providence to seattle

Monday May 3 2004

well it has been a very long time since i wrote and i don’t know where to start. we have just arrived in seattle after driving all the way from providence, rhode island. yes, that’s right.. any other band would view this as complete madness and after doing this i would tend to agree, but without trying it how could we have known for sure? we did drive through some amazing country, the scenery was quite overwhelming as was the feeling of complete isolation especially in wyoming and montana but had we not done the drive we would never have stopped off at the 10,000 silver dollar bar somewhere near spokane. i got some montana taffy but paid a heavy price for ordering a ham and cheese sandwich. who would think so many things could go wrong in the construction of such a simple snack but i guess in the wrong hands anything can fall apart. anyway the damaged was long forgotten by the time we hit the mountains in washington as we immediately got lost in the scenery. our time on the east coast was a lot of fun. we had new york as our playground for a week or so and the sun came out to cheer us on. it was a welcome respite from the bitter cold of the mid west and we wandered the streets trying to look like we belonged. we were staying with good friends, amanda and alex in washington heights who were the proud parents of baby boy lachlan. the boy with the biggest smile in manhattan. we went to the museum of natural history and had ethiopian food for the first time in between slow walks in central park and strolls down the parkways looking out across the hudson into jersey. the shows went well and we had the opportunity to meet the lovely people from essex green and ladybug transistor. chris from the essex green was our travelling companion for a bunch of shows in new england and what a time we had skipping from town to town ending up at his folks place in burlington for a magnificent lasagna. we had to part ways in providence after an impromptu rendition of four strong winds made us all cry rivers but we had his songs in our heads the whole way across the country. we also had a polish dinner with jeff, of the butterflies of love and high barnets fame, round the corner from his place in brooklyn before the show at the great lakes. later on that week we then met up with him and his merry cohorts up in enfield where pete joined the high barnets on a new recording that is in progress. with studio extraordinare michael demming at the helm i sat around and soaked up the atmosphere while the boys busied themselves with the task at hand. two out of the three desired songs were finished before we had to take our leave but it was declared a resounding success and we all left feeling very pleased with ourselves. so those are some of the highlights. obviously a lot more has happend but if we have a little more luck with internet cafes on this side of the country than we have thus far we’ll do our best to fill in the blanks. karl