Hello friends,

I’m at Lestat’s Café in San Diego at the moment catching my breath. The tour has been go-go-go since seeing SF fade in my rear-view mirror on Friday afternoon.
Here’s a quick, semi-rambling recap thus far.

I played at Asana Tea House in downtown Santa Cruz Friday night. Sonny Pete, a terrific singer-songwriter, who it turns out lives 5 blocks from me in SF, opened up. There was a good crowd and a new friend, Vic, who I met at my show at Hotel Utah a couple months back, brought a big crew (thank you!) and then put me up for the night at a cool artist collective called the Tannery, where Vic lives with roomies Phoenix and Henato from Italy (Molto grazie, you guys!).

I hopped in the car pretty early Saturday to make my way down the coast for the show in LA at Room 5 Lounge. The coast was socked in with heavy fog…not typical for this time of year but it has its charm. I stopped along with the way to have lunch at Linnaea’s in San Luis Obispo, where I’ll be playing this Friday. (BTW, if anyone has friends in SLO who might be willing to put up a friendly and well behaved touring musician, please let me know.)

On the road again, down the foggy Cali coast

I nearly got burned for taking the scenic route down to LA (Hwy 101 vs. I-5). I avoid I-5 when I can—the drive is as dull as watching paint dry. And it stinks. Literally. The last time I drove down the 5 to LA I saw a car fly across three lanes in front of me, just after passing one of the numerous cattle stockyards along the route…. the door flies open, and this kids jumps out and spews on the side of the highway. Hard. Like Poltergeist hard. That’s how bad the stockyards smell. So I chose 101. I started to sweat, though, when I got held up for an hour and a half at Pismo beach with traffic backed up for miles due to an accident. Fortunately I made it to Room 5 Lounge in time to set up and sound check. The show went great—the Lounge filled up nicely and folks seemed to dig the music. I hung out with friends and some new fans, staying out later and drinking and hollering more than I should have, given I had two gigs the next day.

Next morning I drove over to Borders in Hollywood for an in-store performance from Noon – 2 PM. The staff was super friendly and helpful…they hooked me up with rockstar parking in the back loading bay, provided a sweet sound system, and just made me feel very welcome. I thoroughly enjoyed the gig—meeting a number of friendly new fans who bought CDs, dropped tips in the gas-fund jar, and asked for autographs. I got an open invitation from Borders to come back. I joked that it would be fun to do a Borders tour. They said “people do that and you should!” Hmmm…interesting food for thought. Maybe an East Coast Borders tour is in the future.

I packed up quickly after Borders and drove down to the San Diego area where my friend and dynamo songwriter Diane Waters had offered to host a House Concert. I love house concerts. They’re kind of an institution in the Bay Area and seem to be popular in SoCal too. They’re intimate and can be roudy-fun, especially when you feed the audience sufficient wine . Diane’s living room was filled with friends and friends of friends of ours who insisted we keep playing well after the 9:30 curfew we’d suggested, just to be considerate of the fact it was a school night. A big thank you to Diane and Will for organizing the House Concert and putting me up.

So that brings me back to Lestat’s in San Diego. I’m using the day off to catch up on email, work on a couple songs, and hopefully catch some Zs tonight. My biggest fear on this tour is getting sick…tends to wreak havoc on my voice. Bagging a good night’s rest every few nights is sufficient to ward it off, so tonight I will welcome the Sandman.

I’m glad you’re with me on this adventure. I’m posting fairly frequent tour updates on my Facebook Page…www.facebook.com/billyschafermusic. I’ve uploaded some pics to the “Tour” folder on Facebook. More to come soon.

Big hug,

Billy

P.S.