Touring Schedule
April 2008 – Solo
Here are the first tour dates for April. Solo guitar. Haven’t performed in Memphis in a long time and am looking forward to that. Four days in the big Apple should be great fun, and I always enjoy the Birchmere
and the Sellersville Theater.
On the 24th of January we (OL + Luna Negra = OL, Jon Gagan, Stephen Duros + Davo Bryant) will perform at the Teatro de la Casa de la Cultura in Quito, Equador.
Link to our tour schedule
We are driving to Colorado today. I am doing a solo-concert at the Vilar Center in Beaver Creek tomorrow evening. Snow-gods willing we’ll get home Sunday evening.
I worked (work=play and play=work) in the studio last night and another new song is turning out to be about 10 minutes long… it’s becoming an album of novels, not short stories. Personally, I love the story-telling quality of the long pieces.
How do you keep the fingers of the right hand from sticking to the strings, especially in humid conditions? I heard of guitarists using olive oil, which sounds like a very messy idea. I was told that Paco likes to put a dab of vaseline on the side of his guitar. If you watch him play you can see that he occasionally touches the guitar-body and then rubs his thumb, index and middle fingers together. Ruins strings pretty quickly I imagine.
I just use the oil on my forehead. It’s a trick I learned from Daniel Ward, when he played in the Luna Negra XL band in 1997. The oil that naturally appears on our face is much finer than olive oil and better than the petroleum in vaseline (yuck). If you have dry skin… well, then you could try the vaseline method.
Now you know why I touch my forehead several times during a performance. It’s not because I can’t remember the music… :)
Best New Age Album:
– Faces Of The Sun – Peter Kater [Silver Wave Records]– Sacred Journey Of Ku -Kai, Volume 3 – Kitaro [Domo Records, Inc]
– One Guitar – Ottmar Liebert [Spiral Subwave Records]
– Southwest – Eric Tingstad [Cheshire Records]
– Crestone – Paul Winter Consort [Living Music]
Maybe the fourth time’s a charm?
Best Traditional World Music Album
– When The Soul Is Settled: Music Of Iraq – Rahim Al Haj With Souhail Kaspar [Smithsonian Folkways Recordings]– From Mali To America – Cheick Hamala Diabate & Bob Carlin [5-String Productions]
– Live At Couleur Café – Konono Nº1 [Crammed Discs/Rykodisc]
– African Spirit – Soweto Gospel Choir [Shanachie Entertainment]
– Singing For Life: Songs Of Hope, Healing, And HIV/AIDS In Uganda – Various Artists [Smithsonian Folkways Recordings]
Congrats Rahim!
New in the LL today: a dreamy remix of Dreaming on the Starlight Train – in the Unreleased album. The original version of the song appeared on the album In the Arms of Love in 2002. This new remix features flies, great fretless bass guitar playing by Jon Gagan, and an electric guitar solo.
