We’re headed for Leyton in east East London, close by the new Olympic games complexes. The Games are 10 days away, but we’re worried about traffic. We take the outer ring motorway, and it’s a smooth sail, until traffic stops cold. Six lanes of gridlock, with oddly pastoral fields to the right, between us and the legendary metropolis somewhere south in the distance. We get off the motorway, into suburban gridlock, quickly get back on. If we don’t get the rentacar back by 4 p.m. we get gouged a fee of unknown size and scale–rental companies have a wild imagination when it comes to missing deadlines.

Traffic picks up, and we exit for the high road heading south into Leyton. We’re in the outer realms of metropolis, rolling south in slow lumbering traffic through unending canyons of three story flats with business fronts. But this is pure entertainment. Every people on earth is living here, in veils, beautiful robes, cheap suits, hip suits, Euro Americana knockoff t-shirts and jeans, all ages, from Eastern Europe, Russia, Africa, the Middle East. The streets are a bazaar, shop signs profuse in polyglot tongues, spices of the world waft into our idling car, the sidewalks are packed to bursting with human traffic. This is the crossroads of the world.

Our high road lurches and bends and turns southward, through harrowing roundabouts. We’re barely moving. An hour of life’s rich pageant out the window, and we reach Leyton, take side streets through quiet poor neighborhoods to our destination: The Birkbeck Tavern.

We load in through the side door in great haste, and Paul and Rob pile back into the car and race south, more teeming humanity on the high road, to the docks area and the striking brand new Olympic Village, onto a long pier and a deserted rentacar complex. We leave the car on a desolate dock, undinged despite roundabouts and lorries, hand over the keys triumphantly ten minutes before the deadly deadline.

The duo is feeling a weight lifting. We’re in London, we’re out of the car and into the best public transportation system on earth, staying in the same place we’re playing for the next three days. This feels like a vacation. We take a double decker bus back towards Leyton, enjoying the slow crawl from the upper level, then hoof it the last couple of miles, part of the sidewalk stream of humanity, mark the scrubby pub claiming to be the birthplace of Iron Maiden with Instagram photos, stop off for a pint of Jamesons in a shop, sip it from a paper bag on our meander. This is the most leisurely we’ve felt in three weeks.

Back at the Birkbeck Tavern, we meet Steve the tough and cool N. Ireland expat and his even tougher Yorkshire wife Ali, with charming tough accent. These hippie wanderer pub managers put on the What’s Cookin’ series in the bar, which draws established and even famous acts from all over the world. What’s Cookin’ is cookin’. We grab our rooms upstairs: PL and VJ settle into spacious matrimonial suite overlooking a lovely garden; MD and RW struggle to inflate two airmats with their own shrinking lungs in a living room where the family smokes.  Invigorated, the band grabs some food and checks out the very good opening British folk act.

The Parsonesque electric country rock band The Snakes hits the stage next, and they sound great, jangling guitars and good singing. We use their gear, do an electric show, and rock the house. The Hawks are a touring machine, our 21st show in 19 days, and the crowd is with us.

We hang, sign CDs, quaff pints, and eventually head upstairs.

We have a piece of the rare and precious nugget handed to us in Leicester. It’s our second to last night of a long journey so we fire up. Even Victoria’s going to take a hit, her first in years. The windows are nailed shut, it’s a tough neighborhood.  But there’s a big ashtray filled with butts. So it it’s cool to spark a J in here, right?  Sir?  A mellow evening in our upstairs den awaits—ah, but for England’s draconian pot laws. Our hostess Ali comes in to turn down the beds and smells the herbal essence, kinda really freaks out. We feel like teens in mom’s basement caught red-handed. She claims it’s a serious bust for the Birkbeck if the cops come around after smelling our sweat leaf. Really?  Sorry, mates. We’ll try and make up for it. We’re from mellow California, where the weed flows like wine. God save the CCTV.

Next day, gloomy of course, or nurturing, as a desert dweller might notice, we roust ourselves and take the tube out to Barry Everett’s House Of Mercy, west and north of Birkbeck but still in vast east London, on an old tree lined street of brick flats with ancient small parks and ruined churches decaying with dignity. Barry and crew are great, show us around, set up a video cam and mikes and we have a great live show/interview. Barry’s lived the full UK to US Concorde 60s 70s counterculture lifestyle, and we hope he writes his memoirs and sends us a copy. Fascinating guy.

It’s only noon and we’re in London, well rested and jacked up by the emanations in the air, as the center of western civilization preps for the Olympics. We grab the tube for Covent Gardens, a kind of Grove at Glendale if it were built hundreds of years ago, of massive brick and beautiful stone. The place is rocking, intriguing markets and outdoor food vendors, street performers, packed with tourists, including the guitar toting Hawks. Victoria lived in London for three years, and she guides us through the mazes, finds us a spud stand, where we gorge our suddenly starving selves. Bacon, butter, chives, mushrooms, we do it all. Damn. Rob and Paul find a tobacconist, buy a silver tin of snuff. The male Hawks sniff, our lady abstains. What a fantastic buzz. You’re alert, relaxed, in love with life’s rich pageant. We wend our way through packed people, back to the tube, bouncy ride underground back to Leyton, half mile walk through flat land to the Birkbeck.

It’s our last show of the tour. This is it. Our straight-edge vagabond hippie hosts have set up a great acoustic show that we’re headlining. We dig the young old timey band, uh oh, pretty damn good, tough act to follow, lots of energy and free spirits. They lead the crowd outside into the garden, where blue competes with gray in the heavens above, shout micless into the open air. The crowd loves it. We start our set indoors with mics, oh yeah, we win the crowd over quickly. Steve then leads the crowd and bands outdoors, where we do a couple of acoustic songs and then jam with the other musicians, 12 of us belting out Ring Of Fire, jumping up on the big wooden table to sing verses. Gentle long English twilight commences as we pack up, embraces all around, long chats with new friends and fans.

We’re done. Next day we scatter over London, Rob meeting his sister, Marc a cousin, Victoria and Paul exploring Brick Lane, where Victoria’s English born grandmother lived in gray poverty before emigrating to America. The ghosts of want are still in the air, even as the area has become a hotbed of British optimism and new commerce. Hip couture, an actually excellent espresso bar, an architect’s school showing off student final projects in an old warehouse space, Rough Trade Records, where we’re pleased to see the Blue Rose release of our new CD in the bins. Victoria spots Zooey Deschanel walking down a wide lane. We meet old Coles compatriots, young and happening architect and Cole’s Alumnus Chuck and his wife Georgia, an immigration lawyer, who show us their cool flat, fill us in on local lore, tell Victoria she can get UK citizenship because of her grandma, and take us to a phenomenal Vietnamese restaurant.  Life is, once again, very very good.

Next day we scatter. Rob and Marc tube it to Heathrow and America, Victoria and Paul roam London for a few more days, good food and food for thought, tubes and walking, films and culture, the global feast as the Olympics loom and flowers are planted while the city carries on.

Every tour must have a low point. There are scientific and linguistic/logical principles that insist upon this. And so, Swindon. For fans of the ”The Office” (the real one — not the gutted, unwatchable U.S. imitation) Swindon is the nearby rival to Ricky Gervais’s Slough paper products branch office. In the real Swindon, a ten story gray 70’s office building with most of its windows shattered rises as a sort of town centerpiece. It was built to replace a handsome old brick college building, but the modern experiment failed.

As low points go, this one is higher than most. Perched atop the town’s steepest hill, stands a cool little pub, The Beehive. As we wind through tightly parked cars up the narrow residential road, it begins to look familiar. Two story row houses packed together with bay windows and garages below. You’d think it was Potrero Hill if you didn’t know better. Six years have fogged our already foggy memories.  As we walk in Paul wonders, was it kind of a bummer playing here last time? Maybe. Rob remembers the little dramatic video we shot here entitled “Exeunt Pub.” That was fun, right? Maybe the Beehive has changed. Or maybe we have. Perhaps our expectations have risen a bit for the places we expect to play. And that’s a good thing.

But we’re country rock soldiers, people. A funky pub is not going to get us down. We know how to deal with this. Paul and Marc get to work setting up the sad P.A. and backline. We all swallow hard as we discover the meager money deal. The accommodations are stinky sofas scattered in the flat above the bar. Now, we’ll sleep just about anywhere, and have, but this is beyond our funk limit, mostly because of the cigarette butts filling the large ashtrays scattered about. Rob and Victoria hit the streets and luckily find a cheap and very cool B&B a short walk away. Whew.

Brightened by the newfound digs, the band takes position and digs into the first set. The gig is okay, could have been worse. Paul overcomes his recurring sullen fit about the backline amp, tonight a giant Traynor with the tone of a, well, Traynor. There’s a group of bearded hippie types gathered near the front. Thank god, the Deadheads have arrived! There’s even a tapir. An Irishman in the front row seems to be singing along. We’ll later learn he skipped work to be at this show, a fan made six years ago on a night not unlike this one. These gigs are the ones that turn you into a band. While some of the crowd would obviously prefer Stevie Ray Vaughn tunes, we find our most innovative and free rock sound of the tour. Victoria plays a rock solid train beat that fits perfectly with all our two beats. But in her drummer’s heart of hearts she’s a groovy melodic indie rock drummer. We turn each song into a jam, Paul turns his overdrive to 11 to disengage Traynor tone. We rock, stretching songs way out. The crowd responds. They’ve been waiting for some action and the action has arrived. The night ends well, the kind owner flowing us a generous bar tab. So it’s a wash, not bad for a low point. Good night, Swindon!

We amble down the road to The Swan B&B. We hang in the Doten-Waller suite watching British game shows, drinking tea, and smoking our first joint of the tour out the window. Finally, someone has hooked up the band–thank you, intriguing mysterious cowboy in Leicester. And it’s actually not bad stuff, even for these spoiled California stoners. We set our alarms for the early free breakfast. That’s the trick of the B&B. You’ve got to be able to get up for that breakfast no matter what. Marc rises first. Then Rob. They knock on the slumbering couple’s door. Shocked and dismayed, they too muster. Bacon. Orange juice. Tea. Cereal. The morning is gray. We are in England. The end of our tour is here, a tour which has, as we suspected it would, passed in a flash. Prepared as we were, we’re a little bewildered and hurt. It’s over? We’re not ready for it to be over. But the end is nigh. Flashes of harsh desert air, desiccating chapparal, billboards and reckless driving on vast freeways intrude into the soft green vistas before us as we motor east toward London, windshield wipers clicking hypnotically.

It’s Tuesday, July 10th. We’ve been away just under two weeks but due to the relentless schedule of this tour we’ve had not a moment to chronicle our journey. Dear Reader, we apologize. We’ll try to catch up. At the moment, we’re speeding towards Bristol on the M6. We have a radio show at 3 pm at the BBC. Will we make it? Torrential rains are in the forecast once again. When we ask natives how long the drive is between Liverpool and Bristol we get answers varying from 2 to 7 hours. Google (like Obama), takes the middle road and says three and a half hours. We shall see.

Last night we played a house concert in the lovely two story brick row house of Peter and Gabrielle Davies, aka The Good Intentions. They won Best Americana act at the British Country Music Awards this year, and we’re excited about finally getting to play with them. The GIs live just down the street from Paul McCartney’s boyhood home. After a terrific dinner of fish risotto by Gabi, wow, did we need that!, with Peter leading we walked the half mile through quiet two story flats and trees to the quaint Council House of this McCartney musical mountain. Quite a feeling to be there. A tour guide guides two tourists in front of the building. Liverpool does feel Beatlesque, leafy neighborhoods and roundabouts. We’re not going to get a chance to see the port and its historic docks.

We walked back to the Davies house properly humbled. Evening. The audience, music aficionados and good friends all, filtered in to drink and mingle. The Good Intentions did a short but sweet acoustic duo set, no microphones in this most excellent small living room concert room. We did the same, just acoustic guitars, bass in small amp, Victoria with broomsticks on a CD box. We got a great balance, did our best acoustic show of the tour so far. The audience got very enthusiastic, their polite British nature giving way to genuine joy. It’s a good feeling. We did a short first set and took a break, the room grown hot and faces glistening. We stepped out into the damp and cool Liverpool night. Back inside for one more set, the sets they just keep coming on this tour. But it was a good one. We chatted for a long time with our new friends and fans. These people know music. We hung with the Davies, drinking whiskey on the couches, their very cool children and friends hanging too. A delightful and civilized evening.

Ah, but now it’s raining, we’ve missed our motorway exit, of course, and Rob is using precious roaming iPhone minutes to get nervous driver Paul back on course. We’ve gone 20 minutes eastward from Liverpool, so we backtrack, finally head southward, Bristol bound. The drive turns enchanting, even on the brisk motorway, dark rain and brilliant sunlight alternating in great waves over the fields and towns racing past.

We make Bristol with an hour to spare, cruise the high (main) street, note the ornamental patterns set into otherwise pragmatic brick row houses. Bristol was clearly a prosperous big town for a long time. We will learn from various chats with locals that this was the center of the slave trade triangle: trinkets and goods to Africa in the big wooden ships, slaves from Africa to America, cotton from America back to Bristol. Nasty and efficient. Bristol 2012 looks tidy, upbeat, and prosperous, with mysterious means of income, like most of western civilization.

BBC Bristol is a model of BBC effiency, genteel officiousness, and intelligence. We maneuver through the security checkpoints, are guided by a nervous greeter to the coffee lounge, and then play a live acoustic set with a super cool, smart, and informed DJ Alex. She’s listened to our material, has great questions, has fun. We’re getting good use out of the CD box, Victoria’s second show in a row on the percussion instrument. Thank you, BBC. Long may you rule, and may American radio follow your example, especially the interest in Americana bands from America.

With our car safely in the high security zone of BBC parking, we wander up the high street, check out the cool Silverlake period of gentrification shops. Cool hang with wi fi at a cafe, Rob chats with the family, whom he misses palpably at this point. Rob and Victoria hit the high end organic cosmetics shop, Marc and Paul amble downhill and fetch the car, we’re off to the St. Bonaventure Social Club up a few grades and through roundabouts eastward. What a beautiful town, all graceful old flats and generous parks, big old trees. The brooding clouds are our constant companion. A nurturing climate. The crew at St. Bonaventure’s are super cool, efficient, have great gear and drum kit for us, including a 1970s Fender Twin Reverb that sounds great, overcoming Paul’s historic aversion to Twins and their sinister cousins, the Mesa Boogie family. We do a full rocking sound check, take a long downhill walk to the street of shops, grab dinner, and walk back up.

St. Bonaventure’s is indeed a multipurpose community center room somehow connected to another deconsecrated church, with an impressive calendar of touring country, roots, and folk bands. Alejandro Escovedo, whose UK paths we are crossing several times, is here a few nights later. The seats in the big concert room are almost full, to our delight, and we do a set that builds to our closing rockers. It’s been interesting building sets with this first time ever lineup, with a batch of mellow songs from our new CD that we’re translating into acoustic and electric shows. We’ve got it down by now, and the crowd digs our thumping conclusion. The Fender Twin has tired tubes, gets quieter and quieter, Paul turns it up and up, and by our last “Good And Foolish Times” encore it sounds like a transistor amp through a fuzz pedal. Nobody but Paul and Marc seem to notice, and we exit the stage feeling loved and appreciated. We do the hang, sign CDs, and our kind hosts for the evening,

Tony and Guilly Jones, lead us in caravan through dark Bristol and down a six mile winding dark country lane to their B&B in the village of Pensford. We have a drink, a nice chat, and to bed in comfy rooms upstairs.

Morning reveals we are in a stunning 19^th century bakery turned sprawling B&B. Guilly makes us a fine breakfast, and we loiter long in the terraced yard that sprawls steeply down to the black and fast flowing Chew River, with fields beyond. Guilly takes us on a dreamlike walk through the old village with ancient carving in church wall and domed single room stone gaol, and out of town along the beautiful Chew sheltered by elms and other big trees. We walk the path under a massive Victorian arched railway bridge, into the hedges and fields with cattle and lonely wealthy farmer’s stone houses. The air is balmy and soft blue, barley bends with the breeze, cattle and sheep graze, and we wander in a big loop and back into town.

A fond farewell to Guilly and we’re off for Towersey, 50 miles northwest of London. On the map it looks like a piece of cake, so we take small roads out of Pensford, avoiding Bristol, and our wandering is rewarded with stunning vistas of Somerset farmland, unspoiled, timeless, and bursting with life from the very heavy spring and summer rains. We stop at a roadside pub for fish and chips and local strong beer, drive off well lubricated and mellow, veer somehow into the ancient town of Bath, drive narrow old streets become canyons by a burst of 18^th century Palladium style building by architects John Wood The Elder And Son. The yellowish Bathstone (a local limestone) buildings form massive and long planned boulevards and circuses that resemble Paris in boldness and farsightedness. Dazzled, we meander the streets until a lane spills us out onto a roundabout that takes us to the M4 eastward.

Now we’re running late, in classic Hawks style. Eastward, then north through the outskirts of Oxford, under beautiful blackening and lightening skies and bursts of rain, then eastward, we’re lost, we’re found, we’re lost, down a series of flat farm lanes, and sometime after sunset we reach the venerable Three Horseshoes Tavern in ancient village Towersey, east Oxfordshire, official home of the Towersey Morris Men

As the guidebook says: “Towersey is a small rural parish just inside the East Oxfordshire border. The origins of its name can be found back as far as the Saxon times. The village can be found in the Doomsday Book under it’s original name of Eye. The name Towersey is actually derived from Richard de Tours. The Tours family were owners of the land and area. Therefore, they became know as the Tours of Eye which led to usages such as Toureye, Towerseye and finally Towersey.” By the 14^th century the Abbot of the Church of Thame had taken the land.

In that same century, the 14^th, yes, the 1300s, young Americans, the barn in which we are to perform was built. Sturdy and whitewashed, the barn has what look like and locals agree are arrow shooting slits. As we pull into the rain soaked parking lot our anxious host Mark Wallace greets us. We’re pretty late, but we do a quick but efficient sound check, two big condensor mics and an upright bass, yeah!, have time to grab a pint at the Three Horseshoes across the yard. The doorway is low, the ceilings almost too low for Rob to stand upright, the floor is ancient planks. We’re drenched in history.

Back to the barn, and it sounds good. We’ve got a medium sized enthusiastic crowd, and we do two sets and an encore, as rain falls outside. Martin and his wife Georgia, very cool folks, lead us back to their row house in the village of Princes Risborough. We take to our rooms and crash. It’s been a long day.

Next morning Martin suggests we walk the mile into town center, which we do, have a cheery English breakfast, heavy on the sausage, in a corner shop, then wander the farmers market. We buy cheeses from a bewhiskered gray gentleman in tweed who rolls a cigarette with tobacco from a tin emblazoned with a marijuana leaf, who fills us in on local lore. A french woman presides over a cart with phenomenal olives and pickled vegetables, and another cart is overflowing with enticing plump bread loaves of a variety we can only wish on Whole Foods. We buy wander, just miss a boys choir in an ancient chapel in ancient cemetery. As we walk out of town center, two gawky raptors fly overhead, circle. Are those kites? The fabled birds we looked for in vain in the hills over Wellinghan, County Down? Yes, they are! They seem to follow us, and back at Martin and Georgia’s house they circle overhead. It looks like their nesting tree is at the edge of our hosts’ long and productive vegetable row garden.

We hit the road, iGuide Rob calling out directions, north for Leicester through Aylesbury, Bicester, Bloxham, Banbury, Byfield, Graydon, just missing Stratford-upon-Avon, past Coventry, Bedworth, Nuneaton, Wigston, roundabouts and hedges, some new suburbs but nothing alarming, into Leicester. A functional town.

It’s raining. We’re hungry. We park, load in and do a quick sound check at The Musician, at the end of a factory road. All is gray except for the bright yellow Musician entrance. The soundman is excellent, cheery, and we cheer up, it sounds great, we’re going acoustic again. Victoria almost slices her finger off with an ancient and cruel drum stool, but it’s only a flesh wound, and Victoria toughs it out. We find the street

with food, grab mediocre Indian fare, come back, and to our pleasant surprise, we’ve got a reasonable sized audience again. And we put on a great show, in Paul’s humble opinion the best of the tour. The grooves groove, the vocals are dialed in from the previous nineteen shows and the monitors are great, Rob’s sounding gigantic, Victoria’s a train beat metronome, we rock. The crowd goes quietly wild, we do a long encore, hang out and sign CDs. A night we were concerned about couldn’t have turned out better.

A friend of the club, Tony, has cheap rooms for us in his row house a few miles from town. We hang out with the other roomers and some musician buddies who turn out to have a great sounding folk band, watch a bit of Orson Welles’s “Touch Of Evil.” In the middle of the famous opening shot, Marc observes, isn’t that Venice Beach? By jove, it’s got to be. Suddenly the Mexican border town is good old L.A. But judge for your self, dear reader.

We hang. We crash. It’s raining.

After three nights in the institutional comforts of the Ulster American Folk Park it’s good to wake up in our quaint and familiar farmhouse. Here we are free to linger in the common rooms in our underwear with whiskey or Guinness or both. We can pee in the grass by the roadside (at least the guys can), we can make our own toast just the way we like it. The Folk Park was fine, and there’s even some part of you that adapts quickly to the rhythms of institutional life: the strict meal times, the brief showers, the motivating sense of shame that gets you down to do your laundry right when they open it up.

But now we’re home. We probably got to sleep around 3 a.m. from our late night flight from Magherafelt, and are more than a little fatigued. PL has woken early and whipped up a lovely breakfast of eggs, toast, scones, jam, juice and tea. There’s even a few chocolate-dipped macaroons. This hippie guitar player can really set a table, folks. The Irish Catholic energy is welling up inside him, making for an Old World breakfast for us all. Marc and RW stumble downstairs from their bachelor attic dwelling and Victoria eventually emerges from the bathroom. The faux British/Celtish accents emerge. The travel hardened band dines together in the calm pleasure of not having a gig until 8 pm, and it’s close by, too.

We’ve been here over a week now, the jet lag has faded, our heads are clearing. Though the ache of missing the family back home is perhaps even a bit sharper, it’s also grown familiar. After breakfast, RW heads upstairs to charge his dying laptop. BOOM! What was that? The 6’4” singer has cracked his head sharply on one of the low-hanging two hundred year old beams. Uh oh. “What’s 12 + 15, Rob?” PL asks. “17,” Rob answers confidently. “Try again. What’s 12 + 15?” RW thinks for a minute, tries his best. “32.” Good God, Rob, that knock on the head has turned you into a musician! PL grabs the computer and heads down the road to Andy Peter’s wifi to check for concussion symptoms, sitting on the front steps with a jacket over his head like an old fashioned photographer. Looks like RW has about half of the symptoms, a mild concussion. Nothing an afternoon of rest and a bit of ice can’t fix. Luckily, the Hawks have not yet adopted the new NFL rules for such injuries. We take a rambling walk among the fields and stone cottages, as Rob recuperates. As the sun gives evidence, behind dark clouds, of heading towards the horizon, Andy and Jenny welcome us into their home for a cozy pre-gig dinner: lasagna, mango chicken, a piece of well-prepared fish for Vicky. Andy uncorks some fine Spanish wines and we start to really relax. The six of us can really get to yakking, the gift of gab on steroids. Uh oh! Time to go. We’ve got a gig, folks.

Returning to the Bronte is a mystical experience. Four years ago (or was it six?) we had our first gig off the plane at the Bronte Center. This deconsecrated church, originally built in 1760, was once presided over by Emily and Charlotte Bronte’s father Patrick “Brunty” Bronte. A graveyard surrounds the church that includes the often exhumed grave of notorious satanist Squire Hawkins. The valley below is many shades of bright green under black brooding clouds and the mist softened Mourne Mountains in the distance. Sweet ancient sadness and ghosts mingle with the raindrops. The history runs deep here.

With solid stone walls and a granite center aisle, the acoustics inside the Bronte are indeed holy, recording-worthy. We set up for a two-set acoustic performance and the crowd begins to fill in the pews. We spot Neve from the BBC and her fiance. Shelagh, from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, also takes a seat. The wind is blowing strongly outside and there are bursts of rain. We play the first set and light is still glowing, first through the clouds and then the windows even though the sun’s been down for hours. We take a break, say hello to friends and sign some CDs. Even as we take the stage again around 10 pm it’s not yet dark outside. Northern Ireland is indeed North, sharing latitude with Denmark and Canada. Our second set is loose and strong. The band has really found its sound. All those sets at the Folk Park have really paid off. Back through the rain to Cavan Cottage but not before taking Andy up on his offer of whiskey and TV. We settle in to a BBC4 documentary on Black Sabbath and truly relax. Seventies Brit metal memoria make us mellow and melancholy.

Morning comes too early once again. We’ve got to load up the van and head over to Letterkenny for the Earagail Arts Fest. Luckily, Andy will be driving us on this one. Jenny is coming too. Big noisy fun, every seat in the Volkswagon stepvan is occupied: three in front, three in back. This is old school road tripping at its most Irish. Andy once again pilots the van with the keen sense of an overly-cautious school teacher, bless his heart. He and Paul banter sharply about the optimal speeds for shifting gears of the cumbersome beast. We make our way through winding roads to the eastern edge of County Donegal. We all have our own rooms in euro-style tonight at the pseudo-plush Station Inn, downtown Letterkenny. My own TV! I feel like I’m back in the USA. The hotel is crawling with musicians from the fest as well as an alarmingly high number of Hen and Stag party attendees. Young ladies walk the halls wearing veils and carrying blow up sex dolls. Drunk guys sit crying in the lobby. What will happen when night falls?

We soak up the solitude of our own rooms for a while and then it’s time to head off to the fest. It’s not too far, just up a series of hills at an old Irish Army military base/Stewart family mansion that seems like it’s been in every WWII movie since 1950. You’d recognize it if you saw it. It’s the place where the Allies have set out the big map in front of the fire place to show how the final D-Day attack will occur. The festival organizers have a tent set up outside on the grand lawn overlooking the grand fields below, green and perfect, and it appears we are in for some fine dining tonight. Also, turns out we’re early. We have a bit of a stink-eye contest with the other band to see who goes on first. They are a (very) cool duo called Hat Fitz and Cara. They have seriously hip retro outfits. At least one of them is from Australia. They seem perfectly engineered for the summer Euro festival circuit. It’s not looking good. Yet somehow we win (lose) and will play second. More time to kill. We wander the grounds. There’s some huge Luminarium that we wish was open. We find an abandoned Military Police shed, get out the cameras, and start improvising a film (clips to follow). We get fed a delicious meal of crab cakes and salad with a choice of lovely Spanish wines. Uh oh, we have a gig. And Hat Fitz and Cara have killed it, a unique blend of perfectly executed Irish fiddle and wind instruments, sweet vocals, and the heavily masculine tremeloed out blues guitar–beauty and the gentle beast. The crowd adores them, and we begrudgingly admit they’re kick ass and a tough act to follow. We finally get re-plugged in on the waterlogged and woozy stage as dessert is being served. We seem to have missed the peak of the night but we still rock it as the more rugged diners dance in the aisles. The crowd is excited to see two female drummers in a row, and rocking it. Back to the hotel, we dodge Hen parties, have a few drinks at the bar with Andy and Jenny, and make our way up to TVs and beds. Thank you, generous Earagail hosts.

It’s now gray morning July 8th and suddenly it’s our last full day in Ireland. The excess of good food and wine slows our exit from Letterkenny, Andy scolding the late rising slow breakfasting band. Of course if Andy managed to hit 60 mph on the motorways east, we wouldn’t be sweating arriving for our last gig on the Emerald Isle. We have a gig at a place called the Comber Recreation Center, in a kind of low lying delta area next to a huge bay on the east coast of Northern Ireland. Interesting. We arrive a bit late and make our way past the lovely green football pitch. It really is a soccer club of some kind. Inside it all starts to make sense. It’s a pub! A sports pub! A blues club! Locals only! And that rocking energy that only locals generate, counting only on themselves, not TV of the big city, is the craic. The Legendary Craic, we’ve found it! There’s a solid all-Irish bluegrass band on stage, the Down And Out Bluegrass Band  with a banjo player that could tour with Del McCoury, he’s that good, and the low ceiling room is packed with families, kids, grandparents. It’s a scene. We meet up with the promoters, nice folks who run a night called the Enler Delta Blues Club. They take over the pub on Sundays for their shows and they’re glad to have us. Irish Johnny is back! He’s taken the bus up from his village, the sweetheart. Radio host George Jones shows up too with bass in tow. Our set goes over great but the real fun comes afterwards when a spontaneous bluegrass jam develops. We Hawks are in bluegrass heaven. We lead the Irish boys through what turns out to be a fairly complex tune, our own “Golden Girl,” but they blast through it.  The pints flow and flow and everyone is singing along. Some stocky toughs on the bench behind burst into a harmonized parallel song in the middle of an instrumental verse. This is a very musical land. A real highlight to end the Irish leg of the tour.

The six of us hit the road, band, Andy and Jenny, somewhat southward, sad and satisfied. Our Ireland farewell looms, and where did the time go? This is Jenny’s turf, and she guides Andy down twisting back roads, dales and vales, with gentle but barbed instructions. No one can bicker like the Irish. Pure entertainment. This is lovely and mysterious country, layered in ancient tales and modern strife and peace. In a tiny town we stop for Indian food. The Hawks are a bit skeptical, for this would be like stopping in Beaumont or Rialto for dining. But the glassed in restaurant serves one of the best Indian meals we’ve ever had. The mysteries are endless.

Monday on the farm, Rathfriland adjacent, green rolling County Down. We’ve settled in quite comfortably to our cozy old stone house, with the cattle lowing in the yard adjacent and flowers and fields and hedges bursting with life from the heaviest rains in Irish history. Rob and Marc are upstairs in rooms with ceilings too low to stand up in. Victoria and Paul reap the marriage status once again, with the big comfy room downstairs. We put on tea, coal in the fireplace, whip up a proper breakfast of eggs, toast, and sausage with black tea and milk, chat with our horrible fake British/Irish accents. Delightful.

This group could easily become citizens of the British Isles. Victoria’s grandmother was raised in London and Victoria lived there for three years in her wild youth, Marc’s forebears came from London on the Mayflower (yes), Paul’s great grandfather’s township is three miles away from our farm, and Rob recently found out that Waller is an ancient Norman name, and his people might have arrived in Ireland 800 years ago. We might never leave.

But leave we must, for after some strolls down farm lanes our host Andy Peters is honking, the big van fired up for our journey south to Dublin. Andy grew up in County Down, is a wealth of all types of local lore, was jacked at gunpoint by both the IRA and the cops, and has seen it all. He and his wife Jenny have the most musical speech we’ve ever heard, which we try and fail to imitate. Andy takes us on a back route south, past dolmens, past a monument to a British generals, past mass rocks where fugitive priests had to hold secret ceremonies while the British crushed Catholicism, past a motorway scene of a devastating IRA bombing. Every inch of this island is packed with drama.

We eventually meander our way onto the M1 which takes us south into Dublin on a lovely cloud and blue sky afternoon. We peer out excitedly, trying to soak in this international city as we roll, for we won’t get a chance to sightsee, not on this tour. We’re playing every single night, or day and night.

Whelan’s is a big and venerable club with wide planks on the floor and big flagstones upstairs, like a cathedral floor. We sound check in the upstairs room, get gourmet free range organic burgers dished up by Japanese chefs in a fish and chips type joint. Our brief taste of Dublin internationalism. Perhaps the best part of the night is the deluxe penthouse green room.  Since it’s Monday and there’s no big ticket headliner on the giant stage downstairs, the Hawks are given the key to the inner-sanctum A-list green room. There’s a patio, a private bar, a big Jesus crucifixion painting complete with candles. All the furniture fits the mid-century modern theme, there’s even a peet fire in the fireplace.  Truly glorious. The show goes well, we have just enough of a crowd to feel good about the whole thing. Our South African friends from Balla have shown up as they promised, bless them!, and they lift our spirits and the room as they step in. Andy introduces us to some local music movers and shakers, and we have high hopes for a return to Dublin. It’s like L.A. You have to keep showing up. Post-show, Andy slowly and cautiously drives us north on the dark M1 back to County Down and the farmhouse. A bit of late night whiskey and off to bed.

Hey, Baby, it’s the third of July. We make a farmhouse breakfast, load our gear into the van under a gray drizzle, and hit the road northwest for Omagh, County Tyrone. This drive is all farm lanes and secondary roads, and we bravely chant our tune, “Lots of room for everyone, upon this country lane!” as Paul hugs the fields on the left side of the road, cringing from oncoming lorries and speeding Audis. Long stretches of lane, roundabout, lane, roundabouts, mellow. Tyrone looks very old money prosperous, big old stone houses on much larger farms than down in Down.

We pass the edges of Omagh town and make our way down a motorway to the Ulster American Folk Park  Down a long driveway, trees, big parking lot, tour buses parked at the entrance. It seems like a tiny and somber Disney construction—a shiny new museum and library, old stone and wood frame houses, an eighteenth century Irish village recreation. What have we gotten ourselves into? We check in, given a warm greeting by the park director, we are shown to our spartan dorm/barracks rooms, fed a massive potato-upon-potato and beef dominant meal, and sound check in a cavernous room housing a full-scale replica of a wooden “coffin ship,” complete with steerage room that Ulster Scots Irish and later Catholic Irish emigrants packed to escape dire conditions on the Isle.

The room sounds great, our grey and taciturn soundman is very good with the mike placement. We do two 45 minute sets, the audience buys lots of CDs, and, hey, this is going to be pretty sweet. We’re here for three days, fed to the gills, and a beautiful country lane closed to traffic winds in a big arc through fields of foxes and bunnies down to the black and lovely Drumragh River. We take long and leisurely strolls after our shows, under black clouds that merely drizzle occasionally. A mellow time, and a much needed catching up on sleep, and adjusting to Greenwich Mean Time. Laundry.

The Folk Park itself grows on us. The guides in the shops really know their stuff, show us how pills were made in the 1700s, roll off an ancient broadside on a hand printing press, explain how the stone and wood frame houses are actually pioneer houses from Virginia and Pennsylvania, shipped and painstakingly reassembled here in the Park. They do indeed look ancient and real. The museum is a trove of history and artifacts from the massive and various migrations from Ireland/Northern Ireland to not just America and England, but a huge Scots Irish movement to Poland in the 1700s, and to Scandinavia. In the genealogy library we eagerly pour over our roots. Rob discovers that the Wallers may be from County Limerick, not Northern Ireland as he’d always thought. We’re hooked. Ancient family lore is pulling us deeper into the damp soil.

On July 4, we feel very American, playing our Americana for tourists of the British Isles. One in four Americans has Irish roots, and we’re in the heart of a celebration of that link. After our show there’s a re-enactment of a gun battle between the British redcoats and the American revolutionaries, both sides peopled by history buffs with accurate uniforms, functioning cap and ball muskets, and thick Northern Ireland accents. Big fun. The Park director is a gracious host and master of ceremonies in full Colonial regalia. The crowd follows enthusiastically through the Colonial America village with spinning wheels and corn fields and bonneted maidens. It’s striking to see how long it takes to reload and fire the big unwieldy guns. If you get off two shots a minute, you’re fast. Much time is spent loading, hands shaking, cursing, a target for the similarly stressed out enemy across the corn field. A lovely war.

That night we drive into Omagh, a charming and very British looking town, head to the top of the hill and stroll past the high court building with its still heavy fortification and surveillance cameras, visit the cathedral and take a blasphemous photo of Reverend Rob at the podium, find a great little pub and a good chat with some locals. We get a strong impression that the Irish follow American events with a close and very wary eye. If you don’t think we’re descending into madness, talk to the educated folk from other lands. Twilight lingers to half ten at night (10:30), and an evening constitutional through the fields to the river is a quiet delight.

July 5, our last day in the Folk Park, last massive breakfast, two sets in the big room, a quick pack, for we’ve decided to accept a last minute evening show at Bryson’s Bar in Magherafelt, not too far to the east towards Belfast. It’s a bit of a load on our fearless lead singer, but Rob says his voice feels great over here in the mellow moist air of this green land.

Our drive eastward is carefree and most pleasant. We’re well rested, some money in our pockets, the day is clear with dramatic clouds, and the road takes us through beautiful and mournful fields. We see a sign for stone circles. Do we have time? Let’s do it. We leave the main road, northward on narrow lanes, far past the mileage indicated (signs and maps will do you very little good in Ireland and the north; you learn to accept this deep and modernity-defying mystery). We ask a woman walking down the lane. Just a mile ahead, she says. Two hundred yards on, there it is, a gravel turn off. We hike down the path through the field to a spectacular array of multiple stone circles and straight rows of ceremonial stones. There are 250,000 archaological sites in Ireland, and this one, like most, is an unobtrusive part of the landscape, barely marked, among shimmering green barley fields and hills rolling to a cloud ringed horizon filtering magic light over us and the stones.

We tear ourselves away and take a meandering route into the small town of Magherafelt, whose logic defying pronunciation we briefly master. We haul our gear upstairs into Bryson’s Bar, where soundman Brian Boyle is patiently waiting, and are we glad to see him. Brian dialed in the great sound at Castlewellan, one of the best sound people we’ve worked with, and a deep and kind man. The night builds and builds, a super enthusiastic crowd gathers of older hippies, recent high school graduates, and mid-life married couples stays and eggs us on, we play a long and longer encore, and this might be the musical high point of the tour so far. We rock the house, verily.

We hang with some local musicians, and bond with Irish Johnny, a legendary music fan who’s hung with Mick and Keith (we view the verifying photos) and charms the pants off of us, regaling us with tales of the rock and roll nobility. Irish Johnny, we will see you again.

We load up far later than we’d figured on, head down the road with local advice to skip going around the west side of the massive Lough Neagh, instead head into Belfast to grab the M1 south. All is going swimmingly. It’s a fast road into Belfast, we’re almost to the M1—oops. The exit is closed, perhaps from the flooding that inundated Belfast recently. Now we are lost, wandering down a motorway towards the airport. Rob pulls out his iPhone, our saviour with high priced roaming minutes for emergencies, guides us towards our southward destination through many roundabouts and back roads. Driver Paul makes an awkward lurch into a lane at one darkened intersection, and immediately a police car is on our tail, lights flashing.

Has our driver been drinking? Yes. Is he over some local legal limit? Possibly. Are we worried? A little. Tales of the Troubles fill our heads. The policemen approach us from both sides. Could they be any kinder, gentler, more soft spoken? No, they could not. Are you lost? Yes, sir, we are. Follow us, say the constabulatories, and they lead us down the dark road and energetically wave us to our exit south. Love fills the air, and the flashing lights vanish in the distance.

More winding roads, roundabouts in the wee hours, and finally we reach the farmhouse. We’re pretty toasted. Do we pour whiskey in front of the fire? Memory fails us here. Good night.

After more heroic-jet-lagged-wrong-side-late-night-driving by PL we make it back to the farmhouse from Belfast. We light a coal fire, turn on the water heater and settle in with some whiskey and chat.  One by one we fall away to sleep.  Morning again comes very early as we struggle to make sense of time and space. A short walk down the lane to Andy and Jenny’s house is a bit grounding, rabbits and sheep following our progress.  Quick visit to our hosts, an exchange of armed witticisms with Andy, and we’re loaded up and off for the West of Ireland.

As we make our way through a gauntlet of roundabouts and lanes westward the countryside becomes more wild.  Close to our destination of Balla town, County Mayo, we spot a Round Tower off in the distance and head for it.  We’ve got time.  A narrow road and a few false turns, and we find the spot.  Dating to around 930 a.d., the Meelick Round Tower is exactly that, a round stone tower about 80 feet high, one of about 120 built throughout Ireland. Their purpose is not fully understood but one hypothesis has them as places of refuge from attacking Vikings. When Vikings were spotted from the tower, the clerics and townspeople would climb a ladder to the high window then pull the ladder in.  Hopefully, the Vikings would not figure out how to overcome the ten foot climb (although they did manage to sail treacherous seas from Norway), eventually get hungry, wet, and tired and head back to their ships? Maybe so.  Maybe not.  A beautiful decaying cemetery lies at this tower’s base. Ancient headstones tumble and fall in different directions. There’s even a horse walking among them. Dreamy. We eventually break away and head on in afternoon sun and clouds to Balla, a small town of sturdy old two story stone houses filling the roadsides, no gap between the walls.

Mannion’s is a classic Irish pub, dark wood, stools and booths, fiddles painted on the wall. When we arrive, a group of South Africans are having a birthday party and singalong with the locals.   They invite us to share in the food they have set out, stewed chicken and rice. We’re hungry and appreciate the welcoming vibe. Proprietor Chris brews us a pot of strong tea and joins us to eat. He was born upstairs in the quaint and immaculate rooms we’ll be staying in. We finish up the chicken feast and he takes us up for a tour. There appears to be a crucifix in every room. There’s a tea kettle and mugs on the table in the hall, plenty of beds and we each get our own room. We give Marc the en-suite bath–it’s his birthday, after all.

Marc Doten is a bold adventurer who has been on many musical and otherwise journeys with us over the years, playing bass and organ on many Hawks recordings, and recorded our new acoustic CD in his studio.  He knows the music well, and has diligently learned volumes of lyrics for background harmonies.  He jumped on board early for the adventure of it, and now we’re hoping there’s a financial payoff as well.  Indeed, for all of us adventurers.

We come back down and the Africans are singing and dancing. The South African women break into the three part township harmonies their region is famous for.  Beautiful.  Folks are coming in and the energy is up. The gig starts out loud. In fact, Chris hands us a note that says “Too Loud!” OK, cool, we got it. We turn down a bit and ease into the scene. We play a few sets, the Guinness is flowing, and the dancing intensifies. This is locals (and Africans) only.  These folks don’t know our music at all.  It’s a meeting of two very distant cultures, enabled by copious imbibing by all.  We bust out Waylon’s “Just Because You Asked Me To” and the place is hopping. It’s a grand time and perhaps best of all we just need to stumble upstairs to bed once they last note has been played.

The alarms go off early. We have a noon downbeat and short drive down the road to the Westport Bluegrass Fest. It’s not far but we’ve never been there and anything can happen on the Irish roads. Chris has woken early and made us the Full Irish Breakfast: fried eggs, tea and toast, beans, sausage, black and white pudding. Damn, it’s a feast. We make our way through most of it and hide little bits of the blood pudding in our napkins.   Chris, a saintly man if ever there was one, is off to Sunday mass, and we in our van westward to Westport.

Westport is a bustling market turned tourist town, its hills filled with old houses and stone mercantile buildings along a river winding through town, with roads feeding into the center downhill from all directions.  We get directions to the Clew Bay Hotel from a Polish waitress, whose English is a distinctly Irish Polish accent.  At the Hotel the promotor/soundman Urey, from Israel, has an Irish Hebrew accent.  The timeless tradition of Ireland absorbing its invaders and turning them into Irish continues.

Urey is super cool, sets us up in a corner of the hotel’s big front room.  We’re part of the Westport Bluegrass Festival, and we do our oldtimey acoustic best with PL on electric guitar.  Victoria rocks the house on snare and crash cymbal, and the band is finding its groove.  The crowd digs it, buys lots of CDs.  But our fun is haunted by a page in our printed itinerary from Andy:  please note that the Westport show ends at 2 p.m., and you have a 7 p.m. show back in County Down.  It’s a five hour drive.  The ink informs us that it’s impossible for us to make the evening show on time.   We pack up and race away, Paul L desperately trying to make the impossible deadline, which proves impossible.

We arrive a bit stressed and damp in Castlewellan, but Andy brings us into a huge pub, a pub empire, assures us all is good, they’ve switched us to last on the festival bill.  Whew.  And curse you, Andy.  And bless you, Andy.  We feast, drink, make our way down to the festival hall, do an electric set for a late but enthusiastic house.  At the end we jam with the other bands on an extended “The Weight” by The Band.  It sounds pretty damned good, the Canadian Irish American 20 piece band trading vocals and solos, a big sloshing groove.  And off into the wet night, the sky still glowing with lingering day at half eleven (that’s 11:30 p.m.).  We beg off Andy’s pub crawl, limp back to the never more welcoming farmhouse down blackened farm lanes, crawl into bed.  We are truly beat.  Jetlag can’t distinguish itself from our general weariness.

Next morning, after fitful sleep, we face the facts–we’re deep in jet lag. There’s no free lunch, and there are consequences for hurtling your body through space for 11 hours, plunging earthward on an island it should take you months to reach honestly. The devil is getting his due. A hearty breakfast from kindly Jimmy Rafferty and family perks us up considerably: robust tea, eggs, brown bread, and four varieties of meat, including black and white pudding. We innocently ask the kind couple in a neighboring booth, “What’s in black and white pudding?” The lovely Irishwoman tries her best to summon a smile:  “I’m not quite sure. But it’s lovely, try it.” Suspicious. But Marc and Rob go for it, with mixed results. It does involve, blood, after all.  We get a call from Andy–can we do a photo shoot with some folks in Castlewellan, just down the road from Rathfriland in County Down? And Andy’s confirmed a BBC Belfast live performance for tonight.  Our only day off has turned busy.

We bid our farewells to Jimmy and hit the road north, a flurry of map consulting getting us onto the M1. We retrace the country lanes of County Down to the charming town of Castlewellan, meet Adam and Shelagh, who are helping introduce the red kite raptor back into Ireland. Killed off in Ireland 200 years ago by poisoning and shooting when farmers thought (mistakenly) it was a threat to their livestock, the beautiful five foot wingspan raptor survived in Wales and has been reintroduced and protected by law in Ireland. We follow Adam and Shelagh up a steep winding lane past forest stands and idyllic farms with old cottages, to a point called Play Point, so named because it remains a trysting spot for young couples. And romantic it is, the top of a peak with rock outcroppings and a spectacular view of a u-shaped valley and mountains, hedge bounded farms and grazing land climbing up the distant slope. Shelagh and Adam, an archaeologist by training and a deep font of lore, fill us in on local history and geography, and we keep our eyes to the brooding skies for signs of the red kite, whose nests are in nearby trees and down below. No kites, but Adam finds a buzzard in his powerful telescope, hovering as a black silhouette in the far distance above the valley. The Irish buzzard is actually a quite beautiful and large hawk, and it has survived through the centuries. Greetings, Irish Hawk.

We take some photos with Shelagh and Adam, now fast friends we hope we’ll see again, and we motor down the lanes and onto the highway north to Belfast. This is beautiful country, little rivers everywhere, endless green, and the black and gray clouds are our constant traveling companions. We reach the suburbs of Belfast and the driving turns aggressive and competitive. There are two lanes in each direction, packed with drivers in a hurry, and no divide between the directions. Kinda scary. Our lanes merge suddenly into one, and Paul L tries to get over. A Jaguar is just behind in the desired lane, not yielding. Are we far enough ahead? Paul nudges the van over, and the Jaguar driver goes berserk, honking madly. Apparently we weren’t far enough ahead. The Jaguar races into the bus lane, pulls in front of us, and stops, blocking traffic. An enraged shaved head pokes out of the window, a Lock, Stock and Smoking Barrel looking murderous maniac, screaming at us. Paul yells out the window, sorry! But it’s not good enough for our Belfast thug. He takes off, then pulls alongside of us down the road and starts screaming again. Rob rolls down his window and he and Paul simultaneously yell at the guy: We’re Americans! We’re Americans! Apparently they mean to say, we are not acclimated to the driving ways of your land, but whatever the intent, it stymies the Jaguar driver. He gazes bewildered at us for a moment, then races off into traffic. Violent international incident averted.

We spy the brick, glass, and steel modest sized buildings of downtown Belfast, poke ahead through rush hour traffic. We’ve been here before, and it’s looking familiar. There! No, there. We find it: British Broadcasting Corporation Belfast.

On our first visit to BBC Belfast six years ago we were confused when they wouldn’t let us plug in our own amps. What’s this all about? This time, we realize they’re looking for bombs with the strange little electronic device they use to scan our equipment before we’re allowed to plug it in. Of course, how could we have missed it? BBC Belfast is, in fact, a fortress. A historical plaque on the wall outside explains that it was built in 1936 with a steel frame and reinforced concrete floors, walls, and roof. There’s guards stationed at all the entrances and you need to be buzzed through big, solid doors to reach the inside. After decades of enduring The Troubles, the BBC still takes no chances as this potent and symbolic outpost of the British Empire.

Ralph McLean has been hosting a two hour American Roots music show on BBC Belfast for many years. He’s interviewed lots of the big ones: Emmylou, Loretta, Tammy, Merle. So we’re damn glad to be ensconced again in this gleaming, smart, highest tech building.  Ralph’s assistant Neve helps us get set up and bang, away we go. Ralph moves quickly and precisely between the live performances and the interview, smart and informed questions, piecing it all together in Protools in real time as we talk. It’s really something to see.

After the interview, Neve recommends an nearby Indian restaurant. We gather together our gear, load the van and keep it in the well-guarded BBC lot, and head out into Belfast. Lots of folks are out on the streets and there seems to be many well armed police around. As we settle in to our top notch Saag Paneer and Cobra beers we hear the drums coming down the street. Orange-clad marching bands with huge banners of ancient saints fill the street right outside the window. What is this? Turns out it’s start of the July 12 Battle of the Boyne celebration (even though it’s still June). Back in 1690 the Protestants defeated the Catholics (with a little help from Pope, curiously) and they’re still celebrating.