Home sweet home

The best thing about about the Netherlands is the weather. At least for us, it is...after weeks of more than 100 degrees (= around 40 Celsius) it's a relief to walk outside without feeling the sweat run down your back. The downside: we're no longer in the country of Starbucks' Java Choc frap (no whip). No more yellow cabs (are all the drivers suicidal?!). No more 'tall, large, grande' (instead of 'small, medium, large'). No more 'Hiiiii...how are you?'. No more young women, wearing flip flops, with high pitched, very loud, nasal voices, talking from behind their Mojito. No more 'What's your opinion about our country?'. No more excellent Mexican food. No more endless highways, surrounded by desert.
More than 11.000 kilometers of driving...we must be crazy. I immediately unpacked my (overweight) suitcase when I got home. Another relief. Some hotel rooms (NY!) were so small we were almost unable to walk around, having the suitcases on the ground and the guitars stowed in a corner.
Real life is waiting. Everything I forget to tell you about our trip might appear on this website...or let's just talk again :-)

Bye bye Atlanta

Atlanta is great. Maybe it's because we're in such a nice neighborhood, our hotel is fabulous and there are enough coffeehouses and nice restaurants for at least a year...or maybe it's because we had a great evening at Eddie's Attic yesterday. What a difference! Eddie and his people took good care of us, there were two other amazing bands playing that night: Brilliant Inventions and Band of Heathens ...wow...that was some great music. Or maybe we love this city because the audience (lots of people!) listened really well and said nice things to us after our concert so our egos are satisfied as well.

The first song we played was 'Hey Girl'... wanna see???



Tomorrow we'll drive to Chapel Hill and play at The Cave. Come and say hi!

Oh Atlanta

What a relief! During our various trips through the USA we developed a black list...a 'never go there again - list'. Yesterday we spent a nigh in Montgomery, Alabama. Driving from New Orleans to Atlanta in one day didn't feel like a good option and this city was kind of in the middle of the trip. And has a Hank Williams museum. Which closed at 4:30 (instead of 6, as the Lonely Planet said) and did NOT open at 9am (like the sign on the door said). Montgomery almost depressed us. How can you fry every kind of food? There was not one healthy restaurant to find and the 'cozy family style hotel' with the great reviews on the internet was just okay. Anyway...today e arrived in Atlanta...and we love it! We have a nice hotel, there are nice café's and restaurants in the neighborhood aaaaandddd we'll play at Eddie's Attic tomorrow! 'Markowski' is listed in every concert agenda and everybody actually knows that place (compared to other venues we've played...). So we're happy now :-)

Forgot to tell you about New Orleans...we didn't perform there, but I insisted of staying there at least one night. I'm sure there are several ways to help the city, we decided to be a tourist for one day. We've been there once, before Katrina. It's weird to see the big Superdome where thousands of people fled to, hiding from the hurricane that was so strong it even destroyed parts of the roof. We drove through a couple of areas where you could still feel the disaster: houses that are no homes anymore, wood instead of windows, dirt everywhere. And here and there a house or business with new, bright paint, where people start a new life. The guy from the Visitors Center told us there used to live more than 500.000 people in N.O.. Now its approximately 250.000. The other half moved to other parts of the USA. It's sad and there is a lot of anger going on. The people think the government could have done more to prevent this catastrophe from growing even bigger. We left the town feeling sad.

'It's a Texas thang, you wouldn't understand'

Bye bye Austin....thank you for 5 days. You could have taken better care of the weather (are we supposed to be outside when it's over 100 degrees???)...but we forgive you :-) You're beautiful and there's so much music that it's impossible to go to every good concert.

Jan and I are on our way to the New Orleans area. I practically spent my whole birthday on the highway, but at least I could make a real (!) hot chocolate for myself (thanks to the microwave in the hotel room and an expensive 70% dark chocolate and milk from Walmart...).
We played two shows in the last days, one in Austin ('Hole in the Wall'), one in San Antonio ('Lion & Rose'). The one in Austin was okay (location was only so so...), the one in San Antonio was nice, mostly cause of two nice guys...they really listened and overloaded us with compliments.
We do enjoy playing our songs here, but it's just not very different from playing shows elsewhere. Sometimes people are interested in what you do, sometimes they're not. One downside is the 'payment'... one food item, one drink, that's it most of the times. We wouldn't survive if it was like that in the Netherlands all the time. But hey...getting rich wasn't the motivation for this trip!

Some things are interesting:

- there are a LOT of churches everywhere
- there are a LOT of homeless / poor people
- some cities just don't provide any cultural activities, so shopping at the Walmart is the only thing you can do on a saturday night
- you CAN get an overload of Starbucks' Java Chip Frappuchino
- some people are really, really nice and interested in us, others really scare us (check THIS out)
- USA = very big country, lots of different people = not everybody has the same ideas about everything. Really.

Our next show will be on saturday, august 18 at Eddie's Attic in Decatur (close to Atlanta). We are so looking forward to that!

PS: 'It's a Texas thang, you wouldn't understand' = line on a t-shirt Jan bought.....

Cowgirls rule

Time is going fast. Too fast. Our car, a 'Chevy Malibu' is doing a great job...including his air conditioning and the cruise control. I just realized my last post is written in San Diego...that's a week ago. We performed at the Hot Java Café and met the most incredible harmonica player . He had hands like shovels but he knew how to use this tiny instrument. Wow. Next stop was Flagstaff, Arizona. I guess I said it before, but I love to say it again: the most exciting thing (besides playing our songs :-) ) is the friendliness of the people we meet. My brother Matti (who ran so fast that he won the silver medal at the European Junior Championships 10.000m...yes, that one) stayed in the most wonderful host family you can ever imagine, from 2005-2006. He spent a high school year in Flagstaff, a nice college town with railroad tracks that cut it in half. Even though Matti is back in Berlin now, the family let us stay at their house for a couple of days. We relaxed, enjoyed the nice landscape and the animals and felt so welcome.

'That's the day when we were dreaming
of the day we're gonna take a ride
to place we can build a home
with two sheep and apple trees
and a front porch with two rocking chairs
so that everybody sees
that your hand fits in mine...'
(Photographs)



Now I'm sitting in café in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a wonderful small town (in spite of all the tourists, like we are :-) ). And again...it's incredible how nice people are. Nico is the administrator of the dutch americana.pagina.nl and he knows that great bass player, Susan Holmes. She offered us a place to sleep, just like that, without knowing us personally. I mean...we could be serial killers.
When I was taking a shower this morning I definitely had the most stunning view I ever had while I was cleaning my hair. Hills, mountains, sunshine, blue sky, cactus, plants we don't have in Europe... and I was thinking about yesterday, when we went to see Susan play with the Santa Fe All stars, a bluegrass band with a guitarist/lead singer, another guitar player, Susan on double bass and the best mandolin player ever. That girl is amazing. Sharon Gilchrist grew up with two of the Dixie Chicks and has been touring with Tony Rice and Peter Rowan, THE bluegrass guys. Sooo...can you imagine how glad Jan was when they asked him to play a couple of songs with them?? I figured out how to import the movies I made with my camcorder (simply with a fire wire cable....), so I'll post a short impression of this performance later.
They even gave us space to perform two Markowski songs which the audience apparently liked :-) So even though we won't play a real show in Santa Fe...we are so glad we came here!

By the way...that doesn't mean that ev-e-ry-thing is only great and wonderful. But I guess that's part of the deal :-) Brainwash Café in San Francisco 'lost' (?!) their microphones and one speaker (they couldn't care less) and we couldn't have played without the other band's sound system. Red&Black in Portland...nice place, but crappy sound system as well and nobody who helps setting it up. One food item and one drink, no money. Flipnotics (Austin) where we're supposed to play on august 9 still doesn't have 'Markowski' on the event calendar and the guy who confirmed the booking in February doesn't work there anymore...we're waiting for an email or phone call right now...I hope they understand that they cannot cancel our show (rescheduling is impossible due to hotel reservations and tour schedule). So yes, there is a downside, too...no 'American Dream' so far...but hey...the audience seems to love what we're doing, we meet new people, enjoy the good Mexican food and we're really looking forward to our show in Eddie's Attic (august 18) in Decatur, Georgia!