3 Mar 2010: Sunny skies and chevrolet

Air travel, what’s it like? One moment you’re walking back from the blue warm sparkly waves with the sun on your back, next thing you’re scraping snow off the car windscreen to do a gig in Lincoln. Which was a cracker, so that’s good. Loved the sun, loved the sea, loved seeing all my good friends and family, but also loved getting back. My long held theory, that I could probably fit most of the years decent gigs in SA into a 6 week stretch, held water and the tour exceeded expectations. A couple of surprise good’uns, PE and Knysna both stellar, 300 folks came to see me and Barry at the Cape Farmhouse, had a corker in Hermanus, and had 4 real fun gigs with the many splendoured John Dickin on percussion. Official lemon of the tour was…ta daah.. Plett, which crashed and burned spectacularly. But apart from that all pretty solid, and I had the bonus of doing a packed town gig with my bro Andy Lund. Also had a surprise in Tulbagh, where we took on the local theatre by way of doing something well, local, as we were staying with Katrine’s mom and Rob Nagel that weekend. Place sold out, and myself, Rob and Albert Frost had a great time playing a blues set featuring Al on washboard and Rob on tea chest bass. People lost their minds, and I was reminded in a very fundamental way of the healing power of the blues. Popped into the Polana to jam a few tunes with Dave Ferguson who has got a heavy blues/trance thing going on, and had a jam in deepest Salt River with my old friend Tim Parr who is firing from both hips on his Telecaster. Had some surf, my buddy Rhett lent me a 6 ‘6’ Peter Daniels for the trip and after two catch up longboard sessions at the corner I had some lovely Vic Bay, Jeffreys, Port Alfred, and even Buffels Bay. I’ve taken the position for some time that trying to replace stuff from home in the UK is a recipe for misery, but I’m going to rethink that one as surfing is just too much fun. So I’m going to become one of those landlocked Brit surfers who drives to Wales and gets stoked if it’s 3 feet, I don’t care. There are some good travel options for surf too, France, Ireland, if my ears hold out. OK, I’m picking this up again after a pretty rubbish week of illness. Had a bad cold for two hardscrabble gigs on the weekend, which I got through on what I believe is known as a cocktail of pharmaceuticals. Thought I got away with it, and then went down hard…as in crawl into bed for 2 days, assume foetus position and whimper quietly to oneself. Still pretty stuffed, but can shuffle around a bit now at least. I’d better get this up as it’s been quite a while. I get scolded occasionally for tardy upkeep, but what folks don’t realize is that people don’t go to artists websites very much anymore. People like facebook. Not that that’s an excuse, but it’s a current and real trend. It might change again. Well, if you can’t beat them, join them, so there are a bunch of pics from the tour on my facebook page. Til later, best, Robin