California: Wedding

I can't possibly summarize how beautiful my cousin's wedding was, and how much fun and silliness was had, so I'll try to summarize it in pictures:


Family:

My cousin, my cousin's friends and my dad playing music the night before the wedding:

 Wedding by the lake:

The bride's brother officiated:

 Party on the lawn (photo by my dad):

 Where the younger generation camped for the wedding:

Annnnd...a paddleboat full of beer headed out to the island in the lake – where a bunch of us slept one of the nights, by grabbing our sleeping bags and paddleboating out there to sleep in the sand: 

California: Songs that Are Everywhere

Have you heard the song "Wagon Wheel"? Based on my experiences over the last week or so, I'm betting at some point you have. It goes like this:

Rock me, mama, like a wagon wheel
Rock me, mama, any way you feel
Hey, mama rock me

Rock me, mama, like the wind and the rain
Rock me, mama, like a south-bound train
Hey, mama rock me

I'd heard the song around enough that I just sort of assumed it was one of those American classics, along the lines of "Country Roads," the kind of song that Europeans love to play in bars and at sing-alongs.

In fact, I'm 99% sure "Wagon Wheel" is the specific song I remember hearing played – twice, to great audience acclaim – in a pub in the tiny capital town of the Isle of Lewis in Scotland, when the father of the woman who ran the hostel where I stayed invited us all to come hear him and his friend in a cover band at the local pub, and I and another American traveler went down and watched the local folks getting happily drunk to country music, and the hostel owner's dad was really flattered that we came, and apologized that we'd traveled all this way just to end up hearing covers of our own American music.

When I got to my cousin's wedding in Chico last weekend, it was to find that his crowd of friends are really into country and bluegrass and old-time music, and especially into the song "Wagon Wheel" – so it's clear I was right that this is a big, well-known song – but also for the first time I was able to put a name of a band to the song; it turns out it's by Old Crow Medicine Show – which clearly also is or has become a big, well-known band.

Except that in my mind, Old Crow Medicine Show was just one of those local bands that used to play at the Grassroots Festival in Trumansburg, the nearby music festival I went to every year as a kid.

?? Confusion ensues. How can this be both a song so famous that it's the crowd favorite at the local pub in Stornoway, Scotland, yet also a local band I remember from my childhood?

After the wedding weekend, when I had internet access again, I looked up Old Crow Medicine Show, and had a "Stop, you're both right!" moment:

Old Crow Medicine Show is "an Americana string band based in Nashville, Tennessee" (thank you, Wikipedia). Part of the band met as kids in Virginia, but the other part met in upstate New York, where they originally formed a band called "The Funnest Game" – which is a local band I remember playing around Ithaca when I was a kid, and which was part of the old-time music scene that's a big thing around Ithaca and Trumansburg. When the Virginia portion of Old Crow Medicine Show's future members came to Ithaca College, history was made, as they all met, formed a new band, and were eventually discovered and mentored by some big names in folk and country music.

So they're world-famous and from Ithaca, which is just rather awesome. And it's also fun that "Wagon Wheel" is a favorite song of my cousin and all his friends in California – by the end of the weekend, I felt like it had been the unofficial theme song.

Here's a live recording, from Youtube:

California: Tahoe, Chico

 Out from the Bay Area, through the golden hills of California...

to pretty Tahoe...

where we stayed in my cousin and his fiancée's rented house in a neighborhood that felt more like a campground with a few houses plopped down in it...

then up through the emptiness of the Central Valley...

...to the orchards of Chico, where my cousin's wedding was.

More anon!

California: Old Friends

My first full day here I spent biking around Oakland and Berkeley, doing some errands (those American things that are easier to get here, like ibuprofen and dramamine...) and my happy bookstore-and-record-store pilgrimages.

Biking up Shattuck Ave called to mind a time – years ago – hanging out with my friend Marisa there, getting gelato somewhere along Shattuck and laughing over the giant sculpture of a tuning fork in the middle of the road.

So that evening, I shot Marisa an email just to say, Hey, I'm in Berkeley and thinking of you!

Marisa and I go way back (or maybe as way back as you can go with someone when you're still in your twenties...) We have Ithaca connections (we met doing a community theater production when I was a senior in high school) and Berkeley connections (she's from California and was living here again by the time I spent that summer in Berkeley) and even Thailand connections (she was the one who first taught me some Thai before my exchange year there, and I visited her six years ago, when she'd just moved to Thailand – where she still lives now.)

Since Marisa lives in Thailand and I live in Germany and we each only come back to the US at most once a year, and not even usually to the same parts of the country, you can imagine we don't see each other often. So it was more just a whim to write and say hi, even though she was half a world away.

...Except that within three minutes, Marisa wrote back with the subject line, "URGENT! Hi from Berkeley!" She was visiting here too.

These are the kinds of coincidences that happen to me.

I only had a left day in Berkeley before heading to other parts of the state; Marisa was leaving for Thailand again at the end of the week and trying to see friends and wrap up important errands before she went, so she didn't have time until evening.

I spent the day working from a café; my mom dropped by in the afternoon, then my dad came by with his old friend Ruel, and we sat around outside the café and I got to hear even more of my dad and Ruel's crazy travel stories from their youth. (Crazy as in, How are you still alive despite all that?)

Then Marisa joined us, and we all went out to dinner – she's friends with my parents too, but hadn't seen them since the last time they were in California, nine years ago!

We all had an intensive catching-up conversation, then Marisa and I went on to another café after my parents turned in for the night, and continued to have an intensive catching-up conversation. And it really did feel like we caught up and connected even though it was only one evening.

For me, it was a reminder that some people will always be dear and important no matter how far away they are – and that it actually is possible to feel a strong connection to someone even when years intervene between the rare times you see each other face to face.

The World Is My Office, Continued

Here, Luna helps out with a translation, at my friend Anna's house in Turlock, CA:

(One of these days I'm going to get around to compiling a list of all the places around the world I've worked. And it will be impressive!)

California: Berkeley

I suppose at this point I can only claim Berkeley as one of many "second" homes, but it does still feel a bit like that, like coming home. My family has always had a lot of friends and family here and visited periodically; I even lived here for a summer, in a crazy, wonderful hippie co-op. (That was a great summer!)

In Berkeley, so many people talk a certain, familiar way, and wear big drape-y shawls, and let their hair go gray. It makes me nostalgic.


("Great Books – Minds Meeting – Hot Scholarship – Handwoven Kilims – Heavenly Wildboars." No idea. On the side of the University Press bookstore.) 

Of course, Berkeley also has a disturbingly high rate of homelessness, and plenty of other problems besides, I'm sure. Just biking north along Shattuck, from the Oakland part to the Berkeley part, is illuminating and a little bizarre, watching how the street gives way from cheap stores to smartphone-toting young folks and eventually to the fancy restaurant district.

But I couldn't help being charmed to be back on Telegraph Avenue (Oh my goodness, the overwhelming reek of incense!) and check out old favorites like Amoeba Music and Moe's Books. Spent a large (for me) amount of money on used books and used CDs, and came away euphoric and a little stunned, having combed through  every part of Amoeba I could possibly think to comb through.

(When I went to the counter to pay, the staff were just having some sort of debate about whether or not they should make a reality TV show about the store, and the guy who rang up my purchases asked me, "If there were a reality TV show about Amoeba Music, would you watch it?" I said, "Well, I don't watch reality TV shows, ever...but if I did, one about Amoeba would be more likely."

"That's a diplomatic response," he replied, and didn't seem to realize I meant it. I love that place.)


(How much do I love that Amoeba has one section called "Unusually Experimental"?)

Even before that, though, the first evening I arrived, I also let myself go a little wild at the grocery store, buying all those American foods I miss, avocados and cheddar cheese and Ben and Jerry's and Milano cookies and Reed's ginger beer... Not to mention going out for the traditional upon-arrival-in-California burrito!

It's nice to be in a place so familiar, to know exactly where to go to get my burritos and my eclectic music and my English-language books.


(Endless Ben and Jerry's!)

And of course, of course, I walked out of the grocery store and ran into someone I knew from college, and hadn't seen in at least six years. That always happens to me in Berkeley (though not usually within an hour of arrival).

(On the Way to) California: Heathrow

My flight to San Francisco was through London, and I was surprised how much I found myself wishing I could stay on and have a little time in England. I've totally become an Anglophile without meaning to. When did that happen?

I'd only been in the country about 10 minutes before I witnessed a traveler commit that legendary Greatest of All British Offenses: queue-jumping. (That's "cutting in line" to the Americans.)

Supposedly this is one of the very few ways you can actually rile the famously mild-mannered British, and indeed, the airport employee who called back the offender (a man trying to jump ahead in the line to go through security) with a sharp "Sir, there's a queue here!" seemed truly angry about it. Heh. Another stereotype confirmed.

I wandered around the airport, stupidly pleased by all the British shops selling British things (I was sleep-deprived, okay, I'm allowed to be happy about dumb, small things...) Britain is just awfully nice.

Good thing the next English countryside hiking trip is already in the works for next year!

California Dream(ing)

Fulfilling my dream of working from my laptop, in the sun in a garden in California. Oh, and also finishing work by 1 p.m. – thank you, time-zone-induced early rising! I've never been so happy to be awake at 7 a.m.

It's a beautiful afternoon that I now have free, so I'm off to bike around Berkeley. More from me anon!

Berlin, September

Berlin, the first days of September, and one of the last days of brilliant sun, though there's already a bit of a chill bite to the air.

Done with work earlier than expected, biking through central Berlin, through the tourists and the fire jugglers. A man with a long white beard playing soulful violin in front of the Alte Nationalgalerie; a young (German) couple in wedding dress and full Scottish kilt, running hand in hand past the colonnade of the museum for their photographer.

My friend David (from southern Germany, now lives in Switzerland) was visiting, and told me he was impressed with the quality of the music in Berlin, that even just the buskers on the street were consistently impressive. I also took him and his girlfriend Luisa to a concert of some of these Berlin singer-songwriters I've been discovering lately, so they could see a little bit of my Berlin life, and the music events I'm always writing and talking about.

I do realize this has become a bit of a music-and-Berlin blog lately rather than a travel-and-Berlin blog, but perhaps that will change soon... I have one or two travels lined up again after my thankfully restful just-Berlin-not-traveling summer!

First of all:


View California in a larger map

Two weeks in September to see friends and family – including my cousin's wedding – starting early tomorrow morning!

Rosh Hashanah in Berlin

(And one more quick photo-based post from me...)

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, starts at sundown tomorrow evening. I wasn't thinking about that at all, though, when I dashed into my favorite nearby bakery to grab something resembling breakfast on the way to work at the Spiegel Online offices on Friday morning.

So imagine my delight when I realized the bakery – which is also a Jewish bakery to some degree that I've never quite worked out, but mostly is just a really good German bakery that's still individually owned and bakes everything there on their own premises – had the special, round challah breads that are only made for Rosh Hashanah:

I bought one and took it to the office with me, to share around with the others there together with an explanation of what Rosh Hashanah is and why I was excited to find round challah in the first place.

Well, most of the others needed an explanation, but the new American intern looked up from his desk and said, "Shana tova" to me, so that was nice too!

Here's my lovely challah with a hand for scale:

It seems a strange thing to say, but in this particular moment, I found myself happy to be a Jew in Berlin.

Pussy Riot Flag in Berlin

The Berliner Ensemble, a theater in downtown Berlin, is flying an enormous flag in support of the arrested members of Pussy Riot in Russia. It's small here in this picture (taken from an office window a few blocks away) but you should be able to see it if you click on the picture.

Not visible from this perspective, obviously, but along with a picture of the three artists/dissidents, it has a quote from Schiller: "Die Kunst ist die Tochter der Freiheit" ("Art is the daughter of freedom").

Venice of Happenstance

A Berlin friend of mine is in Venice right now and mentioned she was hanging out with some Couchsurfers.

So I asked, and of course – because my life always seems to come full circle like this, and because Venice itself is the city of happenstances, more than anywhere else I've been – of course it turns out she's been hanging out there with two Couchsurfers I met when I was in Venice in December.

I love coincidences. And my Berlin life is full of them.

Berlin is...

...nighttime ping-pong outdoors in a light rain!

Becoming the Press

Oh, and Sam (organizer of the Sofa Salon) quoted me on the Sofa Salon press page!

I was awed and sort of terrified when I first discovered that Sam had stumbled across my blog; I do manage to persist in thinking that no one reads this. Despite it being on the internet and all.

In the long run, though, I think I'll just go with being flattered.

Songwriting Workshop, Berlin Music Week

Yesterday, I had the great privilege to attend two Berlin Music Week workshops run by A Headful of Bees (a collective of local singer-songwriters, one of whom is Sam, organizer of the Sofa Salon).

The first workshop was on collaborative songwriting and the second on recording; the idea was that the entire group would work together to write, record and then release (in a third workshop I wasn't able to attend) a song over the course of a single day.

So many people came to the workshops that we actually split into two groups, and wrote and recorded two songs. They're rough, obviously, basically demos that we recorded in just a couple takes, after maybe 30 minutes of frantic rehearsal that ran along the lines of, "Wait, who's singing the lead? How many times does the chorus repeat? Do we have an actual melody for the verses?"

But I'm bowled over by what we produced in the space of just a few hours, and I'm very proud to present the songs: "Hot Sun" and "Five More Hours." You can hear them (and download them, it's all under a Creative Commons license) at:

A Headful of Bees' "Berlin Music Week Werkstatt" page on Soundcloud.

I was in the "Five More Hours" group, where I co-wrote the lyrics and sang background vocals.


More on the process, for those who would like to know

After a bit of initial discussion, we decided to experiment with music first, then add words. (Interestingly, the other group worked precisely the other way around, brainstorming lyrics and then putting them to music.)

Eric, one of the workshop leaders, pulled out a guitar (this was all held at Noisy Musicworld, a fantastic place I'd never heard of that has many different music-related services, including practice rooms that come equipped with all sorts of instruments, so all you have to do is reach out and grab a guitar or keyboard or whatever else) and started playing some chords.

Because this was a room full of very musically talented people, within moments the instrument-inclined in the group were jamming along, expanding the thing into an interesting and driving melody. Then some of the vocals-inclined in the group started improvising along. The lyrics-inclined started scribbling ideas.

Somewhere near the beginning we'd landed on the idea "waking up with a hangover"; over the course of the hour it migrated and expanded into a juxtaposition of an upbeat chorus of celebration, to counterbalance the groggy verses of hangover, I think in part because the instrumentalists had created such an upbeat melody.

Meanwhile, one of the singers did a lot of the initial improvising that got us started lyrically; another came up with a strong line for the chorus ("She was the queen of the night/And she will be again") and then also for the idea of using a series of numbers for the hungover verses: two hours to be able to do this again, three hours to feel ready to do that.

Even despite running half an hour into the lunch break, at the end of the songwriting workshop all we had down was a fabulous melody and a strong chorus, but no verses. So Mira (who'd had the idea of using numbers) and I dashed out to grab and unthinkingly inhale some food from a nearby bakery, while wrestling the vague ideas we'd collected so far into phrases, and hopefully rhyme.

We dashed back in for the next workshop – recording – and when Jovanka, one of other organizers, suggested maybe we should just record the other group's song, since our group had only gotten as far as a chorus, we said, No, no, we've got verses! We've got the complete text right here!

So while the other group recorded first, we ducked into a neighboring practice room, snagged a random fantastic vocalist who'd showed up for the afternoon workshop and got her to sing lead on the verses, tried to remember what the melody for the verses actually was, cut part of the chorus that didn't work, struggled over the timing and what the background vocals should be and when they should come in –

And then went back to the main room and recorded: a practice take, a first take that was also the "final" take, and then because we actually had eight minutes left before the end of the session, one more take.

Go give it a listen; I'd be immensely pleased!

Are You a Musician

Nina Hynes, my latest musical hero, when I talked to her after a concert she and other local singer-songwriters played as part of Berlin Music Week: "Are you a musician too?"

Me: "I don't know how to answer that question. Not yet. Maybe someday."

Nina: "That means yes."

Leonard Cohen in Berlin

Leonard Cohen, secular prophet, and poet of the human soul.

And at 77, still dancing his way off stage.