3.26.2006 I'm in Seattle. It's not the same now with me having my family in Paris. Pls. see the song 'Death of a City'--it really sums up how I feel. It's still beautiful, it still has great music, great restaurants, trees, whatever. It's not my home anymore. That's fundamental, and it's in my chest and stomach and legs as I go round town taking crap to Goodwill, or whatever it is I do all day. My folks' home in Bellingham, on the other hand, felt very good to visit this last couple of days. I was so relaxed that I couldn't keep my eyes open past midnight...I saw a bald eagle nest on my way back to Seattle--where Electric Avenue and Alabama St. meet near Lake Whatcom in Bellingham,if you look to the southwest, up in the trees right there by the intersection, you'll see a big bunch of small branches about 40 feet up in a tree. If you're lucky, you'll see one of the eagles standing on it. As I stopped at the 4-way stop there, one of them flew right over and in front of me, I could see every detail of its face and feathers. It swooped up into the trees and went to its nest. I think the best things that have happened to me here in Seattle and environs have been visiting my folks and son in Bellingham, and two profound encounters with birds: the aforementioned; and when I was getting in my car in front of my house in Seattle, a tiny ruby throated hummingbird arrived right above my head, about a foot and a half from my face, to feed on the cherry blossoms in the trees in front of my house. It stayed quite awhile, went to a few other bushes in the yard, and moved on. REM's Christmas single for 2005 was a DVD with two live songs from the Wercther Festival last year, I was part of the show that night. The performances and video/audio quality are outstanding... RIP Buck Owens. He used to be a radio DJ in Tacoma for a brief period in the late 1950s, before his biggest successes. I read that in his NY Times obit. this morning. No, he wasn't from the NW. You can read the obit. but he was born poor in Texas, grew up poor in Arizona, and moved to California as a young man to play music there. He did gigs and sessions, but during a bit of a dry spell he headed up to do the radio gig in Tacoma. Song he wrote there were recorded (I wonder where/if he recorded up here?) and started a huge string of hits in the early 1960s. And back to Bakersfield he went. Merle Haggard was one of his bass players early on, and--Buck's first wife later married him. It appears they remained, eventually at least, friends. Love KS Seattle 3.18.2006 In the body of the arts film is the head (drama) and eyes (documentary); literature is the consciousnes which inhabits the body; poetry provides the mouth and lips; sculpture, the hands; dance the muscle, legs and feet; painting, the flesh and skin; and design/architecture the bones. Throughout all runs the blood: music. It is my opinion tonight, poised to leave my beloved city of light for the city whose lights are only visible when the wind blows a pause in the clouds, that St. Augustine by Band of Horses is this young century's finest musical moment and Rebecca West was the most eloquent, resourceful and visionary chronicler of the last century. and huge changes in the nature or perceived nature of survivability in a given society produce massive quantities of fear. These fears tend to be projected onto/focused by someone who is willing to caress them into terrible, terrible flames. Chaos after the French Revolution produced Napoleon; economic disasters in Germany after world war one, well--you know how that went. Everyone that I know in the US whether they were conscious of it or not had considered their chances of being killed, immeditately after the launch of Sept. 11 2001 (which is the first time in history someone has created such conditions consciously that I can detect). And these fears have been coaxed into the arms of our president and his handlers and advisers. We are living in an era of cynical, ravenous destruction that is trying desperately to dress up as an ephiphanic form of liberty. It can certainly be called by its common epithet: murder. Many people are confused and think that just because Napoleon faced enemies in battles (that he instigated) he must have been some kind of fantastic leader. 2.5 million Frenchmen killed in Napoleonic Wars were unavailable for the exit polls. Love KS Paris A bientot. 3.15.2006 IT This is about all you get from me for a bit. Oh, I’ll write from time to time but I don’t have any performances for over a month so the tour diary bit will be going dark. Well, I may find something to write about each week. I can always write about not having anything to write about. Fun, huh? Like those episodes of Seinfeld where they are pitching their show where nothing happens to the networks. I am, to be sure, capable of kvetching at a Seinfeld-ian level…maybe I can do that. CRANS-MONTANA 3/11 Dom and I took the train up a day early; we were due a little vacation as a couple to be sure. Aden was surely bummed out to only have me for a day. But we made the most of it, playing and goofing around. And then Dom & I took the train to Sierre, passing thru Dijon, Lausanne, Montreaux and the lot. The area around Dijon was quite flooded, mostly farmland was under water but a few buildings were in standing river. It’s terrible of me to say but if you could take out the human suffering from the equation, the mix of land and water was beautiful. There’s that beautiful-deadly thing that nature does so well. But like I said, mostly it was farmland that was deluged; when you think about it, humans have been living in this part of the world for tens of thousands of years, and I believe they have a pretty good idea about where to build and where it will flood. We got to Sierre in the evening and were picked up by a car from the festival Caprices, and taken to our hotel. Hotel de la Foret, which is built on the bones of a chalet that’s been a traveler’s stop for over a century, is now a typical Swiss construction, meaning built in the 70s and not really redecorated since. Cozy, to be sure, and family run. Family run means the same old guy served us dinner and couldn’t figure out how to print the invoice when we left. And, we were told to sit at the same table for each meal, in the rather large-ish dining room, even when it was totally empty. Thankfully it had a view! I had been fighting this cold that started when I got rained on in NZ, and reached its peak when I endured the layover in Bangkok. My ears were doing the weirdest things. Like, I couldn’t really hear out of my left ear, and when I moved my head looking up or down, my ear opened up, like a door hanging on its hinges was in there. There’s a nasty cough that’s producing blood to this day, and an awful, swollen throat (as I have no tonsils anymore, I have little recourse on this one). I wasn’t feeling so hot on the train, and was looking forward to a quiet night. I didn’t have much to do. We ate dinner at the hotel –fondue, accompanied by a marsanne from the nearby vineyards, which I enjoyed. We went down to the festival and watched Robert Plant; under normal circumstances I would go to the after party but I was ill enough to just want to go to bed (in fact, I hate to say it but both Dom & I fell asleep at one point during the show—someone threw a plastic cup {empty} at Dom and neither of us noticed til we woke up and it was on her head) so I did just that. Jet lag woke me up at five fucking thirty so I played guitar and took a bath and waited until I could wake Dom without guilt and we could have breakfast together. Then I managed to go back to bed and sleep. In the afternoon I went to ‘the Village’ of the festival, a large exposition hall where food and drink vendors were, plus booths and displays from the festival sponsors. Where the public could hang when they weren’t in the big concert tent. It had its own stage, the ‘jam’ stage. On this stage I rehearsed with Marc Aymon and band, his band and he had done a smashing job of learning ‘Je Vous En Prie’ and I had learned (tho not as well, mind you but I made up for it by being a quick study in rehearsal) a song of Marc’s called ‘L’Aviateur’. We made a soundcheck as we were the first band on the mainstage, and in the actual set I thought both songs sounded superb. I had a serious Mark Lanegan thing happening with my froggy throat, but I think it actually helped the songs, esp. mine. Many thanks to James Trussard, who lent me one of his fantastic metal guitars for my performances this night; the strings on my Gretsch were just too caked in blood to sound right and I didn’t have any spares. And many thanks to Marc and his band for doing such a fine job on my tune! So, after dinner and watching a bit of Lou Reed’s set Dom and I returned to the Village, and I took to the jam stage for my set. Originally, I thought I would be doing a typical KS set, and the jam stage just happened to be the one I was using. Of course, everyone else assumed the ‘jam’ was still on so as I started playing, people crept up and started bashing along. What the hell, I thought. No choice but to go for it—and actually, the people that came up, for the most part, were great. I did some covers and a pretty damn good version of ‘Lover’s Hymn’. Then I booted everyone off and did a few of my own songs, and then brought everyone back up for some hilarious stuff—Beatles and Led Zep and whatever. Martina Tipley-Bird was cajoled into coming up, and she improvised a very nice thing over equally improvised music; at one point some dude came up while I was trying to play a Neil Young song and just farted all over the keyboard. He had comic book squiggles for eyes; I don’t know what he was on (other than, marginally, the keyboard). Later, I kid you not, I saw him on his back, eyes open, mouth opening and closing like a fish, in the gangway that connects the Village with the other building that comprises this ‘salle des reunions’ that the festival lives in. He was later loaded into an ambulance. All in all, I ended up onstage for about 2 hours, and was sweaty and happy—I transitioned myself out of there at about 1am. After getting paid I thought about having a drink at the bar, I was feeling physically much better, but all the bars were playing loud techno and I just didn’t want to deal. So, Dom & I got the last runner to take us to the hotel, and that was that. Good call. Dom & I are now on our way back to Paris, where I have the week off to spend with my family and try lunch at a different café everyday. And cook for my daughter! God help the poor child. Love KS On the train between Lausanne and Geneva SWITZERLAND 3.05.2006 IF YOU BELIEVE IN LIFE AFTER LOVE, READ ON No, I actually don’t have any consoling tales of rebirth and regeneration after addiction, trauma--no inspirational anecdotes to guide you. So, you’ll have to get those from network TV. Me, I just write my tour diary, for the tour that never ends. SYDNEY 3/3 We had a couple of shows fall thru (long story) so I found myself with a couple of days off in Sydney, including the night I arrived, I went out for a couple of beers with friends, sang a little karaoke, and beat the jet lag by staying up. Had nice dinners, rested in the hotel, swam, steamed, walked around, did interviews, visited radio stations, had snacks and wine up on the 34th floor of the Intercontinental Hotel with some of the folks from our promoter’s office. I spent time with lots of different friends, had plenty of time to take a meal with each of the dearest ones that were available, etc. Caught up on email. After a couple of days of that I was almost forgetting we had shows to do, but Friday arrived and we pulled into the Metro, where we had done our sole full-band electric show in 1996, in the afternoon. Fantastic sounding stage and great production at this venue. Probably a little big for the crowd we had, but in the end, it looked great in there with the folks that came, and we did have a nice crowd in the end. And it was GREAT to play a Posies show after having a month off: my body was limber and energetic. Of course I was sore as hell the next day, that’s for sure. But honestly I thought we played great and didn’t drop a beat even with the long time gone since we had performed together. And folks said the sound was great (except for one fan, oddly, who said it was muddy and said our HORRIBLE sounding show at Benicassim last year was fantastic sounding). Poor Hanayo, a fan of ours who flew in from Japan and spent an uneventful night in Brisbane where our show was cancelled, got to see this show, so not all was lost. After the show we hung at the lobby bar til they kicked us all out—I went to a party at the house where one of the dudes from the fine band 78 Saab (who named themselves after the car that they borrowed to drive to a Posies gig in the 90s, unbelievable but true!) and had a grand time! The house was next to a park/playground so we sipped beers and sat on some kind of rope net thing…and I saw a fanciful opossum run by, it’s like a very big cuddly looking squirrel (big bushy tail—the creature is 3 times bigger than a typical American grey squirrel and has a much cuter face), and fast, not like the American things that get hit by cars all the time. MELBOURNE 3/4 We were all pretty tired (that party went kinda late and we had an early lobby call for our flight) so when we got to Melbourne and checked in to the trendy Marque Hotel (no I didn’t forget an ‘e’ it’s pronounced ‘Mark’—snooty, eh?) we all took naps. Got up for soundcheck, and all took naps in the dressing room while the gear was set up, then went back to the hotel and took more naps! So by showtime we felt really good and I myself had chugged a Red Bull and was ready for it. As we were driving to the gig we saw that Saturday night was ROCKING in downtown Melbs, every club had 50 people waiting to get in. And thus we benefited from this windfall of bodies too—our show had HUNDREDS of people at it, and they were more than ready for a big rock show. Perfect storm kind of shit—we bashed that room senseless with a furious to do. We did two encores, pretty long ones; I bled like a guy in a slasher flick on my guitar (even my shoes had blood on them) and life was fine; after the show Friendy, the man behind the ‘Puppetry of the Penis’ show, helped me sell merch! We tried to get in to Cherry Bar, owned by one of the Cosmic Psychos, but it was packed and we were a posse of about 20 folks. We found a home in bar hosted by Wally from Even/the Meanies, who had been at a wedding all evening, and showed up at his place, with perfect timing to get us all in, at about 2. And we stayed til the wee hours, and finished the evening at the home of Jo and Roger, Jo being a publicist who worked on the ‘Soft Commands’ tour last year, and Roger her very friendly and kind guy. Pretty soon it was time to head back and shower up for the flight back to Sydney!! SYDNEY 3/5 We flew in and headed straight to the festival grounds, basically squeezed in between skyscrapers in downtown Sydney in and around a tiny park. Our backstage was shared with several bands, in a large conference room in a hotel adjacent to the festival site. I met the Hold Steady, who I saw play later that night and were excellent, and found the guitarist is the partner of an old friend of mine—funny stuff like that. Our show was in the late afternoon, on the second stage. We couldn’t really line check as there was a wedding happening in the hotel right before we were going on and the noise of us checking our gear would disturb it. It all worked out—presumably the wedding went off WITH a hitch and we got onstage and played by all accounts a ridiculously over the top rock show…sometimes having a smaller stage gives me more things to push and bounce off of than a big one where I feel too spread out from my bandmates—you’d think having more room would give one a sense of greater freedom but actually it’s often more like a lens that is pulled out of focus. In any case, this stage was pretty tiny but for some reason we all fit fine (ah…yes…there was no keyboard!) and I bounced, swung, crawled, swaggered, pranced—I verbed all over the damn shop like a sonuvagun. We ended with a foaming-at-the-mouth version of jungle—I ended up with no trousers (but everything else was on, including my shoes!). Received many compliments on our foolish behavior. Afterwards it was all gravy, drinking white wine and eating sausage at the VIP BBQ, watching the incredible Broken Social Scene, the aforementioned Hold Steady, and dropping by the Avalanches’ dance party. Brad Shepard, Hoodoo Gurus guitslinger and proud dad (like meself) came down to see our set and offered many compliments as well. I had purchased a bottle of a very unusual beverage, new to my senses, called Amontillado, I have to see how it’s made, but it’s an alcoholic substance made from grapes using something called the ‘flor yeast process’. I guess it’s related to Sherry but tastes nothing like any sherry I have experienced. I shared it with any interested parties, having grabbed a bunch of port glasses from the bar, and we all agreed it was unusual…softly bitter and nutty, the initial taste is quite diffuse but then the pecan-like finish comes on and stays with you for many seconds. By the time the Avalanches wrapped up at 10, there was of course to be a big after party at the Basement club, but honestly I had been burning the candle from every direction, and I needed a good night’s rest. So, I went back with the van and gear to the hotel and was asleep by 11…up early and on the flight to Auckland. AUCKLAND 3/7 New Zealand…mellow like a giant Seattle…maybe even a giant Bellingham! On our arrival night I dined with Phil, dad and co-manager of the excellent Checks; I’ve praised them at length in these (html) pages in the past. We found some good eats and wine by the hotel. Show day all four Posies cut an acoustic session on the national radio, and Jon & I limped thru a post-soundcheck interview at the student radio that was sponsoring our gig. The host was a fan (‘was’ being the applicable verb after our appearance) and kept wanting to play ‘Golden Blunders’ but honestly I felt like it was the new record we should be speaking about so I told him so. Jon and I also ran off dozens of known bands with names modified to accommodate the hip sobriquet formula that requires ‘wolf’ to be part of the name (Wolf Eyes, Wolfmother, Wolf & Cub et al) –like we came up with Wolfgang of Four, Justin Timberwolf, April Wolf, Frankie Goes to Hollywolf; hell we even hit upon the fact that now is the time for Steppenwolf to return to the epicenter of hipsterdom. Neil Young and Crazy Wolf. Obviously, we needed a nap. And so I squeezed off an hour at the hotel, but it wasn’t enough. When we went to the gig I was still so tired I could barely function. I lay on the couch taking in the support acts’ very nice sounding sets, and peeled myself off the thing and downed a Red Bull; then it was rock time. And you know, it was a damn good show. Lots of musos, journos, and music devotees in the house. Not a ton of folks, but enough to keep us from feeling lonely, and everyone seemed to get their sockies rocked right off. As soon as it was done the house was empty tho’—this is NZ on a Tuesday, I was told. But we were invited to a party thrown by ‘Fort Minor’ a hip hop crew from NY that I hadn’t really heard of before but met one of the guys, very nice—they had played in Asia, Europe, etc. and this party was the end of tour party. I chatted with the Checks, and eventually stumbled across the street to the hotel. OZ/NZ done, I say— success! Love KS Auckland NEW ZEALAND

The latest release by Ken Stringfellow is a split EP with Spain's Muy Fellini, featuring never-heard-before music incl. Ken's take on Bob Dylan, released by King of Patio records in Spain on Oct 8, 2009. Order it directly from Muy Fellini here www.myspace.com/muyfellini 10" VINYL ONLY!!! Subscribe to the RSS feed to keep up to date on all things KS! older news : 8/3/2003 05/01/2004 - 06/01/2004 06/01/2004 - 07/01/2004 07/01/2004 - 08/01/2004 08/01/2004 - 09/01/2004 09/01/2004 - 10/01/2004 10/01/2004 - 11/01/2004 11/01/2004 - 12/01/2004 12/01/2004 - 01/01/2005 01/01/2005 - 02/01/2005 02/01/2005 - 03/01/2005 03/01/2005 - 04/01/2005 04/01/2005 - 05/01/2005 05/01/2005 - 06/01/2005 06/01/2005 - 07/01/2005 07/01/2005 - 08/01/2005 08/01/2005 - 09/01/2005 09/01/2005 - 10/01/2005 10/01/2005 - 11/01/2005 11/01/2005 - 12/01/2005 12/01/2005 - 01/01/2006 01/01/2006 - 02/01/2006 02/01/2006 - 03/01/2006 03/01/2006 - 04/01/2006 04/01/2006 - 05/01/2006 05/01/2006 - 06/01/2006 06/01/2006 - 07/01/2006 07/01/2006 - 08/01/2006 08/01/2006 - 09/01/2006 09/01/2006 - 10/01/2006 10/01/2006 - 11/01/2006 11/01/2006 - 12/01/2006 12/01/2006 - 01/01/2007 01/01/2007 - 02/01/2007 02/01/2007 - 03/01/2007 03/01/2007 - 04/01/2007 04/01/2007 - 05/01/2007 05/01/2007 - 06/01/2007 06/01/2007 - 07/01/2007 07/01/2007 - 08/01/2007 08/01/2007 - 09/01/2007 09/01/2007 - 10/01/2007 10/01/2007 - 11/01/2007 11/01/2007 - 12/01/2007 12/01/2007 - 01/01/2008 01/01/2008 - 02/01/2008 02/01/2008 - 03/01/2008 03/01/2008 - 04/01/2008 04/01/2008 - 05/01/2008 05/01/2008 - 06/01/2008 06/01/2008 - 07/01/2008 07/01/2008 - 08/01/2008 08/01/2008 - 09/01/2008 09/01/2008 - 10/01/2008 10/01/2008 - 11/01/2008 11/01/2008 - 12/01/2008 12/01/2008 - 01/01/2009 01/01/2009 - 02/01/2009 02/01/2009 - 03/01/2009 03/01/2009 - 04/01/2009 04/01/2009 - 05/01/2009 05/01/2009 - 06/01/2009 06/01/2009 - 07/01/2009 07/01/2009 - 08/01/2009 08/01/2009 - 09/01/2009 09/01/2009 - 10/01/2009 10/01/2009 - 11/01/2009 11/01/2009 - 12/01/2009 12/01/2009 - 01/01/2010 01/01/2010 - 02/01/2010 02/01/2010 - 03/01/2010 03/01/2010 - 04/01/2010 04/01/2010 - 05/01/2010