The Mobil Mart in Lee Vining (and the Eastern Sierra in general...) - tour to California!

So the Mobil Mart in Lee Vining is where my live music story began - in a way - I mean, it began WAY before that playing classical music as a kid in Los Angeles, with concerts and suits and orchestras and competitions and stuff, and it even got it's start before the Mobil down at the cabin at Red's for a moment and so this story kind of spirals out of control, but when it comes to the music I make now - it all really did kind of begin at the Mobil Mart in Lee Vining, CA.

I had begun teaching myself the guitar, so it was probably 2004 or so, maybe 2005 or '06, and my friends The Trespassers would play at the Mobil and all of us would go. Blue Turtle Seduction would play at the Mobil and even more people would show up. And after the show we'd all head up the hill to the flagpole. We weren't going anywhere because we couldn't, so instead we'd jam, and those jams around the flagpole is where it all began. I remember belting out Bob Dylan's "Ramblin' Gamblin' Willie" so wildly and so raw that my throat hurt instantly right then and there and I kept singing anyway. I think our ol' taper friend Peter has some hilarious recordings of these flagpole jams, these time capsules, and you can hear the inspiration and the energy and just the raw emotion that is found when you discover that you too can perform live music and you too have something to say, and thank god the night is long and nobody wants the music to stop.

Up at the flagpole was where I finally, for the first time, really found myself able to jam on the cello - where the walls of classical music finally came tumbling down. There were other stepping stones to this moment - playing Bron-Y-Aur by Led Zeppelin with Jon at the Tap, our version of it at least - but the place where it truly first happened was at the flagpole, and for awhile after that whenever I sat in with anyone - like Calmer Than You Are or even later The Trespassers - I didn't want anyone to tell me what key they were playing in. I just quietly found a place where I could play the melody wherever that may be, and I locked into some amazing musical moments that way. Josh Holmes and I lost ourselves in Bird Song and Moonage Daydream so deep more than once at The Tap back then, and those flagpole jams after Mobil shows would run late into the early morning hours fueled by this newfound discovery.

I write all this because I'm headed back soon to this magical nexus - June 12th to be exact - and these places in our lives are important. The Mobil Mart flagpoles of our lives are markers and placeholders and dreamcatchers all at once - places where the past can run simultaneously alongside the present - carrying the memories alongside the memories to be, the present alongside something new. I think places like this are truly the magic of a life well lived - and many of the folks that inspire me, or that I aspire to be, seem to travel often in these spaces, returning to regain and reboot, refresh and retread, they don't abandon their past and the things that brought them joy and yet they aren't chained to only those things - instead they circle back, if only to appreciate where they've been and gain more speed to swing wider out into the field of something new. See you soon at The Mobil and at Mill Creek Station in Bishop...