Hello, everyone, friends new and old, from the mountains of North Carolina. Back home in the states after a long and exciting summer.

Mid-June to mid-August was spent in Tororo, Uganda, working with Uganda Orphans Rural Development Program (UORDP). They’re an excellent NGO working to build capacities in villages in and around the Tororo district of eastern Uganda. UORDP focuses on early childhood development and offers microfinance programs, teacher trainings, as well as lend-a-pig and lend-a-goat initiatives, amongst other efforts. Facilitating the program for a group of college students from the U.S. (and England), we helped local masons build a school, roof a church, and painted and drew murals on the walls of a early childhood development center in the village of Ramogi. I have plenty of notes from the summer, and they’ll emerge, I hope, in some other forum at a (much) later date.

Here’s part one of a run-down of my travels and tour since mid-August. Got to Amsterdam, completely exhausted, on Wed. the 12^th and managed to throw some stuff in a locker, send a package home of excess stuff, and train up to Delfzijl, a town in the northeast of Netherlands, Groningen region. Jan Bos met me at the airport and we walked to the Eems Hotel, on the water (Germany in view across the harbor), and I got to crash out for two hours or so and then.. a hot shower. First non-bucket bath in a while.  Good stuff. Fabulous dinner at the hotel (fish? Veggies? Who can remember. It was tasty and huge, though) and then headed up to the small village of Bierum for the Barndance house show. Lovely folks, pretty little town, and somehow I managed to play, tell some stories, and enjoy the company, cheese and crackers, wine, etc. A lady who plays the squeezebox drove up from somewhere for the show and slept in her camper, parked in front of Jan’s house. I knew there was something interesting about her from checking out her van (an old VW, sure enough).. wondering what sorta funky info would come up and then I hear she’s a squeezebox player. Got it in the van. Check. It’d be wild to follow her around for a bit. Think she was off to try to do some squeezebox seminars on the streets of some towns in Spain. Let me know if ya bump into her. So it was great meeting Jan and all the folks there. Excellent hospitality and a nice, memorable night. I’ll tell ya, these house concerts are good stuff. Please feel free to get in touch via myspace if you’d like me to play a house show in your parts. The answer is yes. Slept in a real, well, real nice bed for the first time in a bit as well. Nothing like a shower and a bed, friends. Sleep on an imbalanced, poorly stuffed rice sack for two years and you’ll get the picture. Oh, great breakfast at the Eems as well. So, trained to Amsterdam, settled into a hostel, and met the wonderful Backers, family friends, for dinner at their place. Lovely evening. Then saw my friend Jamie and a friend around Leidseplein for a quick get-together. Then crashed out. Spent the next few days either walking around town, eating, wandering the Albert Cruypstraat market, trying to get reconnected online at the beautiful new (?) library building near central station and the BimHaus music hall, and writing up a report on the summer trip. Nothing crazy. Not like that time in Amsterdam when that Russian girl and I were at the coffeeshop and we saw the.. ah, never mind. I’ll never get through this blog. What a beautiful city though. When you go to Amsterdam, do yourself a favor and explore. Ride bikes. Don’t get hit. Don’t hit anyone else . Make sure to check out the Jordaan and the outskirts of the canals and beyond, go to the museums. There’s a lot more to that city than red lights and strung out junkies.

Had the idea of taking a few days and really resting and relaxing for once. Southern France, maybe, doing some reading, walking around a quaint town, sitting in a coffeeshop or deli and just checking it out. Playing some guitar, writing some new stuff hopefully, just decompress after the intensive summer trip and the busy-ness of everything that preceded it. Went to the station to catch a train and turns out.. it’s crazy freakin’ expensive to go anywhere in the summer unless you do the Ryan Air thing and book a flight or train way in advance. So no Provence for me, no Paris. I went to The Hague. Which, I gotta say, has a lot going for it.  Enjoyed a few days walking around, went to the beach, and met some cool people.

I used to be a couch surfer, had a profile on the website. Think I wrote a bit about some of the characters I crashed with on my last Europe trip/tour at the end of ’07. Well I hadn’t logged in to that account for ages (who can keep up with facebook and myspace and life? How many social networking sites can a person manage and actually, like, do real things??)  and I got a note from the site saying my account would be cancelled if I didn’t log in. So I tried logging in but couldn’t remember my name or password. So, gone. Booted from the couches of the world. Anyhow, I stayed at the StayOkay hostel, which was pretty nice. And there are a string of Stay Okay’s throughout Netherlands, maybe beyond. If you ain’t got no couch, it’s probably one of the cheaper options you may find. Made some friends. Even got a miniature voodoo doll from Bolivia, perhaps, from a nice Mormon man and his son. They recommend going to Maastricht in southern tip of Holland. I think they’re right. Oh, for those who are wondering. Yes- officially the country is The Netherlands. There are North Holland and South Holland provinces. But, it’s become commonplace to just refer to the whole country as Holland. So for all who call it ‘Holland’, you’re wrong. But that’s ok, ’cause you’re also right. Keep it up. So, realized I could try to get my rustic retreat vacation somewhere in Netherlands (or Holland) instead of la France, and found a hostel in the tiny town of Alem. That’s near Rossum. Ok, Zaltbommel. Den Bosch? That help? It’s near Den Bosch. Which is actually ’S- Herstengenbosch or something like that. Only country I’ve heard of that has cities and towns that begin with “’S”. The hostel’s called the Animal Farm. They’ve got a massive pig (until it gets slaughtered in November), rabbits, goats, chickens, and something that I guess is a hamster. Cute sucker. It’s a house basically. Just relax, hang with the company, ride bikes around the area (gorgeous.. did that every day, to Den Bosch, to Rossum and Zaltbommel). You can cook up a storm in the kitchen, watch one of their wall-to-wall DVD collection, etc. Enjoyed hanging out there and taking a little break of sorts. Theo, the owner, hooked me up with a show at the local Irish Pub, which was a lot of fun. Ended up circling through the ‘crowd’, singing behind the bar. Theo invited me back to town to perform at a soup festival he was organizing. I’ll get to that..

After the countryside it was up to Edam (heard of the cheese?) for a show at the Harmonie. Pretty town. Seems to have a somewhat active music scene going on. Probably only 20km from Amsterdam, so it’s a case of ‘best of both worlds’. Canals, beautiful Dutch architecture, cobblestone roads. It was a nice, brief stay. Walked around, of course, and stayed at the pension upstairs above the bar. Great room with a view of the rooftops. Ended up playing some of the show outside since it was such a warm, sunny day that everyone wanted to sit outside. So I played on the street, dodging cars and singing out. Nice folks in town. There was a late night jam session/’rehearsal’ of a collection of local players, followed by wine and conversation at the bar. I remember appreciating the fact that they were playing tons of Neil Young, and it was my first time in a while to hear Neil blasting on the speakers in a bar or club. “Winterlong”, “Harvest Moon”, “Southern Man”.. it was excellent. The kind of feeling that wherever you are, you’re happy to be there, enjoying and soaking in every moment. Sorta like being on the road. You’re disconnected. In one good place only. The space in between. Music and the road will transport you, you can be sure of that.

Next day it was off to Ireland for a week with Limerick and Lahinch’s finest, NoLand Folk. There’s a lot to talk about there. Fantastic time on the Emerald Isle with a bunch of great people who know how to have a good time. I’ll save that and the England shows for the next installment. Expect it within the next week.

Still with me? Thanks for reading and visiting. We’re down to the wire with the Kickstarter fundraising initiative. Final few days. I’m grateful to all who have already pledged support. If you haven’t please visit the website and make your pledge now. Let’s reach the goal with a major jump in the next few days. See the site for detailed information on the project, my efforts to make a Malian music album in Bamako, Mali (West Africa), with some of the top musicians in the country, in early 2010. Here’s the site:

 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adamklein/the-mande-sessions-get-cool-stuff-and-make-my-malian

Looking forward to getting some more shows set up this fall and starting to record the next album with an incredible band of pop and rock musicians, Athens’ own Nutria. Cowboy Angel will be releasing some great records as well- Nutria’s next album, Justin Evans’ “The Owls & The Hounds”, and Timber’s “Scrawled”. Got some gorgeous and rocking’ songs coming your way.

Catch ya soon and thanks for helping me achieve my goal of making the Malian record this year.

Yours,

adam