the folk-rocking continues...then comes to an abrupt halt (temporaily).

hello my dears,

this entry should serve to dump cold water on any theory that you may have been harboring that i am leading the perfect life here in lovely italia. close, but not quite.

we were supposed to have a show last night at i birbi, the restaurant where we are all washing dishes during the evenings. the problem is that the restaurant is located in a small piazza, and the owner/cook was worried about noise being an issue. in medieval towns, sound travels well and far and gets trapped in small streets, and marcella was worried that we might blow the top off of Via Colcitrone. After we assured her that we were folk-rock, not punk-rock, she assented and we were set.

Until friday night. Friday night, there was a party at the restaurant, and the revelers rented a DJ. The vigili showed up and though they didn't say anything, their presence was enough to make marcella think twice about our show sunday night. But she said that as long as the neighbors didn't say anything, it would be fine.

Yesterday was ferr'agosto, a national holiday in italy, and the wedding anniversary of my friends britt and ramon. We were all eating a fantastic lunch at their house yesterday when my phone rang at about 2 pm. It was juri, my bassist, calling to tell me that marcella had just called and the concert was off. This was extremely frustrating to hear 3 hours before we were supposed to head there, but in part i was relieved, because i've been sick for a week now and my voice has gone on ferie (without asking my permission, i might add).

so i proceeded to pile my plate high with pasta al forno (a creamy, cheesy baked pasta, much like lasagna). i ate like a champ. after we had our afternoon drowse, we all walked to coco palm and i had a big ol' gelato. feeling fat and happy, i walked home and crawled into bed with harry potter (which i am reading in italian, and it is taking me forever). I only recounted my lunch menu to you so that I could point out that milk products are not great for your voice, and especially not when you have been hacking up a lung for a week. I would not have eaten everything I ate, had I known that Juri would call me again at 7 pm, as i was half-asleep, reading harry potter in my pj's, to tell me the show was back on. I have to admit that I was less than excited to hear him say that the concert, only because I could barely speak, much less sing, but somehow we found ourselves loading the cars and heading to arezzo in great haste to try and make the show happen.

I'll spare you the rest of the details, but in short, everything else that could go wrong did. The restaurant was not properly equipped with the right electrical setup and we were going to have to setup on the complete opposite side of the piazza...Juri was splicing together wire, trying to hookup our speakers...and I was busily downing hot water with honey and lemon, trying desperately to resurrect my destroyed voice. in the end, it was a square peg in a round hole. We sadly acquiesed that our Ferr'Agosto show was not to be, and no one was sadder than me...I leave in a month, and we only have one show left before I go. But such is life. I have, on the other happy hand, found someone who is going to help us book shows in Italy in the future...but that is too long of a story for my tired hands to type right now. I have to save myself for my show in Germany, only two short days away...here's hoping the magic pills I bought at the farmacia this morning are going to bring my voice back to life.

The next time you hear from me, I will have taken Stuttgart, Germany by storm. Wish me luck in my quest to not overdose on strudel...
a presto,
v