Wild Man Blues

Here I be slaving over a hot keyboard at the Cafe Unterhaus in lovely Passau Germany, outside the gorgeous snowladen vista ´oer the beautiful blau Danube flowing under the 11th century fortress-castle visible also from the window of my room at the Hotel Wilder Mann (yep, an ancien deluxe hotel named for, uh, dunno...the wild man of Borneo, Yum Yum Eatemup? Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, who stayed here once? Other guests to have sampled the delights of this gravitas-laden gravy boat of a stately medieval manor, according to the photos ringing the löbby, have included Gorbachev, Helmut´s Schmidt und Kohl (maybe Helmut Newton as well?), Neil Armstrong, Yoko Ono (I don´t believe it...but there she is hanging on the wall pictured in floppy hat and shades, coming off the tour of the Passauer Glasmuseum, also in the Hotel proper)...anyhow, the Wild Man Hotel a splendid place to hang my hat for 2 days after playing a very very satisfying solo concert in Muenster on Sunday night (thank you Erhard Hirt)at the C.U.B.A....

... and then a travel day from hell...no Deutsche-Bahnhof porter with luggage cart waiting in Köln to help with the transfer of my bags despite being reserved by my agent--hey it happens--nearly had a heart attack dragging my acoustic and electric guitars, monster-case of electronics, garment bags etc. down along and across the platform to hop the next train in the 5 minutes alotted before departure--couple that with broken cell phone, broken Nano, loud obnoxious Dutch businessman in first class sanctum sanctorum yammering into his cell phone between Frankfurt Flughafen and Nurnberg...oh well...

Two changes of train and seven hours traveling across sunny meadows and open skies of Germany and finally arrived in Passau at the German/Austrian border, to be picked up by Jurgen Waldner from the Kunst Museum Cafe where I am performing tonight, my first time in Passau (I have played about 60-70 different cities the length and breadth of Germany in the last 21 years, in various configurations--always wanted to play here, the scenery really caught my eye, passed through Passau on the way into Austria once to play in St. Georgen, an actual hamlet, literally standing at the crossroads, two or three buildings only huddled at a rural intersection so far out a train don´t go there, marking the spot where...Saint George slew the dragon? Performed in a huge barn-like building with stage back of a manorhouse, a well-paid gig as I recall, afterwards holed up in a tiny room in the manor round midnight with about 17 horse flies buzzing my kopf, went and got wet towel and faced off one on one with the very unwise flies...okay boys, it´s you or me...and St. Georgen-like, smote every one of the pestilential critters in a knock-down dragged-out fight to the death...and later slept the peace of the just)(very un-Schweitzer-like of me, I admit)...

Me, I like this restless, peripatetic life...and I like playing this mix of high-low joints, from the funkiest of roadhouses (St. Georgen gig a literal barn-burner), to elegante, crystal-chandeliered concert halls (the Sin B Martinu venue in the Czech Republic remains one of my favorites, right up there with Royal Festival Hall in London...bring 'em on)...

Off to soundcheck (Don Van Vliet once observed rather tartly, when I tried dragging him away from his tea at an English motorway hotel circa 1980 in order to get him in the van so we could make the next city in time for a soundcheck: "I don´t need my sound checked!")

xxLove


Gary