There’s a lot of news to report this month, and a few experiences from our latest tour in Europe I want to share with our friends and fans.

Our first music video is finished! The video for “What Could Have Been”, the first track from Upon the Bridge should be available to the public soon. I won’t spoil any surprises for you, but I’ll let you know that it features the mythic imagery of the new CD, along with landscapes of our beloved California coast. It also features our good friend and sometime Grounded Soldier Dan Esser. Some fans were hoping for a glimpse of Groundation members in their native habitat, sitting in a hot tub wearing platinum jewelry. It does not. Therefore, I expect it may have limited success with the dominant purveyors of American musical culture (MTV’s Total Request Live, VH1’s 100 Sexiest Reggae Bands, etc…). Seriously, I hope it will reach our fans worldwide, and help to deepen the message of our music. Also on the horizon are two more video projects: a documentary by our good friend Pierre called “Music is the Most High” and a live show recorded at the ReggaeSunSka festival in France.

Our biggest U.S. tour to date begins tomorrow at The Biltmore on the shores of Lake Tahoe high in the Sierra Nevada. This tour takes us to seven states, covering as much territory as we do on our tours in Europe and Brazil. The states of the western U.S. are really big, if you look on a map. There’s going to be plenty of adventure, driving and hustling from place to place. Twenty-five shows in just five weeks; its exciting and a bit scary. How will people react to us in Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico? It’s what we call terra incognita, a challenge and an opportunity.

The month-long European tour that ended in March took us to Spain and Portugal, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, the beautiful island of Corsica and of course, France. Of the twenty-one shows we played, seventeen were sold out, including a show at the famous Olympia Theater in Paris. Standing with our luggage outside the Paris Airport, we were transformed into a bunch of 5-year old kids on Christmas when Santa Claus arrived driving a massive blue tour bus, just like the ones the big stars ride around in! We all have a certain nostalgia for the old days of paying dues in Cali in our beat up cars with holes in the seats and no insurance, but this tour gave us a little taste of “the big time”. Twenty bunk beds, a lounge, a kitchen; everything you could want. It made the journey much, much easier. And it was a good thing, too. Without a bus like that, we could never have done shows in Switzerland, Spain, Portugal and France on consecutive nights as we did. It was often more than ten hours drive between each show, and we’re all indebted to our wonderful driver Monica.

Many of our French crewmembers were up early each morning, enjoying croissants and coffee downstairs. Marcus and Harrison were competing to see who could sleep the longest, and often didn’t move from their bunks until we pulled into town for sound check in the late afternoon. The bus allowed us to each have our own schedules, and that was great. Waiting, my biggest complaint on the road, became a very minor annoyance. Our percussionist, Ben Krames, spent a lot of his time cut off from the world behind a pair of headphones and a laptop. Romantic inspiration and many hours of hard work resulted in a great piece of songwriting. Ben, who is both a producer and drummer back here in Cali, wisely chose to take advantage of the talents of our vocalist Kim, who sang lead on the track, and a potential hit love song was born.

The Professor (a.k.a. Harrison), “Iron” Ryan, and myself spent much of our time reading. This was secretly gratifying to me. I owe a debt of gratitude to Cody’s Bookstore in Berkeley (www.codysbooks.com) for providing me a wonderful dayjob in between tours, and for filling my life with books for the last twelve years or so. Reading is my favorite pastime on the road. On this tour I dedicated many, many hours of downtime to Tolstoy’s War and Peace. It came down to the wire, but I read the last sentence of page 1,378 on the flight from Paris to New York City. Meanwhile, Ryan and Harrison both got into the great books of Kurt Vonnegut. This gave all three of us something to take our minds off the immediate demands of the tour: a precious, guilt-free escape from reality.

Just being on that big blue bus sometimes felt like an acid trip. It was a big house on wheels, and it was filled with characters. Our sound engineer Finger brought both his wife, Amelia, and his son, Jean-Vincent. We hosted Canadian duo Dubmatix (http://www.dubmatix.com/) for a few nights. One of the best new additions to the menagerie was DJ Scratchy, who rolled with us from beginning to end, lighting fires in the crowd every night with roots reggae, ska and dub. He’d toured in Europe with The Clash, The Pogues and other such bands, and was no virgin as far as road life goes. He had the absolutely essential quality of cheerfulness, and kept us all laughing when he was around. He developed a very strange attachment to a carved walking stick he acquired in the little Pyrenees resort town of Ax-les-Thermes. Dubbed L’Ours d’Ax, the spooky little totem was believed to have possessed Scratchy’s mind, bending his will to its own. Hopefully Scratchy’s had a chance to visit his friendly neighborhood exorcist. If he’s not been institutionalized you can reach him at: http://www.scratchysounds.co.uk/.

One of the highlights of the tour for Scratchy, and for the rest of us as well, was a chance to share the bill with reggae legends U-Roy and Junior Murvin. I got to see both of their sets in their entirety, and was really impressed. Elders such as these often have a certain aura about them, which comes both from their spirituality, their close relation to the music, and from the sense of reserve years of road life can give you. Sometimes that vibe is a bit intimidating, but with these gentlemen, as with many other reggae stars, once the ice is broken, a great warmth pours forth, a blast of pure Jamaican sunshine, even in the chilly European winter.

I’m looking forward to the year to come. In addition to all the other stuff, we hope to be returning to South America, and visiting Greece, Cyprus, Australia, Japan, and the remote island of Reunion off the coast of Madagascar. I am also hoping to transform the Diaries into a blog format so we can share some of the thoughts and stories of the fans that email me every week, as well as more pictures of places we’ve visited, friends, and the members of Groundation in our real native habitat: on stages, in dressing rooms and in tour busses, and at clubs and festivals around the world.

I wish I had more time, but here in the U.S. we are paying our taxes. It’s a sad time for us all, but before I split I have to say big up to my friend Antoine Baillet who manages a great website (http://groundation.ifrance.com/) which deals with all kinds of Groundation and rasta-related stuff. He’s been a great friend to the band, and to myself in particular. Thanks Antoine!

Peace to all, hope to see you in the front row!

“Diesel” Dave Chachere
Groundation

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