Here we go again. You'll notice this update comes very soon after the last one, and that's because I am doing all I can to catch up to the present with these things! We'll get there!!

The very last trip I made in 2006 started on December 28, and ended on December 28 too---because I flew from Los Angeles, California, halfway around the world (and across the International Dateline, losing a day) to Auckland, New Zealand. I really love New Zealand, and I've spent lots of time there. Among the many charms of this beautiful island nation is some of the very best coffee in the world. Everyone who knows me knows how I enjoy my coffee! The first thing I did when I got into Auckland airport's international arrivals area was to order a cup of that wonderful coffee!

After a day's rest in the Helensville, New Zealand, home of my friend and organizer for most of this trip, Heather Holland, Heather and I were off to play a New Year's Eve party in Dargaville, New Zealand. I've played a lot of New Year's Eve events in my time, but there is no doubt this one was in what was for me the most unusual place I've played one. This one was a lot of fun!

New Year's Eve is a summer event in the Southern Hemisphere. I did a concert. Kiwi old-time country institution Rex Franklin, from New Plymouth, and his wife performed, and Rex did some tunes with me too. Our host Phil Godfrey, a native of Australia, did a show featuring his very funny Australian bush ballads. The bush ballads are a distinct Aussie art form. We have nothing just like them in the States or in Europe. Heather Holland performed. She is a highly skilled yodeller and very popular with New Zealand audiences. The crowd sang and danced and ate and drank (a little, but not the kind of drinking that made me quit playing New Year's Eve dates in the States years and years ago). We did Auld Lang Syne, of course, and Jambalaya as the year turned...much sooner there than it did in the USA and most of the rest of the world.

A highlight of the evening for me was getting to know and having the opportunity to play some music with Roslyn Gilmour, a very talented and skilled bassist I was to do more work with later, down the road, on another trip to the South Pacific. Roslyn is a very fine musician and a lovely person. It is great to find the really excellent musicians as I go along---and Roslyn definitely is one. She and husband Stan Gilmour, an excellent guy, have become good friends. Stan also makes music, and does sound reinforcement.

Phil Godfrey is a biodynamic farmer. That means he farms organically, even brews his own fertilizers---and much more. Phil took me on a fascinating tour of his biodynamic operations, and I am really interested and enthused about what he showed me. If you want to know more about the subject, you could start by clicking HERE. Use the [BACK] button of your browser to return to this page.

In the States we call them festivals. In New Zealand the first few days of the new year (summertime, and the livin' was easy...) I played an event called the Woolshed Country Muster. It was a really nice festival featuring all New Zealand or Australian performers...except for one American---yeah, me! Joining me onstage in my sets were Roslyn Gilmour playing bass, Heather Holland playing rhythm guitar, and Roslyn's brother, a good electric guitarist, as well. Good fun! To see a picture of us doing one of our shows at the Country Muster, click HERE. Use the [BACK] button of your browser to return to this page.

There were lots and lots of other interesting performers, from singer-songwriters to Hank Snow soundalikes to you-name-it. There was even, unfortunately, one of those guys who sings to the karaoke tracks. I keep hoping I'll find somewhere in the world where that is unknown.

What's a woolshed? Just a big barn where sheep are sheared. There is no shortage of woolsheds in New Zealand, where there are some ten times as many sheep as there are humans!

From Dargaville I travelled on January 5, with Heather Holland, to Kaitaia in the north (warmer) part of New Zealand, where we joined my old friend and music cohort Trevor Curreen (pedal steel, Statocaster, keyboards), of Kaitaia, and Auckland musicians Lynn Walters and Ian Anderson, to play the Collard Tavern, a nice venue. The Collard had a special nice big room with a nice stage especially for shows. Ours was a nice little band, and the crowd was very appreciative of what we had to offer. It was great, of course, to visit with Trevor, wife Beryl, and other friends in that area. Lynn Walters' lovely daughter Jess, 16, came along with her mom and revealed during our rehearsal a hitherto unknown ability to play drums! She's a talented young person, one of my "honorary grandkids". We may just have to put her to work eventually!

Another unexpected pleasure at the Collard Tavern gig was the appearance of my British friend Chris Reilly and his wife Linda. They were travelling in New Zealand and knew I would be there doing shows. I had not met Linda before, and I found her a delightful person. Chris and Linda are real globetrotters and sailing folk who think nothing of feats of sailing that seem like impossibilities to me. We had lots of laughs and a good old get together, both that night and the next day at Trevor and Beryl Cureen's house.

The next evening, January 6, saw the same group of musicians appearing at the Eastern Rugby Club, near Mangonui, New Zealand. During that show Heather Boyed, a musician Lynn Walters performs with in Auckland, showed up with her dad. Of course we talked Heather into getting up to perform a few tunes! Later in the year I sat in for a couple with her band in Auckland.

With the Kaitaia-area gigs completed, Heather Holland, Lynn and Jess, and Ian Anderson headed back south to where they live. I stayed on for a few wooooonderful days with Trevor and Beryl. We had a great, GREAT visit!! We toured the area, explored some beaches on the Tasman Sea that are just beautiful beyond the ability of words to describe, and even did some driving into some difficult-to-access Maori areas (where at one point we got stuck in a huge area of crushed shell and had to do a lot of pushing and pulling to get going again). To see a picture of one of the coastal areas we visited, click HERE. Use the [BACK] button of your browser to return to this page.

We ate the superlative New Zealand seafood in seaside restaurants and enjoyed Beryl's fantastic natural-foods cooking at home. (Trevor mon ami, you are a very very lucky man!) We laughed and told jokes and stories. Trevor and I jammed late into the nights. I am just a very, very richly blessed to know such wonderful people in this world. It was a beautiful time. Thanks, T and B.

One of the best fingerstyle guitarists it has been my pleasure to know is world-class British musician and recording artist Ian Goodsman, whose stage name is "Li'l Ian". You can check out his web site by clicking HERE. Use the [BACK] button of your browser to return to this page.

Ian is a good friend. He lives with his wife, Lynn, in a beautiful hillside home in Whangarei, New Zealand, a very European-seeming New Zealand town between Kaitaia and Auckland. When it was time for me to leave Trevor and Beryl and make my way back to Auckland for more shows, I caught a bus to Whangarei to have a couple of days' visit with Ian and Lynn on the way. Did we play some music? You bet we did!! Ian and I are planning to start doing some duo work together around the old planet, so we went through lots of blues, ragtime tunes, swing tunes, and so forth, looking for what we like best. Ian has played in Hong Kong, which is a place where I want to go. He tells me there is a good blues scene there! Hmmm... Why not? Singapore is also interesting. And Thailand. We'll see what next year brings.

It really is a small, small world. While I was visiting Ian Goodsman in Whagarei, he showed me a videotape of some musicians from south Louisiana. There on the screen were my friends D. L. Menard, the "Cajun Hank Williams", Marc Savoy of accordion fame, and others I knew. Very cool to see those familiar faces and hear that familiar Cajun music in a place as far away from the United States as New Zealand.

Close by Whangarei is Whangarei Falls. I'm a waterfall fan, and I've seen a lot of falls. Whangarei Falls is not huge, but I do believe it is one of the most beautiful waterfalls I've seen on this earth. To see a picture of Whangrei Falls, click HERE. Use the [BACK] button of your browser to return to this page.

Regretfully leaving Whangarei behind (there's never enough time), I caught another of New Zealand's clean, fast, punctual busses back to Auckland, where I gathered up my Auckland band (Lynn Walters, bass; Ian Anderson, guitar; and Tracey Lambert, drums; for a January 13 concert at the Glen Eden country music club. I had not seen Tracey for about a year, and it was good to be around her again. She is a very special person, with lots of very good thoughts in her mind---one of those people with whom I truly love to talk. She's a talented musician too. Lynn Walters and Ian Anderson did a segment, including Lynn's great song The Possums and Me, and Heather Holland did a segment too. Heather wows 'em with her yodelling! Lynn and two musician friends also did some close harmony singing. There were a couple of other acts on the bill too. It was all a lot of fun!

We did a similar concert the next day in Orewa, New Zeland. Both this show and the Glen Eden show were very well attended and very well received.

The primary reason why I came to New Zealand in January 2007 was to accept the invitation to perform in the Marton Festival, at Marton, New Zealand, January 20 and 21. Produced by Anne George, of Marton, it is becoming one of the very important festivals "down under". I was very pleased to be invited to be a feature at the festival, which included an international cast. Two other Americans, friends of mine, were also on the show: Bob and Sheila Everhart of Iowa. I performed with Lynn Walters on bass and no other accompaniment, and that went very well indeed. As special guests on my segment of the show I had New Zealand's Rainbow Singers, a group of sweet and lovely little girls from about 8 to about 10 years old. A couple of years before I'd appeared in Marton, and the little girls appeared with me then to sing Keep on the Sunny Side as a show closer. For this visit I had recorded a special CD just for New Zealand release, which included a song I wrote in 2005, I Hear New Zealand Calling Me. It got, and still gets, a lot of radio play in New Zealand. The Rainbow girls learned to sing it...so I brought them out and we did it on the festival main stage on the evening show, complete with vocal harmonies! It was very cool! The audience liked it a lot, but no more than I liked it. Things like that really, really make me happy.

At the Marton event I also did a version of my Charley Groth Guitar Clinic, and was happy to have a really good turnout for it. I think I sent the earnest students away with plenty to think about, and some tools to improve their guitar playing.

Anne George really knows how to put together a festival, and her Marton event was first rate. Another great thing about the visit was staying with good friends in a huge country house in Marton, New Zealand, with some fine folks I got to know and love.

My next stop in New Zealand was on January 22 at Paraparaumu, where I played in a show put together by old friends Neal Jeffries of Wellington and Chris Down of Paraparumu. They brought together several American acts for a big concert: Terry Smith, Bob and Sheila Everhart, and me. Several New Zealand acts opened. Again, a lot of fun. Also great to see Neal and Freda, Linda Jeffries, Chris Down and Tom Calder, and lots of other great folks.

Next, on January 24, Terry Smith and I were guests on a concert featuring Bob and Sheila Everhart, a show was organized by Andrew Bicknell for his Wellington Bluegrass Society. This was a really fun show to do. Terry and I got to do some of our duo presentation, which I really, really enjoy doing. I played leads for Terry, and then he supported me in a couple of tunes. Since it was a bluegrass club Andrew asked me to do some hot picking, and with Terry Smith's rock-solid backup, it was easy to oblige. Then we also sang and played Smiley Burnette's great Lazy Day together, alternating the first two verses. Then I did some picking to Terry's peerless rhythm guitar support, and we sang the final verse in harmony. It was a FUN evening!

January 25 saw the crew in Fielding, New Zealand, where we did a big show with all the American acts (Me, Terry, Bob and Sheila) featured.

Putaruru, New Zealand, was our next destination. I stayed at Tirau, with my dear friends Karen Hansen and Val. It was great to see these two good ladies again. Karen is a gifted singer and writer of songs, a fine performer and recording artist. She's another of the e-mail pals I have around the world. We keep in touch! Backing me in the Putaruru concert January 27 was Keith Herbert's excellent Cimarron band, of which Karen is a member. We only had a chance to do one rehearsal, but the band paid attention and took care of business, and the show came out very well. Terry Smith and two other American performers, Shirley Raye and Bill Murphree, were on that show as well. Terry complimented me on my show that night, and I really appreciated his doing so---because Terry is the consummate professional onstage! I thought the audience (and it was a packed house) received everything we did very well indeed.

Kindhearted Keith Herbert drove me the long distance, next day, to the Kapiti Coast of New Zealand, where I did a special intimate one-man show at a leading beachfront brasserie, the Waterfront. Chris Down, who booked the gig for me, and her husband Tom Calder perform as Highland Country (web site, click HERE. Use the [BACK] button of your browser to return to this page), opened and did a mid-show segment. They do a neat combination of country and Celtic music. Tom is Scotland-born. At the Waterfront I was able to do quite a few things I don't get to do in the larger concerts: Some quiet jazz, some of my impressionistic alternate-tuning guitar pieces, some nice fingerstyle material. As I went along a fellow in the audience (and there was quite a large crowd packed into the place) shouted abruptly that he couldn't hear me, that I needed to have my vocals turned up. I was startled, but he was right. We fixed the problem, and when I took a break I went by his table to chat. This was how I met Gary Frost, a fine professional musician with whom I've done a number of gigs since, and plenty more to come. Gary and his wife, Wendy, have become good friends. Networking---and positive thinking. Never fail.

After the Waterfront gig, and a good visit with Chris and Tom, down the road I went once again, riding back to Putaruru with Keith Herbert. I was joined in sunny Tirau by Terry Smith, who has on his way back to Auckland to catch a flight out to the USA. I would not be leaving for a while yet. We had time for a nice visit, and some good jamming, in the peace of the New Zealand countryside before Terry departed.

I found a coffee shop I really like in Tirau, the Alley Cat. Karen Hansen actually has a country home a couple of miles outside the village. I got into the habit of rising quite early (as I usually do anyway) and hiking into town for morning coffee. Then I'd come back, pick up Karen and Val's mail from their mailbox at the bottom of their steep driveway, and deliver it to the patio table where they'd be sitting having coffee with Terry. It was a cool routine and I enjoyed it very much.

When finally January had ended and it was time for me to make my way back around the world to the good old U.S. of A., I hopped on a bus and journeyed back to Auckland. My dear friend Lynn Walters was at the bus station waiting to pick me up. We spent a couple of days just visiting and running around the city. Lynn had a gig to play somewhere one day, so she dropped me off in downtown Auckland and I explored. Auckland has a famous and very beautiful harbor, and there is lots to see and do in the harbor area. On another trip to New Zealand I took a ride on a big ferry to an offshore island---but this time I just hung out and had a great time.

Very high in the steep hills near Auckland there is a great music venue called The Bunker. It is the main folk and acoustic stage in the city. Operated by a man named Roger Giles, who is New Zealand's Pete Seeger figure, the Bunker is called what it is because it really is a remodelled World War II vintage military bunker. Now it is a fabulous music venue. On February 5 I played there, and, I must say, was very warmly received by a capacity crowd. I heard, and met, a ton of good music people, including Mike Bartram, of England, with whom I'll be working next year on a tour in England. Roger Giles booked me to do a concert at the Bunker in April 2008. All good!

Incidentally, the Bunker also has, from the area right in front of the door, the most spectacular view of the city of Auckland that one could ever imagine. In the very clean clear air of New Zealand the lights of the city are like a fireworks show. I hope that air can somehow stay as clear as it is now. Air pollution as we know it in some other parts of the world just doesn't exist in New Zealand.

Heather Holland, my friend and music booker in New Zealand, arranged a final New Zealand appearance for the next day, February 6, in a mini-festival she put together in the Auckland area. This little indoor event was very well attended, and there were lots of performers. I was the feature, along with a singer names Kevin Greaves, a member of a large New Zealand musical family who had been to Nashville, made some recordings, and was now back in New Zealand. A couple of really good things about this gig were that I had excellent bass and drums backup, from a couple of good musicians I will definitely keep in mind for future work, and there was a good quality upright piano on the stage that was in tune and was actually playable. That made it possible for me to do some Bob Wills tunes and some piano blues with my good bassist and drummer. Very cool. I usually don't get to do that at festivals, because festival pianos are almost always either miles out of tune, in tune with themselves but flat of everything else, or just outright unplayable junkers.

Back in Auckland, I spent a day relaxing with my good friend Lynn Walters and daughter Jess. Then on May 8 Lynn took me to the airport for the twelve and a half-hour flight back to the States. I've made the flight so often now it seems to go by fairly quickly. I read books, sleep, talk to other passengers (but not much, really), and almost never watch the provided movies. I'm not a movie person, or a television show person. Once in a while there will be a travel show provided on the flight that is of some interest. The contrast between the atmosphere and handling of security arrangements at international airports, compared to the outlandish paranoia seen at airports in this country, is always jolting. The United States is a very frightened nation, and it shows at the checkpoints.

Touching down in San Francisco (and I am always sort of amazed at how gently and smoothly those gigantic world-circling airplanes do land), I was fetched from the airport by my good friend and accordion virtuoso Art Peterson. (Art also plays very fine guitar, by the way.) You can visit his web site by clicking HERE. Use the [BACK] button of your browser to return to this page.

Art and I did lots of jamming of course---that's essential---and went to an interesting gig Art plays with a small area band led by a guy who plays electric solid-body ukelele. When I first saw this instrument I thought "naahh, that couldn't be any good". Boy, was I wrong. The guy was a master of his instrument, and it sounded like a high-quality jazz guitar in his hands. Kind of a Joe Pass type sound. Very, very cool. I want to make lots of music with this guy! There's nothing I like better than finding a good new (to me at least) sound in music!

Leaving California, I flew on United Airlines over the Sierra Nevadas and the Rocky Mountains over to Phoenix, Arizona, where I had left my Toyota van in Tempe, in the tender care of my faithful friend Wyllow Ravenscroft and her husband Kevin. (Tempe is very different from Phoenix, so Wyllow tells me!) Wyllow had started the old van a number of times while I was out of the country, so it fired right up when I got back to it. After a short visit I headed out, making a looong drive cross-country to south Texas, where I was booked to perform in the Rio Grande Music Festival February 16-18 in the deep south Texas town of Mercedes, on the USA/Mexico border. I did my own shows at the festival and did lead work for Terry Smith as well, so I spent plenty of time onstage! Also got better acquainted with Kevin Beanland, a Canadian entertainer from Newfoundland. We talked about playing some cruise ships together in that area next summer. We shall see how that goes.

During and after the Rio Grande Festival, I played a long string of concert dates in Texas with Terry Smith and band, sometimes even more than one a day. When those wound up on February 24, I headed northeast to Louisiana where I visited with many friends and played music at a big party in the Lafayette area with my old friend and master musician Wayne Boudreaux. Wayne is one of those super musicians who has had lots of excellent bands where he lives, but who does not choose the travelling life of a full-time professional musician. His skills are more than good enough to have ensured his success had we wanted that kind of life. I dearly love to make music with Wayne. He's a great guy, too.

While I was in Louisiana I also was able to go to Erath and have a good long visit with my friend of more than thirty years, D. L. Menard, who is a very, very famous Cajun musician known as "the Cajun Hank Williams". Like me, D. L. has travelled the world extensively with his music, and we love to trade road stories when we get together. I told D. L. I had seen him not long before on a video shown to me in New Zealand. He laughed and commented that New Zealand is one of the countries he has not visited in person, so he was glad his music was heard there. D. L.'s wife Lou Ella was a great friend to all of us on the music trail. She made the best coffee in the whole wide world, and that famous brew was available in the Menard accomodations at every festival and concert. We loved it, and we loved the lady who made it. Lou Ella went on to whatever is next a couple of years ago, and all of us were concerned about D.L. They had been together since they were teenagers. D.L. is a pro and a trouper, though, and he has kept right on going. He is obviously still able to find positive things in life. Good on ya, D.L. Keep the tunes coming, old friend!

The next stop on my music road was back in Florida---the Will McLean Festival, near Dade City. This festival is an annual "don't miss" for me. I have participated in every production of the event down through the years, from the first one onward. The festival celebrates the life and art of Will McLean, a Florida poet and songwriter whose striking compositions say a lot, in very beautiful ways, about life as it was, and in some ways still is, in the Sunshine State. Will's most famous song, Hold Back the Waters tells the chilling tale of the devastation an early hurricane wreaked at Lake Okechobee in our state. I knew Will well. He was quite a character, to say the least, and it is always a pleasure to entertain at a festival that celebrates his life and work. Some of the Florida musicians I most enjoy working with appeared in the festival with me this time: Dan Ost (guitar), Carl Wade (guitar), Jim Davis (bass fiddle), Joe Reina (harmonica), Norm McDonald (percussion), Diana Ost (vocals). You can visit Carl Wade's web site by clicking HERE. Use the [BACK] button of your browser to return to this page.

Producer Margaret Longhill gives us excellent stage times at the festival. Audiences were large and appreciative. Weather was perfect. Old friends were on every hand. All good!!

I did a St. Patrick's Day concert March 17, in Orlando, Florida, organized by my good friend and very active supporter Barry Brogan. Now, although a goodly part of my heritage is Irish, I really don't know a lot of Irish music. Did some. Everyone seemed to fully enjoy what I had to offer, so no problem. A highlight of the evening, for me, was a jam session afterward in which I had the opportunity to play some hot tunes with a really fine guitarist from Orlando. Great fun.

March 18 brought me to Titusville, Florida, again, for another concert in a series hosted by talented and award-winning songwriter Sharon Osuna. Sharon really does a nice job putting on small concerts, and, as I've mentioned before, these small concerts are truly rewarding for me. I get to do some things I would not do in the larger shows. I get to communicate with audiences in a whole different way. These small shows are lots of fun. The Susie Cool band from Orlando opened, with some interesting original material. Norm McDonald added his excellent percussion to my set.

While in Phoenix, Arizona to play at the Encanto Park Coffee House a while back, I had been invited to perform in the Phoenix Music Festival, and of course I accepted. On March 20 I flew out to Phoenix. My ever helpful friend Wyllow Ravenscroft met the plane. She and her husband Kevin were good enough to put me up once again. Their cat can be a bit anti-social, but even the cat was getting used to me!

I had been invited to return to both Mama Java's coffeehouse in Phoenix, and to the famous Fiddler's Dream as well, so I did those gigs in Phoenix also. I was at Mama Java's the evening of March 22. The audience was small, because there in arid Phoenix, in the Arizona desert, the night brought a continuing torrential deluge of rain which lasted all evening!! The folks who did come out had a good time, but a lot of Phoenix was closed up tight!

The weather was a lot better, but not entirely clear, on March 24, and better still on March 25. The music festival took place on those dates. It was fun, if a bit disorganized. Due to the threat of rain, the main outdoor stage was moved inside. That made for a lot of confusion. I had a couple of decent sets, and participated in a songwriting workshop at which I met a couple of really good writers with whom I plan to stay in touch. There was some good jamming, including one really nice jam with Bill Berkett, an ace Phoenix picker, and several others, which went well until broken up by the arrival of a heavy-handed bluegrass picker. This gentleman borrowed my 1934 Gibson mandolin, and in a few minutes had slammed the strings so hard he drove one of them entirely off the fretboard and under the end of one of the frets. Later it took me twenty minutes to put the instrument back in playable condition. After he beat up my mandolin he went and got his bluegrass banjo, and very shortly thereafter the good jam had died and hyperspeed bluegrass had taken over. The great Louis Armstrong said it best: "The music is in the spaces between the notes." Seems to me that if you cram so many notes into the measures that no space is left between them, then musicality has to suffer---a lot. Music was never intended to be an athletic contest. Now, I'm not saying all bluegrass is that way, just that too much of it is. I loved much of what Bill Monroe himself did.

On the evening of March 25 I was the feature at Fiddler's Dream. That is a wonderful place to play, and it is easy to see why so many touring musicians love it. The people who run it are great folks. The audiences are aware and intense listeners. Acoustics are great. Atmosphere is great. I love this sort of gig.

After I finished with my gigs in Phoenix, I travelled again to visit Jimmy and Shirley Longfellow, wonderful friends and fine musicians who live on the road but have a beautiful rustic home in the Bradshaw Mountains not far from Black Canyon City, Arizona. We did some music, and did some recording , and I hung out with them for the Easter holiday. We went on a fun jeep trip into the mountains and later enjoyed a picnic by a crystal mountain stream. I enjoyed meeting an Ecuadorian artist and his family who are friends of the Longfellows. He has me interested in visiting Ecuador! The glowing highlight of the visit, though, was a spectacular jeep safari/adventure trip Shirley Longfellow and I made into the rugged Arizona mountains to visit some very remote prehistoric ruins. The day we did that was beyond cool! We found the ruins, and explored extensively. Then we hiked down a nearby gorge until we found an ancient dam still holding a pool of beautiful water. Beyond the dam, the gorge made a spectacular plunge hundreds of feet down. At the edge of the pond and beyond the dam we discovered ancient petroglyphs, one of them showing the figure of a person carrying water in bags suspended from a shoulder carrier. We dubbed the pool "Waterboy Pond". I was able to sit right where the artist must have been sitting all those centuries ago when he or she created that petroglyph. At times like that it seems to me the tissue of time is very thin indeed---a tenuous membrane separating the "then" from the "now". Seems to me it could well be, as the quantum physics folks tell us, that time really doesn't exist at all---at least in the way our senses seem to tell us it does...

Now, the original plan for the rest of this trip, following Arizona, was that I was to go on back to New Zealand to do a whole string of gigs I had been unable to do in January, and then from New Zealand go on around the world to Cairo, Egypt, to see the pyramids and on again from there to Ireland and England to do some shows there. The New Zealand part of that trip happened, and will be chronicled below. The Egypt and Ireland and England parts of the trip did not happen, and I want to tell you why.

Why didn't I go on around the world as planned? Negative thinking and the failure of communication, which I think are the primary causes of most of our failures in this life. First off, one Irish person I'd expected to work with turned out to be someone who did a lot of negative thinking. Negative thinking will prevent anything from happening. It seemed to me after numerous attempts to change the negative thinker's orientation that it was just not possible for me to alter it from a long distance away. Maybe I should have tried harder, but I do tend to shy away from negative people. Two other Irish people I was in touch with failed to communicate well. Without communication it isn't possible to do much.

Then there was England. I thought I had a plan in place to do some things with someone in England. As it turned out...wrong! I thought someone was doing quite a bit of organizing. We had exchanged a number of very positive e-mails about the prospective trip. He seemed both confident and enthusiastic. Told me he had a car lined up, a sound system, that he had a multitude of good connections, that he would get some things arranged and would be in touch with me right after Christmas to firm up everything. I believed it. Why wouldn't I? I waited. And waited. I didn't attempt to organize anything else because I thought surely everything must be going along all right. Didn't want to press too hard. Eventually I sent some more e-mails, and tried unsuccessfully to contact the person by telephone. By the time I realized and accepted that this person in England was just quite simply never going to contact me again, it was too late for me to put anything else in place---although I did try and had a lot of help from some English friends in the trying. It was just too late. Because one person in England could not be bothered to take five minutes at any point to send me an e-mail to let me know he was not going to be able to assist me in putting a tour together, the entire trip to England was lost.

Since all of this happened I have sent multiple e-mails to this person, just to see if I can find out if he is okay and to discover if possible what on earth happened. There has never been any response. I even asked a friend who lives not far from where this person lives to go to his house and see if he is all right. For all I knew, he could have been lying in his house, dead. He could have been run down and killed by a bus. Lightning could have struck him. My friend did go to this man's house...and found that he is perfectly fine. In some ways, anyway. Strange, very strange.

Enough on the subject, except that I do want to be certain all my English readers of this update know that the person who let me down so spectacularly in England was NOT Gerald Brown, my good friend and organizer from Ferndown in southern England. Gerald has always been entirely reliable and a man of his word. He has not been involved in any arrangements I have attempted to make in England lately, due to pressing personal/family matters occupying him otherwise.

Onward---and back to New Zealand. There were a lot of shows I wanted to do in New Zealand in January that I just couldn't do because there simply wasn't time for them. I had to get back to Texas in February for bookings there. Now, in early April 2007, I headed out of Phoenix on good old United Airlines, bound around the world once again. I landed in Auckland many hours after I left Phoenix, and immediately caught a bus to Tirau, where Karen Hansen met me and took my exhausted hulk to her beautiful country home near that village, to recuperate.

Once I was back on my feet (and it doesn't take me long, because I've travelled so much jet lag just doesn't affect me seriously at all) I met with my extremely talented and skilled guitar cohort Garry Spain of Te Awamutu, and we rehearsed. Then I met with Keith Herbert and the Cimarron band, and we rehearsed. Then, not wasting any time at all, we did the first show of this New Zealand tour on April 13, in a hall in Te Aroha, NZ. The next night (April 14) we did one at Putaruru, NZ. The next night (April 15) we did one at the Te Awamutu, NZ, country club. This was a busy week, but it was lots of fun! I greatly enjoy working with Keith Herbert and the Cimarron band. All are good musicians and all really care about the music. Of course I love to work with Garry Spain too. He is a very fine musician and I look forward to doing plenty more with him in the future.

Highlights of this time included having dinner and relaxation with Garry and Carol Spain and a great group of friends in the Spain's beautiful Te Awamutu home; a visit to the bustling city of Rotorua and dinner there in a wonderful seafood restaurant with a big group of friends; and a musical get-together hosted by Karen Hansen at her country home near Tirau. Karen and her housemate Val always make me feel at home. Sweet ladies!

I went back to the Tirau coffee shop I like so well, while I was in the area, too. Alley Cats. Great place. Great coffee. Beautiful young women running it, with that clean sunny New Zealand look about them. They "make an old man smile", as JesseWinchester once wrote.

Back on the bus, I rolled into Marton, New Zealand, again, next. It was great to visit and jam with friends there again. On April 21 did a typically very well organized and very well attended concert put together by Anne George at the Marton Club in that town. Had a good backup band, and the band opened. My little Rainbow girls sang a couple of songs with me. I love having those kids on. The are some lovely little girls between eight and ten years of age, coached by Anne George. The kids have learned to sing some of my songs and I really enjoy having them on my shows now and then.

The next evening, April 22, the same crew that did the Marton Club show travelled to the Rangitiki Club in Fielding, New Zealand, where we did a similar show. This one also went very well indeed!

Leaving Marton, I journeyed to Wellington, NZ, for a visit with my friends Neal and Freda and Linda Jeffries. We had a great get-together with all of fun old friends have. Neal is a walking encyclopedia of country music (the real stuff). I was happy to help him find and purchase on the internet a DVD of a movie called "The Concert Hank Williams Never Gave". It really is a good movie, depicting a concert Hank Williams might have done, but did not do, shortly before he died.

One day Neal and I made a little trip to visit Peter Banks and family. Peter is a country musician from Kent, England, now living in Wellington. I explained to Peter what happened with the fellow in England who let me down on this trip, and Peter is going to be working with me to make better connections for England next trip. Networking. Later in the visit Peter and his wife and an Aussie friend of Neal's who is a good singer and raconteur visited at Neal's place for an evening of jamming. Good fun.

On April 25 my friend and bassist Gary Frost, of Waikanae, arrived at the Jeffries home in Wellington to collect me and take me to his home in Waikanae. I stayed with Gary and Wendy Frost while in the area, and enjoyed that very much indeed. They are great people and fine friends. Gary is a housebuilder and a fine bassist. We worked on a lot of music while I was there, because we have plans for doing some international touring next year. Gary Frost, Garry Spain and I could do a lot of music together, and we plan to do just that!

On April 27 Gary Frost and I played the Rock Salt Restaurant in Waikanae. It is a gorgeous place with wonderful food. We had a friendly audience---including Wendy Frost and Gary and Wendy's lovely adult daughter and her guy. Lots of fun. Gary likes to do a lot of the vintage jazz tunes, so we played a good many of those. Great gig.

The next day I played the Otaki RSA in Otaki, where a country band led by my friend Dick Thomas holds forth regularly. It was fun to see Dick again. I just did a few tunes with the band backing---one of them my song I Wish I Didn't Know, which has long been a favorite of Dick's. There was a big audience, and lots of acts on the show. Good pay for small work, as they say.

April 29 saw Gary and I back at the Rock Salt Restaurant at lunch time, and then on to the Waterfront Brasserie in Paraparaumu (the Kapiti Coast) later in the day. Both gigs went very well. The Waterfront has become one of my favorite places to play. It is a very nice place, and I draw good crowds there. Gary and I "covered the waterfront", doing all sorts of music. My friends Tom Calder and Chris Down were kind enough to provide a good sound system for the evening. A young couple recently come to New Zealand from Europe, who were at the Rock Salt gig, showed up at the Waterfront. I had a nice visit with them and discovered that the man, who is Swiss, knows several people in Switzerland with whom I have been trying to connect for some time. Maybe he will be able to help me get in touch with these people. Networking.

Back on the bus...this time for a trip to Te Awamutu, first, where I spent an evening at Garry and Carol Spain's home, visiting and jamming with Garry and a friend of his who plays good older jazz; and then onward to Auckland, where Lynn Walters collected me from the main bus terminal for a couple of days' visit. I really like Lynn. She makes her way as a professional musician in Auckland and elsewhere in New Zealand. She's a talented songwriter---and, I discovered on this visit---a good painter of pictures too! We hung out, hit the coffee shops, walked along the beach, solved the world's problems, and Lynn hosted a really nice jam session and get-together of a lot of my Auckland friends I had not had a chance to see other places on this trip. I had a chance to play my new guitar instrumental Arizona with Tracey Lambert accompanying on a nice hand drum. Sounded pretty good, I thought.

Too soon, had to go. Bus again---this time to Whangarei, one of my favorite towns in a country of many really lovely towns. There my friend Lois Pratt had put together a couple of final New Zealand gigs for me. Lois is one of those organized people who really knows how to get things done. Both shows were good ones: The Mount Manaia Country Club on May 4, and Reva's, a beautiful big waterfront restaurant and pub operated by an American living in New Zealand, on May 6. I had the great pleasure of having talented electric bass guitarist Roslyn Gilmour join me for both of these evenings. That woman is a superb bassist, and a very good singer as well. Her husband Stan Gilmour set up and ran sound for us, and he did a great job of it. Reva gave us all tasty meals at no charge. All good, as I like to say!

During my time in Whangarei I did not get to see my friends Ian Goodsman and wife Lynn, because Ian, a professional musician, was off on a tour and Lynn had accompanied him. I did have a great time visiting with Phil and Lois Pratt, who have become good friends. On Sunday, all of us journeyed to Kaitaia so I could have a visit this trip with my great friends Trevor and Beryl Curreen. I didn't think I'd be able to see Trevor and Beryl this time, but as it turned out Phil and Lois were game for a trip to Kaitaia. We had fun going and coming back. The two couples hit it off very well, and we all had lots of laughs and good times. Did Trevor and I jam for hours? Of course we did. The Pratts and Beryl were patient with us. Beryl fixed us one of her fantastic natural foods meals. Her cooking really is nothing short of fantastic. I sure am glad I had a chance to visit with these very special friends of mine, and that my very special friends, Phil and Lois, were kind enough to make it possible. Thanks, guys...

My flight back to Los Angeles departed from Auckland airport in the evening of May 8. On May 7 Lois drove me to Auckland, and we visited and stayed the night with Diane Burkhardt, Lois's daughter, her guy, Graeme, and her three kids. These were really wonderful people! Diane is one of New Zealand's noted clothing designers. She is also a very talented gourmet cook. The kids are great, all talented in music. Graeme, also, plays piano. We ran around Auckland, visited Diane's shop, talked and laughed, and played lots of music. I feel I really made friends with these delightful people. Diane's older son is a pianist. Her younger son Tynan is a fast-developing young guitarist, and I'm trying to help him with some things via e-mail. He does some of the tapping style of guitar playing that is WAY off my track, but it sounds good and I admire his ability to do it.

As always, I regretted leaving New Zealand. It is a great place to be, and over the years I've made many friends there. I will be back, time after time. The road called, though, and I needed to answer. I arrived back in Los Angeles, had a visit with my brother, then travelled to Washington D.C., and after one night there went on to Tampa, where my good friend Doug Purcell collected me at the airport. Next stop: Lakeland!

On May 12, my good friend Suz Chapman of Lakeland presented the Charley Groth Guitar Day in Lakeland. We had workshops morning and afternoon, and a concert in the evening. My dear friends Dan Ost, Diana Ost, and Carl Wade did the concert with me. The students were eager and earnest, and I think they all learned something. The concert was a sellout, and the crowd seemed to enjoy it very much. I enjoyed staying over the next day and just visiting with my friends.

Knowing that I would soon be leaving Florida for my summer tour in the USA (and yes, I had just arrived at home a few days before), my longtime friend and supporter Gloria Holloway hosted a concert for me in Tampa on May 19. The turnout was phenomenal. It was very, very heartwarming for me to realize how many folks in my home area enjoy my music and wanted to hear me and visit with me enough to deal with a call-ahead for reservations situation in order to do so. The place was just jam-packed. I couldn't stop grinning. Dan Ost and Carl Wade played with me, and Diana Ost guested on harmonica on several tunes. I thought we sounded pretty good! After the show we all visited and ate and jammed the night away. This show made me feel really really good.

Actually, I was able to have an unexpected extra week at home. Normally the Florida Folk Festival is held on Memorial Day weekend annually. I was booked for the festival in 2007...but the festival was cancelled, and then rescheduled for November, because of what the state of Florida saw as a high degree of hazard from brush fires in Florida that were covering much area in the northern part of the state, where the festival is held. I used the week to get myself more ready than I had been before to hit the summer road.

That road began in Georgiana, Alabama, the hometown of Hank Williams, at the Hank Williams Memorial Festival. This was the third year I've played this event. It's a lot of fun, and I've made lots of friends. I've had the opportunity to be on the same bill with people like Ray Price, Marty Stuart, Connie Smith, Jett Williams, Gene Watson, on and on. More importantly I've played shows with guitar wizard J. D. Beach and master songwriter Terry Smith. This year the headliner at the festival were Gene Watson and Mark Chestnut. I like Gene Watson as a good solid (all too solid, judging by the size of his paunch these days) mainstream country singer. Mark Chestnut doesn't thrill me. As always, I loved performing both my own stuff and with Terry Smith at the festival. It was a good time.

From Alabama I travelled to Cape Girardeau, Missouri, where I go annually to visit my cousin and lifelong friend Stanely Stough and his family, and to play a concert May 8 at Auburn Creek. After Auburn Creek I drove to Poplar Bluff, Missouri, where I performed that evening in a very cool venue, the Java Stop Cafe. Amazing to find such a very nice place in a relatively small town in mid-Missouri. Host Leesa Tilotta knows how to do it right, and I had a lot of fun doing my music there. My friend Teresa Carel, of Van Buren, let me know last year that the place existed. This year I booked it, and I'm happy to say they liked what I did and rebooked me for September. That's how it works, folks!

On May 9 I travelled on down the westbound highway in Missouri to the Ozark resort town of Van Buren, in the Ozark Scenic Riverways National Park area. That evening I played once again at Michael's Restaurant, where Teresa Carel is music director and a good e-mail buddy. Teresa wasn't able to be there on this occasion, but her parents, who are great folks and have become good friends, did come in for the evening. I really enjoyed visiting with them. The food at Michael's is superb.

Following my gig at Michael's in Van Buren, I headed north into the Ozarks, stopping to hike and sight-see at several locations. There is no more beautiful area in the United States. I spent a great couple of days camping and having fun. At the remote Pulltite Trail Ranger Station, I recorded by telephone a radio interview with Woody Adkins, of Columbia, Missouri's KOPN. That is in support of an upcoming gig in Columbia.

When I left Columbia I drove to Fulton, Missouri, the town where, at Westminster College, Winston Churchill delivered his famed "Iron Curtain" speech that was one of the first early warnings of the Cold War with the Soviet Union which was to come. There is a very impressive Winston Churchill museum in Fulton, housed in an ancient Christopher Wren church that was gutted by German bombs in London in 1940. I spent hours in the museum. Churchill is possibly the most important and influential Briton of the modern era. The museum is fascinating. If you have a chance to get to Fulton, Missouri, to visit it, you won't be disappointed.

With that I'll conclude this update. I really enjoy writing them. This one has been completed on the very pleasant deck of the home of my friend Dale Palmer in Columbia, Missouri. I'm just about caught up to date with the updates now, and I will try very hard not to fall so far behind again. I get a kick out of the fact that so many of you enjoy reading about my life. It really does seem like a blessed life to me. I work very hard to make it what I want it to be.

As ever, I'd like to hear from you, so please, dear friends, seriously--send me a few lines of e-mail to let me know how's by you. Note that I have a NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS: charleygroth@yahoo.com

Choose to be happy!

Charley Groth, charleygroth@yahoo.com