Nine weeks. That’s 63 days. Roundabouts. That’s 1/6th of a year, which sounds decidedly less impressive, I suppose.
We got Kerrville.
I’m somewhat in a state of shock, with fear and excitement mingling together. Kerrville Folk Festival, the one we were sure we couldn’t get. I just got an email listing me as one of the performers and it’s upended my view of my immediate future. It’s merged two separate trips into one massive country round-about, returning me to where I want to be.
I got the email a couple of hours ago. It’s 5.45am now, and the sun is working it’s way up over the traffic coming over the hill. This is the festival in the hills of Texas. Arlo Guthrie will be playing there. The contest was started by Peter of Peter Paul and Mary.
It is, to put it bluntly, a big fucking deal.
I’ve been lamenting recently how the Trip had almost become mundane. We come back and spend a lot of time in Maryland nowadays. There’s a lot of neccessity tied in there, of course. Between money practicalities, the recording of a new album, and my Father’s health, there have been an awful lot of advantages to being around the
native soil. But I’ve regreted the fact that we haven’t been doing what we set out to. We haven’t been exploring and rummaging and scaring ourselves shitless by being lost in new landscapes. I’ve got the nervous sleepless feeling that I had on September 1st of 2003. The awareness of what I was getting myself into. I’m looking at maps, and part of me is willing the cities to be closer together – willing the points to creep and nestle – but the rest of me is sitting back from the map and looking at the mileage. We’re not even plotting out our stops and I’m up to 4600 miles.
I’m eager for it.
