THE DEEP POOL - APRIL 2003

Back from touring in Germany, Switzerland and Belgium with Michael Cosgrave and Michael Weston King and a six foot five inch tour manager called Gerne Poets. I've tried to sleep for two days, but just keep waking up panicking because i think it's time for a soundcheck...the weather was beaurtiful for two weeks, but it was snowing at Frankfurt airport as we fell out of the tourbus, said goodbye and disappeared off to different flights. I don't know which is my favourite Frankfurt airport bar - could be Beerlift, or maybe Black Forest.....

I've just come back from a cold grey walk over the fields to the north with my white dog: we passed a field that has been ploughed deeply and looks like the archetypal ploughed field, with glints of red and yellow in the clay. The last crop in this field was corn on the cob, which grew seven feet high, and on an early autumn warm evening with the sun red behind it, was really quite sinister. I used to sit on the turnstyle by the railway line and look at it for up to half an hour at a time, imagining maybe Warren Oates running thru the thick yellow stalks, gun in hand, head of Alfredo Garcia in the other, pursued by a worried looking Gig Young, and disturbing squawks of distorted harmonica as a soundtrack, then Oates bursting forth and rasping ' hey amigo, how do i get out of here?'
- 'Well, if you go down tharrr, thor's a noice pub called The Brewery Bar wot does a noice haddock and chips, an' jaaaaaaz on a Mondoiy noight, and you could call a caab from there oi reckin'.
- 'Thanks amigo - here's seven hundred euros for your trouble, and could you set your dog on Gig Young when he finishes comin' thru the rye?'
- 'Welll, unless this Mr Young is a ferret, he won't be much in'erested, oi'll be bound'.

Back to the house, and as usual, when i open my duffle trolley (bag on wheels beloved of the older musician) there is the usual fifty eight pieces of paper with addresses, phone numbers and cryptic clues that i've been given after shows: 'come to Wuppertal and shag my girlfriend' - 'send whisky' - 'where is my hand?' - 'a photo of you and Saddan Hussein would be nice' - 'have you ever fondled an electric eel?' - 'Zurich says - don't come back' - 'there is shitpaper hanging out of your shorts'. I vow to deal with this wave of attention soon, and put it in a bag marked Germany 2nd Tour 03, but unless i deal with it NOW, it will all mean less and less - the trouble is that another tour starts tomorrow, and there were 4 before this one, so suddenly these pieces of paper represent a month's work, and exactly which month will that be i wonder? - probably the one where i'm doing nothing, being a musician... I've had a lifetime of people coming into rooms and saying 'could you stop tinkling on that guitar for a moment and...
- ' No, sir/madam, i'm NOT tinkling - i'm setting a nuanced passage of imagery for a great song about secrets of the dead to be on an album in 2005 (oh all right, i'm tinkling - strip the hall wallpaper you say? - we'll have to get a steamer to do that - oh you've borrowed your mum's? - GOOD! - i've just got to nip to the pub and get an old head for the dog from Warren Oates - the pub's closed? - yeah, i know but we're meeting in the beer garden - you see he's hiding from Gig Young - it's a long story..)

My next gig is in Nettleham, Lincolnshire, The Black Horse on the 8th April - don't know where that is - haven't called to find out yet, but it means getting thru the London rush hour which starts at 3 30pm and which i hate, then the next night i'm at Komedia in Brighton - i'm going to ask David Thomas if he would like to come along and recite Faces which he does so beautifully on SHINING BROTHER SHINING SISTER - or maybe i'll give him the night off... Brighton is where i buy my Tibetan incense and frankincense face cream, my quarterly moment of being an old hippie, then a journey home along the coast dreaming of the sauna i had in that hotel in Hannover recently - that's my life - one long dream of heat interrupted by a watchful old geezer saying 'tickets please' as he shakes my shoulder.....

jl