The one-man travelling road show starts here…
A sleek silver Amtrak train has just taken my photographer/documenter and friend Geoff back to New York. Expect selfies from here on in.
I get back in the red mobile and hit the road, narrowly avoiding a costly mistake at the first gas station where I almost put diesel in a petrol tank – the colours are inverted here: green for diesel, black for petrol.
I hadn’t expected to hit Pennsylvania until the very end of the tour but it turns out I should have taken a better look at the map. The route takes me through stunning farmland; rolling fields punctuated with idyllic farmhouses with silver grain silos pointing up to the few wisps of cloud in the sky. To complete the picture, an Amish family in a horse and trap comes down the road and Amish farmers can be spotted in their straw hats ferrying supplies across the bridges by horse.
I suppose that visitors to Europe have the same feeling of walking through film sets as a lifetime of film and TV moments subliminally fire off echos in the brain. But America more than most manages to meld its daily reality with the celluloid image it sells. In this rural Pennsylvania, I’m travelling with Harrison Ford in a beaten up Volkswagen. Later as the setting changes and the mines and projects of Baltimore loom on the horizon I’m in yet another gritty thriller with a British actor who doesn’t quite nail the accent.
I drive on through to a beautifully sunny Washington – a delight after the rain-soaked week in New York. I’m excited to play tonight at the Dive, a club with an illustrious rock heritage from Springsteen on down. But first, a nice low-key late afternoon gig at Ebeneezers. The doors are open onto the patio and my songs drift out into Washington streets…
Barton H

French version published daily on the ROCK MADE IN FRANCE website

USA Day 8 – Washington : « Je voyage avec Harrison Ford dans une Volkswagen »