roll the date forward.<br />
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My travel agent is a company called Expedia.ca, and it turns out there is no way to reach them on line for customer service. I've got to phone them in North America, from the ticket counter in South Africa. This I do, and I'm put on hold for over 30 minutes until the international call time runs out, and the call is disconnected. Moments later my phone's battery hits zero as well. This is a pattern which will be repeated several times over the next 18 hours as I purchase and use hundreds of rand worth of airtime, exhaust it, exhaust the batteries of my phone, and bribe the cleaner guy to let me recharge it in his office. Finally I get a guy who says OK, it's taken care of, but I'll need to pay them a surcharge of $800 to make it happen. For the flight that costs exactly the same.<br />
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I sink into my seat, asleep before the wheels have said good-bye to Africa.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7975752083163699450.post-69562135064447854322016-12-17T22:00:00.000-05:002017-01-11T12:42:04.555-05:00Backswing: Desert to Coast. Near Death in the TransSky<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I'm coming to love this desert-like area. I'm heading out of Cape Town after a great run of shows. The road is relaxed, and neatly opens up before me. Unfolding. The big version of my little maps. I know where I'm going now, and I've seen some of these roads before. I've got water, I've got time. It's a nice ride. Did I mention I bought a new tire?<br />
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I'm headed back into the Karoo, or more properly, the TransSky region. I've got two nights of shows at the Karoo Art Hotel in Barrydale. This is a gorgeous, beautifully detailed and restored building dating to the 1800s. The rooms are wonderful. The grounds welcoming. I'm going to stay on here for a day or two after my show.<br />
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Purple trees. I thought this was a spring display, but perhaps they bloom later at this elevation. Mid-summer now, and no longer cool in the daytime. At night, the winds do come up. Perfect for porching, or for sleeping.<br />
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My room looks out across the valley. I plan on sitting here writing songs- and working on this blog- for the next three days. Then I've got two more show dates to wrap the Tour. This is my first block of down time over the Tour, and I'm quite looking forward to it. I've met some great local folks, I love the hotel. Nice to be in one place for just a little while.<br />
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I've been looking for hydro insulators. My pal, Morgan Davis collects these, and I hope to bring him one from South Africa. But these are not glass, and they are not pretty. Grey-brown ceramic lumps. I'm told that they are all imported from somewhere. I can't seem to find a loose one anywhere, anyway...<br />
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Who would of guessed? A moment of inattention. I woke up in the small hours of the night, very thirsty. With no bottled water in my room, I sleepily grab the glass next to the sink and drink a glass of water. "I wonder if I should of done that?" I thought, before falling back to sleep. It is a good hotel. They did have a glass sitting there, ready for use...<br />
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I awake with a violent dysentery. I can't eat. I know I've got to drink water. This is not good. Hopefully it's a 24 hour bug. I'm burning up. I sleep away the day in my room.<br />
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Maybe it's a 48 hour bug. I can't eat. I drink bottled water, but it tastes awful. I sleep and hope this will run it's course. Day three: I take over an hour to crawl out of bed, dress, and make my way to the front desk. I'm sick. I need medical help. Is there a doctor on call for the Hotel? No. Is there a doctor in town? A walk-in clinic? A nurse? No one knows. I head out in my car to the civic centre, where I eventually discover that the medical clinic closed months ago. This is a holiday week, and the nearest doctor will probably be three hours south over mountain and desert roads. Now late in the day, I elect to wait. I've got to drive that road south tomorrow anyway. I've got a major theatre show in a tourist, holiday town, and I'm sure they'll be able to direct me to a nurse, a doctor, a clinic, a pharmacy. Anything. I need to play these last two shows, as the margins are going to be tight on this tour. I wasn't originally planning any down time- so these two shows need to carry the whole of the last week.<br />
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Now I'm very weak. Thank goodness the broken down old porter is on hand to help me load the sound gear. It takes a long time to pack. This is hard work. I give him a big tip. I insisted on carrying my own gear in when I arrived, so I hope this makes it up. I eat a boiled egg, and vomit next to my car. Nothing is going down. I'm even having trouble with liquids. I know I've got to drink them, but now they taste foul, and are very hard to swallow. I've got sores inside my mouth. I'm now using bungee cables to hold up my pants. How much weight have I lost in how many days? I load in some bottles of water and pop, and head out. I thought the pop might give me a few sugar calories and help me to keep going. Can't drink it, either. Not more than a mouthful. My eyes feel strange. I probably should not be driving.<br />
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I arrive at the Barnyard Theatre, later than planned. I've had to stop at every gas station toilet along the way. I've had to park and sleep a few times. But I made it. I found the theatre. It's not in town. In fact, it is some distance from town, and they are waiting for me to sound check. An early show. Doors are already open. Get me a bottle of water and a glass of red. Thankfully, I'm the first act on the program, and there is a band to close the night. Remarkably, my set goes really well. I'm not even aware of being sick until I leave the stage. My room is upstairs, and I go directly to it. The theatre provides me with a little cheese and cracker plate. I can't eat. I'm asleep in moments, in spite of the band playing in the room below me.<br />
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Morning finds me alone in the theatre compound. Two zebras stare over the fence at me. I visit the toilet. I drink bottled water. I'm locked in and can't reach my car. Fortunately the cleaners arrive and let me out. I understand that I am now badly dehydrated. The taste in my mouth and the pain in my body cause me to speculate that my liver and my kidneys may be failing. My tongue is white and feels foreign in my mouth. I'm on my way to a big town. I'll find help there. This is not, not good.<br />
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The Knysna Blues Festival was the first organization in South Africa to book me. By chance, it's also the last concert of the Tour– a Tour which rapidly expanded to over 40 shows from this first booking. I've been looking forward to this festival from the beginning. The folks who run it are really nice, and have been very helpful to me. And– after nearly two months of touring South Africa– I now know most of the acts on the bill. I've done other shows with many of these performers. Many are friends. This should be like old home week, a celebration of the Zulu Skies Tour and all the good things it has brought me.<br />
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I check into the Festival office to get my ID, my schedule, and my hotel. "Do you folks have a doctor on call?" Apparently this is a North American concept. I repair to my hotel for an hour, and then I'm back. I'm on early in the program, but the whole picture is beginning to become quite a haze. Albert Frost is waiting for me. There's a big crowd out front. Somehow I get my gear to the stage and get set up. Then we're on! Again, remarkably, I feel clear and focused. Albert and I turn in a set that is very well received. And I think that it was probably, actually, a great set. It felt that way from my chair. That's it. The last show of the Tour. Done. I did it. Zulu Skies. Albert helps me to carry my things off the stage. I go to a space behind the green room, and lie down on the concrete floor.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7975752083163699450.post-87404303182146075142016-12-10T22:08:00.000-05:002017-01-12T15:21:35.744-05:00Cape Town: The Left Coast of South Africa<br />
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Many roads lead to Cape Town. I'm heading toward the more southerly part of the region, so I've decided to come in on the coastal road instead of the expressways. My Canadian friends might mistake this for a picture of blowing snow: these hot, white sands drifting over the highway. School's out. By 8:30 in the morning these beaches are crowded. It's the holiday season. Summer is doing it's best. By noon the sun will have beat back all but the foreign tourists.<br />
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Bill Knight is a storied, South African singer-songwriter. North Americans will know what I mean when I say he reminds me somewhat of Tony Bird. There's not much room for pretenders here in South Africa. People have been through a lot, and often it's pretty close to the surface. Real stories. The white bread has long since been stolen and eaten, washed down with blood, or red wine, or both. Guitars are not delicate, nor are the people who play them.<br />
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Bill was one of the people I first talked to when I was developing the Zulu Skies Tour. He's run The Cottage, a legendary folk/roots club for many years– and I had it in my sights as being one of the best folk venues in Africa. I was not disappointed. We had a wonderful night, and I loved the room.<br />
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The next morning, I'm off to one of Paul Bothner Music's outlets– Plumstead, I believe. Paul Bothner has sponsored my audio production gear for the South African leg of the National Steel Zulu Skies Blues Tour. It is a nice, family run, chain of music stores extending across the country. I'm very much reminded of Canada's Long & McQuade- indeed, the stores look and feel very much the same. Here, as in Canada, I'm doing a series of blues guitar workshops. The Plumstead location is pretty nice, and has a dedicated room and stage.<br />
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Yup, had bums in all the seats shortly after this picture was taken. Plenty of guitar players and, of course, a 15 year old who could play like Stevie. A good player, too. I heard him. Again, I'm struck by the sheer proficiency of the younger generation. Robert Johnson had a turntable. We had headphones, and then cassette tapes with vari-speed adjusters (hey, maybe half a tone up or down!), album jacket notes, and then the early bad-tab transcriptions (these still won't go away). Today the digital world has provided learning and listening tools that we would never have imagined. Slow it down– in pitch! Auto-replay that passage! These kids can learn stuff in an afternoon that we might of spent a week, or a month, working on. And maybe we never did get it right. Who knows? And then you can watch guys actually playing it on YouTube. So, here we are. For this generation, the musical skills have never been better, but the creative spirit- the artistry, the ability to touch the world, remains pretty much as it always has been. There's plenty of mechanical talent– but only the occasional genius surfaces to hold our hearts. This is the area that most needs encouragement.<br />
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If there's one thing I try to leave my students with, it's the courage to write and sing their own stories in their own voices; putting passion and honesty at the beginning, and letting the musical form follow as it may.<br />
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Here are two familiar faces. I've got another couple of shows coming up with Albert Frost before the Tour wraps. Very exciting. We had big fun hanging out up in Tulbagh, and I think we are both looking forward to doing it again. Here, he looks very much like a member of the Dave Clarke Five– and he's sporting what looks to be my Bandmaster- Bassman cabinet combination... I'd use my 330 with this. Of course I don't have a Fender sponsorship. Or even a National sponsorship. Or a Republic sponsorship... Could we work on this?<br />
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What it is! A great, Cape Town venue. Sold out for two shows. My pal Gavin McKeller took this pic, and the next four below. All the musicians told me I'd love this room. They were right. I came away from here with a whole lot of new friends. Somehow, in all the excitement, I failed to get any pictures of Richard and Retha and Jonnathan, and all the cool kids who help make this place go. What can I say? I'll be back!! And I'll take pictures.<br />
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So nice to have great sound done by a guy who really knows what he's doing. Richard has this aging, Dynacord desk, and it sounded absolutely wonderful. Set up and sound check took less than five minutes. Perfect sound all night, both nights. And plenty of red wine. Hard to go wrong here.<br />
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Waiting lists both nights for the dinner and show events. They do a fairly early start, do the meal first, and dessert at half time. Good folks. An educated, engaged concert audience for both shows. I sold quite a few cds to this crowd– always nice when that happens.<br />
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Neighbours and Alma patrons Gill and John adopted me for a few days largely because I am a Maclean, and also because I really needed a mid-town base for my work around Cape Town. Gill is a McLean, and took me around to meet her Mum, Mrs. McLean– a local character. Strangely enough this family originally came from the same little pocket in the north of Scotland that mine did. Up on the Lovat Estates, near Inverness. There were not many Macleans up there at all, so we are almost certainly distant cousins.<br />
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Gill has also adopted the river above. She and her group of helpers are working hard to clean it up and restore original, wild plant species to the banks.<br />
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The Barleycorn Folk Club. I think Africa's longest running folk club. A big room. Capacity audience. I wanted to play here as a matter of respect for the long history of the organization. Still a great gig because it has such a great audience. On the same bill was Steve Walsh and his Lekker Band with special guest Tim Parr. Steve has had a long career in South Africa– I'd say he's blues royalty there. A great singer, player, bandleader. His Lekker band plays as well as any of the North American festival bands. At the end of the evening I sit in with these guys for a few tunes. Big fun. Nice to get to play a bit with Tim, as well.<br />
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The Flame was a soul and rock band from Durban, South Africa. The band was founded in 1963 by guitarist Steve Fataar, above. I was thrilled and honoured that he came out to a couple of my shows. His original band included bassist Endries Fataar, drummer George Faber, and guitarist Eugene Champion. Eventually brother Ricky Fataar took on the drum throne, and Blondie Chaplin joined as lead singer and guitarist. This combo attracted the attention of Al Jardine and Carl Wilson who brought them to California to record for the Beach Boys label, Brother. Plenty of great soul and rock recordings. Eventually Blondie and Ricky joined the Beach Boys, while Steve returned to South Africa. Today members of the band continue to work with Brian Wilson and with the Rolling Stones. Amazing records. YouTube up the Flame, and then Blondie Chapman with Paul Butterfield... I did this and spent a couple of days listening to some great soul records I had never heard before. Steve can still be heard playing shows up and down the coast between Durban and Cape Town.<br />
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Originally I was going to visit Robbin Island on my down day. That was before I booked a second show at the Alma, and before it got difficult to get tickets to go to the Island. But now, here I am on a show day, early in the morning, at the waterfront, trying to hustle a ticket in person. On line they said they were sold out. I'm here with a nice young couple from the Cafe, and they are doing their best to persuade the ticket office that I am a visiting rock star from America. And it's sort of true. They have seen me in the newspaper.<br />
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This is a personal trip. My journey to look, to see for myself: to stand where Mandela stood. The ticket guy finally says he can get us on the one o'clock boat. It comes back at four. So with a little hustle I could still make my gig up in Durbanville. I decide to risk it. I have not come half way around the world to not make this visit.<br />
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I made a short Facebook, Instagram post of the above picture. The caption read as follows:<br />
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"Mandela's cell. I made the journey to Robbin Island, to stand where he stood, to look out through the bars– his bars, the bars he looked through for 18 years. To feel the place. To better understand how ideas can never be contained by structures such as this."<br />
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The response to the above post surprised me, but perhaps I should of expected it. Dozens of posts to my page suggested that I don't know what I'm talking about. That Mandela was nothing but a terrorist– a word I despise as it is commonly used today. Hostile language. Threatening language. I took the majority of these posts down– not simply because I found them to be offensive, but because I did not and do not wish to have these old battles re-run on my page. It's not that I have any lack of respect for the sheer passion behind the comments. It's not that I don't understand that there are different Mandelas for different people in different times and places. In fact, the hostile comments made this truth perfectly clear. But there is also a Mandela who belongs to the world, not just to South Africa.<br />
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Finally, my simple caption did not express an opinion of any sort, or make any comment about the Apartheid government, Mandela, the revolution, or the current state of South Africa. Nor have I done so on stage or elsewhere. I have mentioned that I believe South Africa may well become one of the great nations of the next century, but that is all. My time in South Africa has been spent listening and learning. I'm a guest here. And, I hope, a respectful one. People from all backgrounds have told me their stories, and treated me very well. I have been made welcome– and this is a valued trust.<br />
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South Africa is a young, post-revolution nation. Anyone, of any race, who has lived through the events since 1948 has been bruised and impacted in some way. It is a country still deeply engaged in healing. A country with a dream– the Rainbow Nation– that is not shared, or viewed in the same way by all. A country in which many people have suffered deep losses. A country in which everyone has a story. Or many stories. A country in which citizens wear their passion for their nation on their sleeves. A country who's future is still far from being secure or predictable. But still a country of hope, I believe. A nation moving forward. Changes never seem to occur at the right speed when they are impacting lives.<br />
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Canada and South Africa have much in common. Constitutionally, and procedurally in the reconciliation process there is a history of exchange. And both peoples are painfully polite– when someone bumps into us, we always say– "sorry!" Upon my return to my own imperfect country, I will have much to think about. Already, I am planning my return to South Africa. I am thinking about truth. About art. About the responsibilities of the artist to be truthful. Above is the view of Cape Town and Table Mountain from Robbin Island.<br />
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Probably the best concert of the National Steel Zulu Skies Blues Tour. Albert Frost and I playing a sold-out theatre show at Die Boer, in Durbanville, South Africa. There was nothing not to like about this show. After good food, good wine, great sound and lighting, and a wonderful audience– we delivered a fabulous show and had a ball doing it. Durbanville is a northern suburb of Cape Town. Thanks to Lorna and Lorna D Photography for covering no less than three Cape Town area shows, and for kindly sharing some images with me.<br />
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Back into the heart of Cape Town for a Bluestown Sessions show at the Mercury Club. It's a big, downtown room. A concert hall, really, with a bar. There were a number of acts on the Blues bill with me, but I played a solo set as the other shows were pretty much electric, big bands. All great players. The bar is pretty high in Cape Town.<br />
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Doc MacLean and Doctor John, the veteran Cape Town based blues and soul singer. It was great to meet him and hear him sing a few tunes at the Mercury Club. Next time we'll need a day to hang out!<br />
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My front row at my last Cape Town area show: Villa Pascal, in Durbanville. Lots of red wine. Lots of guitar players. There was a time when girls used to sit in the front row. Now it's a boy's club, and we enjoy talking music and guitars. A nice night out! Villa Pascal is a fine, small theatre with great sound and great sight lines. People bring their own food, so it's actually a bit of a pot luck event. Quite unique and quite cool.<br />
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Villa Pascal empresario Eugene Lebreton and I had a great time trading music business stories. We'll need more time, and more wine, next time. My quarters are only steps from the theatre but, as I'm planning an early start in the morning, I bid all an early good-night.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7975752083163699450.post-26256367432605782342016-12-03T18:00:00.000-05:002017-01-09T20:23:12.877-05:00The Garden Coast to Cape Town: the Sugarman HighwayOld plantation houses, converted to inns. Or maybe they always were railside hotels?<br />
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The wrap around porch-walkways are always inviting.<br />
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How often do you see one of these outside your room?<br />
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Or one of these in your room?!!<br />
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Rolling up the coast to meet my pal Marcia Moon. I've got the night off, so I'm going to sit in on her gig in Stellenbosch.<br />
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Yeah, the Sugarman Highway. I'm pretty sure the opening sequence was shot somewhere along this road. Totally thrilled by this drive. I've got Ms. Moon's cd cranked up in the car, and I'm liking it- even the Africanner stuff I can't understand. She's a tough, singer-songwriter guitarist who writes and plays really well. North American's are gonna like her when she gets across the pond.<br />
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Set up and sound check. It's nice to be along for the ride on somebody else's gig. Even relaxing. A pleasant night with tourists and college kids.<br />
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In the morning, it's back to business. I get to backtrack the coastal road a little bit for tonight's show.<br />
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Paragraph three is so African. Baboons. That's the way it is here, too. These creatures sit on the side of the road like little hitch-hiking beggars... waiting. And they will break into houses, too. Baboons. Yup. Real deal. Not nice. Not friendly. But smart enough to jimmy a window. Elsewhere, I woke one morning to find a baboon sneaking into my room...<br />
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Bar manager, theatre sound man, jack of all things of the night. Gysie keeps the gig fuelled before and after. He's also getting work as a film extra in Cape Town– they love that beard. Hey, I could do that!<br />
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Before turning the wheels toward Cape Town, I stop to visit a nearby penguin colony. I've never seen penguins in the wild before. So, ok, they stand around quite a bit. Actually that's most of what they do. And they smell. Not nice. Penguins. Check. Been there, done that. Next! Outta here. Where's Cape Town?<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7975752083163699450.post-54997148233103326442016-11-29T18:37:00.000-05:002017-01-08T18:38:38.314-05:00East Cape and Across the Karoo Desert<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Roads greatly improved, I have an easy, relaxed drive down the coast to Kenton-On-The-Sea. It's a little resort and retirement town, just off season. But who can resist playing a venue called the Goat Shed? My publicist, Warren Gibson, lives nearby with his family- so we also take the opportunity to visit, discuss strategy, and socialize. Plug Music rocks. Warren has done a great job and it's been a pleasure to work with him. We're already talking about the next Tour. Now, when a sudden rainstorm knocks out the power, I set up to do the Goat Shed show by candle light– without mics. I'm an old street singer, I like doing shows this way!<br />
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Down the widening highways to Port Elizabeth. A larger, coastal city. I'm to do the afternoon drive show on the big pop rock station- an event that's been set up weeks in advance. This could really help to put bums in seats for my evening show at the Music Kitchen. As I enter the studio, my heart sinks– I hear "American Pie" on the monitor– and the opening question is "what can you tell us about that song?"<br />
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In a remarkable display of nerve and silver tonguing, I actually twisted this interview into a beautiful thing, played guitar on the radio, promoted my Narrow House album, talked up the evening show- and answered the American Pie question. Damn! Sometimes I'm good!<br />
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A great show at the Music Kitchen. I'll be back! A really interesting indoor/outdoor room with a bonfire in the back. Nice people who bought lots of cds!<br />
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The Coast behind me, I'm looking forward to heading out across the Karoo Desert. Some big distances out here. Relaxed. Beautiful. I've got bottles of water and a full tank of gas. How fast does this little car go? We'll find out. There's almost no one out here. The road. And sometimes little ruins out in the distance. Who lived here? When? Why? How? Mid summer now, and it's getting warm.<br />
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I'm headed for what's been described to me as a "small drinking town with a farming problem." Nieu-Bethesda. I'm feeling relaxed, driving under big skies, my Africa relaxing with me now. There are ranches out here in the big spaces, or farms, estates. I'm not sure what they are called, but they are far apart, and seem far from wealthy. A hard life, I'd think. But I've met characters like this before in the American south-west. It takes a special sort, to make a life in an area like this one. Beautiful. Silent. Deadly. The freedom of isolation. The madness of it all. Over my six hours of driving, I see almost no one. This road is mine for a fleeting time, and I'm comforted by the feeling that I am probably as free and as mad as anybody else under these skies.<br />
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This is not one of the largest venues on my schedule, but I'm immediately glad I came. The town has evolved to be a little arts community with galleries, guest houses, a few restaurants, and a micro brewery. There are children riding an old horse down the main street. Pre-holiday. By next week every room will be filled, cars parked up and down. The cash injection needed to carry this place until the next holiday. I love these little arts towns in the off-season. I love the people who somehow wind up living in places like this, nurturing the old buildings, fostering warm little communities of odd souls.<br />
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It's a fun, local filled show in this barn-like bar. Outside, post-show, a strange, star filled sky. I sit on my porch and watch it for a while. Dead still. Dead quiet, but for the peeps of the little lizards.<br />
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In the morning, I stop over at the Owl House. Just steps from my guest house. Owl House is the main tourist attraction in this far flung little spot. A strange sculpture garden created by a strange woman many years ago. Powerful. My broken camera didn't capture it as I might of hoped. Or I didn't use my broken camera as skillfully as I might of wished. Stark, desert art by a woman I might or might not of liked. But flesh and bone art. Of this place. I would not of missed it for the little landscape galleries.<br />
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Soon I'm blasting down the naked highways, now heating up. Heading for the Showroom Theatre in Prince Albert. This is one of the most splendid small theatres in South Africa, and I'm very much looking forward to it. An amazing, art deco theatre, with a world class presentation stage.<br />
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I'm up early and away. I've got an afternoon theatre show in Tulbagh, some distance across the desert. How fast can this little Chevy go? I'm not going to tell you here!<br />
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Tulbagh. Saronsberg Theatre. This place is beyond the desert. It's green. It's fruit trees and wine estates. It's a historic, not so sleepy town, less than two hours from Cape Town.</div>
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Mr. Cat and the Jackal, a popular Cape Town band performed here last night. They are still doing breakfast on the balcony as I arrive to load in for my show. Persuaded that a little breakfast beer might be nice, I join the young animals for conversation. A musician social. Owner Chris Grobler joins us, and it's a pleasant hour spent before I need to set up.<br />
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A number of people around South Africa have worked hard to arrange this introduction. Selfishly, they operated on the expectation that these artists would click and create some fabulous music. Doc MacLean, meet Albert Frost. I guess you've got guitars in the car, Albert?<br />
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Damn straight! I've been checking Albert out on YouTube for months. Long enough to convince me not to play Sugarman for an encore. Long enough to know that this guy is a special kind of player. But I haven't had this much fun in years. Historic. This is very cool.<br />
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I feel like I've known Albert and Chris for years. We spend the next day hanging out, driving around, playing records. I'm blessed. I think it's pretty safe to say we'll be doing this again. And again.<br />
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It was a beautiful day, spent with great friends. Albert and I are booked to play a theatre together in about a week or ten days. I'm looking forward to that. We haven't rehearsed, but we've got a much better idea now about how cool it's going to be! Meanwhile, I've pointed the little white car towards the Garden Coast. In a couple more days I'll roll into Cape Town.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7975752083163699450.post-28993722542640408412016-11-24T16:40:00.000-05:002017-01-23T13:42:20.106-05:00Many Roads: Highway 61 Visited, Not Re-visited<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Many roads. That much is certain. What is it now? The first few thousand kilometres of African highway. Theatres, clubs, juke joints, cows, goats, sheep, taxis, pot holes, speed bumps as big as my car, the horizon always teasing. These roads are posted fast. Slightly less hectic now. Less populated than the north-east, capital district. The open countryside is more relaxed. Fewer barb wire fences. Fewer people walking the roadside. A man in rags, barefoot, makes me drive around him. I've seen two bodies on the roadside in less than a week. Some of these people have arrived from other lands. Walking. They are tired. Or sometimes, high. They don't seem to understand the speed of the road. Or maybe they are beyond caring, beyond worrying about such simple things. Sometimes they run. Maybe they freeze in the headlights at night. I don't know. Maybe they just don't think. Don't think about the speed. Too tired for that. I wonder if there is, at some level, a disconnect from the power, the strain, the danger of the road. These two worlds. Symbiotic. Close. But far apart.</div>
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Some walk beside the highway. Some run. Some are going to work somewhere in the pre-dawn light. Others are just going. Going on from somewhere with nothing to some other place with nothing. Africa is nothing, if not busy. It's walking and picking stuff up. It's trying to flag a ride. It's about not having and having. To have and have not. It's a first world and a third world standing shoulder to shoulder, face to face. Here, under barbed wire and palms. Under Zulu skies, things are complicated. I'm in the first world with my blues tour. My worries are different worries. Much different. The shanty towns built next to the highway. The trash poured out into the ditch. The home-made speed bumps. The traffic lights that don't work because some squatters have figured out how to steal the power. Dark at night. One doesn't stop for red lights. You open the gate to the electric fence, and quickly drive inside.</div>
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But now my Google is messing up again. I'm driving around and around Bloemfontein. I'm talking on the phone to a guy who is giving me instructions I can't seem to grasp. This is a first world problem. Maybe it's my accent. Maybe it's his accent. Clearly there is a communications failure going on here. Planets may be in the wrong places. Who knows? Two hours later, I find the place. It's not in Bloem. It's near Bloem. On a highway near another highway. Easy if you know where it is! The Aasvoel Klub turns out to be quite cool...<br />
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Hein built this place. An authentic, African juke joint. Nothing is wasted here! It looks great in the daytime. It looks wild at night. It is wild at night. A great gig, and a good crowd in spite of it being a Monday show.<br />
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Big drive day. I'm taking some smaller roads east, and then south into Kwa Zulu Natal...<br />
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Caladdi, at Lidgetton, in the midlands of KZN.</div>
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Nova-May Challinor runs a picturesque resort in the KZN midlands.<br />
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Down to Eshowe, in the heart of Zululand. In fact, I play The House at Zululand. Outside, I admire their giant, purple-blue lillies. I wonder if they would grow in my Canadian garden? It is an interesting drive into Eshowe from the big road. Cane being harvested by hand just beyond the ditches. A twisted, narrow highway up into the hills. Small houses and farms cut into, and clinging to the slopes. The clouds hanging overhead. I wanted to drive a series of back roads, but the folks in the midlands talked me out of it. I still don't have a spare tire. "If you break down out there, you'll lose everything," I'm told. I don't know if that's true. But I've got a car full of gear, and I don't plan on finding out. I make the highway drive through Durban, backtracking the next morning.<br />
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The Indian Ocean. Mine for the first time. Like an old pirate, I anchor my land ship in a parking lot, pace down through the sand, across the roaring wind, to dip my foot in this warm water. It's a different ocean from the others I have experienced. How could you leave an ocean like this one? I'm on the KZN South Coast. The venue I was to play has lost it's presentation licence and had to close suddenly, so some local musicians have scrambled to set up a replacement show for me. I'm here hours early, so I snooze in my car and listen to the murmur of the waves.<br />
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A pleasant evening with local singer-songwriter John Skuy. Sugar cane, pineapples, the soft crash of the ocean. Red wine in buckets. Very nice.<br />
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And now: Highway 61. An African Highway 61. Not so different than the old 61 road I used to ride south out of Memphis in the early 1970s. Well, maybe this road is rougher than that one was. Tougher. This one I'm riding from Ramsgate to Port St. Johns. It crawls, it stops, it waits, it passes, reckless and wild. It's a blues highway from KwaZulu-Natal to the Eastern Cape. It's my route to the Wild Coast. Cattle crowd the highway. Goats. One of the taxi-vans flies past, gets smashed at the top of a hill, and plunges off the steep bank.<br />
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It's market day in the little villages, and the streets throng with people. Speakers blasting, walking into traffic, riding in open bakkies. Pot holes. Too fast. Too slow. There's not much shoulder next to the pavement. If you drop a wheel off the crumbled blacktop you could roll your car. I almost do that. I'm ok. I'm ok. Now I'll hug that centre line like everyone else. I'll take whatever road is available and use it for my own. It all could of ended here, quickly, at the twist of a wheel. A little bit of luck, and a little bit of skill. Sooner or later you run out of one or the other.<br />
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Little houses everywhere. Corrugated tin roofs. Rocks on top to hold them down. More goats, lying in the road. People walking. Walking everywhere. Talking on cell phones. Sitting by the wayside, in small groups, drinking. It's Saturday. Speed bump. Speed bump. Speed bump. If you hit one of these above a certain speed you will destroy your car. Gouges in the road serve as rumble strips. Tame this highway? I don't think so. Climbing, climbing, climbing. Twisting. Every hill a mass of neatly cut terraces. How could these frail houses cling to these steep slopes? These villages are not on my maps. The occasional town is. This gives me hope. I'm still on 61. I'm not lost in this land of no signs.<br />
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Highway 61. Trying to flag a ride. That could of been Robert Johnson, standing at the crossroads back there, or up ahead of me. Arms outstretched, fingers open. And the whole world seems to be walking, as if flagging a ride were only a dream. Inexplicably, two men in fitted, black suits stride purposefully along the broken shoulder. Walking. The world is mostly walking. Dressed neat. Balancing bags on heads. Babies on backs. Trying to flag a ride. Trying to sell me fruit, water, pop at every slow corner of the road.<br />
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The sugar cane fields come and go. Teams of people are working these by hand. The road twists. I am alone. I'm not alone, but I feel alone. A white man in a sea of black faces. I could be drowning in this sea, or I could be swimming. I have no idea. I do know that I have entered into a type of relationship with the world that I have never experienced before. Not in this way. I am first world, a white beacon recklessly moving through this land of broken roads alone, without a spare tire. In a breakdown, my privileged world could disappear in a hundred directions: into the corrugated homes, mud brick structures, behind the burning rubbish, into wanting hands. Or not. Today these hands are waving at me, and teaching me. I'm not sure exactly what. But they remind me that there are many things I don't know or understand in this world. Yet. But these are lessons, gathering in my mind as I navigate new roads, and new places of the heart.<br />
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Highway 61. It brings me back now to the comforting roar of the Indian Ocean. Here, behind locked gates, I'll play a show tonight. This is good. The location, that is. The Wild Coast. They grow dope here. That's the root economy. Dope and beaches. It's a young, mixed race crowd of travellers and backpackers. They're in the mood to party and– indeed– after my show, the party continues all night. It reminds me of Tofino, on Vancouver Island. From my bed, I can see the moon sliding across the ocean. I fall asleep with the booming of Jimmy Cliff in the distance.<br />
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I take my down day here, and go for a long run on the coastal trail. Ok, I walked quite a bit, too. And then swam in some tidal pools. You can get sucked out to sea, or eaten by sharks along this coast. The great, warm, welcoming roar of the water has persuaded many to such fate. The shore pools were everything I needed. I bet you could also disappear in these hills, if you ran into the wrong company. I didn't run into anybody at all, and had a good long trail expedition. Without a brimmed hat, my face took more sun than I would have wished for. You'll see me red-faced for the next couple of days!<br />
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This ass came into the bar and ate my breakfast toast. I didn't want the wheat bread, anyway. Even the cats beg on the Wild Coast. This one followed me for two days, and got nothing. I'm not really sure what it wanted. Beer? Do cats drink beer? Maybe this one did advance work for the donkey. Never mind.<br />
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I rode 61 Highway out, and much of the way to East London. A bigger town, a bigger venue. And one of the most interesting radio interviews I have ever given took place before the show. A freewheeling, but well thought out series of questions about music, politics, race and culture. I was challenged, and thrilled to meet these questions and the woman behind them at Coast Radio. This is the kind of discussion I'd like to have more often. These are the kinds of ideas that float in my green rooms, my car, my study. Now, I'm thinking about participating in the walk from Cape Town to Cairo next year... Reminded once more of how ordinary people like ourselves can change the world.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7975752083163699450.post-40179838846426654472016-11-14T07:01:00.002-05:002017-01-25T12:06:04.395-05:00Africa LandingLondon: Heathrow. Still the crossroads of the world. Flights leaving to everywhere you've ever heard of. Casablanca, Istanbul, Zurich. It's all routed through here. My flight to Johannesburg, now departing an hour later. That's a ten hour layover now. An expensive airport. And the bar is not that friendly. Beer at something like five pounds a pint. I don't know what the exchange is to what currency, but I sense it's a lot. Nobody's pounding these down unless they have corporate expense accounts. My laptop and my cell phone are all but dead. I should of charged them on the plane. There are charging stations all over the place, but they ignore the fact that it is an international airport- strictly British outlets while transit passengers like me don't have adaptors. Maybe if the Johannesburg plane ever gets here I can charge up on it...<br />
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Africa! After months of preparation, I'm shuffled through the Customs line. "How long are you going to stay?" STAMP! "Welcome to South Africa!" I walk down another hallway called "Nothing to Declare." My giant bag is waiting. I'm glad my guitars were not sitting, visible in that area. There doesn't seem to be anybody around to supervise the baggage. Out another door, and I'm in the hustle of the terminal.<br />
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Crowds of men in suits, in vests. "Taxi! Taxi! Ride to hotel, Sir?"<br />
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It's not the wrong side of the road, it's just the opposite side to which i'm used to driving. The car rental exits directly onto the expressway, so there's no pissing around to get used to this. My Heathrow depleted phone/GPS dies within five minutes. And my expensive paper maps of South Africa give no Johannesburg information beyond the largest of roads. And it's raining.<br />
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People are walking along the highway, across the highway. Cars are driving on the shoulders, crossing the median. Little minivan taxis are everywhere. Weaving, bobbing, stopping, starting, honking: guys hanging out of the windows yelling, music beating and booming. Groups of people are sitting under bridges. Trucks barely moving: spilling blue smoke in dense clouds, leaning on strange angles. Overloaded. Carrying what? Breakdowns in the ditches. Earnest men in dirty clothes and baseball hats grouped around open hoods. Police everywhere. I don't know what you have to do, or who you have to be, to get stopped out here. This road is posted 120 and the lux cars in the fast lane are flashing, pushing, wanting to do much better than that. And they are.<br />
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There's no USB plug in my rented car, so I can't charge up, phone anybody, or re-boot my Google Maps. Well, now I'm on a mystery tour of Johannesburg and- as I quickly confirm- it's a big place! Eventually I get focused on remembering where on the Big Map my destination was near. Charlie and Wim's pace. Friends. Blues people. A secure spot I can sit and figure out what's what, have a beer, and recover from 35 hours of travel. Ending up in a busy market in Krugersdorf, I find a little Pakistani cell phone repair shop. Quickly, I buy an adaptor so I can power up my phone via my car's cigar lighter outlet.<br />
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Hustlers and street vendors swarm my car at every stop light. Twenty minutes later I've got a charge up and the txts are coming in. My pals have been wondering where I was. Pulling off the road to be txt safe, I hit a pot hole and destroy two tires and a mag wheel. Hey, welcome to my Tour: under Zulu skies I'm nearby a squatter's camp. In front of the tin shacks I'm changing out the front wheel. Quickly. Me and my guitars on the side of the road. The good thing about this, I guess, is that South Africa can use the money. I'm thinking that by the time I pay for these repairs, I'll be making nothing on all these shows. At least the rear tire is holding air, in spite of it's sidewall being gashed open. Meanwhile, my credit cards are all maxed, and I've only got about 200 rand, about twenty dollars, in my pocket to carry me until my first show. Thank goodness the car came with a full tank of gas.<br />
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Yes, I've arrived. Purple trees shimmer in the distance, and the birds are singing strange songs. Maybe not as strange as the ones I'll soon be singing. I'm heavily booked. I hope they like me here. A little SUV pulls up behind me. It's Charlie and Wim: come to fetch me home, only about ten minutes away. This Tour, more than any other I have ever done, is destined to be about the goodness of friends.<br />
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The core of the Charlie King Blues Band. Drummer Wim. Singer Charlie. They've got a cool little compound just beyond the big city- a place I'll gratefully use as base for my first few days of the Tour.<br />
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After a day's rest on the farm, my first stop is Jean Village Music in Centurian. It's part of the Paul Bothna Music chain which has sponsored the audio production of this Tour. I'm visiting Jean Village to pick up the PA system I'll be carrying for the duration of my shows. The store is pretty nice. The place reminded me very much of Canada's Long & McQuade: another old, family run business. Happy folks working there. Great selection of stock. Nice layout. There weren't any kids in there shredding, but then the holidays hadn't started yet, either. I pick up a little Allen and Heath board, a couple of 15 inch powered speakers, a wedge, stands and cables for everything– and I'm show ready. The speakers, stands and banners fill the entire backseat of my little white Chevy, so now I'm going to have to load this stuff in and out a couple of times a day. Builds character, and I won't need a gym.<br />
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My next stop is my first show, up in Pretoria. Not just any show, but the Tour launch: a reception at the Canadian High Commission's Maple Leaf Club. I hope all this gear works. I hope I can set it up easily and quickly. I hope I can get up to the Embassy without getting lost or car-jacked! Of course, I can, but I don't know this yet.</div>
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Pretoria's a pretty town, even in rush hour. And those purple trees are everywhere. I find the Embassy fairly easily, and my set up goes well and quickly. My sound check takes all of two minutes. As it happens, the reception is a fabulous event. Between myself, my publicist- Warren "Dog" Gibson- and the Embassy staff, we've got a top flight guest list, and the event is golden. Jack Black Beer, run by a Canadian couple out of Cape Town, dominates the bar. The Embassy is sold on it! So am I! Networking at it's finest! After my set, I meet the ambassadors to several nations, writers, music fans, musicians and ex-pats. Madam High Commissioner, Sanda McCardell is wonderful. My South African friends are very impressed. She is very good at what she does. "You've got a great government," they chorus. And I can't help but thinking that they are largely right.<br />
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But with 38 signed contracts accompanying my application, a proven marketing plan, a publicist, a new cd release, the largest tour of South Africa any North American has ever done... Canada Council for the Arts declined to provide me with any support for this Tour. A "jury of my peers" concluded that there were other tours more worthy. What– me, bitter? No just surprised. No, not surprised at all. It's very Canadian. Ok, I was disappointed, and I hadn't asked for much.<br />
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Meanwhile, as always, this Tour is totally independent. It runs on blood and guts, not pension money, holiday money, or grants. If it doesn't go well, I could lose everything. My gear needs maintenance. My shoes are old. It wouldn't take much to push me off the edge of the earth.<br />
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Tim Parr, one of South Africa's best known singer -songwriter storytellers, a fine blues and roots guitarist, a guy who has had hit records. I was pleased to meet him at one of my Johannesburg shows. Maybe we'll get to play together before this Tour is done!<br />
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The South African release of Narrow House. I had a special, South African version manufactured in South Africa. I think it's a good idea to network and support the local economy. It took me a little while to find the company, but this Cape Town firm, One Stop CD, did a nice job for me and delivered the product on time. Very lekker! The biltongs are, too! Not at all like cod tongues.<br />
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Cliff Central Radio. Big South African drive show. Shock jocks. Very American, but very South African. I play on-air. We talk. Tickets start selling to my shows across the country. I now know for sure that Plug Music and Warren Gibson are doing a great job for me. He's going to keep me busy with phoners, print interviews, and in-studio radio and television shows for the remainder of my tour.<br />
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Radio Eden. Cool, midtown Johannesburg music radio. I do the morning show with host Janet Sedgewick. Johannesburg last night in a storm: power flickering. Traffic lights down. I learned that you don't stop for red lights at night anyway. Or stop signs. Unless there are police there. I learned that there is a learning curve to survival here. How to bribe a cop. How much to offer, how to offer it, and when. Don't do that around Cape Town. Now, concerts around Johannesburg, Pretoria, Bronkhorstspruit, Nelspruit, Cullinan, Lyndenburg...<br />
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Andre runs The Cockpit Brewhouse, Cullinan. Knows his brews and his blues. South Africa has plenty of both. Hops are expensive in Africa, so none of those crazy, IPAs around here. But plenty of good beer, and plenty of local micros competing. Diamond mines here. Folks on holiday from Pretoria and Johannesburg. A nice crowd. A nice day out with some local musicians sitting in for a few tunes.<br />
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It's been a great first week on African soil. My time in the Gauteng province has been filled with amazing shows in amazing venues. Around the edges I've appeared on three of the region's most watched/ listened drive shows. I've been up with the roosters to appear on Cliff Radio, Radio Eden, and this morning, Groot TV/FM.<br />
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Photo op with Groot morning host Johrne van Huyssteen.<br />
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Sinkshack. Bronkhorstspruit. My compound is made of corrugated metal. It's a long series of buildings facing a brick courtyard. Palm trees fill the areas between, and over the shacks. It's a compound that makes Clarksdale, Mississippi's Shack-Up look like suburban architecture. I've got a ceiling fan. There's heat, there's thunder overhead. I've got no wifi. I could use all my data on my phone pretty quickly. I've got some red wine. I play guitar in the shade. I nap. One week in. I played one of the largest television shows in Africa this morning. Now, I've snuck out of Pretoria on the backroads. "Hey, I saw you on TV!"<br />
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One of the many unexplained things I will find in South Africa. A series of clocks behind the bar. London, Paris, Bronkhorstspruit... Newfoundland, Canada. Go figure. I'm still jet lagged. I think. After all these months on the road I have a hard time deciding what time it is. Gotta follow the clock you are with. They don't mess with the clocks here, either. Moving the clock forward and back is a first world problem.<br />
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The rain on the metal roof is deafening during my show. Hot/cool neon is everywhere. The staff run around with little pots to catch the leaky roof water. The board snaps, crackles, pops, goes down. It's ok. This is Africa. I can play without the PA. And there is a spare board, somewhere.<br />
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Before heading out, I go for a run around town. I'm getting braver. I trot by the busy blocks of street market and vendors. There are home made, steel boxes serving as barber shops. "Haircut! Haircut!" The anxious barber smoking in the shadow of his one kitchen chair shop. I buy fuel. I tip too much. I know this because of the way the man smiles and looks at the money. You tip for everything here. Even services you don't need or want. There's always someone appearing to help you park your car, watch it, and unpark it again. These people make up these jobs. All you need is a safety vest to look official. How poor are the parking guards? They watch my car for two rand- about twenty cents. At four of five rand they are very happy. "Don't pay them too much," I'm advised, "they'll get greedy." To have and have not. I've got a pocket full of change, and I may need all of it to get across this strange land.<br />
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I'm up early, determined to do an eight hour detour through Kruger on route to my evening show. I'm "on safari" with my little car. It's completely filled with gear– all but the driver's seat. And I no longer have a spare tire. I have a broken wheel in the trunk. No Rover. No Tilley hat. Note to self: get the tire and wheel replaced as soon as possible. Yeah, a little reckless. But here I go.<br />
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I'm lost, my Google map blue dot floating in dribs and drabs. I'm pretty sure I'm heading in the right direction, but not on the larger road I had planned. Around a corner and there are police and soldiers everywhere. Trucks, cars, yellow tape. Guys with rifles. Two bodies lie on the road. Several other men are pressed together like cordwood, face down on the pavement, their hands fastened behind their backs. "Move! Move! Move!" I'm hastened through the scene, beyond the next yellow tape, and then it's gone behind me. I have no idea what was going on. Some kind of take down. What? Why? Who knows? Close on the National Park boundary security is high.<br />
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Under gloomy skies, the air is tense at the little entry point I arrive at. Soldiers search my car. I need to show my passport. They take it away. Bring it back. I pay a bunch of rand, and they wave me through. I pull over and figure out where I am on the map. The speed limits are very, very, slow. How many hours will it take me to drive through here? I set out on these empty little roads. Either I'll make it on time, or I won't. The math looks tight, but I wouldn't miss this landscape. It's my tourist moment.<br />
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To my surprise, most of the high drama animals are visible on the roadside. Yes, I was quite lucky. Rhinos, giraffes, elephants, buffalo, various deer species. Worth the price of admission. And I make it to my show on time.<br />
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South African roads are full of surprises. This truck sign is normal in South Africa, but provided me with endless amusement and commentary. In America, the sign would probably read "wide load."<br />
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Nelspruit. And now, down into Free State...<br />
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Louis runs the bar. The music end of it anyway!<br />
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Mojo's bar in Welkom, Free State, South Africa. When I walked in here, Fury Lewis was blasting on the sound system. I've left the north-eastern region and am now pushing south. Bigger distances between shows, but the pace on the national highways is fast. Last night I heard lions roaring. Tonight in Welkom, there are dogs barking. Tomorrow, I'll run these palm lined streets before heading into Bloemfontein to play the Vulture Club, the Aasvole Klub. By mid-week the Tour will reach KwaZulu-Natal, ever closer to the Zulu King...Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7975752083163699450.post-21389537340378320222016-10-28T16:06:00.000-04:002016-10-28T16:07:49.357-04:00Not So Crazy: Party at the Riverview Asylum<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Hard travel. Terminals at night. Canada is starting to cool with the season, and other ports are calling. Next week the Zulu Skies Tour will reach South Africa, but tonight I'm playing on darker roads in Vancouver. I'm playing the 10th Anniversary party of Cottonwood Lodge, a modern residence for the mentally ill, set on the sprawling grounds of the original, Riverview Hospital asylum.<br />
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This is a giant tract of land, slowly being brought into the modern age. But the connections to a recent, dark past are everywhere on these twisting roads: barred facilities. Places where people were subject to electro shock, brain surgery to quiet them down, sterilization. Cages. Haunted? Absolutely. The dripping overgrowth, the moss-faced buildings with wire fencing, holes in the walls, twisted old depots. This was a town once. With it's own bank and transit. Crazytown.<br />
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Movies are frequently shot in the surviving, old school buildings.<br />
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Cottonwood Lodge, I'm pleased to report, is a modern, friendly, mostly unlocked facility. I played Cottonwood's little coffeehouse, and had a nice time with staff and patients here. It's always a pleasure to be able to give something back to the towns that have supported me over the years. In recent times some of these, off-the-radar stops have been among my favourite Canadian, west coast shows. Worth doing. Blues is healing music, and sometimes it really needs to go to places that need it the most. Both the Artist and the Audience escape the Asylum, if only for a few moments time.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7975752083163699450.post-66945205286327435412016-10-28T00:12:00.000-04:002016-10-28T00:12:12.430-04:00Left Coast: In Which I Travel Without the Big Lincoln<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I break with tradition. The Big Lincoln safely parked, I'm now at the mercy of taxi drivers, bus terminal directors, airline baggage handlers, rental clerks, and ticket sellers. Street hustlers. Lunatics. People who love the blues, and know more about it than I ever could. God knows what will happen if my credit card is declined somewhere. Usually I can sleep in my car, or point it to the next, friendly destination. I've cleverly shopped for a massive canvas bag to carry my guitar cases in. It's a professional, hockey goalie's bag. It holds two guitar cases easily, and doesn't look like the property of a traveling rock star. The bag is half empty, but still looks gigantic. I wheel it awkwardly through the airport and check it as sports equipment. The tag on the outside says I'm on the "National" Team. For the first time in years I escape the "random" full body security search. In a pinch, I could probably sleep in the bag.<br />
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I'm headed for Canada's left coast. Politically as well as geographically. But with a change in travel plans, I can't buy a direct flight to Victoria, British Columbia from Toronto at a reasonable cost. Nor can I purchase one to Vancouver at a reasonable cost. Instead, I get a budget ticket with two stops. That's fine, I'm not rushed this day. Little do I suspect that my cheap flight will not stop in a linear fashion, but will instead take me to Vancouver, and then Edmonton, before Victoria. Three half-empty planes. Over the Rockies three times. An extra eight hours. Extra thousands of kilometres in the air. If only I could of got my guitars out of baggage, I could have fled the Vancouver airport and caught the ferry to Victoria. Then again, flying direct to Vancouver is an expensive trip, so they say.<br />
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My big bag seems to have made the trip nicely. I'm met at the airport by local bandleader Ian Walls. He's kindly signed on to be my bassist, driver, bar man and landlord for most of the Vancouver Island dates. There's a typhoon coming, and the Island is hunkering down, checking it's battery supplies, sump pumps, fresh water. There also seems to be a brisk business at the wine and spirits store. With a couple of cheap, California reds in hand, Ian and I head back to his place for an evening of rehearsal. The McKinley Wolf band has backed me up here in recent years, but this season it will be Ian and I playing duo up and down Island.<br />
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Up Island. Duncan, British Columbia. We point the van into the lashing rain, and make it over the pass. It's dark early. They say the typhoon might make shore in just a few more hours. Not many on the road this afternoon. You could feel the old, Toyota van lurching in the wind. Load-in and soundcheck to the Duncan Showroom. It's a great sounding room I've always enjoyed playing. Tonight we are set up and sounding good in a scant, few minutes. The sound techie even remembers where I place my mics. I wish every stage was as simple, and professional as this. The Elks are serving steak next door, but soon they too are loading their cars, heading off into the night. With the meat draw over, there is nothing in the street but the rain and the wind. Plenty of empty seats in this little theatre tonight. Two sets later, we're back on the highway, southbound. We didn't make gas money, much less dinner. Not a great start to the Left wing of this Tour. There are leaves whipping through the air. It's cold and damp, and I'm wondering about Africa. By the time we reach Victoria the rain has all but stopped.<br />
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There's always tomorrow, and in Victoria that means we'll be playing at the storied Victoria Blues Society jam. Always a great chance to make new friends, and meet up with old ones. Here's a snap of Mark Crissinger and myself. He's based out of Cedar, up Island. Mark was kind enough to sit in and play guitar with the little "band" I put together from the available players. A cosmopolitan crowd, with players and fans from England, Germany, South Africa, USA and Canada enjoying each other's company and music. A good bunch– and they keep the music alive.<br />
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I wish every bartender was as friendly as this one. The staff here were good to everybody. It's taken me a dozen years of visiting Victoria to get this gig. Hermann's Jazz Club. Legendary west coast venue. As a performer it's always a thrill to play a venue stage that has hosted so much musical history. Nice to play on boards that thumped so nicely under my foot, boards that knew something about time and place. Boards with secrets about the fleeting moments of music and the artists who make it. So much of it is fleeting. Like life itself. Moments not written down, photographed, posted or recorded. Just lived. Howlin' Wolf down on his hands and knees, pounding the stage with his fist, roaring through the dust, soaked in sweat. Hubert looking on, blinking. The girl that grabbed my arm, briefly, and then vanished. The old guy that used to come through and play that club, I forget what they called it, down by the station. Fleeting. Like some kiss you want to keep forever, perfume on the wind. There and gone. Breathe it in when you can. Taste it. Swallow it. Fleeting. Life.<br />
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Up Island once more. This time we're going to Port Alberni. It's an old mill town with picked over thrift stores and beat up pawn shops. Dreadlocked surfer kids on route to Tofino stop here to look for cooking oil to feed their rusting busses. Beamers on holiday from Vancouver buy a few litres of gasoline to get themselves past this, up the twisty road to their timeshares. Tonight, Ian and I will play here. An old church in the shadow of the mill– now a concert venue. Our route takes us through some of the mighty old growth trees that have survived the loggers.<br />
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I'm praying that we'll have an audience for tonight's show. My lodgings are in the Prayer Room. Ian spends time in the adjoining Cry Room. If I had a god, mine would laugh and smile with me. And would free the wage Slaves from the Mill. It's another quiet night. That typhoon's not gone yet, not yet forgotten. Still fodder for the bored world of the WeatherNet. Not counting the cheap red wine we drank, I've lost a couple of hundred dollars to walk in the mud under the giant trees. Ian and I play well together this night. We chat into the small hours, bridging the distance between the Prayer Room and the Cry Room with the last of the wine. After twelve years, and several thousand shows, this great Canadian tour seems less sustainable than ever.<br />
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The drummer was a little stiff...<br />
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The smell of money didn't reach into the concert hall that night...<br />
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Safe in urban Victoria for a couple more shows. My friends and fans are propelling this bit of the Tour in spite of the now spent storm. Storms. The storm of the Tour. Here's a little shelter from it. Some respite for a couple of days. I rest here by the kindness of my friends. Rested. Recharged. A little coffee. A little scotch. A little bourbon. Books, blues, Bix. Hope for the soul! Hope for the storm of the Heart! I open the little, virtual office, and scratch out details for Africa. The car, the phone, the cds, the reception at the High Commission. I walk the beach before prepping for the next show. A house concert. A good one.<br />
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Best show of the Left Coast, so far. Great blues fans, friends. Southern cooking. I helped move these chairs in, and then moved 'em out again. I also helped eat the ham and biscuits, drink the rare bourbon, and played the show. Sometimes it's nice to wear all the hats. Rain on the roof of the guest house. Sleep.<br />
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These deer are the scourge of Victoria's beautiful gardens. This four pointer watched me walk by with some distain. "Whatzamadder? Never seen a deer, dude?"<br />
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Most cities are at their best when the sun comes out. Victoria is no exception. For a few short hours the rain snuck back behind the horizon. This is a place to walk, or run, or take small children and big dogs. All of these appeared like magic, with the sun. As did I. Walking, not running this day. Oak Bay.<br />
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As I return to my quarters, Buck shows his distain for walking bluesmen.<br />
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My last show of the Tour on Vancouver Island. It's an early show at the Victoria Folk Club. I've played here before. It's among Canada's oldest folk clubs– I'm going to guess close to 40 years old. Somebody will probably correct me. Electric instruments are not allowed here, no pick-ups, DIs, or mics, either. You might say it's very traditional. The fact that I've brought an electric bassist with me this evening has been lost in the debate over the new, overhead, ambient microphone that has been installed in the old wooden hall. It's a big room, and some of the members don't hear well anymore. On this night some have boycotted the show because of the new microphone. From the back, where Ian and I are discretely sipping our wine from teacups, I cannot tell whether the microphone is even on. Numerous members apologize to me for the new contraption. When the time comes we play our set into a warm, standing ovation and encore. I certainly don't need a microphone in a beautiful room like this. Even the Queen looks somehow pleased, gazing over my shoulder at the spectacle. A nice way to wrap my shows on the Island.<br />
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Vancouver Island behind me, I've arrived on the British Columbia mainland. It was a good trial for my new, gear carry bag. I managed to wheel it through the terminals, up and down the ship gangplanks without too much difficulty. Meanwhile the Zulu Skies Tour is building momentum in Africa. I'll be there in less than a week. Just a handful of Canadian shows left on the schedule.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7975752083163699450.post-84350809777523890642016-10-20T00:51:00.001-04:002016-10-22T16:00:06.077-04:00Canadian Maritime: Bare-Fisted Blues behind the Wild Atlantic Roar<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Eastbound. It's night time on the Big Road. Blowing out of Toronto on a twenty-four lane, black snake. I've got a full tank of gas, and a big, big cup of coffee. Late. I should of left at noon, not nine. But that's the blues. That's a tour start. This is a tour start. Driving all night: Lincoln on cruise, passing semi trucks decked out in lights, their strange electric faces looming and groaning oncoming, then winking, moaning behind me. Slick sports coupes: Montreal bound. Appearing in the rear view, then gone. Gone cat, gone. Blood red tail lights flashing, vanishing. The vanishing footprints of the broken line: now drifting behind me in the rear view. Drifting. Truck stops. Convoys. This road is getting smaller: just four lanes now. Rigs pulled off, down for a few hours. Motors humming under the mercury vapours. I sleep among these grumbling giants for a short, half dream– and then I'm back on the run. East. East. I don't keep a log book like they do. I'm driving into the sun as it teases, then rises and shakes off the night. For a few moments I'm in a strange, exotic world. Maybe I always am on the Blues Highway.<br />
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How many coffees later. Ordering in french now. Lumpy hills. Tail end of the Appalachians. Almost Laurentian. I'm headed down the St. Lawrence River, now through Quebec, past Quebec City. You can still see the original land grants carved into the earth. Narrow tracts foraging back from the river. Always the silver roofs of the Catholic churches, spires like pins holding down these little villages, holding them to the earth, to the mysteries of this place. Black robes. Cigarettes and warm beer, crosses casting shadows over it all. I used to play here for weeks on end. Beer in quart bottles. Girls who'd flash their tits at you– when they thought their boyfriends weren't looking. Everybody seemed to love the blues. You never had sex, but it was always there. Or at least you could easily image that it could be, or might be, or was. A sensual place where the sacred and the profane found a little harmony, worked together to keep the whole thing on edge. Six nights a week. Now I'm blasting through it on the Big Road, the Twenty. Sometimes I sneak a night in when nobody's looking, and play some little biker joint. But today: I'm steady on the pedal, bound for the Maritimes, the smell of ocean, the roar of the tide.<br />
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I didn't see any moose– but that's not a bad thing. New Brunswick has plenty of them. Big, dark. Hard to see at night. Hit one and die. They can put a semi in the ditch. If you hit one straight in a car it will probably come straight through your windshield. Take the legs out and a bloody ton of meat will crush the cab. The big roads have some moose fencing now, but I wouldn't count on it. People die. Daytime, you can rock at 130 kph. Dusk brings caution to the wheel. It's festival season in this part of the country, so I'm going past the larger towns to the places less often visited. I stop to do a little house concert and we have moose stew after the show. It's a couple of weeks early for moose, if you need a tag. Coyotes are howling in the distance.<br />
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Prince Edward Island always comes and goes too fast for me. Stories told in cabins. Songs written there, too, sometimes.<br />
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I hole up in the red dirt hills. The Dunk. Yes, the river, and the place. Out my window I see the Man Trailer II. There is a little festival held here, and occasional concerts. My late friend Hal Mills built all this. It was Hal who put Africa in my ear. Coming in late from a show elsewhere on the Island, I sit in my cabin and play Sugarman for him. I play it badly, and forget some of the words, but it doesn't matter. I came half way across North America to stop here on route to Africa. To play this tune, to get some of Hal's driveway splattered on my car. Sugarman.<br />
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Walking with Catherine MacLellan. She's a great, Canadian songwriter. Her dad, wrote a few good ones, too. I always enjoy hanging out with Catherine and Chris on the Island. On this day Melonie, Catherine and myself walk the abandoned railway path. Fall crops edge in from the back acres of the farms. Much is now grown over and given back to the wild. We pilfer apples from a long forgotten orchard, go back to the Dunk for coffee and more conversation. For a time, the world seems easy. Airports and highways are far away. A black lab puppy commands our attention. My pockets are crammed full of those strange old apples. Hugs, and we are all back to our virtual offices: booking shows, making arrangements.<br />
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I'm up Island for a couple of shows. Bull rush country, where the land is a little boggy and rough. Here, you look to the sea for your money. The people are supposed to be rough here, too. But I'm always treated well. At the show I have drinks with an Irish doctor who moved here long ago. Wouldn't live anywhere else. Plenty of room on Main St. to park the Lincoln in front of the venue. Plenty of room for a country doctor and a blues doctor to share a few stories.<br />
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Chris Roumbanis runs the weekly blues jam in Charlottetown. It's now in a downtown bar called the Factory. I'm their guest again- and we have a ball playing a set together. Chris has done so much to foster a music scene in his community. He gets the young players up. He shows them what to do. He brings in the old, road dogs as guests, mixes it all up. There are a whole lot of fine, polished players in this little place now. The blues is universal, and there are little places like this around the world: run by unsung heros who do so much to keep this music alive. Far from the bright lights, they get the kids up to play, they play Willie Dixon and Robert Johnson, they make people happy and build community. You can hear anything, or anybody in a place like this. Here's a sincere thanks to Chris and the others like him who do what they do.<br />
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Blues can never really be measured by a musical form, by a place on a map, a collection of objects. Maybe it's more like the wind on your face, like fleeting shadows. Something that ceases to be the moment it is too carefully, or too carelessly defined. Something to be discovered at the secret shrine of the heart. Celebrated. Excised. Healed. You know what it is when you taste it. Prince Edward Island behind me: I played an old barn in the red dirt hills. We drank beer under a big moon, and laughed at the night. Up west I touched the coast. A pub in bluefin territory. A club in the heart of Charlottetown. Raw oysters washed down with South African wine. Songs written to the sound of rain on a tin roof. The Island is always very good to me. It's not about the money.<br />
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Tied to the southern swamps by more than a thread, I walked into the dark woods, dank mud on my shoes, in my shoes. My shoes. Now, pushing through brush, through a cold autumn rain, past the dolls in cages, past the plastic bottles hanging wildly from broken trees, past the last place you might yell and be heard by anyone, or anything. Far beyond the abandoned old house, the broken glass, the faded signs, here secreted: this shrine. Not new, not yet swallowed by the creeping spruce. But soon. Soon. Another fifty years. In time another soul may stand on this spot: offering a candle to the night. A lucky dollar. A couple of guitar strings. Who knows what this day will bring? What this day might take?<br />
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I'm both glad and frightened at the sudden loud start of the motor. Soaked through now. My shoes won't dry for days. I edge the car around, and find my way out to the dirt road, out to the highway. The wipers slap over the fogged up windows. I'm looking for coffee. Looking for fuel. I'm outta here feeling as unsettled as I always do. Madness and strangeness. The lingering darkness. The unanswered questions. It's a strange walk through the secret corners of the world. Now I'm glad to be driving.<br />
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I'm in Nova Scotia: an event at the Atlantic International Film Festival, then I'm busking a music festival that didn't hire me, playing a stop in a small fishing village way up the coast, a couple of house concerts, and a bare-fisted show in a boxing club.<br />
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John Hopkins premiered his new film, Bluefin, at the Atlantic International Film Festival in Halifax. A sold-out event, the film was a huge success and has been picking up awards and nominations ever since. I was honoured to be invited to the premier- and to play at the afterparty event.<br />
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When I'm in central Nova Scotia, Lindsay and I often bomb around in his '39 Ford. Cars and bikes and beer and blues. How can you go wrong with a schedule like that? The rural, farm area has remained largely unchanged over the last 50 years.<br />
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I had a house concert cancel on short notice, so I thought I'd hustle what I could on the sudden down day. Nearby, the Deep Roots Festival has declined to hire me for the last 10 years, so Calliun and I set up in front of opening night to scrape a little silver off the rainy day. Had a good crowd for our three hour set, although the cases got a little damp. Later, we drove back to the house, soaked in a wood-fired hot tub, drank home made beer, and listened to the coyotes howl. Not a perfect day- but not too shoddy. In the end, the days are usually what you make them to be.<br />
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Now, up the wild, Nova Scotia coast. Up the winding road from Halifax through places with names like Ecum Secum. My first stop is Charlos Cove, a little fishing village which is much closer to Cape Bretton than it is to the bright lights of Halifax. Still a long run on a twisting road, pot hole traps waiting to take off a wheel, rip open a tire.<br />
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I'm lucky enough to play an old inn, the SeaWind Landing. The original historic building where I stay post show is haunted. Hey, I don't believe in these wandering spirits, anyway. Or do I, now? For two nights I thought that there was somebody else staying in the next room. The low, cough. The clearing of the throat. The footsteps on the wood floor. I wouldn't lose sleep over it. I was also lucky enough to get to hang out with one of my special friends for a while. It means a lot to me that some folks come back year after year to connect. That's a reward for the heart that can't be bought or borrowed.<br />
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Taking a down day in Charlos Cove, Nova Scotia. I walk the beaches at low tide. It's a place where my own footprints are the only ones I see all day. There's something to be said for that. It somehow clears the mind to be this alone sometimes, and the day fades quickly, thoughts and memories rolling in like the gathering tide.<br />
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Time to leave this place again. Saying good-bye is the hardest part of my life as a traveller. Now, I'm headed south, catching the little cable ferry that will send me on my way into the historic communities of East Preston and Bedford.<br />
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I reach Halifax, Nova Scotia early enough to do a round of media interviews and station ID's. I wish I had some big shows to promote here this time around. It's ironic that sometimes you get the most help when it's least needed! But, gosh, I had fun with all of these folks. Mostly hard core blues fans who really know their stuff. Good questions. Good stories. Here's a picture of me with "The Wolfman" Wayne Schnare, who does a weekly, east coast blues show. Great, classic FM Wolfman voice. He could be syndicated. Big fun.<br />
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Bedford, Nova Scotia. Near the place where Africville once stood. Near the place where garbage trucks evicted residents of a historic black Loyalist community. Oh, I know– there's different points of view about what it was, about how the church was burned at night, where the smoke drifted, where the cinders fell. And yet, that was long ago for the children and grandchildren that make up today's rainbow. Canada, like many other places, is still engaged in healing. Some wounds forgotten, forgiven. Others still hidden, or spilling out in the papers, demanding resolution.
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I'm standing in a boxing club in Bedford. The air carries hints of sweat. Load in. Tube lights glare overhead. Richard is moving a punching bag off to the side. Mics are going up on stands. Buckets of ice shifted to the back, under a table.
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I chat for a while with Ricky "The Gentleman" Anderson, a two time Canadian boxing champion. It's been a long while since he stood in the spot where I'm going to sit, but when he grips my hand there is still a gentle, but crushing power in it. The blues is healing music– colour blind, even when the people who buy and sell it are not. Ali said that the real work was done out on the road, long in advance of dancing under the bright lights. I've always thought that this was the case for music, too– but it does seem that there is a universal truth in what he said. Social change as well. Building the kind of world we'd like to live in. Ordinary people do the real work far in advance of the politicians under those bright lights.<br />
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My friend Judy Corkum took this picture, and a few more, at my East Preston show. A cool venue at the end of a dark road. Brave folks drove out from the city. We had a time. Next day I'm pointing the Big Lincoln west. It could be a while before I see Nova Scotia again. One never knows.<br />
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Durham Bridge, New Brunswick, Canada. Can you find it on a map? Up a little river that I can't pronounce. Well, yes I can, but I can't spell it, so I'm not saying it here. Up the Marysville road, up Canada Street, up some highway with some numbers, up a dirt road and a twisted drive. It wasn't my turn to play the nearby Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival this year, but local blues fans made a show happen anyway. Not just a show but a backwoods, New Brunswick party. They probably have a word for it, if anybody can remember it!<br />
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The next day I backtrack. A classic, Doc tour zig-zag of three hours. Down towards Fundy, the place with the highest tides in the world. But I don't get to see the water. Instead I'm pushing the Lincoln into the near abandoned hills. The old, farm villages are swallowed by the forest again. Second and third generation growth over these rough and rocky lands. Acadians, and then Irish. Cheap land. Opportunity. And heartbreak. As if the small farm would survive in a world of machines, anyway. The rocks and the toil and the wicked winters took care of the rest. There are still folks here- and some of them are coming to my show tonight- but many work elsewhere, up the big road in the city.<br />
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Playing fields used to surround this place. I roll in early. This is tonight's gig. I stroll around the edge of the yard and pick blackberries, and then sleep for a couple of hours while I wait for the hall to open.<br />
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A guy from India rented a car and drove in the dark for hours to find this show. It was a blast to play for him. Later he told me his story of immigrating to Canada as a young man so he'd be able to see shows by Led Zepplin and other blues-rock acts. Now he's an IT wizard in Nashville, and his kids live on a First Nations reserve in New Brunswick. He married into all that. I tease him about being a "real" Indian. We laugh. Next time I go to Nashville, we'll be taking in some music together. Or I may just take him through to Mississippi. Blues heaven. Clarksdale...<br />
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Soon enough, I'm waking up in somebody's living room. Hustling out to start the motor, I'm going way up river into potato country. Covered bridges, mud on the roads, y'all come back now.<br />
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It's a beautiful concert hall set in an old church. We put some mics up, but hardly use them. This Sunday night I have the biggest crowd of the Maritime district. Thank goodness. I've got to buy a plane ticket to the west coast in just a couple of days!<br />
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Big Lincoln on cruise. I'm on a reach for Ontario. I'm going to get over Quebec in overdrive on one tank of gas because the tax is so high there. I'm going to stop and sleep once in a while. Because I can. The trees are beginning to change to bright colours. There are geese, wheeling overhead in formation. South. South. A Canadian autumn. Bright beauty getting ready to fade. Overnight the naked trees under grey skies, and then the harsh call of winter wind. I won't be risking my life in it again this year. At least not as much.<br />
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And now, the Canadian Pacific coast. Vancouver Island. The Lower Mainland. In a few more days: Africa. I'll be doing short, daily blogs again once I reach Africa.</div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7975752083163699450.post-30385365426964023112016-09-05T09:55:00.000-04:002016-09-05T09:55:21.532-04:00Plug Music to Advance Zulu SkiesI couldn't get Col. Tom, but that's OK. When this Tour started to take on shape, people began asking me, "who's your advance man in SA?" One name came up more often than any other– Warren Gibson and Plug Music. I'm very pleased to announce here that "The Dog" is now on board my Zulu Skies Blues Tour until wrap in mid-December. Welcome!<br />
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In North America I usually have to wear the publicist hat myself. In Africa, it just made sense to partner up with Plug Music. Warren is one of the most experienced and best regarded music publicists in South Africa. It's going to be a blast to work with him, and I'll have more time to focus on my shows. That's just Big Leg Good! How do you say that in Africaaner? Likker? Don't worry, my friends, I will learn and be guided. Links to Plug Music can now be found in the sidebar.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7975752083163699450.post-77994709357681725382016-09-01T09:52:00.000-04:002016-09-02T21:17:30.405-04:00Paul Bothner Music Joins the Tour<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
I was kind of disappointed when the Canadian firm, Yorkville Sound failed to respond to my suggestion that they send a small PA to Africa with me. After all, I've been using Traynor and then Yorkville gear since 1972. Good company, good gear and– via Long & McQuade– some good partnering over the years. So Canadian, eh? How could you not want to have your logo on the banner, and your equipment touring under Zulu Skies? Can't say I didn't ask. No matter, I'm now very pleased and proud to announce that the National Steel "Zulu Skies" Tour production for the 40 South African shows will be...</div>
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Bothner Music was established in Cape Town around 1902. By the late 1960's it had become Paul Bothner Music, a family run firm destined to become South Africa's leading supplier of modern, musical equipment. Today, with ten locations across the country, it provides one of the largest selections of gear and service in Africa. The staff have a reputation for being friendly and helpful, and they were highly recommended to me by several hard touring South Africans. I can only say that I've been met with a whole lot of enthusiasm for the Tour, and these folks already feel like old friends. It was great to see that my friend Tony Cox is doing a blues guitar workshop for Bothner in Cape Town! September 24 and 25. Some lucky people there- Tony is a very, very cool guitarist. If you live in that area, go. No excuses. I'll be doing some workshops, too- dates to be announced soon.<br />
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Welcome on board, Paul Bothner Music. I'm very much looking forward to working with this fine, South African company.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7975752083163699450.post-27267539009622801032016-08-15T14:42:00.000-04:002016-09-05T09:08:46.007-04:00Big Tour of Small: Lost and Found in the Canadian West<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Each year the Blog takes on a different style. Zulu Skies will be a bit of a mash-up. Here, I've crunched the first two months of road Tour into one long, long posting. It's reflective of my decades of travel and shows through these places, my life in motion on the Blues Highway, my state of mind, my world. I'll try to keep the upcoming postings more bite size– meanwhile, I hope you enjoy this chapter of the Canadian journey.</div>
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Canada goose. Actually, a giant, sheet metal version of a Canada goose. Perched on a rise over Highway 17, wings half splayed, ready to take flight, ready to run, ready to point you down the narrow two lanes of blacktop that tie this country together. Which way? Which way? Since the 1950's it has been a rite of passage for every Canadian musician to travel this road. The Walk of Fame ought to run right down the middle of it: stars inset, buffed by the wheels of the semi trucks, scraped by the winter ploughs. The TransCanada Highway. Like Route 66, except with more trees and rock. A lot more trees and rock. Trees and rock. Back in the day, rolling through the mill towns, the hard rock towns, the railroad towns, the ports, the places with no reason, the places with gas stations and shattered cars, the sweet smell of fuel rippling on a hot day, bottled pop clanking out of a coin operated cooler. Ice cold. Ice cold. Bait and tackle. Motel. Motel. TV Vacancy. Cabins. Genuine Indian Souvineers. Moccasins. It was a long, long haul across Ontario in good weather, and sometimes a lifetime in bad.</div>
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The road to the Big Time. Homes left behind. As if this tour of punched out taverns and rusted skating rinks was going to change everything. It might change the way you drink, or your reasons for drinking. Girls, Girls, Girls. You were how old? Fluff shows with women who winked and called you "honey." Close enough that you could smell the perfume over the cigarettes and beer. Close enough. Untouchable. They were here for the railroad men, the miners, fallers from the lumber camps. Suckers with wallets, who knew exactly what they were getting into. Ten or twelve or fourteen hours out of Toronto, you'd hit the Big Lake. Superior. More like a freshwater sea, more like an angry ocean. And then here, Wawa, Ontario. The BFG. Plug full of kids with backpacks and dogs. Signs that read "VANCOOVER." Did they have any idea of how far it was to Vancouver? The other end of a continent? It didn't matter. And no one cared. A generation that later forgot nearly everything they might have learned out on this sunburnt highway.</div>
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I'm not hitch hiking today, or riding with the bins in the back of a rusted Econoline van. It's a near perfect day as I pull the Big Lincoln off the highway to get a coffee and find some wifi. It's hard to imagine this place without a coffee stop just over the hill. A couple of motor homes crowd the parking lot. Husband-wife Golden Eagles with Michigan plates. A BMW out of Alberta. Not a backpack in sight. I'm heading West. Day two. The first leg of a Tour that will see me drive across two continents– and not straight across, either. That's not my style. But change is in the air. I've been out on Hwy 17 many, many times– and this is the eleventh consecutive year I've humped north and west over the Great Lakes. I've got about 125 shows in front of me. I've got three guitars and a small PA. I've got an extra large coffee, and the Blues Highway is just as mysterious and compelling as it ever has been: and there– the white line escaping behind the car in a cloud of dust. "West," hums the motor, "west."</div>
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It's a small show this night in a small cafe I've played before. An old port town where the train no longer stops, but screams through anyway, just to let you know. The owners will put me up in a cabin, feed me well, pour me red wine. This show is really for them. And for me. Fair trade among friends. The rest is seasonal. Travellers who Googled up this town, this place: eager to get off the blacktop for a time, eager to look at Canada. Americans now looking south, homeward, across this great lake. I've got a small, after dinner crowd of perhaps twenty souls. The room being small enough, I don't put mics up for the show. An armless chair, a glass of red. Now, let me pour you some stories.</div>
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There's a handsome couple from suburban Chicago. She loves the blues. He's patient, he'll indulge her enjoyment. We chat for a few moments. Their nineteen year old son was stricken with an aggressive cancer during his first year at college. They've spent the last few months caring for him, but he's now insisted that they take a holiday. Clearly, they are exhausted. Any parent could feel their pain. I've got a nineteen year old son going to college. How would I deal with such a hard card of fate? I want to give them both hugs, but I don't. They're seated. Somehow awkward. They are supposed to be forgetting their troubles for a few days, or a few moments. So many tears, so many broken hearts. I play the next show for them. In the morning, all of us will be back on Hwy 17. Trying to lose something, trying to find something else. Hoping against hope.</div>
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Who dressed this cross, and when, for whom? The log church stands in good repair on the edge of this First Nations reserve, but most of the wooden markers have fallen. Now the bush consumes them. Already, the names forgotten. Maybe never inscribed. They knew who they were. As did the hands who buried them there, above the river. Now the bush sings in the wind: the same songs that mourned the parting of the dirt, as if these human years could be remembered long.</div>
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In Canada, the bugs are special at this time of year. The swarm of the little black fly. The constant buzz of the mosquito. And ticks. Wood ticks, deer ticks. I don't know one from the other– but there seem to be ticks everywhere this year. It's been dry. Every night I undress and inspect my body. I'm lucky I haven't had to burn them off, or salt them off, or tear them out of my skin. But I've caught a few, tickling around, getting ready for blood. Hate 'em. I'm usually west in the fall, when all these pests have past their prime. Tonight, I'm being eaten on a screen porch in the shadow of a Sleeping Giant. In the end, I don't think there is any part of me the mosquitos haven't found. In fact, I know this to be true. It's otherwise a pleasant night with friends. I'm so far off the beaten path it's not funny. Red dirt sticking to the tires, red dust coating the rest of the car. I'll be back to do a house concert here in a few weeks. I'm at the top of Superior now. Off grid. The generator hums. The waves murmur gently along the shore. Tomorrow, I've a short drive to Thunder Bay and my next show. And I've got plans for the morning.</div>
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Did you know that I'm a runner? It's one of the things I do between shows. I'm not as fast as I used to be. But I still like to get out and do it. Running keeps me thinner, younger, feeling good– things that appeal to my personal vanity. It's also my pension plan. I'm going to need a long life to pay my debts and make a little money. I'm up early this gloomy morning to run a special little chunk of highway.</div>
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Rip it up baby.</div>
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I ran that last strip of highway today. The last strip Terry Fox ran. A man who ran 148 marathons in a row, on one leg. Life and death. A man compelled by life and death to push his days to the max. It's not about running, or fighting a disease. It's about life, and struggle and dreams and things that might be possible. Today I shuffled in his shadow. Note to myself: live life. Don't miss a moment. Taste it. Smell it. Breathe it. Take it for your own and ride it. Now, put your black clothes back on and go play a show.<br />
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The inner sanctum. Still daylight in the locked bar. I use the time to do a little maintenance on the girls. These are my long time travel companions: a 1929 National Type O and an early 1950s Stella. The Dark Angel, my 1935 National Duolian, broods in her case. She's trouble. She knows I won't come to her until these other girls have failed me, until the wine has had it's way, until the night is truly dark, until the ground is cold and strange. And yet we are lovers, year after year, and cannot part.</div>
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Stage ready once more, I take a short walk about. I drink coffee. A new coffee joint in this hollow, casino dominated downtown. Read the local paper. I haven't made the listings. Pretty hard to fill a room when hardly anybody knows you are coming. Oh, it'll be what it is, 'bye. That's for sure, eh? Right out of the gate I'm worried about gas money to the next gig, much less paying the banks at the end of the month. The best thing to do, I figure, is to take a nap. I've got rock star parking outside the venue, so I sleep in the Lincoln the rest of the afternoon.</div>
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The Apollo. Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. I love this room. Nice big place with great sight lines, great sound, great hospitality. Popcorn. Well known by the knights of the open road. We all stop here. Blues. Jazz. Rock. Metal. Punk. Folk. Stuff you can't figure out what it is. Old dogs. Wide eyed kids on their first tours. Big acts and small. Got a night to fill over the hump? Better give Sheila a call. Why would you play anywhere else at the lakehead? For a few dollars more? Like many of us, this old club has seen better days– but this is where the mojo is: the place where the stories are told, the place where you might hear anything, anyone. Like many of us, this old club could vanish in the night. This night the power company has turned off the mains, so I sit on the edge of the stage and play to the room without mics. People move up close in a semi-circle at the front. It's a small crowd. But it's a great show. Magic all around. Every once in a while you catch a night that's really special.</div>
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What Manitoba looks like in my rear view mirror. It's not heavily populated, but it's getting harder and harder for a travelling show to make stops. It's a great music scene, but heavily local outside of the flagship, Winnipeg Folk Festival. This won't be the first time I've driven through without a show, but it is cause for thought. It's tight on the ground, and harder to network for house and community concerts. The majority of the stuff I find out about now is gleaned from other touring artists. I wonder if the new, corporate face of folk music has anything to do with it? Don't get me started. It's the eastern part of the Great West, it's the middle of Canada. Today it's flying by in my non-aligned rear view mirror.</div>
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I'm now on Sweet Sixteen, the Yellowhead Highway. I've played the length of this road, from Club Zero on Haida Gwaii to Portage la Prairie. It's as storied and dramatic a highway as you'll find, snaking it's way across half the continent. In northwest British Columbia this road is known as the Highway of Tears. Women have disappeared there. For years. A dark and troubling mystery. A brooding highway holding unspoken secrets. But here, in western Manitoba, it's a blacktop farm road. Kind, but plain and firm. At least less broken. Pick up trucks hauling gear. Rigs hauling supplies to the oil patch. Mostly flat and dusty. Sunset finds me at a jog in the road. A little rest stop parking lot. Hey, the Canada geese point the way. West. I recline the seats and listen to Duff Dorough, one of my favourite contemporary musicians. Everybody needs a dream to keep from waking up so mean. Everybody wants to ride. Wake up on the other side. Will you laugh or scream? I sleep in the Big Lincoln while the semi trucks rumble by in the darkness. I live the dream. Whatever that is.</div>
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Looking for a gas station that sells coffee. I eventually find something hot and black in a plastic cup. I hate driving how many km before coffee. This may not be coffee anyway. But it's hot, black, and the road is opening up. I'm surfing heat waves in the Lincoln today as I enter the province of Saskatchewan. This is a place that's always been good to me. I've played a whole lot of Saskatchewan over the years. It's not all Big Sky, although I love that. I keep finding stuff here. It's always been friendly and welcoming, and is still full of surprises. The birthplace of Canadian socialism. Full of places with names you can get your tongue around: Saskatoon, Indian Head, Moose Jaw, Regina, White Bear, Cadillac, Kyle, Wadena, Forget, Prince Albert, Wroxton...</div>
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Listening to Smilin' Johnny and his Prairie Pals, rolling toward Saskatoon, Saskatchewan for tonight's Blues Society show at Vangeli's. I stop at Wroxton, SK, but don't see any sign of Johnny and the Pals. A strange landscape unfolding. Around here: Land cleared and towns built by Ukrainian immigrants. Abandoned Orthodox churches, once almost as important at the grain elevators– now housing the same birds, looking out over the same almost abandoned towns. Once this was really somewhere. A place where folks walked on tree lined streets, stopping to talk outside the little shops. Marrying. Dying here, too. The children of big families. The oldest boys, gone to the Great War. Their names carved forever on a stone by the edge of town. Names now forgotten, the young now moved away, the buildings now boarded over, or fallen. Like the fallen sons: broken. No black framed envelopes arriving. Tears long swallowed, long dried. Just the wind now. People danced here and went to shows. Smilin' Johnny was a big star. Today: not a soul, not a car. I give this place a moment of two of silence, and then gun the Lincoln back over the dust and the mud (how do you get both at once?) to the blacktop. It'll be an early, 8:30 show for me, and then down the street to visit with Big Dave McLean at Bud's on Broadway. Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, on deck.</div>
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Well into the most ragged blues tour I've done in years. Western Canada. The prairies in late spring. A bit like Oz. Green. Manitoba. Saskatchewan, Alberta. The great flatlands. Parts of it burning. In the near middle of it all is Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, a small city I've come to many times. A city that seems to embrace me in good times and bad. A city where I belong to the Blues Society. Nice to roll in at the same time as my pal Big Dave McLean. We've played here together many times, but tonight we are in different clubs on the Broadway strip. The Blues is back in town.</div>
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Dave's show was what it usually is– only better. He's looking good, feeling good and probably playing better than he ever has. We've known each other for what– forty years? I arrive at Bud's in time for the last set, but let some local artists sit in instead of me. I need a drink tonight. Or maybe I just don't feel like climbing up on Big Dave's stage. My own show did not go well. From my seat, at least. That's rare, for me. I enjoy them all, and nail 'em down. I've spent a lifetime at this, and shows are what I do. I was really pumped for this show– bringing out some new material, and expecting a good crowd from my local fan base. The Blues Society put this together for me, and I always want stuff to be great for them, too. The show was fine, just not the barnburner I had come to deliver.</div>
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On my stage, the house sound tech did not understand what I wanted and needed– but I should have addressed the situation differently than I did. I let my disappointment get in the way of my professionalism. At the end of the night, the tech man left before I had an opportunity to make an apology, and the show was less than it could of and should of been. So I'll learn from this. It's about respect and communication, and playing the hand you've been dealt. In the scheme of things, one small show– but when you earn your friends and fans one at a time, they are never given, never taken for granted. That includes your support team, whoever they are, and whatever their skill set.</div>
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Shows done, Big Dave and I talk beyond the night and into the dawn. Short stories and long stories. Stories we save for each other. That's what friends are about. That's what keeps the Blues Highway worth traveling. Bud's puts on a room for me, even though I was playing a different, competing venue down the street. That's Prairie hospitality. It does feel like a home away from home.</div>
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I was getting mad at the Wind, but reminding myself that this is not very useful, I spent an afternoon running and riding on the banks of the Saskatchewan River. A hard run has a way of beating the stupid thoughts out of one's mind– or at least helping to manage them. Feeling much, much better, I'm now headed for Jasper, Alberta. A Friday show in the mountains. A Saturday run to follow!</div>
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Yeah, the Big Lincoln eats up the flatlands, eager to find the mountains. I've got to make time, and the newly tuned motor is running better than ever before. Doing a ton– American style– and there's a whole lotta room under the pedal. I could be doing time if I get stopped.</div>
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Taking the roads less travelled, I get as far as Rocky Mountain House before I run out of pavement. Now, pushing across the foothills, I'm running out of daylight. I haven't seen another vehicle in a long time. Quiet. Dead quiet. I pull off into an old meadow to wait out the night. I've seen wild horses up this road before, and maybe I'll get lucky again in the morning. Who knows? I do know that you don't see many Lincolns running up this log and ranch road. But what good is a car if it doesn't take you where you want to go?</div>
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Just me and the howling coyotes under a big moon. The racing clouds. The strange arms of the night wrapped trees. The edge of the forrest. The edge of the world. The edge of a journey. I'd stand outside and revel in the moment, but the mosquitos swarm, so I huddle in the front seat of the car– swatting at the ones that managed to get in. Remarkably, I've got cellular service in this spot, so I check in to the social networks, the email servers, the voice mail. Then I turn it off. The wind is rising, hushing and whispering in the trees. I fall asleep listening to their story. If I was in one of those silver busses outside the casino, I would of missed all this.</div>
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In the morning, the ride out to the blacktop is uneventful. Finally, there is a rest stop across from Glacier National Park. I clean up and have a shave in the spacious men's room, and then purchase the most expensive cup of coffee in the world. It comes in a smallish, styrofoam cup and tastes like something nine days old.</div>
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Roads through Canada's Rocky Mountains look like this... sometimes, in good weather, when you're not hairpinning up some icy pass in zero visibility late at night...<br />
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And soon I'm in Jasper, Alberta. And my show is sold out. And I don't have a sound techie. And I believe that I play really, really well. It's a good show from my seat. If not a great show. I raffle a tour jacket. Sell another one. Sell a pile of CD's. Get fed really well. The best wines. Encores. Good friends in a room I really love. I feel so, so very good that this show went off as it should. The next day I hang with my pal, Charlie. The trail I was planning on running is closed, so Charlie drives me up to another park. The idea is that it will be a mostly downhill run back to to town. Easy, eh? Typical of the trails in this area, it is not well posted, and typical for me– my GPS is not connecting me to a map. My 8- 10 km turns to about 15 km, with plenty of up and down. There's nobody on this trail but me, and I sing as I run so as not to surprise any bears. And I try not to limp, because I don't want a big cat to take me from behind. This is as far west as this Tour leg goes. I'll be flying west again in October to pick up the Pacific coastal area en route to Africa.<br />
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A surprise visit from my sister, Dr. Kathryn MacLean.<br />
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What I do out on the Blues Highway. Between the driving, talking, looking for a cell signal. Running some trail. Running some blues down. Playing the blues. Or maybe riding it like some dark horse. Or maybe it rides me, urging me reckless down these roads. Some nights the stories flow from unknown places, and the music is a gift- a surprise to both the artist and the audience. During a recent interview I recalled spending time with Son House. About how he would sometimes go into a trance like state, and about how he'd take you there with him. A whole crowd sometimes. And he didn't need a guitar. He could pace up and down in his living room, the blues as a story, a lever, as a memory, as a magic to take us beyond ourselves into different, otherworldly places. Today it took me to Edmonton, Alberta for a club date, and then to one of the nicest after hours, speakeasy places I've been to in ages. Blues under a starry sky. A roaring fire. Beer. Zulu Skies continues across western Canada... Worldly and unworldly. The sacred and the profane. The smell of gasoline. The taste of cheap wine. The humming of the highway in the distance.<br />
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I spend a couple of days in Saskatoon with my pal, Ross Neilsen. I run the river. Fall and hurt my shoulder. Maybe my knee, too. Quite a fall. Dirty and bruised I pick up my sorry self and finish my run. Barely. The uphill is a killer in the heat. I work on some songs at Ross's kitchen table. I look at a bag of receipts I need to process for a tax return. Pathetic, after expenses. Don't look at this now. No don't. Why bother? Gossip. Next, I'm drifting south to small town, Saskatchewan shows...<br />
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Dave "Too Tall" Kampman and Howard Schmenge Chapman came in from Calgary, Alberta to round out the bill in Kyle, Saskatchewan. Groovy, blues accordian and percussion. How come I never met these guys before? By the end of the night nobody remembered that they weren't my band. Steel guitar and accordian? Sounded great. Anytime, guys. I'll have to play Alberta next year as an excuse to do some shows with you.<br />
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Sometimes you drive across the flatlands for hours on busted roads: driving past places with small names and peeling paint, past the dust, the mud, the twist, the shake– past the horizon. Sometimes, with your name on the front page of a prairie paper, with pick-up trucks coming out of the night, pies on the counter, friends laughing, bourbon in plastic cups... Sometimes this is the Big Time. As good as it gets. Sometimes I'm a very lucky man. Garth Brooks might of owned Saskatoon last night, but we took Kyle, Saskatchewan for ourselves. Big Sky. Far from the blacktop and the hum of the silver busses.</div>
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I've been to Kyle before. I'm supposed to do a one day layover here to work on my taxes. The back seat of the Lincoln has boxes of paper that I'm sworn to process into something that resembles a tax return. Of course, my friends conspire to spare me the pain, and the day is blown off in a haze of garage tours, flatland hotels, and beer.<br />
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I've got a short drive day, so I take the road less travelled. I meet the Wizard of Oz at the Crossroads, talk John Deer for a while. Lots of these rigs are GPS controlled now, so you just ride them to the edge of the earth, and then turn them for the next row. Some of the guys get bored and program strange designs into their fields. To entertain anybody that might fly by. Because they can. And why not? Saskatchewan folks love to talk, so we had a nice visit, uninterrupted by anything or anyone.<br />
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I saw a white dot on the horizon, so I chased it along until it became a schoolhouse. Nothing else out here, as far as the eye could see... Built in 1914. Who sat at these desks? Wrote on this slate blackboard? What boys fed the wood stove in the cellar? Born and died and off to one War or the Other. Came back or didn't. Or wound up managing a bank in Petrolia, Ontario? Who? The building yields no secrets. Every story safe, every child a success. Every seat a mystery. The wind ripples the crop outside, like waves on a flat green ocean. I linger, and then flee the loneliness in a cloud of dust. I leave my mark behind with the marks of the other boys.</div>
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South and east now. A couple little shows across the fading lands, the half abandoned towns.</div>
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The grain elevator. The freight train. Oil pays better than wheat or livestock– or I'm betting it does. The church. God knows they've shut the elevator down. All the prayer in the world won't bring back the money and the dancing girls, the pick-up trucks roaring up and down Main St. on Saturday night.</div>
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The hotel. Hot in the summer and cold in the winter. You could leave your door open to try to catch a breeze. Lie there at night listening to the couple in the next room, listening to the trains roar by in the night, grinding and rattling. It's all grind and rattle into the witching hour. Have another drink and blow out of this place in the morning. Twenty miles east. Another town, the next letter of the alphabet. Try your luck again. I park under a tree and sleep for a while in the Lincoln. In a few hours I'll roll into the provincial capital, Regina. And try my luck again.</div>
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At dusk, I go for a run past the provincial Parliament. It has been a hot, hot day and now the tuner cars, pickup trucks, and motorcycles are cruising the strip. Windows open. Stereos cranked up. Drake. Adele. Hello. Everybody's noisy, talking. Cold drinks in parked cars. The Parliamentary parking lot is definitely owned by the people of Saskatchewan. Out on the trail there are a few other runners, plenty of walkers, and a multitude of Canada geese. They show their absolute distain for me by turning their backs on the camera. Soon it will rain hard– a massive cracker of a storm– I'm dry in the Lincoln, and these geese will be very wet. Serve you right! Honk! Honk!</div>
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An unremarkable two sets in a half-empty restaurant. In a couple of years, I will lose the memory of this place the way they lost my Tour posters. I open the Lincoln Hotel in the corner of a too bright parking lot, close my eyes, open them again, and that's it for Saskatchewan. They had a big music festival last weekend and, for some, that means the music can now be forgotten until next year. "You should play that festival next time! They'd probably like you!" I drive across town to Mr. Breakfast, go to the cheap gas place near the Casino, get a massive coffee from Tim's– and then I'm out sailing on the blacktop once more.</div>
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I like to explore the little towns and villages along the way. The roads less travelled have got some great thrift shops. This is a pretty typical, Manitoba prairie town. But I buy nothing today. Some days it's just more fun to look.</div>
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The prairie disappears pretty quickly as the road moves me east into Ontario. </div>
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Rough country with a thin blacktop carved through it. That's what it is for hours, for days, forever. Northwestern Ontario. What it is. Roadside on a rock cut. I went looking for a widow today, but didn't find her. Instead, the old homestead: no longer proud, but overgrown, posted. No Trespassing. His old truck still parked where he had left it, where he had left this world by the sad glory of his own hand. And now. The business of life continues at the same pace. A face missing. A place missing. I remembered the backroad turns one last time, the too tall grasses waving behind me. We, the living, selfishly mourn the loss of shared memories: of things we count on, and expect. A hot coffee and a cold beer. The closing chord of a show. Crawling through a tunnel under the old railway tracks. As if this world were static, and here for our pleasures alone. </div>
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I didn't know what these flowers were called, but at this time of year they are the colour guard of the roadside into western Ontario. "Lupins," chime my western friends. So now we know! Or, now I know. Brightening an otherwise gloomy day. Lupins. Today's gift to me.</div>
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Back on the shores of Lake Superior. A couple more shows. House concerts now. Small gatherings here this time around. I'm playing places that are well away from the blacktop, and people aren't driving as much in the dark anymore. Plenty of moose in these parts. People die when they hit these massive, dark animals. Plenty of police on the highways, too. Nobody wants to get stopped, and nobody wants to take any chances. My audiences are accordingly very local for these, off-grid shows. Pulled pork. Home made red wine in big jugs. I don't have to go anywhere at the end of the night. I'd like to stand outside and look at the stars, but the clouds of mosquitos get in the way of my view. </div>
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My friend Vic does make a drive out to the last show. When I first met him he was the host of the only regional, blues radio show at the lakehead. We became friends, and it's been a pleasure to connect year after year on my travels. It's a strange life on the road. With Vic, like so many of my friends, we always seem to pick up exactly where we left off months ago. People will find their true friends and know them when they do. On this night, Vic stays over in my cabin and we talk far too late. The next morning we kayak Superior. The mysterious lake is smooth when we depart, but choppy enough hours later to provide a good workout. We explored a nearby river, working our way upstream until a treefall and white water blocked our progress. Nothing quite like northern Ontario by water. Nothing like a paddle with a friend.</div>
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The dusking highway. Soon to snake it's way beyond the call of this Great Lake. I'll coax the Big Lincoln over some long reaches. Watching the fuel gauges. Watching for moose.</div>
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Sometimes I ride in silence for the fleeting hours. Other days I crank up the music. Playlist across The north shore of Lake Superior: Big Joe Williams and Sonny Boy. I want to pull over, park and practice whenever I hear these guys. Later I listen to Jimmy Vaughn and Omar Kent Dykes. Omar's one of the only cats who has really absorbed the original Sonny Boy. And I love the way he sings. Next up: Catherine MacLellan. I play her when ever I need a hug, or have a heart that needs some mending. Today it's The Raven's Sun. Finally, I reach for a Johnny Cash collection I haven't heard in some time. American IV: The Man Comes Around. That's a strange and troubling track. But it's track two that nails it- and me. Hurt. I don't know if I've ever burst into tears during a song before. But I did today, and had to stop at this abandoned filling station to compose myself. As much as I love his earlier records, these last recordings take us to different places. The wisdom of an old heart. Magic.</div>
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Blues stage. One man with a guitar. Sometimes a little band. Amps: nicotine stained, still stinking of the good old days when the cigarette smoke drifted across these stages like fog. Out in front: cold beer, tables. Bikes and trucks grumbling in the parking lot. Plenty of mojo. Real deal with neon trim. Rough looking men, sporting pension money, pictures of grandchildren. Old wooden buildings that could burn down overnight. Hotels where towns used to be. Places where railroad men and bikers and miners and First Nations tough guys held court. Sawdust on the floor. Sometimes. Meat packers. Pavement guys. Cowboys. Places where you had strippers work the matinee show on Saturday afternoon. Where the old men sat quietly, shaking salt into their little draft beer glasses. Where young men would buy enough draft beer to cover the table. Beer. Buckets of beer. Bring more. Old school joints where the urinals in the men's room were always filled with ice. As if the neon wasn't cool enough. Places with history stapled to the walls and names scratched into the tables.<br />
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Almost gone. Not quite. It's not a dream you'd have on purpose. Instead, you wake up one day and find yourself in it. Playing pinball, craving the waitress. Killing time. Tuning before the first set. Now pushing two tons of chrome and steel down a highway, half hung over, halfway to the next town. My name left behind: still on the marquee. One letter missing.<br />
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And someday it will all be gone, vanished like the buffalo. And where will the blues live? Where will it go? With us? With the wind? The central-western Canadian part of this year's Zulu Skies Tour wrapped here, Saturday night. You bet, I love that stage. All these stages.<br />
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Next: The Canadian Maritime– the wild Atlantic roar. The Canadian Pacific. Africa...<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7975752083163699450.post-3608942750478373832016-05-09T03:20:00.000-04:002016-08-09T10:18:47.905-04:00Zulu Skies Blues Tour Announced: 40 South African shows<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: large; text-align: left;">Zulu skies. Old stories once took me to the Horn of Africa. Now, this Tour takes me there. This Blues Highway, always curious, always twisting. Now, under Zulu skies. A cold beer in a joint somewhere between the Blue Train and the shacks by the roadside. I bring the Blues to Your Town. Clouds are shifting. Nothing is certain, but all manner of things seem possible under Zulu Skies.</span></div>
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Forty shows across South Africa. Zulu skies. It's not about wishing and shiny new guitars. It's bare fingers on dead strings. Blues from the darker side of the road. It's truth. Lies. Redemption. It's the vagabond telling songs and singing stories. It's cheap wine and bourbon. It's whispering and shouting of things close to the bone. It's listening to the voices in the wind. It's life lived. It's my life.<br />
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Now I'm bleeding the brakes on the Big Lincoln. We're going to roll out another thirty thousand km across North America. Two oceans, fifty shows, and then we part company for a new adventure. Two more oceans. Forty more shows. Voices I've not heard before. Zulu skies. This Tour is dedicated to my late friend, Hal Mills, who put Africa in my ear.</div>
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Sept 8- Oct 1, TBA Atlantic Canada</div>
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<span style="text-align: right;">Oct 7- Oct 29, TBA Pacific Canada</span></div>
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<span style="text-align: right;">Nov 3- Dec 19, South Africa–</span></div>
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Nov 3 Sony Balcony TV, Johannesburg</div>
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Nov 4 Bluestown Sessions, Wedge Park, JHB<br />
Nov 5 Eden Radio 1350, Johannesburg<br />
Nov 5 Tour Launch Reception, Canadian High Commission, Pretoria</div>
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Nov 5 Asbos Theatre, Pretoria</div>
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Nov 6 Cockpit Brew House, Cullinan</div>
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Nov 9 Sinkshack, Bronkhorstspruit</div>
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Nov 10 JamJar Lounge, Lyndenburg</div>
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Nov 11 Stoep, Nelspruit</div>
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Nov 12 City Soiree, Pretoria</div>
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Nov 13 Mojo's, Welkom</div>
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Nov 14 Vulture Club, Bloemfontein</div>
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Nov 16 Caladdi, Lidgetton</div>
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Nov 17 The House at Zululand, Eshowe</div>
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Nov 18 Rock Music Bistro, Umzumbe</div>
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Nov 19 Amapondo Lodge, Port St. John's</div>
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Nov 20 Private Event, Port St. John's</div>
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Nov 22 Raggies, East London</div>
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Nov 23 Goat Shed, Kenton-On-Sea</div>
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Nov 24 Music Kitchen, Port Elizabeth</div>
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Nov 25 Karoo Lamb, Nieu-Bethesda</div>
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Nov 26 Show Room Theatre, Prince Albert</div>
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Nov 27 Saronsberg Theatre, Tulbagh</div>
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Nov 30 Botrivier Hotel, Botrivier</div>
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Dec 1 Cafe Roux, Noordhoek</div>
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Dec 2 PeriScope Theatre, Pringle Bay</div>
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Dec 3 The Cottage, Cape Town</div>
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Dec 4 Cafe Alma, Cape Town</div>
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Dec 5 Barleycorn Folk Club, Cape Town<br />
Dec 7 Die Boer, Durbanville</div>
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Dec 8 Bluestown Sessions, Mercury Club, CT</div>
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Dec 9 Villa Pascal, Durbanville</div>
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Dec 10 Karoo Art Hotel, Barryville</div>
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Dec 11 Karoo Art Hotel, Barryville<br />
Dec 14 TBA<br />
Dec 15 City Soiree, Port Elizabeth<br />
Dec 16 The Barnyard, Plettenburg Bay</div>
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Dec 17 Knysna Blues Festival, Knysna</div>
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Additional shows to this early list are pending. All schedule updates will be made in the Sidebar. So, c'mon– ride with me once more. Follow the Tour here, and at the Facebook, docmaclean.deltablues address. You never know who we're going to meet, and what's going to happen on the Blues Highway.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1