Driving south on that bright morning, I couldn’t help but smile at the wide open Colorado sky and the towering pines that reached up to meet it. Yup, this is one special part of the world, all right.
I had the day to chill out and take my time. I stopped in Fairplay and grabbed a coffee, a bag of nuts and a banana. The lady at the register looked at the speckled banana (how I like ’em) and said “Hm… the banana’s on us” . Surprised, I said ” ok…erm…why?” “Weeeellll” she explained,” it’s not gone off, exactly, but it’s darned close…”
I thanked her and gave a quick internal nod to the road gods and their one simple act of kindness. “Welcome back to Colorado” they whispered. I took it as a good omen, and I was taking as many of them as I could find.
You see, this “mini-tour” was designed as an experiment to see if it was feasible to hit the road in these strange times, and the booking agents and I were prepared to fall flat on our faces if our hunches were wrong.
My first show the following day was in Westcliffe, just shy of 8000 ft elevation, which can send a singer into a tailspin gasping for air, but this wasn’t my first rodeo so I just took it easy and gulped the air when I needed it.
I played outside under a cloudless sky to a wonderful audience of music nuts, and then hung out with the night owls, strolling around that tiny town under a blanket of stars until the bed beckoned.
The remaining shows were great, and the old schoolhouse in Coaldale is rapidly turning into one of my favorite rooms to play, so I didn’t think twice about playing two shows back-to-back on the same day to allow for social distancing. A room like that, built in the 1800s and ushering countless generations through it’s doors has it’s own stories to tell. Then fill a room like that with an audience of music lovers who can hear the stories from the walls just as well as the songs and well, you have a recipe for magic. I’m forever grateful for times like that.
Once the playing was done, it was time to hang out with friends and de-compress before heading for the airport – a day to chill in Salida, where an odd thing happened…
Sometimes I go looking for LP records. It’s my “day off” thing to do. Sometimes I find ’em. Sometimes they find me. I wandered into a store that had a small bin of vinyl; HOWL Mercantile:
I stood by the box and started flicking through the pile just to relax, expecting nothing, just kinda zoning out when I saw staring back at me, this record;
“Hello Sonny” I said, “it’s been a long long while…” as I smiled to myself. You see I used to open shows for Sonny back in Dublin – a hero of mine and a living legend, and we haven’t crossed paths in over 20 years, and there he was, looking at me from a small box of records in a random store in a small mountain town in Colorado.
Needless to say, the album came home with me. In the words of another hero “Nobody told me there’d be days like these. Strange days indeed. Most peculiar, Mama”.
After saying ‘bye to my most genial hosts and good friends, it was time to hit the airport again- a simple case of hurry up and wait. Buds in. Coffee at hand.
…..and with Mick Jagger hollering in my ears and the coffee no more than a rumbling in my belly, it was time to, well, wait some more…..
…until inevitably, I had a plane to board, back to the snowy north and the comforts of home.
And every time I come home I think of one thing; how great it is to see wonderful places, and how great it is to come home. A wonderful place is a wonderful place. Home is a feeling.
God bless ’em both.
See you out there.
🙂