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Twenty five years ago or so, I was flying on a plane from New York to California. An amazing woman, Vella, was sitting next to me and we talked and chatted the entire flight. I never saw her again, but we remained fervent pen pals… for 25 years. Every Christmas and every birthday, we faithfully sent each other cards and pictures… along with handwritten letters throughout each year. I practically knew everything about her family and kids and grandchildren and all of their lives.

A couple years ago I stopped getting them… and worried that something was wrong. This past year, I received a letter from one of her daughters, sharing with me all the sad news and heartbreak. Indeed, Vella had passed away. She told me how I was like a part of their family, that they all felt like they knew me and loved seeing all the cards and letters all these years.

Last night, the daughters came to the show in Logan. We went to dinner beforehand, and told stories and had a beautiful time. During the show, I sang “Million Lonely People” and dedicated it to Vella. I had a difficult time getting through it without choking up. I know Vella must have been looking down on us and probably was singing along, too.
Goodnight, Vella.

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After a raucous, barn-burner show last night at The Bouquet in Boise, Idaho, Tyson took us out to an early breakfast, before spending the whole day recording us in a day-long session. I swear, Tyson always treats me like a king every time I come through… such goodness and kindness…

Cydney was giddy with delight and bursting at the seams like a freshly squeezed Twinkie to be playing the organ. Her first-ever organ session, dear diary….

We then dashed off to play a long night’s show in Twin Falls… Afterwards, instead of crashing at a local hotel, we decided to drive on to Logan (in Utah). We covered so much territory in one day… sometimes it feels good to keep moving and jump in the car and pedal for a few hours after a crazy jam-packed day… de-stressing… decompressing… unwinding… and getting free from all the buildings and neon signs… back into nature and the great wide, open sprawl…

Utah is quite cold, as it turns out… especially at 3am… especially to Southern Californians… and this is supposed to be the sweet weather, hovering in the lower 30’s, before the winter hits…

After all the rigmarole of checking in to the hotel, dragging ourselves back and forth to the freezing room to unload the car, settling in and settling down, I finally crashed into bed around 4am…

Just before checkout time in the morning, I slowly awoke, and felt a blistering heat wave smashing down on my face… a smothering hell-fire blanket choking and gagging me… felt like I was going to break out in a nose bleed over my now freshly-baked and scorched, chapped lips…. apparently, the thermostat was broken and the room was now a sweltering 99 degrees…

As we gasped and clutched for the door, practically having to crawl on our hands and knees below the flames, we both shot out like an exploding pressure cooker was kicking us in the back… as if we were running out of a burning building… laughing at how lucky we were to be alive…

Lucky it wasn’t the stove or a running car left on all night…. lucky we didn’t die in our sleep… lucky.

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kung fu
During these long marathon drives between towns, Cydney has been entertaining us with poetic and heartfelt readings from UrbanDictionary.com… her enthusiastic and super-charged interpretations make it dangerous to drive while we’re both crying and sobbing tears of gut-wrenching happiness…

I decided we had to make a game out of it… we pick a new word every day out of the Urban Dictionary and then we each have to stealthily insert it somewhere during the show. It could be in the middle of a story between songs, it could be sung as a lyric in a song… anywhere, so long as it is spoken or sung or used during each of our sets. Sometimes it’s nasty ghetto slang, or something completely vile and utterly disgusting.

The rule is, nobody in the audience can know about it. It has to be delivered with a straight face, without calling any attention to it. The only tip off to innocent bystanders, really, is when either of us are sitting in the audience listening, and break out in hysterical laughter (seemingly for no reason), as the sneaky treasure gets released into the air… like a stealth-bomber dropping the perfect ninja bomb.

It has become quite hilarious and ridiculous and a high point of each night… After the show, we congratulate each other with a high five and bow… like two sparring, kung-fu Jedi knights… recalling each other’s artful skill with genuine admiration and mutual awe and respect of how the word was slipped in.

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I slept in a 5 foot long, NASCAR bed tonight. Some nights we get to stay with friends, instead of in hotels. Couches. Floors. Hallways. Backyard tents. Late night fellowshipping and wine and stories and laughs and home-cooked meals with dear friends… it breaks up the solitude and loneliness and road weariness… like a re-fueling pit stop to ground me and remind me we are not alone… Thank you John and Tammy for my race car dreams.

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The shows are going well… every night Cydney’s set kills… some real jaw-dropping, tear-inducing, breathtaking moments… kind of knocks the wind out of me… and i get to feel this every night before I sing… it’s lovely…

We’re driving up the coast now towards Oregon… this is something very new to me: having someone riding along in the car… after being so used to traveling alone for so long… the past year of about 50,000 miles… alone…

I have this feeling that every time there is a bum, stinky smell coming in from outside, or when we’re driving through a roadkill skunk bomb, or cow fields, or anything awful smelling, Cydney thinks it is me… there are no words spoken, just silence… then i started thinking, wait, what if all these smells are hers…

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Time to get back out on the road… I am super excited to announce that the fantastical and magical Cydney Robinson will be opening the shows! It will be a big, giant hootenanny!

NORTHWESTERN FALL TOUR 2010

10.06 – Hollywood, CA @ Cranes
10.07 – San Diego, CA @ Lestats
10.08 – Santa Ana, CA @ Gypsy Den
10.11 – San Luis Obispo, CA @ Steynberg Gallery
10.12 – Sacramento, CA @ Luna’s
10.13 – Seaside, CA @ The Alternative Cafe
10.15 – Cottage Grove, OR @ Axe and Fiddle
10.16 – Portland, OR @ Hawthorne Theatre
10.17 – Seattle, WA @ Rendezvous
10.18 – Pendleton, OR @ Great Pacific
10.19 – Spokane, WA @ Empyrean
10.20 – Boise, ID @ Bouquet
10.21 – Twin Falls, ID @ The Anchor
10.22 – Logan, UT @ Why Sound
10.24 – Boulder, CO @ Laughing Goat
10.27 – Hollywood, CA @ Cranes

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Pulling into Southern California is a weird feeling after being away for so long… I always think it will not be a big deal, or that I should be jaded and calloused enough to hardly notice the homecoming… but it feels like returning from a foreign country… and it takes a little bit of time to get re-acclimated… part of the process is just getting used to NOT moving… NOT having to be in a new place the next day… not physically moving forward…

This time, more than ever, I felt a great choking claustrophobia as I drove into civilization here. After weeks and weeks of daily big-sky driving and open horizon landscapes, it felt like everything was constricting around me as I emerged from the desert and crossed into Southern California, USA… the buildings and freeways and traffic and noise… tightening and squeezing…

Until I made it all the way home to the ocean… and performed my ritual tradition. Parking the car, then, before I even go into the house, running out to the waves and the edge of the world… to watch the sun setting into the water… the antidote… the cure and balm… just sitting there and staring out over the ocean… to slowly ease into the idea of being back in the real world…

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I was pretty anxious to get home… thought I would keep driving through the night until I got too tired. It was a little after 3am, somewhere in the middle of Arizona. I could feel myself starting to fade, so I thought I would check some email and rest for a few minutes, and pulled off the highway and into the parking lot of a sleezy motel that had the number “8” on its sign.

An elderly man was slumped outside the main entrance, smoking and chugging away on his cigarette as I drove on by to the back end of the motel, far away from any of the other cars. I opened up my computer, checked out some maps, started reading some emails…

Suddenly, there was a “tap! tap! tap!” on my passenger’s side window that shook me out of my trance. I looked up and saw the same wiry, sunken man, pushing his bushy, grey mustached face right up to the window, his security flashlight quivering.

OLD MAN: “Can I help you?!”

I slowly turned, pretended like I didn’t hear him, cracked the window a hair, paused, and said, “Excuse me, sir?”

OLD MAN: “Can I HELP you?!” he repeated.

ME: “Ah, no thank you.” and I rolled the window back up, nearly pinching off his mustache, then went back to staring at my computer screen.

TAP! TAP! TAP! More banging on the window.

OLD MAN: “You can’t be here! Helloooo!”

I ignored him and kept looking down, peering intently at my screen.

He banged some more. Harder.

I cracked the passenger’s window again and told him I was lost and that I was just getting my bearings. Then zipped up the window and went back to my email.

He stomped to the front of my car, stood in the headlights, and yelled at the top of his lungs,

OLD MAN: “LADY!! YOU CAN’T STAY HERE!”

Then, to my complete and utter amazement, he jumped onto the front of the car! Bounced up and down, yelling again. I was rather shocked and awed and slowly looked up through the windshield… paused… then carefully and sternly recommended, “Sir… you will need to get off my car.”

He stepped down. I resumed my reading. He jumped back up and forcefully bounced my car even harder with each syllable,

OLD MAN: “LAY-DEEEE!! YOUUU – CAAAN’T – BEEE – HEEERE!”

I raised my head and coolly repeated, “Sir…. get… off… my… car…”

I then laid as much weight and force as I could launch onto the steering wheel horn… for about 15 seconds, blasting away any night stillness that might have been left…

He finally got down, walked over to my side of the car, put his face right up to mine in the window, then forcefully loaded, cocked, and released the most explosive bird with his middle finger in my face…

OLD MAN: “F!@#K YOU, LADY! I’m gonna call the cops!!”

I fired back, “Yes, sir. Please call the police right now!”

He stormed away, back towards the motel office, shaking his head like he had just witnessed the worst crime in all of mankind, but was helpless to stop it.

Ten minutes later, I closed everything up and started driving to get back on the road. I pulled up in front of the office, and found he was back where I first saw him… smoking his cigarette… dreaming his dreams… I rolled my window down, paused long for effect, then waved and yelled a Dukes Of Hazard farewell, “Thank you, sir, for all your help!” and pealed away with a little dust trailing behind me…

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Before the show tonight, I walked across the street from the venue and drank from the hot springs of Hot Springs, Arkansas… apparently people drive from hundreds of miles around, bringing their empty jugs and containers to fill up… from the fresh and fantastic (and hot) eternal springs… so crazy and naturally delicious….

I wish gold, or healthy complete meals, or freshly cut watermelon slices, or happiness, or peace-love-and-understanding…. all could gush and pour out of a natural spring… at all times…. making them value-less, and common to everyone everywhere, and anyone could just pull up in their camper, and have a free fill-up any time they wanted…

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I was in a love buzz spell-trance, cruising the Kentucky back roads, and decided to take a little detour to Hodgenville, Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace…. what a lovely distraction and field trip off the beaten path to give my mind a break from all the big-sky driving…

and totally worth it!… a tour of the cabin replica that might have sorta been like what Abraham Lincoln maybe kinda was born in… saw the running natural spring where young Abraham might have drank him some water… strolled through the same souvenir shop where Abe would have sold his own souvenirs if he had lived a little longer…

I thought this would be as good a place as any to get some extra trinket souvenirs for my darling nephews… something fun and educational at the same time… an awesome “uncle surprise” to share from my long travel adventures. We could bond with each other as we learned some historical, fun facts together.

Lincoln pennyMost everything was overpriced horrible crap that would not have made Abraham proud at ANY age… On the way out, however, I spotted a bowl of shiny pennies next to the cashier’s register. Commemorative, gleaming keepsakes, with a couple different interesting, rare backside designs, one with Abe and another with the cabin. WOW! Only 25 cents each! This was my Kentucky treasure-find and I would be a hero to my nephews, reason enough for playing this entire tour.

I bought a couple and made sure to keep them separate from my normal change holder in the car. I was pretty excited to hurry home just so I could give them the precious (and educational) gem mementos and tell them some awesome Abraham Lincoln stories.

A few weeks later, back home in sunny California, far away from Kentucky, I was digging for some spare change as I headed into the post office to mail some letters. I emptied my whole ashtray container into my hands to sift through and find the right amount that I needed…

Like a gold miner’s pan-dream…. shimmering and peering back at me from my hands… were 4 or 5 “rare” Abe and log cabin backside pennies!! Exactly like the two I paid 50 CENTS for in Kentucky!!