Randoms: tour lag & lightning in San Francisco

"Electricity is really just organized lightning." —George Carlin

Lightning in California surprises me. On the coast of California, (mid-coast though some would call it North here in San Francisco), lightning is aberrant. Laying in bed at 4 in the morning, my mind first registers the flash as something else--electricity generated by a a car or a building, not nature. Then thunder and I am miles away, in Colorado or Italy or India.: laying on a driveway waiting for afternoon thunderstorms to roll over us; standing against the wall of an ages old church, looking with the fisherman dressed in their colorful rain jackets to sea, wondering when it will pass. Or India, the start of the monsoon, my feet muddy from running in the rain, parrots flying as quickly and silently as I run to their own kind of shelter. I am not, at first in San Francisco, where I am in body. San Francisco has been feeling more often a perch between trips, though always, bedrock (or rather sandstone) to bounce off memories, sift through what has just occurred. A few more lightning bolts, then slumber. Touring is gratifying, and it's taken several days to recover. Tour-lag I suppose.
I'm playing at Socha Cafe tonight! the debut of the Crooks/Walsh Blues plus sets by Ben Bernstein & Kwame Copeland. Come on down. Socha Cafe, 3235 Mission Street (@ Valencia), San Francisco • 8pm-11pm • ph: 415.643.6848

Week's Gleanings: Quotables, Community Works, Gigs & Art-making

" I think an artist should work even harder than those who work 9 to 5 jobs. In these times, especially, the materialism and lifestyle attached to art, and music, and just about everything, has become so rampant, and has produced a lot of soulless, contentless work, I think more than ever we have to work harder." — Patti Smith, in Gibson Interview: Patti Smith on Rock and Roll, Poetry and Lullabies

A lot of practice and gig prep this week, and in between, making some new discoveries on the SF community & insight front....

Can I not say enough about Community Works Acupuncture? Thanks to Indie Abundance™ tour mate Chantelle, I got turned onto this GREAT resource for those iso affordable acupuncture. Thank you Ninah.

I went to the Ferry Building Farmer's Market today, very mellow on a weekday, stellar food per usual. It was one of those nearly everything-from-Santa Cruz days, including Farmhouse Culture sauerkraut. Yum.

Didn't Stefan Gustafson of Stefangus Design do a great job on the Indie Abundance Tour™ poster? We're psyched.

In the midst of staying sane amid a lot of activities, I've been re-appreciating sun salutations for all they contain this week, which led me to re-reading about obstacles, etc. The yogic view:

From Bo Forbes in Yoga Journal:

"According to the Yoga Sutra (Book II), there are five kleshas, or afflictions, that, like clever sorcerers, can knock you off balance or sidetrack you in your quest for spiritual evolution.

AVIDYA The inability to see things for what they are; this causes you to mistake transient, ego-related matters for permanent, soul-related ones.

ASMITA The tendency to overidentify with your ego; this keeps you from connecting with your soul.

RAGA The flame of desire that causes addiction to pleasure; this discourages you from leaving your comfort zone for more evolved territory.

DVESHA The aversion to pain; this creates a quicksandlike cycle of misery and self-hatred that sucks you under and suffocates your will to evolve.

ABHINIVESHA The fear of death or a clinging to life; this dilutes your focus and interferes with your ability to experience the spiritual freedom that is the goal of yoga"

Thinking About Trees

I was at a gathering last night, were someone brought a bowl of fresh plums from their tree to share. Biting into the fresh plums reminded me of home, growing up with a whole bunch of fruit trees out the door, and how over the years, I had a relationship of sorts with those trees--who was bearing, who was best to climb, who was best for shade, who wasn't going to last the winter, which one my dad planted before I was born. My friend of the plums said the tree was from her Community Garden space. They fed a half dozen of us and there were plenty left over. Despite the urbanity, there are plenty of trees in San Francisco, and I've been enjoying a summer sublet near a wonderful park with a nice selection of trees. I took a break today from all the tour planning and sat contemplating some of the trees at Alta Plaza, none fruit bearing, but stalwart all the same.

San Francisco randoms

I've been in do mode more than reflect mode, till I got sick this week. Nothing like laying flat on your back with a fever for a day to remember (or hallucinate?) a variety of thoughts and occurrences that have been taking/taken place in the life. While I wasn't the only one I knew who got sick this week, I think I hadn't been writing enough, here, there, or anywhere, and getting sick was forcing me to do some processing. Not all of that needs to be shared in this forum, but here are a couple of gems worth sharing from recent events:
While it's easy to get on one too many emails, I can't overestimate getting on the list of a handful of local clubs. A Yoshi's special alert, offering a free show, got me to the San Francisco club on a Tuesday night for what turned out to be one of the best nights of music I enjoyed all month, the Cd release party for local saxophone player Joshi Marshall and his project. Smokin! I hope that's the last time I 'get' to see him for free as he's worth a heap more (which can be said for a lot of people I know playing in San Francisco).
I have a special fondness for KPIG radio, the offspring of KFAT, the country, roots and outlaw friendly station I grew up on in podunk (at-the-time) Corralitos, CA, where I first heard the likes of Waylon Jennings & Willie Nelson. KPIG a yearly "Fat Fry" a weekend of music in Aptos which I missed a couple weeks back, but they've been running many ticket giveaways, which is more incentive to listening to some good rootsy programming and live sessions.
One thing that gets people out reliably in this town (more so than live music, truth be told), is coffee. Two new-to-me high-snob appeal espresso bars in the tradition of fave Blue Bottle proved their reputations correct this week: Cento Coffee deep in the heart of SoMa where I spent a few days last week, was a near mirror twin of the Blue Bottle kiosk, save for the name change on a few items (their version of the trademark BB "Gibraltar" — a half-sized latte served in a short glass — is called a "Cento" & ever-so-slightly larger). Like the Hayes kiosk, Cento is dog and local friendly, and lends itself well for chatting with your fellow caffeine aficionados.
On the opposite side of town, a couple blocks from the beach, where I was headed with two friends visiting from Brazil, is another find
"What brings you to Trouble?" barista asked Brazilians, who were ordering some, short, not-too-sweet mocha's before the Ocean Beach stint.
"Her," they say, pointing to me.
We'd just returned from a visit to Amma so I took that potentially guilty moment with a grain of salt. And Trouble Coffee is pretty nice: surfer cool, makes killer coffee, and will sell you a coconut if you like! The perfect place to take friends you made in India. Which is good to remember when you're sick, perfection and its random moments, that is. It made for rallying, and thus happy shows went on (there's another post coming about how much I've been enjoying playing with my SF band), and it's time to pack for another week in New York.

Notes & Quotables: On home & history

Nothing like visiting your family to take stock of everything, personal, political and in between. I ventured up to Santa Rosa on Friday for my niece's high school graduation, that time check fact alone reason for pause. My sister was pregnant with this niece at my wedding, and I've lived several lifetimes since. And of course, sitting playing catch with your nephew and eating with my sisters and trying to figure out with my brother why we'd blocked out our own graduation, put me right back into some of the initial chapters. Ouch, I say! The graduation was at once sweet — all those young lives launching into the world! My beautiful young niece! — and troubling: why was the principle harping about the inherent dangers of a world with equally powerful countries? Why was I the only one cheering at the mention of Obama's name? So I came home to how I've made it, only an hour away from the suburbs but oh so different: rocking out with my SF band mates, walking an artist couple's big dog around Mission Bay, meeting a friend for lunch @ Bar Bambino (yum), practicing yoga with the ever-questing Ashtangis, and revisited my favorite venerable authors and artists, taking notes on how to be graceful about it all:

"A mosaic is a conversation between what is broken," — Terry Tempest Williams, Finding Beauty in a Broken World

"It is something—it can be everything—to have found a fellow bird with whom you can sit among the rafters while the drinking and boasting and reciting and fighting go on below.” — Wallace Stegner

"nobody left unbroken/nobody left unscarred/nobody here is talking/that's just the way things are/ — "Sister Lost Soul," Alejandro Escovedo