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‘Mystery Drug’-  Label: ‘Blue Rose’ -  Genre: ‘Alt/Country’ –  Release Date: ’1st May 2013′-  Catalogue No: ‘BLUDP0611′
Our Rating:
I See Hawks In L.A. are a group of psychedelic country rockers that formed way back in 1999, and this is their seventh release.There are several different vibes going on in there, although the predominant genre is country music, there are elements of blues, new wave, Celtic flavours and psychedelia, which all go to make this an extremely interesting melting pot of ideas and styles. The lyrics are a blend of witty observation and direct comment which hits hard, such as ‘Stop Driving Like An Asshole’, a song that is extremely topical, what with the newspapers displaying a daily dose of deceased on our roads. this has the ability to make people stop and think. The song is wrapped up in a country style electric strum, with guitars to the fore, however it’s the lyrics that hold the imagination, especially the lines: “Stop driving like an asshole/ You know who you are/ Did you think when you cut me off it would help you go farther? / You’re an accident waiting to happen, a flipped over SUV/ On the 405, at six o’clock, your carcass on TV.” The band also touch on subjects such as the human condition on tracks like ‘Mystery Drug’, a country style ballad that is primarily played out on acoustic guitar. Once again however, it is the lyrics that have the power to grab you: – “I am a lonely primate, craving drugs to soothe my mind and body/ I am alone/ I am a lonely primate, shunning any social group that could give me peace. I am sorry.” This band isn’t just however solely based around social commentary, however. They detour into classic country mantras such as relationship break ups, such as on ‘Yesterday’s Coffee’, a song that would fit easily alongside any by Gram Parsons: – “Yesterday’s coffee sits by the window/ Nobody really wants yesterday’s coffee/ And I know you’re thinking, thinking about leaving/ But every morning I’m still hoping – I’m here, I’ll do/ But you’re feeling something new.”	The band also dip their toes into the new wave genre with ‘My Local Merchants’, a song that races along at a breakneck pace, a la Ramones, however, whilst the majority of songs on the first Bruddas album were uniformly negative, this is a song about how the people working in your local store have the ability to lift your mood: – “My local merchants cheered me up tonight/ My local merchants made me feel all right/ On a cold bitter night, that found me questioning my sanity/ I truly dug that little contact with humanity.”The band will be touring the UK throughout June and July this year. Further information and CDs are available from I See Hawks In L.A online This is definitely a band worth investigating.
	author: Nick Browne

Check out our version of the classic Grateful Dead song “Friend of the Devil” up today on the official Dead website at: http://www.dead.net

or go directly to the video here on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6boeo3HB-w&feature=player_embedded

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A lovely post-Thanksgiving Friday night at Bob Stane’s island of acousticism, Coffee Gallery Backstage in the upper heights of the Altadena altiplano.

Bob Stane deserves a Folk Medal of Freedom for his unswerving and unerring taste in folk since 1961. He gets wittier and more acerbic every year. His microphone/mixer layout is based on ROY G. BIV, the visible light spectrum. Yes, his mic chords on his six channel board are color coded red orange yellow green blue (hmm, he seems to skip indigo), violet. If you need more than six channels you might be in the wrong place. And you’re going to get a light show: lights up. Lights down. Lights up. Lights down. Rock on, Bob Stane, for decades more, we hope.

In attendance tonight were a sold out familyfriendsfans lovefest, all recovering from the previous night’s feasts. Onstage were Rob, the Pauls, Victoria on snare drum, and our national treasure Brantley Kearns, on fiddle and voice of America.

Brantley’s orbit is wide, far ranging, and elliptical, and when it enters the Hawks gravitational field, events both familiar and unpredictable occur. On the cozy Coffee Gallery stage we played lots of songs from our very first and very last CDs–new folk and
old new folk. Brantley’s fiddle can go psychedelic if that’s what you’re looking for, and he took it to the frontier on “I Fell In Love With The Grateful Dead” and “River Run.”

And took it old timey, too. Brantley’s rich North Carolina voice led us through Jimmy Martin’s “Ocean Of Diamonds,” Flatt and Scruggs’ strange and irresistible “Loafer’s Glory,” and Bill Monroe’s ”Christmas Time’s A Comin’.” Hog heaven for Hawks, who hanker for hollows and hot cider and bourbon.

It’s been twelve years since we first stepped onstage with Brantley and wondered what might happen. We still wonder and still wander and that’s the way it should be.

It’s November 2 in the last year of the Mayan calendar and therefore the last November 2 we’ll ever experience. So we’ve got to make it count. Like every day between now and the end of time (12/21/12), we’re going to live it to the fullest.

And what’s better than piling into the gracefully aging Yukon, with its non-opening doors, its tailgate that only Rob can open by summoning his dad’s surgeon skills to manipulate unseen levers inside the pried open plastic panel, its oil sipping engine and brakes that need to be woken from a deep chronic slumber. There’s nothing better, that’s what.

The Ireland/UK crew of Rob, Paul, Victoria and Doten (as Marc Doten is most affectionately known) always have a good time, even in trying situations. Whatta ya got, road? We’re ready for it. And the road this time out is mellow, a dry fall day with very dry brown hills as we 210 it to the 5, 46 it to the 101, and then–a break in the routine.

We’re playing in Carmel Valley, inland from the magic and expensive Carmel coast. New territory. Google maps says drive to Salinas and backtrack, but there’s an intriguing back road out of Greenfield. We take it. Through the small farmworker truck with shiny pickup trucks, west through fields towards soft old mountains that guard the coast. The narrow road leads into a long narrow river valley with high narrow mesas packed to the edges with vineyards blazing fall yellow in the low sun. Sedimentary rock beds turned straight verticle, one lane iron bridges, mysterious oak stands, infiltrated with cottonwoods and sycamores as we wind up and closer to the summit and lush coastal moistness. Thirty seven miles of forgotten California, and we pray for its continued obscurity. It’s nice to know the hills the Indios roamed are still untamed.

We spy squatting on a power line a hawk so huge that we stop and gawk. Oh, no, thinks the hawk, another eco tourist gawking vehicle, and lumbers off the line and out over the steep valley walls. Bigger houses and shiny new cars start to appear in the shadows of trees. We’re within commuter distance of Carmel and Monterey. We roll up a last rise into Carmel Valley, the town, nestled in oak covered hills. Olive oil, wineries, money.

At five p.m., uncharacteristically right on time, we reach Plaza Linda, a low brow high end Mexican restaurant. And there’s Paul’s mom Teresa, just driven down from Capitola and ready to rock. Sound check, large meal, the locals and some long traveling Hawks fans settle into tables, and we rock acoustically through a single PA speaker. It’s good. We’ve retained our tour tightness, and the crowd loves it. Kiki Wow, our host and music queen of these valleys and hills, arrives, introduces our second set, and this one’s good, too. We hang with friands (friend fans), sign CDs, talk over a return with Kiki, and hit the road. Paul and Victoria drive back with Mom Lacques up the coast to Capitola, and Rob and Marc motor out to the coast and a bit south, caravanning behind Matt, a Hawks fan and ranger who’s hosting the Hawks at his cabin on Point Lobos State Park land.

Matt’s cabin is offroad, up a winding dirt road over soft earth skirting unseen cliffs, the sound of surf pounding faintly far below. The caravan pulls up to the cabin in pitch blackness. Matt leads Marc and Rob, not into the cabin, but down a narrow trail through towering trees. Marc and Rob can’t see a thing. Follow your heart vision, advises Matt, and they gamely stumble forward. Matt stops abruptly on a wind whipped cliff’s edge. Jump, he commands. Marc and Rob stand frozen. Gotta jump, says, Matt, and he pushes Marc and Rob off the cliff. They plunge blindly downward, tumbling, a scream trapped into their throats. Whap! They hit ice cold Pacific Ocean, claw desperately to the surface, only to be pummeled by a series of small, unseen waves. Matt laughs, faintly audible up on the cliff’s edge. Two glowing orbs float on what might be rocky shore. Marc and Rob swim towards them, choosing unknown something over unseen nothingness. They clamber, stiff limbed and shivering, onto big flat rocks. The orbs belong to a black bear, who attacks. Rob and Marc tag team the bear, wrestling for their lives. Rob picks up a big flat rock, smashing it down on the bear’s skull. The bear lurches sideways, collapses to the ground, breathing heavily. Down, but not for long.

It’s November 3. Only 48 days till the end of the world. Live, people, live! Victoria and Paul and Mom grab breakfast at Linda’s, an in demand Santa Cruz breakfast joint filled with hippies of indeterminate age and provenance, and the food is damn good. Coffee at Coffeetopia, Paul’s Mom catches us up on the latest Santa Cruz county corruption scandals and plans for overdevelopment, business as usual. Meet the Yukon back at Mom’s house, and we’re on the road, 1 north to 17 and perhaps the 880 to 580 perhaps, heavy traffic that Northern Californians deny that they wallow in al la their neighbors to the south, and finally we’re free of Bayarea commutation and into the Central Valley.

The Palms Playhouse in Winters is our next stop.  Old friends Kate and Dave are there when we arrive, Richie and Katie too.  We do a sound check with new friend and soundman Warren.  Then it’s off to a quick dinner before the gig. Paul’s sister Madeline and her ultra cool husband Joaquin join us, tell us tails of their son Gabriel and his girlfriend Andrea, who are on a WOOF tour of Latin America that’s turned into a true epic wandering, gone over a year and now in Colombia. We hope they write a book when they get back. Madeline and Joaquin are flying to meet the errant young ‘uns in Ecuador.

The show goes quite beautifully, Richie adding ever more masterful accordion, singing his own Sorrow Be Gone with wife Katie coming up to share vocals. Marc’s vocals add to a new seamless blend now, with our 23 show overseas rehearsal paying off again. Doten wows the smallish but very enthused crowd with his version of “Into The Mystic.” Victoria’s rock of the world snare is nicely cranked in the monitors. We do a couple of encores, fond farewell to Dave and Kate of the Palms, farewell, sis, and head back to Richie and Katie’s in Sacramento for our customary midnight scotch and cheese tasting.

Next morning we take care of priorities, head straight out, groggy and a bit whiskey soaked, through the flat streets of Sacto to a groovy coffee house, animated discussions of solar panels, backyard gardening and how to fight the massive development that will abut the charming 1900′s neighborhood. And we’re off. Farewell, kind Sacto tribe. We power south on the 99, take the intriguing Highway 41 at Fresno that angles due south to the 5, no time saved but a fascinating cross section view of some smaller farms and signs of rural America collapse. The ups and downs of unlimited backyard space. Do Europeans exhibit their abandoned trucks and backhoes?

Sunset. Nightfall. We’re back in Highland Park. That was a good one.

We’re headed for Leyton in east East London, close by the new Olympic games complexes. The Games are 10 days away, but we’re worried about traffic. We take the outer ring motorway, and it’s a smooth sail, until traffic stops cold. Six lanes of gridlock, with oddly pastoral fields to the right, between us and the legendary metropolis somewhere south in the distance. We get off the motorway, into suburban gridlock, quickly get back on. If we don’t get the rentacar back by 4 p.m. we get gouged a fee of unknown size and scale–rental companies have a wild imagination when it comes to missing deadlines.

Traffic picks up, and we exit for the high road heading south into Leyton. We’re in the outer realms of metropolis, rolling south in slow lumbering traffic through unending canyons of three story flats with business fronts. But this is pure entertainment. Every people on earth is living here, in veils, beautiful robes, cheap suits, hip suits, Euro Americana knockoff t-shirts and jeans, all ages, from Eastern Europe, Russia, Africa, the Middle East. The streets are a bazaar, shop signs profuse in polyglot tongues, spices of the world waft into our idling car, the sidewalks are packed to bursting with human traffic. This is the crossroads of the world.

Our high road lurches and bends and turns southward, through harrowing roundabouts. We’re barely moving. An hour of life’s rich pageant out the window, and we reach Leyton, take side streets through quiet poor neighborhoods to our destination: The Birkbeck Tavern.

We load in through the side door in great haste, and Paul and Rob pile back into the car and race south, more teeming humanity on the high road, to the docks area and the striking brand new Olympic Village, onto a long pier and a deserted rentacar complex. We leave the car on a desolate dock, undinged despite roundabouts and lorries, hand over the keys triumphantly ten minutes before the deadly deadline.

The duo is feeling a weight lifting. We’re in London, we’re out of the car and into the best public transportation system on earth, staying in the same place we’re playing for the next three days. This feels like a vacation. We take a double decker bus back towards Leyton, enjoying the slow crawl from the upper level, then hoof it the last couple of miles, part of the sidewalk stream of humanity, mark the scrubby pub claiming to be the birthplace of Iron Maiden with Instagram photos, stop off for a pint of Jamesons in a shop, sip it from a paper bag on our meander. This is the most leisurely we’ve felt in three weeks.

Back at the Birkbeck Tavern, we meet Steve the tough and cool N. Ireland expat and his even tougher Yorkshire wife Ali, with charming tough accent. These hippie wanderer pub managers put on the What’s Cookin’ series in the bar, which draws established and even famous acts from all over the world. What’s Cookin’ is cookin’. We grab our rooms upstairs: PL and VJ settle into spacious matrimonial suite overlooking a lovely garden; MD and RW struggle to inflate two airmats with their own shrinking lungs in a living room where the family smokes.  Invigorated, the band grabs some food and checks out the very good opening British folk act.

The Parsonesque electric country rock band The Snakes hits the stage next, and they sound great, jangling guitars and good singing. We use their gear, do an electric show, and rock the house. The Hawks are a touring machine, our 21st show in 19 days, and the crowd is with us.

We hang, sign CDs, quaff pints, and eventually head upstairs.

We have a piece of the rare and precious nugget handed to us in Leicester. It’s our second to last night of a long journey so we fire up. Even Victoria’s going to take a hit, her first in years. The windows are nailed shut, it’s a tough neighborhood.  But there’s a big ashtray filled with butts. So it it’s cool to spark a J in here, right?  Sir?  A mellow evening in our upstairs den awaits—ah, but for England’s draconian pot laws. Our hostess Ali comes in to turn down the beds and smells the herbal essence, kinda really freaks out. We feel like teens in mom’s basement caught red-handed. She claims it’s a serious bust for the Birkbeck if the cops come around after smelling our sweat leaf. Really?  Sorry, mates. We’ll try and make up for it. We’re from mellow California, where the weed flows like wine. God save the CCTV.

Next day, gloomy of course, or nurturing, as a desert dweller might notice, we roust ourselves and take the tube out to Barry Everett’s House Of Mercy, west and north of Birkbeck but still in vast east London, on an old tree lined street of brick flats with ancient small parks and ruined churches decaying with dignity. Barry and crew are great, show us around, set up a video cam and mikes and we have a great live show/interview. Barry’s lived the full UK to US Concorde 60s 70s counterculture lifestyle, and we hope he writes his memoirs and sends us a copy. Fascinating guy.

It’s only noon and we’re in London, well rested and jacked up by the emanations in the air, as the center of western civilization preps for the Olympics. We grab the tube for Covent Gardens, a kind of Grove at Glendale if it were built hundreds of years ago, of massive brick and beautiful stone. The place is rocking, intriguing markets and outdoor food vendors, street performers, packed with tourists, including the guitar toting Hawks. Victoria lived in London for three years, and she guides us through the mazes, finds us a spud stand, where we gorge our suddenly starving selves. Bacon, butter, chives, mushrooms, we do it all. Damn. Rob and Paul find a tobacconist, buy a silver tin of snuff. The male Hawks sniff, our lady abstains. What a fantastic buzz. You’re alert, relaxed, in love with life’s rich pageant. We wend our way through packed people, back to the tube, bouncy ride underground back to Leyton, half mile walk through flat land to the Birkbeck.

It’s our last show of the tour. This is it. Our straight-edge vagabond hippie hosts have set up a great acoustic show that we’re headlining. We dig the young old timey band, uh oh, pretty damn good, tough act to follow, lots of energy and free spirits. They lead the crowd outside into the garden, where blue competes with gray in the heavens above, shout micless into the open air. The crowd loves it. We start our set indoors with mics, oh yeah, we win the crowd over quickly. Steve then leads the crowd and bands outdoors, where we do a couple of acoustic songs and then jam with the other musicians, 12 of us belting out Ring Of Fire, jumping up on the big wooden table to sing verses. Gentle long English twilight commences as we pack up, embraces all around, long chats with new friends and fans.

We’re done. Next day we scatter over London, Rob meeting his sister, Marc a cousin, Victoria and Paul exploring Brick Lane, where Victoria’s English born grandmother lived in gray poverty before emigrating to America. The ghosts of want are still in the air, even as the area has become a hotbed of British optimism and new commerce. Hip couture, an actually excellent espresso bar, an architect’s school showing off student final projects in an old warehouse space, Rough Trade Records, where we’re pleased to see the Blue Rose release of our new CD in the bins. Victoria spots Zooey Deschanel walking down a wide lane. We meet old Coles compatriots, young and happening architect and Cole’s Alumnus Chuck and his wife Georgia, an immigration lawyer, who show us their cool flat, fill us in on local lore, tell Victoria she can get UK citizenship because of her grandma, and take us to a phenomenal Vietnamese restaurant.  Life is, once again, very very good.

Next day we scatter. Rob and Marc tube it to Heathrow and America, Victoria and Paul roam London for a few more days, good food and food for thought, tubes and walking, films and culture, the global feast as the Olympics loom and flowers are planted while the city carries on.

Every tour must have a low point. There are scientific and linguistic/logical principles that insist upon this. And so, Swindon. For fans of the ”The Office” (the real one — not the gutted, unwatchable U.S. imitation) Swindon is the nearby rival to Ricky Gervais’s Slough paper products branch office. In the real Swindon, a ten story gray 70′s office building with most of its windows shattered rises as a sort of town centerpiece. It was built to replace a handsome old brick college building, but the modern experiment failed.

As low points go, this one is higher than most. Perched atop the town’s steepest hill, stands a cool little pub, The Beehive. As we wind through tightly parked cars up the narrow residential road, it begins to look familiar. Two story row houses packed together with bay windows and garages below. You’d think it was Potrero Hill if you didn’t know better. Six years have fogged our already foggy memories.  As we walk in Paul wonders, was it kind of a bummer playing here last time? Maybe. Rob remembers the little dramatic video we shot here entitled “Exeunt Pub.” That was fun, right? Maybe the Beehive has changed. Or maybe we have. Perhaps our expectations have risen a bit for the places we expect to play. And that’s a good thing.

But we’re country rock soldiers, people. A funky pub is not going to get us down. We know how to deal with this. Paul and Marc get to work setting up the sad P.A. and backline. We all swallow hard as we discover the meager money deal. The accommodations are stinky sofas scattered in the flat above the bar. Now, we’ll sleep just about anywhere, and have, but this is beyond our funk limit, mostly because of the cigarette butts filling the large ashtrays scattered about. Rob and Victoria hit the streets and luckily find a cheap and very cool B&B a short walk away. Whew.

Brightened by the newfound digs, the band takes position and digs into the first set. The gig is okay, could have been worse. Paul overcomes his recurring sullen fit about the backline amp, tonight a giant Traynor with the tone of a, well, Traynor. There’s a group of bearded hippie types gathered near the front. Thank god, the Deadheads have arrived! There’s even a tapir. An Irishman in the front row seems to be singing along. We’ll later learn he skipped work to be at this show, a fan made six years ago on a night not unlike this one. These gigs are the ones that turn you into a band. While some of the crowd would obviously prefer Stevie Ray Vaughn tunes, we find our most innovative and free rock sound of the tour. Victoria plays a rock solid train beat that fits perfectly with all our two beats. But in her drummer’s heart of hearts she’s a groovy melodic indie rock drummer. We turn each song into a jam, Paul turns his overdrive to 11 to disengage Traynor tone. We rock, stretching songs way out. The crowd responds. They’ve been waiting for some action and the action has arrived. The night ends well, the kind owner flowing us a generous bar tab. So it’s a wash, not bad for a low point. Good night, Swindon!

We amble down the road to The Swan B&B. We hang in the Doten-Waller suite watching British game shows, drinking tea, and smoking our first joint of the tour out the window. Finally, someone has hooked up the band–thank you, intriguing mysterious cowboy in Leicester. And it’s actually not bad stuff, even for these spoiled California stoners. We set our alarms for the early free breakfast. That’s the trick of the B&B. You’ve got to be able to get up for that breakfast no matter what. Marc rises first. Then Rob. They knock on the slumbering couple’s door. Shocked and dismayed, they too muster. Bacon. Orange juice. Tea. Cereal. The morning is gray. We are in England. The end of our tour is here, a tour which has, as we suspected it would, passed in a flash. Prepared as we were, we’re a little bewildered and hurt. It’s over? We’re not ready for it to be over. But the end is nigh. Flashes of harsh desert air, desiccating chapparal, billboards and reckless driving on vast freeways intrude into the soft green vistas before us as we motor east toward London, windshield wipers clicking hypnotically.

It’s Tuesday, July 10th. We’ve been away just under two weeks but due to the relentless schedule of this tour we’ve had not a moment to chronicle our journey. Dear Reader, we apologize. We’ll try to catch up. At the moment, we’re speeding towards Bristol on the M6. We have a radio show at 3 pm at the BBC. Will we make it? Torrential rains are in the forecast once again. When we ask natives how long the drive is between Liverpool and Bristol we get answers varying from 2 to 7 hours. Google (like Obama), takes the middle road and says three and a half hours. We shall see.

Last night we played a house concert in the lovely two story brick row house of Peter and Gabrielle Davies, aka The Good Intentions. They won Best Americana act at the British Country Music Awards this year, and we’re excited about finally getting to play with them. The GIs live just down the street from Paul McCartney’s boyhood home. After a terrific dinner of fish risotto by Gabi, wow, did we need that!, with Peter leading we walked the half mile through quiet two story flats and trees to the quaint Council House of this McCartney musical mountain. Quite a feeling to be there. A tour guide guides two tourists in front of the building. Liverpool does feel Beatlesque, leafy neighborhoods and roundabouts. We’re not going to get a chance to see the port and its historic docks.

We walked back to the Davies house properly humbled. Evening. The audience, music aficionados and good friends all, filtered in to drink and mingle. The Good Intentions did a short but sweet acoustic duo set, no microphones in this most excellent small living room concert room. We did the same, just acoustic guitars, bass in small amp, Victoria with broomsticks on a CD box. We got a great balance, did our best acoustic show of the tour so far. The audience got very enthusiastic, their polite British nature giving way to genuine joy. It’s a good feeling. We did a short first set and took a break, the room grown hot and faces glistening. We stepped out into the damp and cool Liverpool night. Back inside for one more set, the sets they just keep coming on this tour. But it was a good one. We chatted for a long time with our new friends and fans. These people know music. We hung with the Davies, drinking whiskey on the couches, their very cool children and friends hanging too. A delightful and civilized evening.

Ah, but now it’s raining, we’ve missed our motorway exit, of course, and Rob is using precious roaming iPhone minutes to get nervous driver Paul back on course. We’ve gone 20 minutes eastward from Liverpool, so we backtrack, finally head southward, Bristol bound. The drive turns enchanting, even on the brisk motorway, dark rain and brilliant sunlight alternating in great waves over the fields and towns racing past.

We make Bristol with an hour to spare, cruise the high (main) street, note the ornamental patterns set into otherwise pragmatic brick row houses. Bristol was clearly a prosperous big town for a long time. We will learn from various chats with locals that this was the center of the slave trade triangle: trinkets and goods to Africa in the big wooden ships, slaves from Africa to America, cotton from America back to Bristol. Nasty and efficient. Bristol 2012 looks tidy, upbeat, and prosperous, with mysterious means of income, like most of western civilization.

BBC Bristol is a model of BBC effiency, genteel officiousness, and intelligence. We maneuver through the security checkpoints, are guided by a nervous greeter to the coffee lounge, and then play a live acoustic set with a super cool, smart, and informed DJ Alex. She’s listened to our material, has great questions, has fun. We’re getting good use out of the CD box, Victoria’s second show in a row on the percussion instrument. Thank you, BBC. Long may you rule, and may American radio follow your example, especially the interest in Americana bands from America.

With our car safely in the high security zone of BBC parking, we wander up the high street, check out the cool Silverlake period of gentrification shops. Cool hang with wi fi at a cafe, Rob chats with the family, whom he misses palpably at this point. Rob and Victoria hit the high end organic cosmetics shop, Marc and Paul amble downhill and fetch the car, we’re off to the St. Bonaventure Social Club up a few grades and through roundabouts eastward. What a beautiful town, all graceful old flats and generous parks, big old trees. The brooding clouds are our constant companion. A nurturing climate. The crew at St. Bonaventure’s are super cool, efficient, have great gear and drum kit for us, including a 1970s Fender Twin Reverb that sounds great, overcoming Paul’s historic aversion to Twins and their sinister cousins, the Mesa Boogie family. We do a full rocking sound check, take a long downhill walk to the street of shops, grab dinner, and walk back up.

St. Bonaventure’s is indeed a multipurpose community center room somehow connected to another deconsecrated church, with an impressive calendar of touring country, roots, and folk bands. Alejandro Escovedo, whose UK paths we are crossing several times, is here a few nights later. The seats in the big concert room are almost full, to our delight, and we do a set that builds to our closing rockers. It’s been interesting building sets with this first time ever lineup, with a batch of mellow songs from our new CD that we’re translating into acoustic and electric shows. We’ve got it down by now, and the crowd digs our thumping conclusion. The Fender Twin has tired tubes, gets quieter and quieter, Paul turns it up and up, and by our last “Good And Foolish Times” encore it sounds like a transistor amp through a fuzz pedal. Nobody but Paul and Marc seem to notice, and we exit the stage feeling loved and appreciated. We do the hang, sign CDs, and our kind hosts for the evening,

Tony and Guilly Jones, lead us in caravan through dark Bristol and down a six mile winding dark country lane to their B&B in the village of Pensford. We have a drink, a nice chat, and to bed in comfy rooms upstairs.

Morning reveals we are in a stunning 19^th century bakery turned sprawling B&B. Guilly makes us a fine breakfast, and we loiter long in the terraced yard that sprawls steeply down to the black and fast flowing Chew River, with fields beyond. Guilly takes us on a dreamlike walk through the old village with ancient carving in church wall and domed single room stone gaol, and out of town along the beautiful Chew sheltered by elms and other big trees. We walk the path under a massive Victorian arched railway bridge, into the hedges and fields with cattle and lonely wealthy farmer’s stone houses. The air is balmy and soft blue, barley bends with the breeze, cattle and sheep graze, and we wander in a big loop and back into town.

A fond farewell to Guilly and we’re off for Towersey, 50 miles northwest of London. On the map it looks like a piece of cake, so we take small roads out of Pensford, avoiding Bristol, and our wandering is rewarded with stunning vistas of Somerset farmland, unspoiled, timeless, and bursting with life from the very heavy spring and summer rains. We stop at a roadside pub for fish and chips and local strong beer, drive off well lubricated and mellow, veer somehow into the ancient town of Bath, drive narrow old streets become canyons by a burst of 18^th century Palladium style building by architects John Wood The Elder And Son. The yellowish Bathstone (a local limestone) buildings form massive and long planned boulevards and circuses that resemble Paris in boldness and farsightedness. Dazzled, we meander the streets until a lane spills us out onto a roundabout that takes us to the M4 eastward.

Now we’re running late, in classic Hawks style. Eastward, then north through the outskirts of Oxford, under beautiful blackening and lightening skies and bursts of rain, then eastward, we’re lost, we’re found, we’re lost, down a series of flat farm lanes, and sometime after sunset we reach the venerable Three Horseshoes Tavern in ancient village Towersey, east Oxfordshire, official home of the Towersey Morris Men

As the guidebook says: “Towersey is a small rural parish just inside the East Oxfordshire border. The origins of its name can be found back as far as the Saxon times. The village can be found in the Doomsday Book under it’s original name of Eye. The name Towersey is actually derived from Richard de Tours. The Tours family were owners of the land and area. Therefore, they became know as the Tours of Eye which led to usages such as Toureye, Towerseye and finally Towersey.” By the 14^th century the Abbot of the Church of Thame had taken the land.

In that same century, the 14^th, yes, the 1300s, young Americans, the barn in which we are to perform was built. Sturdy and whitewashed, the barn has what look like and locals agree are arrow shooting slits. As we pull into the rain soaked parking lot our anxious host Mark Wallace greets us. We’re pretty late, but we do a quick but efficient sound check, two big condensor mics and an upright bass, yeah!, have time to grab a pint at the Three Horseshoes across the yard. The doorway is low, the ceilings almost too low for Rob to stand upright, the floor is ancient planks. We’re drenched in history.

Back to the barn, and it sounds good. We’ve got a medium sized enthusiastic crowd, and we do two sets and an encore, as rain falls outside. Martin and his wife Georgia, very cool folks, lead us back to their row house in the village of Princes Risborough. We take to our rooms and crash. It’s been a long day.

Next morning Martin suggests we walk the mile into town center, which we do, have a cheery English breakfast, heavy on the sausage, in a corner shop, then wander the farmers market. We buy cheeses from a bewhiskered gray gentleman in tweed who rolls a cigarette with tobacco from a tin emblazoned with a marijuana leaf, who fills us in on local lore. A french woman presides over a cart with phenomenal olives and pickled vegetables, and another cart is overflowing with enticing plump bread loaves of a variety we can only wish on Whole Foods. We buy wander, just miss a boys choir in an ancient chapel in ancient cemetery. As we walk out of town center, two gawky raptors fly overhead, circle. Are those kites? The fabled birds we looked for in vain in the hills over Wellinghan, County Down? Yes, they are! They seem to follow us, and back at Martin and Georgia’s house they circle overhead. It looks like their nesting tree is at the edge of our hosts’ long and productive vegetable row garden.

We hit the road, iGuide Rob calling out directions, north for Leicester through Aylesbury, Bicester, Bloxham, Banbury, Byfield, Graydon, just missing Stratford-upon-Avon, past Coventry, Bedworth, Nuneaton, Wigston, roundabouts and hedges, some new suburbs but nothing alarming, into Leicester. A functional town.

It’s raining. We’re hungry. We park, load in and do a quick sound check at The Musician, at the end of a factory road. All is gray except for the bright yellow Musician entrance. The soundman is excellent, cheery, and we cheer up, it sounds great, we’re going acoustic again. Victoria almost slices her finger off with an ancient and cruel drum stool, but it’s only a flesh wound, and Victoria toughs it out. We find the street

with food, grab mediocre Indian fare, come back, and to our pleasant surprise, we’ve got a reasonable sized audience again. And we put on a great show, in Paul’s humble opinion the best of the tour. The grooves groove, the vocals are dialed in from the previous nineteen shows and the monitors are great, Rob’s sounding gigantic, Victoria’s a train beat metronome, we rock. The crowd goes quietly wild, we do a long encore, hang out and sign CDs. A night we were concerned about couldn’t have turned out better.

A friend of the club, Tony, has cheap rooms for us in his row house a few miles from town. We hang out with the other roomers and some musician buddies who turn out to have a great sounding folk band, watch a bit of Orson Welles’s “Touch Of Evil.” In the middle of the famous opening shot, Marc observes, isn’t that Venice Beach? By jove, it’s got to be. Suddenly the Mexican border town is good old L.A. But judge for your self, dear reader.

We hang. We crash. It’s raining.