I 17 South towards Phoenix, Arizona.

On Thursday we did two school performances in Navajo Indian Reservation land near Shiprock, New Mexico. The kids were really nice; we enjoyed playing for them and they had lots of questions for us. Most of them brought guitars, and asked us to sign their instruments afterwards. Our evening show was in a beautiful theater in Shiprock.
Driving through this reservation land is interesting but also a little sad. This is one of the poorest areas in the country; most people here don't even have running water. The people are engrained in a rich Indian culture. I could see this during our performance: during sound check they cleaned up the stage area for us. But when we hit the stage for the performance I noticed a stone corn grinder, placed in front of us, in the front middle of the stage. And the monitors were carefully covered with Navajo blankets. I don't know why, but the stone tool placed in front of us seemed to give me some energy and focus during the performance.


View from the stage during sound check at Orpheum Theater in Flagstaff, AZ


Billboard of our CGT performance, located next to an Adult Superstore near Shiprock, New Mexico


CGT onstage in Shiprock.

Santa Fe , New mexico. Great concert at the Santa Fe brewery co. last night. We are driving to Shiprock today. It started snowing overnight; looks like we'll have to take it slow today.
Below a few pictures from the past few days.


Santa Fe, NM


Set up for sound check in Santa Fe(last night)


Load up the van in Gallup , NM


Coach House, San Juan Capistrano(photo by TourBusLive)


Coach House, San Juan Capistrano(photo by TourBusLive)

I 5 North. Today is a drive day, 12 hours from San Diego to Gallup, New Mexico.
On Thursday we played at the Canyon Club in Agoura Hills, about half an hour North of Los Angeles. We played for a truly gracious audience. One young kid in particular(maybe he was only 16 or so) seemed really taken with the music and left me with a feeling of purpose.
But this sure was not a good listening room: people were partying in the back by the bar, and right after the concert, while we were signing CD's and saying hello to the fans, the loud disco music kicked in. As if to say: ok, you paid for the concert, have another drink and get out before the party starts!

On Friday we played a show at the Coach House in San Capistrano. We enjoyed great hospitality there, and excellent openers Incendio and Tom Griesgraber; tough acts to follow!
Thanks to Tom's promotional help we had a big crowd there(about 250 people) and an amazing concert.

On Saturday we played a near sold out show at Acoustic Music in San Diego; a lovely old church building in a residential neighborhood of the city.

And yesterday(Sunday) we had a day off in San Diego. Tom Griesgraber picked me up at the hotel around noon, and we spent the afternoon recording my guitar parts for his piece "Don't Look Back", completing our recording sessions for our new CD together.


CGT at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano. Photo by Mark Perry

A little stretching (Tom and Paul) during our 12 our drive today

Bishop, California. We drove down here from Reno today, and enjoyed nice weather and beautiful scenery on the way.
The concert was good, but we could all feel the effects of an 11 hour drive through the snow and the mountains yesterday, and another four hours today. But I enjoyed the challenge, and I know that if we don't beat ourselves up over it and accept the situation as it is there is still a great possibility for music to shine through. And shine it did: in the Moonlight sonata I could sense the agitation of the composer(Beethoven) and his essence was shining through the music, just like the moon shines in the reflection of a mountain lake.


Somewhere near Mono Lake in California

Reno, Nevada. We arrived here after an 11 hour drive through snow, ice and mountains. We decided to take a shorter road with less traffic but going through higher altitude, meaning: more snow! But it was a good choice, because there was no traffic, and we just took it slow and easy, sliding up and down the mountains at an average of 25 mph. Today's Hideyo's birthday; we had a beer down at the bar while watching some music videos of Led Zeppelin, Pink, Journey and Snoopdog.

Our CGT winter tour is well under way; we met last week in San Francisco for rehearsals, and started with a private living room concert at our friend Kevin's house. Tony Levin flew out for this occasion, and was going to join us for a few more shows, but he had to fly home after the first gig because his mom had to undergo emergency surgery.

We made a major discovery on this tour: we begun using microphones onstage during the performances, and for the live recording. As you may know, we are recording each show and we bring a CD recorder + duplicator along. This allows us to sell the CD's of the live concert, just a few minutes after the show is over. Thanks to the Beyer microphones the overall sound suddenly has jumped from two to three dimensional---you can hear the true dynamics of the guitars, blended with the more electric sound of the guitar pickups and the effects that we use.
We're so excited about it that we may do a future CD release with live recordings of just our classical pieces.



The lefty guitar trio-trying some telecaster guitars in San Francisco


Rehearsal with Tony and CGT in a hotel room near San Francisco


Crescent City, set up for sound check...


Serious waves in Crescent City, on my morning walk near the hotel this morning


Tedious driving through mountain passes today...

Louisville, Kentucky. 12;50 am. We finished mixing the new CGT CD.
Tyler Trotter came in this afternoon, and also this evening to add help mix Andromeda and Improv 7. After a final listening session Tyler opened a bottle of La Chouffe and we toasted to the new CD..and Tyler and Lori's new business(Louisville beer Store)


Toast with Kevin, Paul, Tyler, Aaron, Charlie and Lori


Tyler adding Moogerfooger effects to Andromeda

We're in day 2 of a second round of mixing the new all originals CGT album. Yesterday Paul, Kevin and I mixed a series of four improvisations. During this weekend we are making a lot of changes to the mixes we did a few weeks ago, starting mostly from scratch again, and working from the many notes we made after listening to the first mixes.
Kevin's made major improvements to the acoustic guitar sound, lessening eq's and compression, creating a beautiful warm and natural sound.

Today we are mixing four originals:

-Portland Rain (with Dilek Engin on viola, Eric Slick on drums, Julie Slick on bass)
-Cathedral Peak (with Eric and Julie Slick)
-Turn of the Tide (with Tony Levin on chapman stick)
-Chacarera (with marimba player Daniel Shu)


Mixing Portland Rain


Sending my guitar solo for Chacarera through an old amp



Kevin at work.