I’m folding up my laundry from 23 days away from Austin.  It is so bizarre to fold freshly clean sweaters in July in Texas.  The best thing about our summers is that you never have to wonder about what to wear or whether to bring a sweater. You know it’s going to be hot all day every day.  Packing for New York and England is far more complicated. Hence Andy’s dismay when we reached the steps of cousin Danny’s apartment building on 49^th St. in New York City:

The first thing Andy did in NY was to go in search of food.  I was determined to be rested and stay well for the tour, so I opted for a nap.  Comforted by a summer breeze flowing through wide-open windows, it was one of the only times on the trip that I slept really deeply. For some reason, I feel a deep sense of peace perched above the city noises. It becomes white noise, a constant reminder of all of the activity below and the fact that I am cocooned away from it.  Andy returned to the apartment with a big grin on his face. ‘Have you been drinking?’ He discovered that his favorite beer, Stella Artois is readily available ON TAP in NY! You can’t buy Stella in Texas.

That night we took cousin Danny out to dinner.  He showed us a street lined with curry house after curry house.  We were drawn in to a little restaurant with 2 live musicians sitting Indian style in the window playing tabla and sitar.  It was one of the best Indian meals we ever ate.  Stella and Curry, Andy decided to love NY.

After dinner we checked out the Parkside Lounge where we would play two days later.  We introduced ourselves to the staff and listened to a bluegrass band.  I was delighted to see my posters prominently displayed in the front window as well as on poles throughout the neighborhood thanks to my sure to sainted friend Dylan. When I got the NY gig, Dylan called me and said, ‘OK Sarah, you know that I’ll do anything you need me to do to help you promote this show.  I don’t care, I’ll show up at radio stations, newspapers, you name it.’ There is no truer friend than someone who really understands how much it takes to have a successful show (or career for that matter).  To show up is effort enough.  To help…. Sainthood in my book. 

The next night I had a reunion with my best friends from Berklee.  We all lived in the dorm together our first year and I had not seen some of them in six years. Now they all having exciting, successful careers in film scoring, composition, songwriting, and teaching. 

The next night was our NY show at the Parkside Lounge. We had a good turn out. We basically knew everyone in the audience, but most of them had not heard me perform in years and had never heard my songwriting.  It felt good show them what I’ve been up to.  I managed to get one guy there from Electra records and he said he really enjoyed it.

On to London….  My only priority on our first day in London was to pick up the package I had mailed to my friends Joe’s address.  When you don’t have a work permit to play in the UK, you are strictly there ‘on vacation’, so I had to mail over all of my CDs, posters, postcards, set lists ahead of time. I sent the CDs to Joe’s house because we were staying with him first.  Joe had warned me that he might not have time to fetch the package from the post office and I told him to leave it me.  I spent $150 mailing over 60 CDs. I sent them a month ahead of time to make sure they would be there for my tour.  Little did Joe  know that the post office only holds packages for 21 days unless you respond to the card.  THEY SENT IT BACK!  So, my first UK tour and no CDs to sell. At that point. What can you do?

So that night was a Friday.  We played a show at the 12 Bar Club on Denmark Street.  It was a warm sunny day in London, so the streets were filled with people overflowing out of every pub, ties loose and sleeves rolled up.  I love London when it’s warm.  All of that stereotypical reserved British demeanor goes out the window when the sun shines. 

The 12 Bar show was really good. It’s a very old building with stone walls and the quirkiest stage I’ve ever seen.  Basically, when you’re on stage, the people on the ground floor can see you up to your shoulders and you are eye level with the ankles of the people in the balcony, which is about a foot away from your forehead.  So you either have to look up or down at the band.   The show was packed with people who were silent during each song, really paying attention to every lyric. That environment always brings out the best in us. It is so rewarding. We would have sold lots of CDs. J

The next morning we attended a very posh wedding near Cambridge.  Andy’s good friend Allie married his girlfriend of 10 years in a 13^th century church in St. Neots followed by a reception at The George Hotel which dates back to 947 A.D.

The timing worked out nicely, because the following day we appeared live on BBC Radio in Cambridge with Trevor Dann.  Trevor turned out to be one of the world’s biggest fans of Austin Music.  He was delighted that I personally knew some of his favorite artists.  He played a Darden Smith song in the middle of our interview to further educate his listeners on the glories of the Austin music scene.  It was fun, however he was not the least bit amused by Andy’s stage name.  In fact, he refused to say it.

We had a BBC radio interview in Southampton the next day.  This one was loads of fun.  The station in Southampton is the headquarters for BBC radio and TV for the entire Southern region of the U.K.  We had to go through tight security.  It was a very modern, impressive station.  We even got walked through the newsroom on the way out.  It was just like in the movies, a field of phones ringing and people collecting/chasing the latest news. Richard Cartridge is a really good interviewer and apparently a real favorite of housewives.  He’s also a big fan!  We found out when we got there that they had chosen my EP as album of the week and they were playing it every day!  We got a recording of the interview that we hope to post on my website when we get permission.

The next night was our show in Winchester (which is near Southampton). Thanks to my new friend Oliver (www.olivergray.com), it was the highlight of our tour. Oliver lives near Winchester and we met this year during SXSW.  He set up the gig, lined up 3 female opening acts who were local, and got us really good press.  I was actually on the Cover of the Winchester Observer – the daily newspaper. We had so much fun playing to a sold out crowd, some of whom were very vocal.

Determined to make the most of every moment on this trip, Andy and I went straight from the Winchester gig to Weymouth. We slept (well Andy slept) in the car for 4 hours on the beach before we caught the morning ferry for a day visit with our good friend Nick in Guernsey. (FYI – Guernsey is an island that belongs to the UK, but is only a few miles from the coast of France.  It is a tax haven and unless you’re born there you basically have to be super rich or work for a bank to live there.)  The sun, once again was shining and Guernsey was stunning. We arrived back on the mainland at 12:30am and began heading in the direction of our next gig, Cambridge, stopping off at every motel along the way.  Everything was booked.  So quite unexpectedly, we drove all the way to Cambridge, parked on the 7^th floor of the public parking garage in the middle of town at 4:30am and went to sleep for a few hours. Two nights in the car and boy did we smell nice. It is also worth mentioning that at this time of year, the sun sets at 10pm and rises at 4am in the U.K. So it was daylight when we found our cozy parking spot.

First order of business in Cambridge was to find accommodation. We were politely informed by the first hotel we found that this was graduation weekend for Cambridge University and they their hotel had been fully booked for this weekend for over a year. Luckily, we discovered that the tourist information centers in the U.K. are excellent.  I will never attempt to book accommodation without them again.  They have brochures of every kind of lodging, all of the local little B&Bs… the places you would never find on the internet for much cheaper than you could find yourself. They found us a B&B five miles outside of Cambridge for about $80.  We got cleaned up and back into town just in time for our gig.  Another good show… My picture and a blurb were printed in the Cambridge Evening News.  One couple who saw us play at the 12 Bar the week before made the trip to Cambridge to see us again.  That was particularly touching.

Andy was so impressed with our room at the B&B that he drew a picture. The closet had been converted into the ‘en suite bathroom’ that we requested from the tourist board. It was literally a converted closet just wide enough for a toilet that faced a little shower stall. The sink was on the other side of the bed.  It’s amazing what efficient use of space some people come up with in countries that don’t share our wide open spaces.

Our next gig was one of those paying your dues kind of shows.  I was excited about playing The Musician in Leicester, because I found that every Austin musician who tours the U.K. plays this venue.  Their walls were lined with autographed pictures of Kinky Friedman, Trish Murphy, Susan Gibson… many familiar faces. Of the 30 people who showed up, two of them were there to hear me.  The rest were there to hear the headliner.  I opened for a guy who plays very deep, dark, rootsy songs to make you want to mine coal and cry in your beer. So I didn’t manage to connect with audience like I would have liked to.  I guess you win some, you lose some.  I do hope that I get to return to the Musician when I am more well known and join the ranks of the autographers.

We returned to London to play a songwriter showcase called ‘Acoustic Trip’ in Camden.  It was a fantastic night.  All of the songwriters were very talented.  The pub was packed and I was very well received. The host of the event is a man named Ben Mitchell who used to be a soap opera star for a show called neighbors.  Any U.K. friends reading this diary are sure to be impressed.  If I lived in London, I would probably go every Tuesday night to this event. If I had found this scene when I was living there, I might not have left so soon. 

Our last show was in Andy’s hometown of Wrexham, Wales.  We played at the W.E.S.S. club, owned by Roy Mack.  Roy is a blues musician who tours the US and he LOVES America.  It was apt that our show was on the 4^th of July.  Roy hung an American flag on the stage he serenaded the audience with our National Anthem at the end of the evening.  I stood with my hand over my heart and was very touched by his gesture.

Well, that’s the basic wrap up.  Here are 2 reviews from our first of hopefully many tours.

http://www.wess-club.org/news.htm http://www.playingoutloud.co.uk/