Steve's Coast to Coast Summer Tour 2014

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Steve's Coast to Coast Summer Tour 

May 25-July 24, 2014.  

Click here for the Schedule.

With stops in California, Colorado, Illinois, Ohio, Tennessee, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado and Michigan, Steve will be playing solo and teaching at week-end and week-long festivals and camps.  

He will also be performing with Vi Wickam as Fiddle Whamdiddle, and Erin and Amber Rogers as S.E.A (Steve, Erin and Amber).

S.E.A will also have California engagements in August.

Dulcimers, dulci-bro, banjammer and more will be coming to bring lively and thoughtful music to you.  

Come and join me!

After the Land Rush....

After the Land Rush and many of the the campsites are claimed, or re-claimed from a year of vacancy (which is what we CHOOSE to believe happens in OUR Pecan Grove)....everyone settles in to finding the neighbors that weren't uncovered in the Land Rush Line-Up or who are beginning to arrive as we re-create this annual, magical, acoustical Brigadoon.

The afternoon I arrived the heat was pretty oppressive, but by the weekend, Kansas was whipping up some good storms (on the outside edge of the seasonal hurricanes which usually have a strong impact there.)

Jim is watching the weather map, but having sailor Jeff with his nautical knots (there's an unlikely alliteration!) we feel secure in the battening of our hatches.

So when the winds blow strong and bring in the storm clouds from the north, scudding by at a furious rate of speed, our proud Scottish flag unfurls and the walls of our  carpeted "living room" keep us relatively warm and dry.

But how quickly it becomes hoodie weather!

But we are adaptable and this year we opened our own e-Library for quiet perusing of books, magazines or the editing of lyrics or chords on the songs that are shared between different i-devices.

Guess which one is reading an actual book (with paper pages?)

Stevens County Library Hugoton, KS

After driving through parts of Southwestern Colorado for the first time as I began my May-June 2012 tour,  I arrived in the Natural Gas Capital of the world on Tuesday and was delighted to find that my housing was booked into a Bed and Breakfast with a hammered dulcimer shape carved in its stone sign!

The Stevens County Library was the venue for the concert, booked by Unbound Booking.

Because I arrived early, I was able to visit the very impressive local museum, where I was informed that I was visiting the two best features of the town today!

Hugoton, county seat of Stevens County, (a story which is interesting in its own right!)  had a massive natural gas boom in the 1920s, which paralled a similar boom in my hometown of Pemberville, Ohio.  The comparisons between this town and the one of my birth and rearing were very uncanny, even though my hometown is about a 1/3 the size of this one.

This was my first gig booked by Unbound Booking and was great fun.

Even MORE fun was when Eunice, the librarian, brought out her dulcimers made by a builder in Liberal, Kansas in the 1990s!

Destination: Home! (Finale to the 30-Dulcimer-Filled Years Spring Tour)

TUESDAY, APRIL 27^th

Up before my alarm at 6 am.  Take my last compartment of daily vitamins, shower, gather up my remaining belongings and leave.  The singing and chirping birds sound so familiar and I realize…these are the same birds as we heard in the pre-dawn in our years in Kansas City!

Driving on the Cimarron Turnpike, then Kansas Turnpike—the familiar return from Winfield.  I talk with Karen Deal at the Walnut Valley office and Jim Pierce as I relive those memories.  

Stop for a chance to journal at the rest stop on I-135 just south of Lindsborg.  The steady west wind is a bit brisk and my fingers begin to get stiff from the chill.  Messages left for my college friend, Meck.  I decide to stop on Kansas Wesleyan Campus and drop in.  He is grading papers but sets them aside as we go to lunch at our second choice:  the student center.

Today I'm listening to Vince Papele’s book, “Invincible.”  Quite a powerful and compelling story.  The drive west does begin to get tiring and long.  My stops have broken it up nicely, but now I am feeling the pressure to finish the final tricky logistical steps with the precision of a finely-tuned Swiss watch.

At the start of this trip, I flew to the Baltimore airport and picked up the rental car that would carry me across the country.  A shuttle ride from Greenride took me from the Harmony Transfer Center to the Denver airport to begin the trip. 

After I left, my wife picked up my car from the Harmony center, so it wouldn’t sit there for 2 weeks.  Now I need to fill up the gas tank before arriving at the rental car drop off, then drop the rental car at Dollar (which has just been purchased by Hertz, while I’ve been on this trip), and catch the Dollar shuttle to the airport terminal, in order to catch the Green Ride Shuttle back to Fort Collins. 

This all works as planned.  I schlep all my gear and instruments into the terminal for a bathroom break, then schlep back out to Island 3 by Door 505 to sit and wait with a white-haired woman who is also waiting for Green Ride.

The shuttle arrives only a few minutes after the expected time, we load up and head north as the sky grows darker.  The woman beside me started her travels in Tampa. The couple in front of us are the winners, however.  They began their travels 24 hours ago—in Cairo, Egypt!

David Schnaufer and Butch Baldassari’s recording and Dan Fogelberg on my iPod accompany the final leg of the trip.  Two spots of road construction slow our progress, but we are finally delivered back to our destination.  

As we turn in, I can see the silhouette of my wife with our little black dachshund on his leash waiting patiently beside the silhouette of a man with his poodle-terrier on a leash.  It is good to be home, and great to be warmly welcomed!