The Crumbling Majesty Of New Orleans... and beyond..

David Eugene Edwards is sitting 20 meters in front of me. Tuning his Banjo. The club is playing insanely bizarre music. There are approximately 20 people here so far. It's looking grim. On the positive side, the backstage room resembles some sort of Beduin tent with ornaments, and oddly enough a buddha statue....

Morning wrestled night to its side, and I awoke. The dew of a new day annointed me, sunlight flooding through the windows of the bus. The streets outside were highlighted in regions the sun shone, and hidden where he daren't. A thick, mystical wind curled around the trees making midday almost seem like some dream-like evocation. Slowly I registered. Six of us made our sleepy way onto sunstoned streets, surrendered to the inside of a cab, and ploughed the new streets of a new city. David was with us, and had been here many times before, therefore becoming the default tourleader for the day.

Truly I cannot describe what I saw today. It is impossible for my humble fingers to bark it out of this computer keyboard and attempt to explain even fragments of the delights we have experienced........beauty....long rows of decrepid buildings standing glorious with the sun flooding their peeling paint.......alleyways hidden by bowing trees silent in prayer......squares where music escaped from jangly guitars and found its haven in our ears.......lingering smells of a southern kitchen spilling through pots and copper pans......madmen laying drunk in their own despair clinging to railings and old newspapers.....shutters wide open allowing the stealing heat to rob houses of comfort......rambling cars in their exhaust clamor deciding paths laid out in white and amber......falling leaves portraying death on the streets of life, with vein and furled edges cautiously begging a final farewell from the nest of their birth.....dark wooden beams holding a bar up above the streets where cold beers were enjoyed with a flooding string of light piercing a badly built frame......fresh catfish grilled and battered in a small local cafe with smiling waiters.......the long steps on steaming tarmac taking its toll on us fair skinned europeans.......deep streets set like a movie set with decadent balconies and the dreams of a better life nestled in their tangled iron.....the blue, blue sky allowing all of us illuminated passage beneath her mighty canvass.......wandering around like children in a fairytale, with mouths open and hearts thankful.....

Day of dreams merging into a night of work, but not before securing a bottle of La Chouffe from a grocery store... sipping back on the waters of the Ardenne region here in the heart of Louisiana, with friends and foes at hand. Then the curricular activities of a show, the carrying, loading, setting up, dossing around in the backstage area, drinking a few mediocre beers, longing for another meal, waiting...waiting...planning the rest of the night post-concert... and just utterly utterly speechless at this city, well, speechless for a man who just wrote 300 words about it in 3 minutes... truly a treat!

Here I end, I would like to say with my pen running dry of ink, but sadly its just the end of my thoughts... they need time to replenish.. and I need silence for that.. something that does not come easy on tour... silence.. the one thing I long for in this storm of sounds and impressions.... silence.. the completion of my sadness.