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Back in October, I posted some notes on a new song for a pedal steel guitarist in the US, Bruce Kaphan, that was about to play on a song of mine called 17 Hills. I mentioned to him that in addition to adding touches all through the song, he could take a crack at the solo section; but I warned him that I was trying to locate Mark Knopfler, who I thought would be perfect for a lead guitar part for that solo. Well, six months later my wish came true: I was invited to Mark’s studio in London where he took some time out of mixing his own album to play on my song.

I’ve been lucky to work with some of the world’s most iconic guitarists—including Jerry Garcia and Eddie Van Halen, two guys that were possibly past their sell-by date… but Mark’s playing is a gorgeous as ever, and he’s matured as a storyteller and songwriter, which made him the perfect choice for 17 Hills. He really grokked to the fact that his guitar helps propel my story. The song is nearly eight minutes long and has an epic, road movie type feel; it’s very dreamy at times, but his guitar brings it sharply into focus. I think very cinematically, and Mark’s entrance is like a jump-cut. One minute we’re in a wide shot of a car kicking up the dust on a distant desert road; suddenly we cut to a closeup of to the radio in the car’s dashboard.

British Grove studios ars a perfect blend of old and new. He has a couple of EMI desks with levers instead of faders; an ATC board beloved of guitarists (Steve Vai also has one, and swears by the mic preamps); a more modern Neve board, and of course a ton of Avalons, Fairchilds and LA1076s, all going to classic 1″ and 2″ analog machines or state of the art hard drive recorders, as the project requires. Presumably has has more guitars than God lurking behind closed doors, though only two or three emerged for our session, and the chosen one was a custom Don Grosch. Its tone was somewhere between a Strat and a Les Paul, though of course in Mark’s hands it could sound however he wanted. At one point while transitioning between sections I asked him if he’d changed his tone–no, of course not, it was all in the fingertips!

I was relieved that my song sounded pretty accurate on the big monitors, as it was the first set of tracks I’ve worked on in the Nutmeg and brought elsewhere. It was a pleasant, relaxed session. I always skirt the line between letting a musician like that just do his thing, versus giving too much direction and cramping his style. And I’m a keyboard player after all so I don’t really have the vocabulary to explain what I’m looking for. But our communication was good, and I think we got something great. Mark gave me upwards of 12 takes, and we did a fairly hasty comp while I was there, though such is my reluctance to let anything great slip away, I think I’ll give the rest of his takes a good going over tomorrow and make sure no sweetness slips through the cracks.

10.11.07 DUBLIN, IRELAND --WHELANS

We're on our way to Boston for tonight's gig at Harper's Ferry, that last of the current US tour. After the show tonight we drive north to the Canadian border. As Boston is where we started out two weeks ago, this seems like a good moment to post some thoughts about the tour.

We've played eleven shows in the last twelve nights. Mostly I've enjoyed myself once I'm onstage and there have been many high points. But I have to say that overall it's been the most stressful tour I can remember.

It started out with a catastrophic equipment failure that nearly caused me to cancel some or all of the gigs. On Sept 11th (coincidence? I think not…) my gear arrived at Logan Airport by cargo plane. Evidently some security official wanted to look inside the cases. My main Mac G5 computer had been opened up, the hard drives pulled out of their bays, and multipin connectors stuffed back on clumsily, breaking the pins. This meant the computer would not start up at all. A certified Mac genius spent 15 hours trying to get it back, but was only able to retrieve about 40% of the data. I stayed up all night two nights in a row trying to pull the songs back together. As my songs involve many seperate resources like samples, MIDI sequences, hardware patches and preferences etc, almost all of them were irretrievable. And the main backup drive was right there in the Mac and also damaged. I had a second external backup which had older versions of the songs (pre-Horns) but I was still missing many software plugins, preference files and so on.

I'm very embarassed to admit this because it's such old hat. I'm sure you've all had computers go down at one time or another, so you'll you know how hard it is to maintain a thorough backup policy. And yet there's almost a tradition among high-tech performers (viz Todd Rundgren, Howard Jones) for gear failures resulting in cancelled shows or worse. I watch that and think, well it would never happen to me because I will be smart about backups, have two of every piece of kit and so on. But I probably had a false sense of security after nearly 70 gigs in the last 18 months with nothing worse than the odd gremlin. When it came down to it I wasn't as prepared as I thought for the unexpected disaster of Sept 11th.

(I realise my own little 9/11 disaster was a mere trifle compared to that other, more famous one. No offense intended.)

When Peter Gabriel did his 'in-the-round' stadium tour a couple of years back he had a dedicated technician under the stage with a twin backup system running the entire show in perfect sync and a giant A>B button which could be automatically or manually flicked at any instant with only a few milliseconds of audio lost.

And yet I remember Roger Waters at The Wall concert in Berlin—a man whose worst waking nightmare is to be left stranded in the spotlight with nothing but a microphone—surrounded by massive production teams with no expense spared, and three songs into the show, guess what happens? A complete failure of the the sound system, and a deathly silence witnessed by millions of people around the world on satellite TV.

What's most upsetting for a performer is not just the silence—because that's just a brief moment of embarassment you can usually wave away with a curse or a joke, and the audience just goes with it. What's upsetting is the haunting feeling that follows you around: at any moment this could all come crashing down around my ears.

It's so hard to sing your songs and stay emotionally present when that feeling is haunting you. And every other part of your reaction—the stress, lack of sleep, over-eating and drinking, you ultimately forgive yourself for, but what's sacriligious and unforgivable is being onstage yet not really in the moment along with the audience, sharing that communion, the common love of the music that is so precious. Without that, the whole touring equation doesn't add up.

BUT! On to the positive side…..

Last night I slept in a comfortable hotel bed, a rarity on a tour when you drive overnight and hope to catch a few winks in the back lounge of the tour bus. I feel relatively rested, and I'm very much looking forward to the Canadian and British dates. The show has settled down and kinks ironed out, and I've decided to take this same show to the UK, which will save me re-programming all over again for my solo set. A couple of 'oddball' gigs are behind us (Moogfest and the charity show—different songs/guest perfromers etc) This has definitely eased the stress levels and allows me to concentrate on the Sputnik perfromance, for which I need to write a number of instrumental cues. I can use daytime hours to work on those on my laptop.

My road crew have been great through all this. Jeff Kaplan and Mike Klooster, and Rick our driver, have worked overtime to adjust to the messed up schedule. Many times they've kept it together in the early hours of the morning when I was at my wits' end and ready to throw in the towel.

And the Jazz Mafia Horns have been fantastic. Their playing goes from strength to strength. Like Rebirth and those other New Orleans brass combos they admire, they play super-tight but loose at the same time, reading flawlessly from charts but weaving improvised licks in an out of the written parts. Adam, Joe and Rich are gifted section players and soloists, and very dedicated to their craft—they can often be heard of a morning wandering around some back alleyway practising scales, and presumably nursing a hangover from the previous night's partying!

I'm also feeling better having unloaded this on you. There's an argument that says, never tell the audience about the problems and they will never know the difference. But I've always been quite candid on this blog and I think you should know what goes on behind the scenes. I'm amazed and quite proud that we pulled them all off, considering the situation. Nigel Tufnell put it succinctly: "I won't let it affect my professionalism".

In any case, if you saw one of the shows or are coming to see one, please put all this crap out of your mind and just enjoy the music!

It seems an age since I've posted, for which I apologise. In only a few days I'll be getting on a plane to Boston for the start of my fall US tour, so it's high time I updated my blog.

The steamer trip was fantastic. I brought my family across from New York to Southampton on the Queen Mary 2. First time I've ever done it by ship, and it was terrific. Instead of arriving jetlagged and losing several days to fatigue (and nights to sleeplessness), we arrived refreshed, entertained and well-fed. My favourite part of the trip was an ancient maritime historian who lectured each morning in the Planetarium on the Golden Age of Ocean Liners. Among the eye-openers was the fact that at the end of the ninettenth century I had an (almost) namesake writer Morgan Robertson, who (a) invented the persicope! and (b) in 1898 wrote a novel about a giant luxury ocean liner which hit an iceberg and sank at great loss of human life, and was named…. HMS Titan!

"Well, that was in Chapter One", said our lecturer. "In Chapter Two it turned out the iceberg was home to a tribe of neolithic eskimos, and the whole thing went to pot. He was really a dreadful writer." I accosted him afterwards and told him that my name is Thomas Morgan Robertson, and he immediately got terribly defensive, worrying that I must be descended from said rotten novelist. I reassured him that although I was named after an ancestor called Morgan, he had been dead for many years before this guy got famous.

So. Here we are in England. It's great here and we'll be staying for a year. My kids have just started school, and are loving it; California schools being what they are, this is a big step up. The weather's very warm and pleasant, and our house in the country is surrounded by green fields, marshlands full of migrating birds, and we see more Thames Barges out our window than cars.

I've been gearing up to start on my new album. As was 'leaked' a few days ago, I have this plan to record it using only solar and wind energy. This will be hard to pull off, but it'll be the culmination of many years' ambition. It may be perceived by some as me jumping on the current green bandwagon, but that's really not the case. For a start my wife and kids have all been passionate about reducing our carbon footprint for many years. We bought our first all-electric car in 1990 and now have two Priuses. The five of us usually generate half a trash bag of rubbish per week, the rest going to compost and recycling. Yet I think the other major part of my contribution is via my music and lyrics. As you recall, I wrote a song in 1980 called 'Windpower' and I've been interested in alternative energy ever since. Sun spots are also an area of great intrigue for me. Wind and sun can be harnessed not only for energy to power my recording, but also as variables that can affect the music itself. Obviously the seasons, tides and equinoxes will all affect my mood emotionally—but I can also use several parameters as input to the music directly, a form of sonification on a large scale.

This is a long-term project, and I'm planning on documenting the whole process. It will take time to get right, and some outside money to set it up, but I'm fortunate in that the TED Conference community includes many of the most brilliant thinkers, inventors, architects and scientist on the planet, and many are willing to help me with my project.

But first, off on tour. I'm heading to New England for the first leg, with the Jazz Mafia Horns, whom I've never brought to the NE USA before. Very much looking forward to jamming with them, and trying out a couple of new songs I've been working on. We can work on them on the tour bus and in sound checks, and hopefully work them into the set. I feel kinda guilty that I STILL don't have a whole new slew of songs to play live—but I don't feel like I'm retreading old ground, as this month a whole new set of audiences will get to experience the fab Jazz Mafia Horns. And then I'm back off to London for some UK dates. As you know I only played a couple in the UK in 2006, which went very well, so this is a chance for regional audiences to check out my solo one-man show.

It's nice to be back online!

10/3 - ICA, LONDON
10/4 - CONCORDE, BRIGHTON
10/5 - ACADEMY, BRISTOL
10/7 - ACADEMY, MANCHESTER
10/8 - ACADEMY, BIRMINGHAM
10/10 - ACADEMY, ISLINGTON

09.11.07 LONDONDERRY, NH--TUPELO MUSIC HALL
09.13.07 PHILADELPHIA, PA--WORLD CAFE LIVE
09.14.07 AKRON, OH--TANGIER
09.15.07 PITTSBURGH, PA--REX THEATRE
09.16.07 NORTHAMPTON, MA--THE IRON HORSE
09.17.07 NEW YORK CITY, NY--BB KINGS
09.19.07 ANNAPOLIS. MD--RAM'S HEAD
09.20.07 SELLERSVILLE, PA--SELLERSVILLE THEATER
09.21.07 ALEXANDRIA, VA--BIRCHMERE
09.22.07 NEW YORK CITY, NY--MOOGFEST
09.23.07 GREENWICH, CT--REENTRY (afternoon charity show)
09.24.07 BOSTON, MA--HARPERS FERRY
09.25.07 TORONTO, ON--MOD CLUB
09.27.07 MONTREAL, QB--CAFE CAMPUS