The Purple Cabin and the Green Tour Machine

It’s been ‘a beautiful day in the neighborhood’. The weather in the North East has been exceptional this last weekend. However, I hear nothing but problems concerning friends in the U.K. with all the flooding. It seems that it’s all quite serious. CNN made it their lead story last night. Another friend from Sweden, just got back from a month back home and said that even there, she became quite worried about the weather. Seems that the high speed train tracks between Malmö and Stockholm were actually washed away by all the rain.

Maybe Al Gore does have a point.

For many of you, it’s been a forumless weekend too and now it’s down yet again. Some bozo decided to wreak havoc and flood the thing with spam or messages from a revolving IP address and it crumbled under the strain. Talk about raining on our parade. Well, he probably feels really good with himself now…oh well. It’s been a wonderful thing now, this forum, for some 7 years, but it’s probably time to upgrade to something with more built in safeguards. It’s a real pity that people get so vindictive, if that’s what the deal is.

Other than that, I can tell you that the band has been taking time out from matters Wishbone Ash. Joe Crabtree just got back from the Lorelei Festival in Germany where he played with Pendragon, I believe. We played at this festival a couple of times, years ago, and it really is on a spectacular site on a cliff overlooking the river Rhein, in Germany. As many may remember, it’s where the legend of the Rhein Maidens emanates from and this inspired one of our songs, Lorelei. Legend has it that these mystical Rhein Maidens would cry out in the night and lure sailors to their doom on the rocks overlooking the river.

Guitarist, Muddy Manninen has been taking in a lot of classical music this summer. He checked in with me and in a recent e mail wrote; “There are a lot of free concerts around here in the summer time, classical stuff. Just back from one. A string quartet played some Argentinian music, Astor Piazzolla being one of the composers. Great music, but also very sad music. I was just wondering where does that sadness come from. It is something I can´t put my finger on, and one that I recognise in myself. What is it? There are many different kinds of sadness, and, most of them I am familiar with, like most of the people, but this is something different. It puzzles me. Oh well…The other day I went to hear a guy play Bach and Chopin in my childhood church, where I haven´t been in 40 years. It was strange to be there. You should really come down here sometime when it is summer. It is a great city (Helsinki). Where else can you go paddling in a canoe almost in the middle of the city, like we did today?
Cheers – Mud.”


Muddy was also recently staying in a one room wooden cabin way up in the north of Finland where he visited a classical musical festival with his family. He said it was amazing.

Bob Skeat has been everywhere this summer. He almost had a situation where he was going to play with the band Squeeze during our down time. It seems that their bass player injured his arm and Bob got the call. It didn’t happen in the end due to the dates being moved around.

I’m off to visit family in North Carolina this weekend. We are also staying in a log cabin, painted purple (hmmm), situated in the town of (most appropriately) Asheville in the beautiful Smokey Mountains. We’ll take in some down-home folk music. I’ll be taking my guitar and mandolin along and making the drive down in the Green Tour Machine. My granddaughter, Sophie Rose will be joining us, along with her parents. It’s her first trip away from home since her two major heart operations. She’s doing fantastically well at the age of 8 months and things are looking great for her. Thanks to all the people who have leant support to her and my son and daughter in-law, with their prayers, phone calls, letters and best wishes.