The basic tracks to "Upon the Bridge" were still cooling on the reels when we caught our flight out of San Francisco Airport headed for our summer tour in Europe. The band has acquired a sort of poise when traveling. It's a cliché, but we're a well-oiled machine nowadays.

This year our tour in Europe took us to Italy and Spain, France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Holland and Morocco. Some people ask me if I've acquired a jaded attitude about all this touring. Well, I'll never feel jaded about music, but touring has its ups and downs. It seems that lot of people envy this life, but I'm not sure that everyone who dreams about it really knows what its like. If you're interested in being a touring musician here are a few bits of advice:

1. Try not to be too picky about food.

2. Never stand when you can sit, never sit when you can lie down.

3. Get used to waiting.

One of the things people outside of the music business never talk about is the endless waiting. Every tour involves many hours of pure, undiluted waiting around. Here's a typical days wait times for bringing one set of Groundation music to a new town:

:30 wait for band to get on the bus

1:00 wait for airline to check bags

:45 wait for plane to depart

:25 wait for baggage to arrive

:15 wait for bus from airport

:10 wait to be checked in at hotel

:30 wait for other band to soundcheck

1:30 wait for Groundation to soundcheck

2:00 wait for Groundation to start

2:00 wait for entire band to be ready to leave the club*

*That last one is a killer. Some people are on the bus and ready to go in half an hour, but we often have to send out search parties to physically drag some straggler (usually from the rhythm section) out of the club, especially when an early-morning flight looms.

So, total hours spent waiting around: 9:05. On an average day. And I'm not even kidding.

Now, the hour and fifteen minutes of music that comes after all this waiting is sometimes amazing. In fact, it usually erases all the stress and frustration of the other stuff, putting everyone in the band in a great mood. Duke Ellington's group had its very best shows on the days they spent 12 hours on the bus, and I think we've experienced the same thing: That ecstatic feeling of getting off the damn bus and making noise comes through in the music as pure joy.

Now that I've got that off my chest I can tell you that this years summer tour in Europe was truly one of the best opportunities we've had to spread our music. Here are some of the highlights:

Paris, France: Two sold out shows in Paris. Everyone that was there for these shows agrees that it was Groundation at its absolute peak of energy and creativity. The Parisian crowd was phenomenal, the vibes alone would have turned a lesser club to a pile of rubble.

A third show in a historic royal square was stopped mid-performance when a near riot broke out among fans trying to get in. Chanting people attempted to break down the carved oak doors with a battering ram while a half dozen security guards attempted to hold them from the inside. One fan, dubbed Spiderman‚ by the French person who filmed the fiasco, fell fifteen feet from the façade of the Hotel Sully. This all took place five minutes from the site of the Bastille, the notorious French prison, international symbol of revolution. The year was 1789, and Groundation was there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HO_e0UlPsQ&mode=related&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HO_e0UlPsQ&mode=related&search=

Casablanca, Morocco: The bus let us out in the middle of a street parade near the massive square where we were to perform. People in huge giraffe costumes surrounded us. Then we were nearly blown to smithereens by a fireworks display. We played our biggest show ever, estimated between 30 to 50 thousand people. I'd never seen so many people in robes and headscarves rocking to roots music! It was a dream come true for those of us who wish for peace between the United States and the nations of Africa and the Middle East.

Uppsala, Sweden: After spending some quality time backstage with good friends Gavin DiStasi (trumpet) and Gabe Eaton (sax), we convinced their bandleader Don Carlos to join Groundation onstage along with The Congos for one climactic song. It's been years since we've had a chance to perform Hebron Gate songs with the original singers!

I just wanted to tell you about two other brief moments from this latest tour. We were all backstage waiting around (see above) at a festival in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. A young Rasta sat down on the bench next to me and said, "Play!" Well, I'm a trumpeter, and I certainly like to play, even at the drop of a hat, so I started playing some funky blues. He started banging out a nyabinghi rhythm on the picnic table and singing along. We jammed for a few minutes, then he took off and I went and played the show. We never spoke a word to one another, never saw each other again.

Later that night, Harrison and I found ourselves in the hotel elevator with an older Jamaican man in an outrageous purple suit. All three of us were tired from playing music and traveling. Harrison spoke to him, "I'm going to come and visit you sometime soon." The man in the purple suit smiled. "Well, OK!" he said. I complimented him on his suit. That was the last time either of us would see or speak to Joseph Hill, legendary Rasta elder, and singer of Culture.

Our lives are fragile. Sometimes we meet people only briefly, a few words spoken in passing. Perhaps it's a shared musical moment: a song onstage with a special guest, or a spontaneous jam with a total stranger. You might dance with someone all night and never even know their name. You may spend your whole life with someone, and grow accustomed to their presence, but you will never know if it's the last time you'll see them. Music is such a fragile, fleeting thing, but I'll never forget seeing Joseph Hill on stage that day, stalking back and forth across the front of the stage, his band cooking along behind him, his purple zoot suit flashing. So his music is his eulogy, his epitaph, just as in life it was his greeting, his blessing, his exhortation to all of us to live, love and stand up for our rights. It made me realize that music can give you the feeling you've known someone your whole life, when you've only just been with them for a ride in a hotel elevator.

Thanks to everyone who came to our shows this summer from Montana to Morocco. Those who are checking the diaries to read my belated scribblings about the Bob Tribute Tour will have to wait, as I have no deadline. ; )

P.S. Dear England,

We stopped by the other day but nobody was home. We had plans together, remember? Have your feelings changed? All this time I thought we were speaking the same language, I thought we had a special relationship. I really hope we can work things out between us, some foggy day. Until then, lets just say, "cheers!"

Peace,

“Diesel” Dave Chachere
Groundation

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