Stormcellar Band Home Page

ok I know I have said I don’t want to support Facebook but it’s been where we are doing the on the fly blogging. Argh.

I’m conflicted. Oh well.

a week in Memphis, the end of our IBC campaign. Big ups to our mates in the  achievers for making the semis and to Ray Beadle for making the finals.

it has definitely been an experience.

beale st is smaller than you might think, the peel st mall in Tamworth runs longer.

We have been travelling back and forth using Uber which is giving me a chance to hear the opinions of the locals about Memphis and some of those experiences wound up in a new song. 

 Getting ready for this unexpected tour took six months and otherwise we would have been recording an album by now. It seems  slightly ironic that it takes an overseas journey for us to have enough time to do the next batch of songs, or perhaps it doesn’t, perhaps that’s exactly the right way .

Looks like we will be doing a few days of recording in the coming week which I am greatly looking forward to.

Oh yeah we also added another show at the cat head in Clarksdale on Sunday the ninth.

 I am also advised by our Kansas City friends to say go Chiefs ahead of tomorrow’s Super Bowl .

I was standing outside our venue on Beale Street listening  some back-and-forth regarding the current state of US politics . 

 As guests in a foreign country we are very much neutral observers .  Nonetheless it is an inescapable element of American life at the moment and I think tumultuous times are to come .

 Monday marks the halfway point of the tour and we still have many miles to cover and many things to do .

 Our good mate Jonesey is experiencing the US for the first time and blogging like crazy on Facebook on our page and I think he’s putting an excellent perspective and plenty of pics up .

We have some work to do over the next couple of days to get the guide tracks ready ahead of the recording sessions.

 The cool air, the fresh air and lack of smoke make me think of how folks are doing it back home and I confess to a little homesickness .

 Nonetheless onwards we go.  We have other people’s stories to tell and other people stories to listen to .

We’ve been on the ground a week now, far from the heat and smoke and dust of a still suffering Sydney.

everyone we meet  has heard of the fires and they all send their regards with a collective kindness that may come as a surprise .

 Much as we see one image from the outside, the locals see Australia as on fire,  where we see nothing but impeachment talk .

In both cases there is an element of truth, it does not describe the totality. The map is not the territory.

 In the three years since we were last here things have not significantly changed .  Americans still live the 24 hour lifestyle and are too busy doing their own thing to be collectively obsessed with one subject .

 Having said that, there is a deep sense of something being out of whack, but what it is depends on your perspective .

 We try to remain good houseguests  and I grow strangely quiet when certain subjects are raised finding that it is better to listen .

 My focus is first and foremost the logistics of moving a bunch of people around in cars, taxis, Uber, planes trains and mule wagon.

In the week since we have been here, the very straightforward tasks of obtaining equipment, lodging and transport have occupied my time.

 We have been able to renew the bonds of friendship with our mates in the states, without Whom  it would be very hard indeed to do this.

I am dictating this into my phone, seated behind my cup of coffee, here on a cold Memphis morning while the sound of trains honking their horns comes in from the nearby tracks.

 We do our first show tonight as part of the international blues challenge and I will admit to feeling the excitement that comes with walking such hallowed ground. 

Even in this age of the removal of privacy, there are some elements of organising a tour, the ups and downs, starts and stops, that I leave for a future time. It is fair to say the calling this the minor miracle tour  is apt .

Last night we ate our first meal together in Memphis and spent time reviewing our set lists,  making sure our equipment is in order and getting ready to represent .

 We still have much ahead of us and I need another cup of coffee .

 Seven days in, my thoughts are still of home  shrouded under dark skies and heat, as I look in wonder at the blue skies of Texas and Memphis and the relief of a soft winter.

I guess it's time we put out a tour poster for US tour #5. Here ya go.

All this is US Central time, so for the Aussies that's um...yesterday. I mean, not calendar wise but um...errr...well on the other side of the earth

More dates or changes likely. It'll be up here when it occurs.

Alright it's T-4 and finally we're more or less ready.

One day, in the distant future, the background details will make interesting reading.

You can no more liberate touring from the task of overcoming obstacles than you can liberate a fish from water.

The smoke and fires have made life hard for us as well. Not as much as our good mate Pete D, who we send our respects to, or to a few other Friends Of the Band, but enough to share in the common disaster.

Some of our mates in the states have stepped up to help us get it together.

In particular, the assembled collective of the good ship Stormcellar extend our thanks to Travellin' Mac and Susie for going above and beyond the call of duty to make things work for us, as they have done now since 2013.

Yeah imagine that. We started touring the US in 2013.

It's been said that to see afar is to have stood on the shoulders of giants. I'm not Mark Twain enough, or Banjo Patterson enough to improve upon Newton speaking of Hooke (I only know this cos Hooke's Bio has been random background reading).

When i think of it, it feels more to me that if I have traveled afar, if I have voyaged, it is because I have found shelter, kinship and courage in crisis.

I watch the US and the media presentation. How can we not. I wonder if maybe those better angels of the American nature are merely waiting to alight once more on shoulders and whisper the divine, simple understanding, that we are more alike than not.

We have a great blessing before us, to travel again, to voyage once more, after a careening of the ship these last three hard years.

Once more we make sail. 

Thank you O, W & M from T. Thank you to Mr D.G and the KC All Stars and Frank for the welcome. Thanks to the Sydney Blues Society, patrons and members, and thank you to all the places that have opened the bar at a late hour for a weary traveler.

The whole world is made and remade from a single act of kindness.