All posts filed under: Acoustic Music

Lunch in Claremont with Claire

Observations from the road: The “Thankfulness edition” at the end of our “Not all who wander are lost” tour

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Tuesday, August 19th (and day #19) – is the last one of the cross-country Not All Who Wander Are Lost tour. Later this morning I’ll be flying home.  I can’t wait to see Candice and Andrew (who leaves for his senior year in college on Friday morning).  But I also want to put a wrap on the wonderful two-and-a-half weeks Claire and I had on our exploration of this amazing country we live in. It has been an experience I’ll never forget. I’ve had several parts of this series where I’ve thrown together random thoughts that I’ve entitled Observations from the Road.  For those who want to see them in order, you can find them here as: The First Edition The Central Time Edition The Prairie Edition The Jeez, Montana is a Big State Edition The We Made It (Well, In One Sense) Edition The On the Edge Edition So this grouping of random thoughts wraps up the Observations From the Road posts as well as the series on our cross-country tour.  I’ve entitled it …

With Willie at ATT Park

Fun in the City by the Bay

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Say Hey! I do love San Francisco. On two picture-perfect summer days, Claire and I have had fun exploring the food, the museum life, and – yes – the unexpected treasure of a Giants baseball game – in this city by the bay. We arrived mid-afternoon on Friday, the 15th day of our cross-country tour, and we stopped just short of the city to have a light lunch. Cavallo Point is a former army base turned into National Park and luxury resort.  Their website shows a stunning shot of the Golden Gate Bridge with the words A View With Rooms. Truer words were never spoken.  I had visited this wonderful place with colleagues a few years ago to learn about the ways the park service was working with private interests to re-imagine and reconfigure former Army bases. I was taken with it then, and I wanted to show it to Claire as part of our trip. We drove into Cavallo Point as the clouds cleared from the bridge, and while my shot from the porch of …

Redwoods and Coastlines…The Main Course

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Wednesday’s visit to see California’s redwoods and coastline turned out to be the appetizer.  Beautiful as it was, it couldn’t hold a candle to today’s visits to forests, coasts, and wine country. Thursday – the 14th day of our cross-country tour – was the main course. As is the case with much of the best cuisine of California, it did not disappoint. Claire and I left Eureka around 9 a.m. and headed south on Highway 101.  About 45 minutes into the drive we stopped for gas, and as fate would have it the manager had come out to fix the printer on our gas pump. When he saw our license plates he struck up a conversation, and finding out we were traveling cross-country, he immediately said, “You have to drive the Avenue of the Giants route.  This is the old road that criss-crosses 101, and in slightly more than 30 miles it has many of the huge redwoods in the region.” Oh my…was he ever right. And are we ever glad we took his advice. …

Observations from the road: The “On the Edge” edition

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At times, Wednesday’s ride seemed as long as a California redwood is tall. Claire and I were on Day 13 of the Not All Who Wander Are Lost tour (a.k.a., the “length of the country” portion), and perhaps it had to do with it being the 13th day, but there were some weird things happening along the way.  We left Portland, Oregon at 8:30 a.m. and didn’t arrive in Eureka, California until around 6:30 p.m. for what was supposed to be a 7 hour trip.  (Darn those Google maps algorithms.)  The portions on the “straight and narrow” path of I-5 could give a guy and his daughter the blues.  Rest areas that we really needed were closing up due to “bear activity.” Ah, but those crooked roads through the mountains, the redwoods, and along the beautiful California coast…now that’s when we felt we were alive and on the edge of the world. We had to take I-5 down to Grants Pass.  The Oregon landscape is changing and beautiful through this part of the country,  but …

Efficiency Isn’t the Point

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One could look at today’s itinerary for the Not All Who Wander Are Lost tour and think that our main goal was to go from Point A (Seattle) to Point B (Portland) as quickly and efficiently as possible.  But those who think that way miss the point of our cross-country trip. We avoided most of Interstate 5 – the main line between Seattle and Portland – and struck out from Gig Harbor, Washington, to get to Astoria, Oregon on the coast via the crooked road. And think of what we would have missed had we taken the straight and narrow way. Why, we wouldn’t have known that Montesano, Washington is the home of the Tree Farm.  (It says so right on the sign.) We would have missed the fact that South Bend, Washington is the Oyster Capital of the World. Given the amount of “working forests” one sees in this section of the state, I suspect this is where America’s supply of paper is produced. And who knew that McCleary, Washington will be celebrating the …

Observations From the Road (The “We Made It [Well, In One Sense]” Edition)

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Arriving in Seattle Sunday evening, Claire and I celebrated making it cross-country with a dinner in the revolving restaurant atop the Space Needle. We did the Atlantic to the Pacific thing! I can check off one bucket list item. Who hoo!! Of course, we’re just one day into the second half of our tour. Now that we’ve done the width of the country, we still have the length to go. Southern California or bust! So this edition of Observations From the Road is the “We Made It (Well, In One Sense)” edition. Sunday was a long day on the road – from Kalispell, Montana to Seattle, Washington. Three states (Idaho is in the middle there, for those who are geographically challenged.) That’s why this post is being finished on Monday morning. The trip was made longer by an hour-long back-up on I-90 in  Washington State.  There might have been an incident, but we suspect it was tied up as people gawked at the forest fire smoke that was coming over the mountains.  More on that …

Montana Landscape

Observations From the Road (The “Jeez, Montana is a Big State” Edition)

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On Friday morning, as we began our second week on the Not All Who Wander Are Lost tour, Claire and I drove the 20 miles up from Fort Peck to Glasgow, Montana where we reconnected with U.S. Route 2.  Now mind you, we had driven two-and-one-half hours in Montana the day before just to get to Fort Peck – which is in the eastern part of the state.  So imagine our surprise when we clicked on the Google maps direction finder to head west to Glacier National Park from Glasgow and the young lady on the smart phone who has become our traveling companion says: Go west on U.S. Route 2 forever. Well, I may be exaggerating a bit. It was actually something like 259 miles. But after a long day of driving through Montana’s plains along the original Hi-Line (New York City’s High Line is late to the party), it seems like forever. This Hi-Line refers to the northernmost route of the Great Northern Railroad and U.S. 2, near the Canadian border. But, as …

California or Bust

Taking the long way

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California or bust! We had barely slipped the bonds of the beltway as we began our Not All Who Wander Are Lost tour when the Dixie Chicks tune The Long Way Around popped up on Claire’s playlist.  We both laughed and agreed it was a good omen for our less-than-direct trip to Southern California. Today was the day to hit the ground running and make it to Cleveland.  Almost six hours of driving lay ahead of us, and we wanted to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, spend time with my colleague Kathleen Crowther and her husband Herb, and take in a Cleveland Indians game. We didn’t make any stops, but we did see our first set of absurd billboards.  As we crossed  the state line into Pennsylvania, a series of ads from the state’s coal and energy producers sprang up touting the benefits of “clean coal.”  Who knew?! The best was the billboard that asked, “Would You Take Energy Advice from Someone in a Meat Dress?” alongside a ridiculous picture of Lady …

Pokey the Preservationist

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Last Friday I was sitting outside on a beautiful summer day at the Red Wing Roots Music Festival, listening to Pokey LaFarge. Yesterday evening, I was skimming some YouTube videos to learn more about Pokey’s music when I came across a TedX talk entitled Pokey LaFarge:  Evolving Through Preservation. Whoa!  Could it be that Pokey is not only a great musician with a hot band, but also a preservationist? Well yes, that’s exactly what he is. Take a listen to this TedX talk from St. Louis – and after the music history lesson you’ll hear Pokey’s thoughts on how young people are taking old buildings and using them for new uses – just as they are doing with music and fashion. They are claiming these places and making them relevant today.  Just as we’ve been preaching in my day job at the National Trust for Historic Preservation. And as Pokey reminds us…he’s only 30 years old! Who knew that the next generation preservationist could come in the form of a hip traditionalist musician who happens …

Sarah Jarosz at Red Wing 07 12 14

An amazing day of music at Red Wing

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Saturday at the Red Wing Roots Music Festival was one of those days when the music starts off great and then – when you think it can’t possibly be sustained – it keeps getting better.  (The last day that rivaled this one at a festival was day two of Merlefest 25.  It is interesting to note that the Steel Wheels were involved with both!) Duets were the order of the day in the early afternoon at Red Wing II, beginning with Bernice and Bryan Hembree playing as Smokey & The Mirror.  He writes great songs (St. Alban’s Day, Will and Woody) while she has a powerful and beautiful voice (showcased on a cover of Dylan’s Buckets of Rain).  They were the first out of the chute today, and the Hembrees set a high bar. Mandolin Orange – an acoustic duo featuring Andrew Marlin and Emily Frantz – were up next and played a beautiful set that we caught while eating lunch (and Kline’s ice cream!).  With just a guitar, mandolin, and fiddle, they crafted songs …