Melanie Dekker - Distant Star Tour 2013

November 25 - November 25 The Sunshine from Vancouver goes home

I am flying out of the Stuttgart airport and the tour bus headed back to its home last night via an Elephant Ears Ent family member to www.autoservice-ruhsam.de. I wish we didn't have to part. I need another shower as I am wearing a few pounds of winter clothes I didn't want to add to the 25 kilo suitcase. I have a banjo filled with cash money on my back (who can say that?) and a ukulele filled with special teekampagne tea on my knee. My Taylor guitar was gently placed...ugh, into the belly of the plane. My Mac laptop is tucked under my arm as if it's a skinny wallet...not another luggage piece. Bingo... I'm boarding, with one last large German pretzel in my cheeks and 'you're not allowed' and 'who is she' looks coming my way. Red eyes burning. Sun rising. Oh please, this time : no cat jumping on my lap clinging to me like a koala while landing, or a too fat to fit in the seat crying person beside me (while I should be the one crying because I had to pay for my extra 20 pounds of 'luggage'), or a broken window plane duck taped shut next to the emergency exit. Ah why be picky...just enjoy the ride. I am the not so fortune person coughing and sneezing on this flight, so I may take a mama's little helper blue pill that I have saved for over 300 days incase sleep won't easy. And for me, sleep is easy, I just haven't had enough of it. Wow. What a journey, what a ride, I am high from it and totally spent now for all the right reasons. (Photo by Hans Kraus taken last night at Sous Sol, Fribourg

November 24 - Fribourg, CH

Show time! We rattle your cage, Flirt with you, and you Give our heart's a home...for two more shows. Thank you. I feel dizzy and my voice is cracking. I use all my power left for the hours on stage. And oh Fribourg you are mystic and grand.

November 22, 2013 - CH Confoederatio Helvetica or Switzerland

Thank you Radio Grishia & Country Radio Switzerland for your interviews! NOTE English is not an official language here but French, German, Romansh and Italian are. My high school French seems to have shamefully disappeared. In Flawil it snowed and there were about 50 candles lit around and near the stage, and a bomb fire just outside the front door. I hope the venue doesn't burn down in the next year, as I'd sure like to go back. The city of Chur has the glorious Alps as a back drop and our concert was packed, and many of Ron Putzi's family and friends squeezed into the place too. (Yes, the famous Swiss Canadian from Richmond basketball player) Over dinner I discovered a new red wine favourite...trying to locate the name of what I had...as I MUST have it again! I thought I'd remember...next time I will take a photo with my phone, or scan it. A CD review came in from Austria, and I loved that a story on the Beatles was next to it :)

 

November 20, 2013 - Germany to Switzerland

Last night was fun. A girl from radio Ulm 8 took her shirt off of her back and I put it on mine:) I played my second set with the band Soul Kiss from Ulm and said goodbye to Germany. I partly said goodbye to some parts of my voice too! Ugh.

A wonderful review by Friedrich Hog hit the papers. His support always comes with grace, surprise and a smile! Thomas Fuchs the keyboardist goes back to his 'work'  and David I play together as a core duo in Chur and the other Switzerland concerts.

November 18, 2013 - A New Situation

The Studio Lounge concert in Untertrubach, across the river from Obertrubach, was cozy and familiar; though it took a while to get used to the cameras 'rolling'. By this, I mean forget about them completely. A video will be online soon. Musicians!! Play here: www.thestudiolounge.de

Last night on my night off in Ulm my throat closed completely from swelling glands. By midnight it was so swollen that it would tap on a gag reflex. I gargled with salt. I love that remedy. Up down up down. Sleep was not going to come easy. At about 3am I remembered that this happened the last time I was in Ulm. How could this happen? Coincidence didn't seem enough for me. Is it because the tour tempo relaxes here...or... Is it jasmine's perfume... or did the hot baked cheese veggie burger burn my throat...or am I allergic to these cats that live in this gorgeous house??? What's wrong!!!?? If I was a dog I would have been whimpering. In between all my questions and strep throat type pain, I desperately pray that I am able to please sing another five concerts. I am asking the rest of my body to get to sleep, so tomorrow all I can do is wake up fresh and forget what was all a bad dream. Though it was clearly not a dream, and sleep only came in short welcomed doses. I put my clean sweater between my head and the pillow, and it gave me comfort. Was it the pillow? I realized I was delirious and getting good and paranoid now. I put socks and a scarf on. Up down up down. Back to bed... I text my band mates Fuchs and Sinclair with a heads up. Got an immediate vitamin c and chamomile tea response. I am awake now, getting a cut and colour at an Italian hair dresser. Groggy is an understatement and it is going to take more than the usual to make me feel pretty. Is it the cats?! Please let it be the stupid cats. Yes, if Eric Reed a guitarist who performs with me in Vancouver, was here, he would have surely died here. Tea coffee muesli oranges water more tea. If I am going to have to swallow, it may as well be food. Now, it's been three hours since a very hot morning shower. The hair dresser is a hot Italian man who speaks no English and he is smiling and working with a variety of colours. Maybe I need to shift my worry.... I can swallow again, without the two lumps of construction blocking the way. Gulp.

November 17, 2013 - Baden Wuerttemberg & Hessen

Just what we needed: Hiking, saunas, a tour through Lichtenstein castle, warm welcomes, great company, fan mail and packages, pretzels for breakfast, more delicious pumpkin soup, and two packed shows in non-typical venues (a giant foto studio and an old beautifully decorated farm house!). Though I hear him play every night, I was especially in awe of David Sinclair's solo performance in Lichtenstein. Also! Take some time to check out Ulli Koebe's (www.koebe.de) stunning photography, and Doris Happ's full-of-warm-feeling  paintings.

November 15, 2013 - eee headquarters

I sang for too long on Wednesday night in Ebelsbach and both my voice and my whole body are wiped out from it. Rest. I picked up a bottle of homemade Haselnusslikor as souvenir from the venue...to enjoy later on the tour perhaps. We spent the following day all together at the elephant ears headquarters in Sesslach. We got busy sorting out touring plans for the upcoming concerts and mostly the ideas for next year. We finness some David Blair (davidblairsongs.com) and Maria In The Shower (Mariaintheshower.com) plans, and Hans Kraus sorts through photos most of the day and gets them ready to send to some of the venues I performed in. Fuchs communicates with the next potential mitfahrgelegenheit passengers and David plays a lot of unplugged electric guitar riffs. 
We have just left Thomann music store (3rd visit this tour) and my Ukulele is repaired. (Www.thomann.de). I saw the most spectacular dreamy vintage and high-end electric guitars today. Value: starts at 9999 euro.

David is now part of the chocolate!

http://www.infranken.de/regional/hassberge/Distant-Star-Konzert-Gleisenau-Kreis-Hassfurt-Weinscheune-Rockballaden-Poesie-Hassberge-Steigerwald-Ein-Stern-ist-den-Ebelsbachern-zum-Greifen-nah;art217,570738#

November 11, 2013 - A special day for many

Fulda and Marburg offered rest, hacky-sack time, jamming, and feel-good very special times. We drove behind a little parade just outside Fulda, where the parade folks who  danced also carried beer and champagne. A brass band or musik kapelle marched and at the end point
there were speeches laced with good jokes from the priest and the burgermeister. Hot orange juice and hot wine was served. Stefan Rapp made a delicious pumpkin soup, we have jokingly called this the pumpkin soup tour because we are so delighted to eat it again and again! It's now the start of Carnival in Germany, Remembrance day in Canada, and my official German CD release date. Available now at all retailers. 11.11.13. The house concert in Marburg was especially unique, we had personal assistants, guitar girls, a full house of people and so much good food. In this environment it feels like the audience are all new friends and so it seems that the tales we tell between songs are steered in a new direction.

November 9, 2013 - Eichsfeld

Two nights in a very special place. Every house here has a plaque with a family name and other info and sometimes a photo too, of the original owners. Some are dated as far back as the early1700's. We are greeted by our friend Thomas Pf who has helped set up this concert in the village of Friedrichrode, and he was born in this area so we have the very best tour guide. We go to parks and bars, we climb along city walls, step into lady's towers, wander castle grounds where the last to inhabit the place were farm animals in WWII, and we visit the spectacular city of Muhlhausen too. I was there for a concert in 2005, yet somehow it was like the first time...again.

November 8, 2013 - North to East

Koln and Ahaus were not without character, tight construction zone parking, smiling sound techs, Persian cats, Shamans, TV support, warm socks and a lost hotel room key...but the audience numbers were down. A sound tech (who is really a bass player rescuing a no-show) that smiles throughout the concert can seem suspicious at first, and equally so can a Shaman that engulfs Sinclair the guitarist with hugging, pressure points and band humming. However, if you go with the flow and do your best; it seems that all the oddities in the world can be quite smooth. Smiling. And now off the a town that according to Wikipedia has a population of 80!