9/17/06...flying home from Frankfurt (hmmm...good opening line for a song!) from my third trip to Germany since 2003. The first two voyages were for the recording sessions of Stockfisch CDs "Pearl Diver" (2004) and "More Pearls" (2006), and this one brings me home after my first-ever concerts in Europe as part of the Niedersachsiche Musiktage - the Lower Saxony Music Festival. What a wonderful adventure...I shared three sold-out evenings with fellow Stockfisch artist Allan Taylor from England and and we shared two incredible supporting musicians, Beo Brockhausen (percussion, saxophones, guitar, autoharp, zither, tin whistle, flutes) and Hans-Jorg-Mauksch (bass) in three of the more intriguing venues I've ever played, with Gunter and his fantastic assistant Ines at the mixing board. A great aspect of these events was that they were the first-ever folk concerts at this 20-year classical musical festival that runs for an entire month all over Germany every September, and the resounding success may make this an annual trip.

Arrived on Tuesday for a day and a half's worth of rehearsals with the fellows at the recording studios in Northeim, and the first show was Thursday evening in the town of Hardegsen. The sound system was sponsored and provided by Bowers-Wilkins, who rolled in one of the more impressive audiophile set-ups I've played through in a huge truck that followed us around for the whole tour. Took three chaps to carry each main speaker up the stone stairways of a castle built in the 1300s, and the full house was extremely attentive and appreciative. To my surprise, I was rather nervous, this being my first-ever show in Germany. Although i've been doing this full time for nearly two decades in the States, I still had jitters this night for a million reasons, I guess...not the least of which was wanting to do a good job for all the people who put their faith and efforts into these concerts, and wondering how a foreign audience would respond to the music I make. A few minor flubs here and there later, I was still breathing, and the audience was wunderbar.

The standing ovation is replaced in Germany with sustained applause that turns into staccato clapping that doesn't stop til the musicians return to the stage, and we were treated to that each night. Another feature of every evening was the "artist reception" which translates into food, beer, and wine (for those who partake) after each performance, where we'd get to rub elbows with the concertgoers, many of whom spoke enough English to understand the talking between songs, converse a bit afterwards, ask for an autograph. We also got a private tour of the upper chambers, complete with suits of armor, fireplaces as big as walls, and furniture that would have done any Harry Potter movie set proud.

Gunter drove us to and from each show in his Mercedes that effortlessly did 100 mph on the autobahn, and we geared up for the next day's journey to a private estate run by the descendants of the celebrated WWI pilot Baron Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen, aka the Red Baron...we were greeted by his granddaughter Heidi, and the show was mounted in a long barn of sorts with several hundred seats...what became amplified on this second night was the respect, reverence, and support the German culture has for the arts...wonderful to feel part of. And with one show under my belt I'd caught my breath and got a grip on my previous night's jitters, so the evening was much more satisfying for me from a musical standpoint.

Night number three was the biggest concert, and another I won't forget soon...held in a factory where wooden FEET are made as molds for shoemaking. They actually pushed aside the machines and set up 300 chairs right in the warehouse (with hundreds, perhaps thousands of timber hooves eerily pointing their inanimate toes toward the stage along with the 600 live feet attached to the attendees)...and where Allan, Beo, Hans-Jorg and I had been presented bottles of fine wine onstage the two previous nights, this evening the local bankers presented us each with...you guessed it...a ligneous extremity. Quite a souvenir, now resting safely at Stockfisch Studios in Northeim. Or as Allan exclaimed "What the bloody h--- do they expect us to do with a bloody wooden foot?" A great laugh and a "fitting" conclusion to a trip that provided memories for years to come.

A couple weeks after returning from Germany I received an e-mail from a gal named Ute who'd been to that third concert. She filled me in as follows:

"I do not know, what they told you about these "wooden feet" and the factory. In Germany you had until the 1970 regions which lived from shoe production since the industrial revolution. So this factory with his "Schuhleisten" was a basis for the income not only for the workers of this factory but for many other people too. So there is a big pride behind the production of these wooden feet. Furthermore the factory building was created by Walter Gropius, an architect and artist which was forbidden and chased under the Nazi regime. He was a member of the BAUHAUS (many of the furniture, dishes and other household products they design are exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art in NY). The factory and the buildings around it were designed to facilitate the life of the workers. More light while working, better living conditions and facilities like bath and wash houses were concepts which Gropius and his fellow designers put into all their construction concepts. So you played at a very special historical place."

A new perspective, a new respect, a new appreciation.

 -David