I’m on a train to Hicksville. For real. It actually exists. I cannot shake the idea that it must be a place where people drive down dusty roads in pre WW2 pickups and stand around on street corners with an ear of corn in their mouth. My apologies to the good people of Hicksville. I’m sure they’re thoroughly modern and have wifi connection problems like the rest of us.
I’m once more headed into the unknown. “Remain unattached to the outcome” said a plaque in a coffee shop this morning. The quote was loosely attributed to Scott Joplin, a former resident of Harlem, but personally I doubt it. If he’d have been able to come up with pearls of wisdom like that he’d have written songs and not jaunty instrumentals played on slightly out of tune pianos.
Speaking of which… Following the June tour where my guitar shunned all tuning rationale, I’ve come equipped with a nice new Epiphone. I’ve surrendered part of my soul to a strange black beetle-like box attached to the back. At the touch of a button it magically adjusts to any one of the four open tunings I use. It’s depressingly good at its job. All the functionality and none of the poetry. My centre of worry has duly shifted from staying in tune to the horror of breaking a string mid-set. The instructions for changing a string take up three pages in the manual and for clarity have also thoughtfully been provided in Korean.
The train deposits me in Mineola and I head for a radio show at WRHU, a college founded by the man who came up with the universal Pantone colour system. The show is expertly hosted by Drew who conducts an in depth interview with well researched questions. A few acoustic songs, some off the cuff answers (to maintain the illusion that my songs are carefully thought out and not dashed off on the back of a napkin) and before I know it I’m back at the train station in the middle of a biblical downpour that promises to turn my grey suede boots to a colour that does not figure in the Pantone catalogue…
Barton
French version published daily on the ROCK MADE IN FRANCE website:
October US tour day 2 – Hicksville : « Je vais à une émission de radio à WRHU »
