I was at a loud bar in Buenos Aires, Argentina watching a three-piece klezmer band along with a bunch of new friends when one of them, Freddy, turned to me after some thought and said:
“Imagination is experience.”
I think that’s what he said. It was really loud in there. Maybe he said, “Experience is imagination,” or [...]
Archive for the ‘Tour Diaries’ Category
Snow is Still Falling, I’m Almost Home (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
Posted in Tour Diaries on January 13, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Going to Graceland (Memphis, TN)
Posted in Tour Diaries on December 28, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Some of us walk the borderline between believing in something and believing in nothing. Whether it is our country or a divine creator, we are certain that we feel something stirring inside us, but if it is a true feeling we are afraid to let it out, because we see other people with a strong [...]
See You In Heaven If You Make The List (Burlington, VT)
Posted in Tour Diaries on December 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Sometimes there are coincidences in this world that are so incredible that you can’t actually appreciate them. For example, the sun is about 400 times larger than the moon at the same time that it is 400 times further from the Earth than the moon is. This creates the illusion in the sky that the [...]
The Misuse of the Bassoon (Outside Toronto, Canada)
Posted in Tour Diaries on December 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
As we were being thrown out of Canada the other day, the immigration officer coldly said to me the words that truly hurt:
“You’re just not offering any benefit to Canada.”
And I know he meant that in an economic sense. But still. Ouch.
We were driving from Michigan to play a show in Toronto. We had no [...]
An Easy Chair on the Chopping Block (Denver, CO)
Posted in Tour Diaries on December 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
We drove down from Salt Lake City to the redder and redder rocks of Southern Utah on Friday, to the little town of Torrey, Utah. There lives David Williams, a man who looks like Jesus, and who humbly and Jesus-like puts on shows in a little pizza place in this tiny town and asked me [...]
A Brief History of Western Pop Music (Salt Lake City, UT)
Posted in Tour Diaries on December 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
One problem that we human beings have that won’t endear us to our future alien overlords is the way that we tend to take personal, subjective experiences and try to turn them into universal, objective truths. Probably 3 billion or so murders could have been prevented throughout the history of the world if we were [...]
Take This Child, Lord (Tucson, AZ)
Posted in Tour Diaries on June 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Take This Child, Lord (Tucson, AZ)
I recently had a dream where I was asked to play second base for the New York Yankees. Just me, in my street clothes, with no particular baseball skill, suddenly asked to jump into the middle of a game and start playing. And instead of saying no I just stalled [...]
He Strummed His Way Into Trouble (West Texas)
Posted in Tour Diaries on June 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Olivia Pepper gave me a haircut on a bench in a small park in Austin, Texas. The park was filled with strange birdfeeders that looked like Scandanavian condominiums. A random man walked by and saw what was apparently the first outdoor haircut he had ever seen and shouted, jokingly, “Hey! I’m next!” Olivia yelled out, [...]
Repair is the Dream of the Broken Thing (New Orleans, LA)
Posted in Tour Diaries on June 11, 2008 | 1 Comment »
The sickness grew and mutated. It had a name and a face, though I promised the sickness that I wouldn’t tell anyone what it was. It tormented me like a bully at school. It pushed me down and let me get up and then pushed me down again. It was psychedelic. It entered my brain [...]
All My Favorite Singers Couldn’t Sing (Chicago, IL)
Posted in Tour Diaries on June 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
My friend Dave Depper has contributed a lot of good to my life, like the one time that me and him played an informal set at the Roadside Attraction in Portland that consisted of nearly half the songs from the White Album, done spontaneously as best we could from memory, switching off between guitar and [...]
