Going Down the Road Feeling Good!

TiB: Oh really, how?

Donna: Should we really tell the whole story?

Lance: Sure … why not!

Donna: Circumstances caused us to become homeless and broke. I had a very troublesome and costly divorce.

Lance: She was married to an excellent artist who was an even better alcoholic. Since she had always supported him, allowing him to paint without other employment, she was ordered to pay alimony in the divorce. Because of this, and a decrease in her business income, she could not pay her taxes.

Donna: One day the tax inspector came and demanded payment immediately.

Lance: “We want everything” he said.

Donna: We lost everything. We had a large house overlooking Music Row in Nashville, cars, a truck, everything gone. We even had our own demo recording studio in the house.

Lance: We had to sell everything to pay the debts. We were left with very little. So I said to Donna, “What do you want to do now, baby? What is your dream?”

Donna: I answered that "I had always supported the dreams of others. My dream is to travel around the world. But we don't have any money!!!"

Lance: Myself, I said, “So!?! I have a guitar and I hear that people make music on the street. If others can, why not us, lets go!”

Donna: So we left. It was without a doubt one of the greatest blessings of our life.

TiB: Were you already musicians?

Lance: Yes, I was. I grew up with a ukulele in my baby bed. My mother plays the piano. She doesn’t play by ear but reads music with surprising ease. I play the piano, too, but I also play other instruments. Music has always been with me one way or another.

TiB: And you, Donna, do you sing?

Donna: No, the real musician in the family is Lance. I am content to play percussion on my rainstick. Which we call "Miss Stick" ... it was given to me by a mystic. It works like this (she shakes the rainstick). It was such a challenge for me since I have no musical training.

Lance: She sings a few songs as well. She's better than she thinks.

Donna: I’m beginning to sing on the choruses, but Lance has been playing guitar for 30 years.

TiB: You joined him on stage since the beginning of your travels?

Donna: It developed little by little. We started by a trip to Central America with the little bit of money we had left from selling everything

Lance: We left with our backpacks. They were much too large so I had decided to take the smallest instrument possible… a harmonica. After 3 weeks Donna said to
me…

Donna: "Oh please Lance! You are not a harmonica player, you need a guitar!" We looked, but first for a mandolin because it’s smaller. Then I said, "No, no, no, you're a guitarist! We have to find a guitar!" and we did.

Lance: It cost $42! When you see it, you will understand why. At this moment we are recording. Others bring me guitars and say “Go on, use this new Taylor acoustic”. I reply “first, lets try mine”. They think it will have a terrible sound. After the session they are all surprised that a cheap Mexican guitar, like mine, could make such a sound. We get surprised comments about it all the time.

Donna: That’s how things happened. The first time we came to Europe, we had our backpacks and hitchhiked. We played in the streets. Then we went to Israel and stayed for 3 months. It was there I learned to really play my rainstick. Then we went to India and Nepal, after we returned to the USA. In April, 1996 we decided to return here and stay. That was when we bought the camping car, a "vintage" model. 1971 Mercedes! Again, we were blessed with mixed luck and were able to buy it.

Lance: I believe that when you follow your dreams, blessings flow your way.

Donna: Quite right, people ask us if we earn a lot of money, we reply, “We live a simple life. It’s not money that we are searching but real life experiences, travel , learning more of our music and meeting people”. That is what we appreciate. We’ve been to Paris, seen the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame, but we spend most of our time visiting friends. Friendship and feelings are in people, not in monuments and it’s that what we like and look for the most in our travels.

TiB: You give the impression of a couple who believe. (They laugh)

Donna: We do! We’ve been traveling now for 5 years and many fascinating things have happened to us. Of course we have had to sleep in parks and other strange places. We have really traveled in blues.

TiB: It sounds like a fairy tale.

Donna: It truly is.

TiB: There are lots of people who would like to do the same as you.

Lance: The other alternative would have been to stay in Nashville, look for another job, get an apartment, start again; it would have been more "safe". Security is comfortable, but it does not always allow you to realize your dreams. For that you are obliged to sort things out yourselves. I believe that if you follow your dream, it will take care of you. And you must have faith. Having lost everything is the best thing that happen to us. It set us free to do what we wanted, ground zero, square one.

TiB: I talked of believing. What do you believe in? God? Providence? Or a simple life?

Donna: Simply life. We believe that if you find your real place then everything is OK.

Lance: I am really thankful for what has happened to us. I don’t know who to thank. God or... I don’t know myself... it’s greater than any religion. It’s simply.....

Donna: It’s spiritual. There are people who after loosing everything, just sit, worry and complain. It’s simply that they have lost their spirit, and that’s the only thing that they could not take from us. When they say God is in you, it’s that what I call spirit and it’s that what makes us travel. Everyone we meet helps us in some way or another. Just as we help others. They also have that spirit. We call them the "sparks of light". Sometimes, we are down and ask ourselves what are we doing here, but other times we know that we are on the right road. We are asked 'when will you return home?' We don’t know, something will happen to tell us it’s the time. Sorry, we are not your typical bluesmen!

TiB: It’s just as well like that. Perhaps, some will say on reading this, “where is the blues in all that?”

Donna: But it is the blues. Blues can have a happy side as well.

Lance: The Blues, is about life. Before, Donna worried more, when we had nothing she was like, “Aaaargh”! So I say, “Calm down, it’s OK. Everything will be all right!” That seems to be one of my mottos: "Everything’s gonna be all right!"

TiB: I don’t know what to say. You’ve thrown my prepared interview in the air. After all you’ve said, I would look like an idiot by asking what type of tuning you use on your guitar, Lance.

Lance: I like to play slide a lot. When I was younger, I played slide in standard tuning. I read an interview with Jeff Beck where he said that he preferred to use that method instead of changing guitars a lot or re-tuning each time, so I learnt like that. But now, I use more open tunings and love to explore other possibilities. Open G, open E, open D.

Donna: We now have a lap steel that Lance plays a lot. Once again it’s second hand. It cost us $50.

Lance: It dates from 1938. I found it in a pawn shop in Nashville. When I saw it, I said to Donna, “I've got to have it”. Fifty dollars? Sure, we can find that!

Donna: People are surprised that we have such cheap instruments, but it’s not the price, its the sound of the instrument and the musician that counts. Once again we were blessed with luck. Like when the camping car broke down.

TiB: You speak of being blessed with luck again.

Lance: You can say that. We were in La Rochelle (France) at the time and it was really luck that made us stop there. We met lots of folks, made excellent friends, people who mean a lot to us.

Donna: When the camping car broke down we were broke again. We heard of the Cognac Blues Passion which was to be held soon. So we hitchhiked to Cognac and slept in the park. The next day we played in the street and made 4 francs (80 cents) in an hour and a half! We couldn't even buy a baguette! For a town that was supposed to be entirely devoted to the blues… it was dead. It was the first day of the festival and it hadn't come to life yet. With a big stage in the middle of the town, we knew it would be impossible to busk* later. Then we met Dominique Floch (of Quatre Ecluses in Dunkerque) when he heard Lance playing on the street. He asked what we were doing on the street? We told him our story and he asked us if we would like to play on one of the stages at the festival.

(* busking is the word used for playing music on the street for tips -Ed)

Lance: We said, “Sure! Why not?"

Donna: Yes, why not! That’s another one of our mottos. We played at 2:00 that afternoon, mainly for the organizers and others of the festival who where setting up. They passed the hat, and we made 450 F ($90.00). Then Michel Rolland, director of the festival, gave us a room in the 4 star hotel, free passes to the festival and Dominique found us gigs around the town. We also had articles in the press about us. He really took us completely under his wing. When the festival finished, Dominique invited us to Dunkerque. Since then, he has helped us a lot.

Lance: That’s how we found ourselves playing with Blind Mississippi Morris and Bob Brozman.

Donna: We were like children. We did not speak a word of French. Dominique helped us get bookings.

Donna: At the same time my father passed away so, I went to the States and Lance stayed to get the van repaired. That’s how it all started. This year we were invited back to Cognac and even invited to return again next year! It’s a special place. For us, it was a miracle. We went from the street to a concert stage! That’s what I mean when I talked about spirit and people with heart.

TiB: The fairy tale continues. What are your future plans?

Donna: We are recording a CD. We already have two cassettes, which we made ourselves. They are not a studio production, but people like them. Bluesboarder wrote a good review on them. To come back to the CD, we are now in the studio recording, since we have been able to put aside a bit of money.

Lance: And we have help. Antoine Gedroyc, a young man we met in Cognac this year, brought us to Paris to record. He thought the cassettes were not enough. The recording studio ... it’s wow! It’s super, the sound produced there shows the real spirit of our music.

TiB: So you will be staying around for a while?

Donna: In October, we tour in the North of France and Belgium.....

Lance: ....and in November, we return to Paris to play at the Bottleneck!

by René MALINES

From the monthly magazine of the Travel in Blues Association Paris, France
issue #12, October, 1997