We arrived in the morning and the hotel wasn’t ready. I decided to stay on the bus and change strings on the 2002 DeVoe Negra, which had been in use since before rehearsals in Santa Fe at the beginning of June. To my dismay I discovered a 4 inch crack in the back. Shining a strong flashlight on the crack from the outside and staring at the crack from the soundhole revealed that it was indeed a very small crack in the rosewood and not just a crack in the finish. I emailed my man Keith and set up a time to drop the guitar off after the tour. Battle scars. Could be due to handling-error or could be due to humidity change. Maybe I should not keep the guitar on stage after soundcheck. I do that so the guitar can get used to the temperature and humidity on stage, which is often quite different from the conditions in the dressing room, but somebody could easily bump against the guitar while it is up there. Maybe Keith can tell from the crack whether it was humidiy induced or blunt-force trauma… In any case I am not going to worry much about it. The crack is very fine and the guitar’s sound has not changed.

In the afternoon I walked about 3 miles to a store to buy a book about Dali which Lawrence Russel had recommended. I found Jackson Street Books to be a great little bookstore, a real bookstore with books spilling out of the shelves and onto the floor because there isnt enough space for them all… Couldn’t find the Dali book, but bought a nice hardcover of Benvenuto Cellini’s autobiography, considered to be the first autobiography. Cellini was a contemporary of Michelangelo and quite the rascal.