A note on "The Road"

To me the road is not measured in miles, or money, in gas, tolls, good gigs or bad ones, CD sales or opening acts. It's measured in moments, brief and sharp as a razor or slow and soft as a prayer.

In 2005, in Louisville, a drunk stumbles to the stage and asks how much my CDs are. I say fifteen, and he says he only has eleven. "Close enough,” say I, and he hands me $6 and a scratch and win lottery ticket for $5. This is the what I remember.

By all accounts, this tour was successful, Jonathan Byrd successful. If I did this kind of touring 40 or 50 weeks a year, I’d be very successful, Ellis Paul successful. But it’s not the money or the shows that we do this. At least, it’s not why I do.

The tour started out well enough, Chester Page and company up in White House put together one heck of shindig for Steve Seifert and myself. Chester built this even to be a success from the bottom up, and as a result everyone had a good time and we were able to raise nearly $500 for the White House Elementary School’s dulcimer program. Seriously Chester, this was a better-run event than a lot of the “established” venues I’ve played over the last decade or so.

In Columbus I played Special Ed kids at the Heritage Middle School and remembered this: all my accomplishments aren’t worth a tinker’s damn compared to the everyday heroes out there, unsung and vigilant.



I went on a wild goose chase with Cindy Howes through crooked Pittsburgh streets that I once knew by rote, Cindy swore that her GPS was not faulty. We had a long lunch with much talk about music, how Pittsburgh is America, and how Tom Brousseau is not at all like the movie North Fork. She’s perennially in my Myspace top 8 because she always has new content. Then there was a pasta dinner with Stu and Ash in a Shadyside flat, the Bloomsburg Bridge Tavern, where I did not have the Perogies (and am still regretting it) and a sleep-in morning that the only one I got this trip.

If Nashville is the “Athens of the south” then Athens, Ohio is the “Athens of Ohio.” Once about three years ago, I sipped a cool Guinness in a very hot tub under a star-filled sky while coyotes bayed in the distance. This time there where no coyotes, only that star filled sky, and tho’ the times weren’t as good, it made the tub and the companionship more urgent, and fulfilling.

Heidi Muller invited me to play to six people at an Elderhostel, who were learning dulcimer. It reminded me that what the dulcimer gives, is the gift of music to people who never ever thought that music was in the cards for them. How do you put price on that?? An hour later I was playing for these inner city kids, who are also all learning the dulcimer.



I met Clare, 6 years old, red hair and freckles, she drew me a picture of a palm tree, its leaves spelling out the phrase “you rule.” Things like this are the best reason for owning a refrigerator. That same gig brought a pop-quiz request for Radiohead and Peter Gabriel. Note to self: keep yr. Chops up, especially on old material. You never, ever, know.



At the Hilltop house in Harpers Ferry, where the Shenandoah meets the Potomac, the trains come out of the tunnel and blast their horns; these echo down the valley. Heading north, the Doppler effect drops their notes of the horn one semi-tone down, and southbound it comes back a perfect forth lower, creating it’s own harmony in the key of C.

And finally Christie and I discovered the town of Thomas, squashed into the side of a mountain, it’s like a model train diorama comes to life. If there’s ever a place on earth like the fictional Cecily, Alaska, this is it. Here, in a freezing cabin, I reconnected with a random old friend who had come to the same conclusion thing I did: we do this because we have to, and because of that fact, we always will.

One of the wonderful things about Chattanooga is that I look forward to coming back to it. It feels good to be back on the road, to put all those miles beneath my wheels again. But this time coming back is as good as going out. I am truly blessed in this.