Saturday, Oct. 30. Olympia, WA. Le Voyeur.

Olympia, Washington is a fitting place to be on Halloween, or the Saturday night right before it. The Westside Arts Walk was on, 17 house shows in one night. My show was downtown instead, at Le Voyeur, but I did play a short set at the Square One house venue, right before the Olympia Free Choir.

We stopped at another of the house shows and viewed The Haunted Hot Dog Zombie Zoo From Hell. Click to enlarge.

Caitlin, with whom I'd perform later that night, took us to Hall of the Woods, an old barn or church (it's unclear) in the forest near Black Lake. At Hall of the Woods they were having a ceremony for the dead involving a beautiful altar made of fallen leaves. We ate vegan soup and hash with the hall's residents and friends in the glowingly warm kitchen.

After that we went down to Le Voyeur for the show.

The performance space is in a madly graffitied back room. The venue takes an unapologetic version of the very hands-off approach to shows I've seen at many quirky dive bars. This was vividly illustrated by the back room's amusing sound board. Actually I didn't see the sound board, as the mixer is padlocked inside a wooden box, with a sign that says the levels are pre-set and that you just need to turn on the power strip below. XLR and quarter-inch cables escape from the box through holes drilled in one side. The bar staff explained that this eliminates the need for a sound man, but still prevents bands from blowing the speakers, as they might were they to have access to the controls.

The back room was draped in dead corn stalks, for the season. I played first.

Caitlin played next; her project is called Autococoon. Her music is friendly/aggressive/strange.

The last band, Making Love, introduced a crazy old regular named Dan Avery to be their pre-show. Dan told a story (true??!?!?) about his father forcing his brother to kill their childhood dog by pouring acid onto the dogs head. Holy shit. Making Love, also, was a trip.

This was a very entertaining evening. To be honest, though, I was still upset about losing my guitar in Eugene. Here I am am attempting to find a quiet moment in a corner of the bar, hiding among all the trippy bric-a-brac of Le Voyeur.

I kept trying to take pictures of all the wild costumes parading down the streets outside, but the pictures all turned out blurry. No Masks In Store.

Oct. 28 & Oct. 29. Eugene, OR: The Jazz Station, and Portland, OR: The Waypost.

We lost my guitar in Eugene, OR. It seems impossible that such a thing could happen.

The drive to Eugene from San Francisco was beautiful,

and it was long. In the end, it was raining, it was the mountains, one of our (already milky) headlights burnt out, we got pulled over, and the van's serpentine belt slipped off.

The van limped into Eugene and pooped out for real about four blocks from the venue. Actually making it to the show felt like a miracle. We were late, but the small group of guests at the Jazz Station were waiting patiently. They had crackers and wine and a cauldron with apples floating in water, since it's almost Halloween. Bryan did a set with Sabrina Siegel. They'd collaborated through mail before on a recording project, but this is the first time they'd met in person. Sabrina vocalizes and plays the electric guitar with rocks. It was cool to see. I played a good set too. We had made it there.

And it looks like, in the dark and the weariness and the loading of our gear from the venue to the van four blocks away, and in limping the van over to a residential neighborhood so we wouldn't get a ticket, moving our stuff into Sabrina's car and then driving to her house, the guitar disappeared. It's not at the Jazz Station or at Sabrina's. And we didn't realize it was gone until opened the van to load in outside the Waypost in Portland. And now who knows.


On the up side, we have a nifty new tool. Through our serpentine belt adventures (it seems to slip off in wet weather), we discovered that a special wrench is needed for the singular task of installing a serpentine belt, as the opening to reach the belt tensioner is so narrow. Since we'd had so many problems we finally went to Autozone and bought one of these things. Now have our very own Serpentine Belt Tool and the power to fix this problem on our own if we get stuck again.


I don't really have photos from Eugene. Back in Chicago something happened to the display screen in my digital camera, it's all covered in psychedelic colors now but you can't see the image except for a tiny corner of the screen. In Eugene it had an error message of some sort and without seeing the screen we couldn't figure it out. But someone was taking photos at the show, if they send them to me I'll post them here later on. But here are some photos on the road from Eugene to Portland after we got the camera working again.


Borrowed a guitar for the Portland show from Ohioan. The Waypost is a sprawling coffee house/bar in Portland, with bicycle-part art adorning their garden gate.

I played with Ohioan and with Hearsay and Hyperbole, the solo project of Alexis Powell (she's half of the sister-duo Festival). Alexis creates her music with vocal loops; she had a couple of friends join in for the last few songs.

Ohioan is slow psychedelic country with guitar, bass, a couple of drums, saxophone, fiddle, organ and piano; great sound.

Many old friends have migrated to the Portland and came to the show; they were all so good to see.

Not sure what to do about the guitar situation, with two weeks of tour to go. Also lost in that case a really cool strap that Bryan got me for Christmas, a nice Fishman pickup I'd broken down and purchased in Philly after my old pickup crapped out, the tuner I bought (also in Philly) after I lost my nice one in New York, a capo and sundry picks, and all the stickers I'd picked up on the guitar case during this trip. I don't have a backup guitar anymore, as I sold my extras this spring. Trying not to think about it. Show in Olympia, Washington tonight.

Wednesday, Oct. 27. San Francisco, CA. A Boat in the Bay.

Bryan met up with Cheryl Leonard in San Francisco today to do a recording session. Cheryl played rocks, seashells, penguin bones and brushes of pine needles. Together with Bryan’s homemade instruments, the room was full of amazing things.

We went down to the pier. My Aunt Mysty works for a company in San Francisco that does boat rides around the bay, and she got me a sunset show on one of their boats. This turned out to be a lot of fun.

We had a good time hanging out with Mysty and her husband John and their friends on the boat.

Golden Gate Bridge

Playing on the boat

Bryan playing the flute in the warehouse

This morning we left for Eugene, Oregon. Now we’re driving through mountain forests full of mist. It’s about 45 degrees outside. There was just a road sign for a bear crossing. We can see snow on the rocky peaks above the pines as we pass exits for Dunsmuir and Crag View Drive.

Tuesday, Oct. 26. Oakland, CA. The Cakebread Castle.

Today we visited the Albany Bulb and the Marin Headlands, and we played a show at The Cakebread Castle.

The Albany Bulb is an interesting piece of land: it was made out of construction refuse that was deposited in the Bay and then covered with clay, for many years.
Non-native pampas grass on the non-native land mass

Three artists known collectively as Sniff filled the place with “murals” and sculptures a few years ago.

Bob and Frida

My friend Amanda works at the Headlands Center for the Arts, so a drive though Sausalito to go visit her was in order. I thought the place was wonderful.

After that went to walk around Rodeo Beach and its accompanying lagoon.

And Bob and Bryan did a recording session back at the house.


Then we went to Oakland for a house show at Dax Tran-Caffee’s fascinating place, The Cakebread Castle.

Dax made eggs and pecan pancakes for all the guests. He was a fantastic host. Bryan and I both performed, Dax did a puppet show, and several other musicians shared a few songs throughout the night.

Dax playing the wine glasses

I got to see Marla, old friend from college, and our friend Justin Rhody was there too. This is me with Vernon Putnam, who gets the cool award for coming to see me play this week twice.