The Grand Schlep

I'd resolved to see if I could do LA without a car this trip, and when I arrived from Bakersfield via bus I was able to get to North Hills (in the Valley) from Union Station to North Hills by public transit, via one metro and two buses, which took about an hour and a half. That was a little long, but ultimately bearable. But then last night, I needed to get from North Hills to LACMA, which is downtown (Miracle Mile-ish). Looking online, I found that I would have to takeno less than four buses, and the one-way trip would probably take two and a half hours. Getting back late at night was going to be even worse.

Hence, I borrowed a car for the evening, and next time I'll rent a vehicle, as much as it kills me. The monster of Los Angeles wins.

Leaving LA wasn't so easy, either, thanks to a numbskulled mistake. It started off well enough, with the shuttle bus to the airport being both quick and cheap. But when I tried to check in, Delta couldn't find my reservation. After several minutes of searching, finally they pulled up a reservation for me from LA to Vancouver, but leaving /next /Friday. Oh dear. That wasn't going to help me, so I canceled (rather than paying the $450 difference in fare to change the flight- yikes!) and feverishly hopped onto Kayak, hoping to get something soon and less-than-outrageous. Alaska had something that fit the bill, so I gratefully paid up and dashed to their terminal.

I once again had good luck with my two-in-one-guitars, being able to put them in the overhead storage. There were a few askance looks, though, and if I'd been a few minutes later I'd have been out of luck, as the bins all were crammed, this being Alaska which charges $20 per checked bag. I'm starting to look again at acoustic travel guitars; I hate having the constant worry when it's time to fly, hoping that my instrument can be guaranteed safe passage.

My second flight was a turboprop, and nobody could bring along any carry-ons bigger than a tote bag, so I relinquished control of my guitars, though as I watched the handlers they did seem to take decent care with them. I arrived finally in Vancouver, caught the (very fast and clean) Skytrain downtown, and met up with a few of my friends at a fantastic, yet cheap, sushi place (Zipang Sushi, on Main). Payoff.

Cafe Montmartre was just a few blocks away, mercifully, as I was quite ready to stop dragging my stuff around. It turned out to be a lovely little place, very much modeled after a French cafe, and largely succeeding. There's a stage next to the windows in the front, and old bicycles hanging from the ceiling, and charming little tables scattered throughout. Best of all, there were people hanging out, drifting in, and making the place feel quite lively.

My friends in Nothofagus did a great little set, with guitar and accordion and vocals in both French and Spanish, perfect for the environment. A good little crowd had gathered, and it was nice to take the stage already warmed up, as it were.

I'm still fooling around with different approaches to my sets. Recently I've been leaning towards doing a rocking, uptempo set, and standing up to play (which seems to fit that kind of material). But the other night in Bakersfield, I felt like I was beating people over the heads with the non-stop strumming. So tonight I sat, and mixed in a fair amount of quieter stuff. People applauded, and seemed to be listening, more-or-less, and I ended up doing two sets. There were some tips and nice compliments afterwards, and even an offer for another gig next week. But still, I feel like standing calls for more attention, and does a better job of calling people in to the "show", as it were. Perhaps it's only natural for a performer to want to capture the hearts of every person in the place, but there's always that nagging feeling that if I were really getting across, nobody would leave and everyone would want a CD. I'll keep experimenting. Even after all these years of solo gigs, I still feel like I have much to learn about what makes a good performance.

Afterward, I retired to my friends' loft, full of artwork and instruments, a place where creativity is nurtured. A great place to lay my head for the night.

Bakersfield is the butt of many jokes in California, owing mainly to the fact that it's in the Central Valley. It's cruel, really, but none of the towns in that part of the state get any respect. Try it with someone from LA or San Francisco: say "I just spent the weekend in..." then pause a moment, and fill in the blank with any one of these towns: Fresno, Stockton, Visalia, Modesto, or Bakersfield. Cruel laughter will ensue, I guarantee it.

Personally, I've always had a good experience in this trucker's town (home of Buck Owens, many signs will remind you). Granted, I don't come here to vacation or to look for a house to buy, but the gigs have always been good. People seem to simply enjoy new music, free of attitude and judgement.

I almost always play at a Border's Books in a big mall. One of the downsides to Bakersfield, which I will agree with, is that there are very few places to play. Even a simple cafe with acoustic music has been extremely difficult to find. On one tour, a scant two days before my visit, I booked a gig at this branch of the monstrous chain, and found the employees to be very supportive and helpful, and the crowd relatively abundant and interested. Sure, it's a commercial packaging of the cafe experience, but a venue is a venue is a venue, ultimately. The paramount thing is always to play music for people.

I have quite a few regulars who always show up, but disappointingly, this evening there were only a few familiar faces. Taking their place, though, was a small crowd of students from one of the colleges in town. After hanging back and listening for a bit, four of them came to the very front and occupied the four chairs directly in front of me. I played close to two hours with a short break, and they stayed the whole time, with many compliments toward the end. A nice feeling.

The one regret I have about tonight is that I'd decided to do a rocking set, standing up and doing all of my louder material. I think folks were a bit shell-shocked by it, and I myself starting craving some variety towards the end. From here on out, especially for a longer gig, I'll mix it up as I usually do. The jury is still out on standing vs. sitting, but it may be something dictated by the venue.

This was my third gig of the Noisefest weekend, and my first time playing with Laurie Amat. I'd met her at the Boise Experimental & Improv music fest last spring, and we've hung out since. She's an amazing vocalist, with a long CV (Residents, etc) and a most delightfully uninhibited way onstage. We've been looking for opportunities to play together, and when the tireless Lob Instagon (the organizer of Noisefest) asked me about doing a final set to close out Noisefest, I jumped on it.

It's not easy getting from San Francisco to Sacramento, which seems a bit ridiculous since they're both major cities and only 80 miles apart. But public transit is limited to Greyhound and Amtrak, and the traffic sucks. Still, the car was really the only option, so we got a Zipcar (which is genius, if not exactly cheap) and set out at 6. It took us 45 minutes to get to Berkeley, where I'd stowed my looping gear, then another hour and a half to get to Luna's Cafe in downtown Sacto, which is starting to feel like a second home.

We arrived in time to catch most of the second artist of the evening, doing a solo improvised acoustic bass set. It's pretty gutsy to go onstage and improvise on such a stubborn, massive instrument, and he acquitted himself well, doing some really interesting things with two bows at one point. Though I'm used to the place being pretty full, only half the tables were occupied, which may be unsurprising after the massive blowout of the Noisefest (something like 50 artists).

In contrast to Friday's Noisefest, which was the typical mad rush on- and off-stage to get out of the way of all the other people on the bill, tonight was very laid-back, and I didn't even bother to set up my gear before it was time to go on. Laurie was incorporating a looper into her setup, which normally involves nothing but a mic, and I had my two tape decks as usual, but it didn't take long and soon we were off.

One thing I like about following an acoustic instrument on a bill is that I don't have to match volume levels and intensity with, say, amplified buzzsaws (not out of the question). We took advantage of the freedom and started quietly, then progressed from there, getting pretty loud at some points...and that's about all I can remember, except a frequent feeling of exhilaration and much pleasure at the end. One of my markers for judging a good improvised set is not being able to recall much about what occurred afterward, except the sensation of things working really well. Such was the case this evening. It's not every time that it happens, but when it does, it makes all the experimenting worthwhile.

No more brunchtime coffeeshop gigs. I've done a lot of these over my the last few years, and they never really work. It's too bad, because it's a great idea, getting in a gig while allowing time for another at night, or just an evening off. But people don't generally come out, and the people who are there usually aren't interested in live music at that point in the day. Such was the case today.

Still, it was good as a warmup, the first acoustic gig of tour, and my first time singing live in two years. A bit terrifying to open my mouth and belt, but it went okay once I got started. It wasn't like everybody in the place dropped what they were doing to listen to me - far from it - but I can't deny that writing lyrics and putting them to music is still important to me. And once the songs exist, they need to be heard, so...there will be more singing in my future.

This was the fourteenth year of the Norcal Noisefest, and the third where I've taken part. I'm always impressed at how well it's run, even without taking into account the misfit nature of the music involved. Things start on time, nobody gets stressed, and somehow a dozen artists make their way smoothly on and off a small stage in one evening.

I was happy when it was time to walk the 15 blocks to Luna's Cafe. I'd been huddling in the Motel 6 all day, taking care of all sorts of things that got crunched in the last days before the tour began, so it was nice just to be around people again. It's a friendly crowd of folks, a number of whom I recognized and/or have gotten to know through these Fests. Smelly black clothing abounded, evil-looking tattoos shined from forearms, necks and heads, and what sounded like TV static was spilling off the stage, courtesy of a gentleman with a tableful of pedals. All comfortingly familiar.

The typical Noisefest set is 10-15 minutes, which is merciful considering the volume and range of frequencies involved. I appreciate the brevity for a lot of reasons. It keeps the energy high, makes for variety, and of course if an act is absolutely horrible (there are two kinds of noise, good and bad) one merely has to step outside for a breath of air before somebody else takes the stage.

I watched the next set - more pedals, more static - then set up my gear on one of the cafe's tables. My setup has remained unchanged for about three years now, and though I've occasionally brought things out of storage to incorporate, it never sticks and I always pare back again. I plug my guitar directly into a Tascam 424 cassette four-track, loaded with a short endless loop cassette. Then I put a Panasonic microcassette dictaphone (a secretary's machine) in the effects loop of the four-track. There's a foot controller for the dictaphone which turns playback on and off, and a punch-in pedal for the four-track, and that's it. I bounce things back and forth, mess a lot with the pitch controls, and am still finding new possibilities in this simple arrangement.

However, this time I did add one tiny thing, a mono earphone which works as an exceedingly low-fi microphone. After a very nice introduction by the organizer (Lob Instagon), I started off my set with the gain turned way up and the earphone in hand, amplifying the mechanical sounds of the machines. Waving it close to the power supply created a very nice buzz, which I then looped and pitch-shifted, and after toying with that for a bit I added some guitar. Things went okay from there, a few good sections, though I felt a bit directionless halfway through. (Amazing that one can feel that you're running out of ideas in a 12-minute set, but it happened). Still, I felt it ended well, with a nice wash of noise from the dictaphone with the pitch low and the volume cranked up all the way (which produces a ferocious fuzz-tone), and people seemed to enjoy it.

Following me was Holly Herndon, who was fantastic. She had a microphone, a laptop, and a MIDI controller, and processed the mic heavily through the laptop while adding bits and pieces of beats, low-end blasts, and high arcing squeals. There was a very nice logic to her explorations, as well as a good helping of space in between the loud bits, both of which are frequently in short supply in these kinds of musical situations.

The rest of the night was a bit of a blur, but I remember large amps, several masks, a huge shirtless man screaming while prostrating himself on the floor, a butcher knife used to hack a vinyl record to smithereens, an amplified wooden box covered with springs, and at the very end, an honest-to-goodness band playing actual instruments with actual sheet music (Lords of Outland - who still produced a hell of a noise, and were brilliant). I'd sad I have to miss the rest of the festival.

(The airport has a sense of humor. There are two of these installed in the luggage area)

My sixth tour of 2011 began with a 4 a.m. reveille to catch a flight from Laguardia to Chicago and on to Sacramento. Though I continue to strip down what I need for tours - this time, my direct box and tuner are sitting it out, and I've replaced my backup tape deck with an small, ancient delay pedal - I still have a rather heavy and inconvenient batch of luggage to haul around, with an overstuffed wheelie suitcase, laptop bag, a solidbody travel guitar and my full-size acoustic. (I could play the acoustic on all the gigs, but on high-volume noise shows the feedback makes it almost unusable). Someone gave me the idea of strapping the two guitar cases together, and the bottom of the travel guitar happens to slip handily into the huge outside pocket of the acoustic's hardbody gig bag, so a simple belt is all that was needed to convert them into a single, lemur-riding-on-mother's-back unit.

With this innovation, I can skirt the issue I sometimes run into of passing through security with three distinct items, the two guitars and laptop bag, one too many according to regulations. I now have two items, though the thing riding on my back now is unwieldy and heavy, to say the least. Happily, I encountered no issues getting through the terminal, and even managed to carry the assemblage onboard and into overhead storage on the Southwest plane. The skies began to dump just at 6 a.m., when my flight was schedule to leave, but we took off on time. Tired as I was, I couldn't sleep for the first hour as I experienced the worst turbulence of my life. Unbelievable rocking, rolling and pitching. It's at times like this that I put my imagination to work: we are on a soft rubber boat, being tossed about in safely pre-planned fashion on the kiddie flume...

We arrived half an hour early, to find beautifully clear skies and 80-degree temperatures waiting for us in CA. Just a few days ago down south, LA experienced 113 degrees, the hottest temperature on record, so I'm glad to be starting this tour in NorCal.

Once again, I'm relying on public transportation, so I checked out my options for getting to downtown Sacramento. Turns out the choices are limited to exactly one bus which arrives once per hour (and has no service whatsoever on weekends). Ridiculous. Isn't this the capital of the state?? I waited in the warm breeze for 30 minutes until the packed bus ambled up. We arrived downtown in a ten-minute ride, but I then had to wait another 25 minutes for a transfer bus to take me down one of the main streets of the city. This is pathetic. Californians and their cars and their priorities! (Or maybe it's just that negative state budget...).
After a productive afternoon in the Motel 6 involving practice, napping, and a classic rice-and-bean-and-cheese-stuffed, foil-wrapped, two-meals-in-one California burrito, Ross Hammond came by to schlep me to Davis for our performance, the first live show with our quartet. Along with Kevin Corcoran on percussive devices and Wes Steed on electronics, he and I (he on guitars, lap steel and effects) had a fruitful recording session this summer at the Hangar in Sacramento. We're slowly working on plan for those recordings; they should be shared.

The John Natsoulas Gallery in Davis is a spacious, lovely place in downtown, among all the student activity from the UC. Though the gallery has a wonderful room for performance inside, complete with a catwalk/balcony, we set up on their round front patio, which faces the street and is also a great place to play. This was the kickoff set of the Noisefest weekend, and as usual Lob Instagon had planned things well, with no evidence of stress. An amiable group of young volunteers got us set up with electricity and a PA, and after Lob introduced us we started off.

Unlike our summer session, where Ross had created a bit of a blueprint for our improvisations, we didn't discuss the music at all this time. Ross began with some mbira, Kevin bowed a massive gong/cymbal, and Wes and I slowly added some electronic crackles and hums before heading off into other directions. It was a great set. We played for close to 40 minutes, and though we ventured into some pretty heavy drone/noise territory, overall it was a pretty meditative set (and pretty, well, pretty for a Noisefest event). Great stuff, I hope we can play together some more in the future.

After watching a good set from Sacramento's Chopstick inside, I called it an early night, went back to the hotel to finish off the burrito and crashed. A good start to this final tour of the year.

(This is posted out of sequence, sorry - this gig took place July 8)

If you show up to play a gig, and nobody is there to listen, do you play anyway?

In this case, tonight, the answer is an absolute yes. I met Greg Campbell and Tom Baker at the Boise Creative & Improvised Music festival this past April, an event which yielded lots of quick friendships (and great music, let me hasten to add). They're part of a Seattle-based trio called Triptet, which closed the festival with an excellent set. We chatted afterward and exchanged contact info, and when it came time to plan this tour, I got in touch and we booked a night at Gallery 1412.

After a pleasant, if early, train ride from Vancouver, I arrived in the Emerald City around noon to find it uncharacteristically hot and clear. I ducked into an "Asian Food Court" (exactly as its title promised) and found a tofu Banh Mi, my latest obsession, for $2.75. Bingo! I gobbled it down and hopped the bus (quite clean & spacious, I must add) down south, where I'd booked a Days Inn near the airport. It was a luxury to have the afternoon to do laundry, practice, and catch up on emails, and I made good use of it.

Around 6 I hopped the bus going northward (maybe a half-mile from the hotel; this public transportation thing is definitely good for the walking muscles), and emerged at the same stop I'd left at noon. I decided to aim a notch higher than the food court for dinner, and scanning some reviews on my dependable Droid, found a very highly-recommended Vietnamese place between me and the gig. I ordered spring rolls and a vermicelli bowl (another obsession) from the surliest server in recent memory, and upon arrival found the food to be quite good, and cheap too. I paid another clearly disgruntled employee - must have been a bad day at Green Leaf Vietnamese - and decided to set out on foot toward 1412.

Though on the map it didn't look like a long walk, it turned out to be a very steep route, and I was sweating mightily by the time I arrived at the Gallery. Unlike some other places I've seen, it really is a gallery, a long space with art all along the walls. Greg was already setting up on the small stage, and we caught up as I put together my gear, electing to play from the floor as the stage looked most comfortable for two people at most.

Tom showed up before long and set up his equipment - a few Moog pedals on a stand, a looper, and a few other things on the floor to process his sweet fretless axe - while we chatted about music and the difficulty of getting musicians across the Canadian border with their gear.

Eight o'clock came, and nobody had yet arrived to see us. They reassured me that it tends to be a late-leaning vcnue, so we waited to play and chatted some more. After twenty minutes, we elected to do a piece, and launched into something that went into quite interesting directions, with Greg pulling out his French horn and Tom eliciting crazy sounds from his guitar. Another interval to chew the fat, and still nobody, so we did another tune, then another. It was soon well after nine, and it was obvious that nobody was going to hear any of the good music we were producing, so we did one more long tune that turned gloriously raucous and called it a night. On one hand, it was a shame to play for nobody, but on the other hand, it was a great hang and I loved the music we created. We made plans to do it again, with the hopes for an attendee or three, and bid each other goodnight, Tom giving me a ride back to the closest bus stop.

Getting to the Denver airport from Palmer Lake was epic, a sixty-mile trip which took two hours on two buses, and cost nearly $20 (I'm sorry, that's just too much for any kind of city bus, be it commuter or long-range or whatever). Then the Frontier staff wouldn't let me check in at the kiosks, saying my three bags - carry-on size suitcase, laptop bag, guitar - were too much, even if I planned to gate-check the guitar. I'd bought the suitcase with a big pocket in front specifically to deal with this kind of situation, so I stuffed my laptop bag inside, showed them my two bags, and was able to enter. After passing through security - always a bit of ordeal, with my tape decks and cables and punch-in pedals and tiny Roland amp for the uniforms to fret over - I pulled out the laptop bag again and was good to go. They let me take my guitar onboard (the third time it's been allowed on this tour, amazing) and I was finally in my seat. It always feels like a small victory to reach that point.

This was my fourth time playing in central Kansas. My sister lives in tiny Hesston, so it's always nice to visit, and I always make sure to have at least one extra day to hang out. Thursday night I had no gig, so we made fish tacos, played with their adorable rat terrier and caught up on life in the middle of the country. After my hosts went to bed, I worked out a John Mellancamp song I'd heard on the radio on the way to the grocery store ("Check it Out" - it's a great song, I swear to you), then got obsessed with Elvis and worked out four of his tunes, as well. My list of covers is getting quite long.

Friday was spent working, practicing, making a quiche, and catching up some more. Dinner was at Reba's, my gig for the night. For a Friday evening, it was strangely desolate at 7 p.m. It's a pricey place for a tiny Kansas town; I hope it can continue to weather the recession. I had a very nice pistachio-crusted salmon (the best part of playing in a restaurant, of course, is the gift of a meal, which always feels so flattering) and went to set up. Though on my previous gigs there always have been a dozen people in the room, friends and relatives, tonight I didn't see any of those people except my sister and her husband, who nicely sat right up front for support.

It had been described to me on the phone as a "tiny" place, where I had the option of playing acoustic if I wished. Based on that, I figured my new Roland amp (a Mobile cube - the size of a small boombox) would be more than fine. When I walked in, though, the room was about four times the size as I'd pictured. One would really need a full PA to actually fill the room. But I plugged into the Mobile, and launched into my first tune for the little crowd.

I always play "First Hurrah" to start, and right from the first chord, I had problems. The Micro was clamping down with an odd compression on my big loud chords, with the sound almost cutting out completely. I didn't want to readjust mid-song, so I waited until the end and tried some different settings. Testing it with single notes, it was loud and full, but as soon as I began the second tune, another strummy number, it once again faded away in that odd manner, with the tone returning for sustained notes. I knew that I wasn't being heard very well, and with the tiny crowd hardly seeming to acknowledge my presence (besides my relatives, of course), I began to steam.

I filled the two hours I'd promised, with some more people coming in toward the end, and beginning to applaud now and then, but the damage had been done. I played decently, but was never quite able to rise out of my funk, even up seeing some generous tips and hearing some nice words. Even after all these tours, it's hard for me to let go, to simply relax and persevere through a frustrating situation. I need to work on this, as it can be crushing and can prevent me from seeing the good connections that can happen even when my viewpoint is of failure.

(I know I'm behind on this diary - I'll be catching up on my Seattle and Nelson entries very soon, which will appear below this one).

I'm actually in Palmer Lake, CO, which is south of Denver about 40 miles, but I've always considered it part of Denver. Even though the ride here from the airport took two hours and cost nearly $20 (the commuter bus I can understand, but the airport shuttle was $12...?!), on a map it still seems like it's part of the metropolitan area.

I discovered how untrue this is at the gig, a cute cafe called Speedtrap, on the main drag (as it is) in tiny Palmer Lake. I've played three times in Denver and never have had a good gig, but last night was going great. Then I made the mistake of saying "this is the best place I've ever played in Denver..." and was greeted by a chorus of hisses and boos. Oops! I made peace with the crowd by asking how I might properly say it - "the greater Denver area?" (still wrong) - and was finally told that we are in the "Front Range".

Very well; by far, this is the best gig I've ever played in the Front Range. I was staying with friends who live just up the hill from Speedtrap, and though half the family had fevers over 100 degrees, they cheerfully put me up for two nights even when I arrived a day earlier than planned and had to call from the airport to make sure it was ok for me to come down. After a very lovely day in their house, I was able to saunter down to the cafe, cutting through meadows and crossing some rail tracks just after a huge coal train. I absolutely love walking to a gig, and being able to do so through actual grass and dirt was a sheer pleasure.

I arrived to find a friendly owner, a fine PA, and even a projected banner above the stage which alternated between my name and a reminder for the crowd to address the tip jar (helpfully lit up with a flashlight inside - brilliant). I began plugging things together, and even before I started playing, a woman introduced herself, welcomed me to the area, and chucked a few bills in the jar. Hospitality!

Wednesday nights, the Speedtrap hosts a runner's club, which begins and ends at the cafe and features a big tray of free pasta for the athletes to replace their carbs after their jog. This guarantees a good crowd, and there was a very large contingent in Lycra shorts hanging out both inside and outside. I started up right at 7, and though there was plenty of bustle going on, a nice group sat down and listened attentively, applauding after the first tune. Though there was a revolving cast of characters at the tables in front of me, they always stayed full with listeners, and the set flew by. At one point, the owner suggested I play a few tunes outside. I stretched my cable and did three tunes by the front door, and when he followed me with the tip jar (I need to knight this man, seriously), the runners parked on their tailgates and bumpers showed their appreciation generously.

I took a short break, then continued on til 9, still with a nice little crowd listening. When I finished up and started wrapping cables, the owner called me over to the counter and asked if I could play another tune or two, as a group of women had just arrived and were disappointed that they'd missed the music. I obligingly sat down and did two more tunes, and was profusely thanked. I sold a good handful of CD's, had a good chat with the proprietor, and walked back up the hill with my host to finish out the evening with some homemade wheat beer. It rarely gets better than this.

There's a great series in Vancouver called Fake Jazz, which is geared toward the increasingly blurring genres of free jazz and harsh noise. I'd played there in April with some great friends of mine there, and was hoping to do a follow-up joint performance. It didn't end up working out, and neither did my booking attempts at a few of the acoustic venues in town. I considered scrapping the visit entirely, but elected at the last minute to take the long train ride from Portland to spend 12 hours with my peeps before reversing course and heading to Seattle.

The ride was uneventful, with the usual border check moving quickly, except when the customs agent pressed me about my plans for the next week. For the life of me, I couldn't remember what day it was, and a small eternity crept by as he stared impassively and I racked my sleepy brains in regard to this simplest of questions. Finally I hit on something solid to extrapolate from - /Portland was a Tuesday gig/ - and responded to his satisfaction. To his credit, he gave no indication that he must have judged me a complete drunk and/or hobo (the latter not being far from the truth).

I emerged from the beautiful Vancouver train station, having arrived nearly an hour earlier than scheduled (Canadian trains be efficient, eh?), and found a farmer's market in the park situated across the street. I bought three kinds of berries and a bag of fresh garlic scapes, and when a friend arrived to pick me up we immediately began making a plan for dinner.

Cooking is an obsession with this particular household, a loose group of artists and musicians spread out in a huge warehouse/loft space. After a warm round of greetings, we set to work. A cheese plate came out first, with some Scottish malt liquor. I blanched half of the scapes and added them to a bowl of chopped cucumbers and red onions, which one of my hosts dressed with grapefruit juice, olive oil and sea salt. More cucumbers were sliced, arranged with cherry tomatoes and sprinkled with orange zest for a different salad, accompanied by tuna and good bread. Zucchini was sauteed with the rest of the scapes and more tomatoes, and served over whole wheat spaghetti, with gold potatoes on the side (I could NOT stop eating these...). Somewhere along the way, fresh piña coladas came out, as did several bottles of Spanish red. It was a beautiful meal.

Overstuffed and moving slowly, I set up my looping gear while my five friends arranged their instruments - two drumsets, violin, cello, acoustic bass, plus a slew of pedals and homebrew electronics - among a forest of mics. We tend to favor low-volume, slowly-building improvisations, and this session started especially softly. We played for an hour or so - great stuff - and two of us took a break to fetch a liter of gelato from a huge local shop (La Casa - "218 flavors"), which we served with the berries.

Another improv session, then five of us grabbed bikes and we headed toward the sea wall, one of my favorite things about Vancouver. My heavy balloon-tired cruiser (not to mention lack of recent biking exercise) made it hard to keep up with the others, all of whom rely on bikes to get around the city. But there were few hills, and the cool air near the water was refreshing after the hot day, so I pedaled along gamely, enjoying the glittering lights all along the harbor. The macadam seawall gave way to tight gravel, then sand, and when it spilled out to a wide beach we set down our bikes for a long while to enjoy the night before heading back, long after midnight, taking our time on the return.