Tish’s Summer Review

Hola and greetings to all!

I hope you are doing fine. I have been busy and enjoying autumn. The summer in Hamburg was beautiful and warm. I got a new bike in June and had a great time riding around town with good lights, brakes, and easy shifting gears! What a difference! I was ok with my old one, given to me by a friend, who moved away, one of those big old practical ones. I like those older bikes and am certainly not a racer. However, for safety sake, I decided to shop a little because there were some things going wrong with it, and fixing it to my needs was going to cost anyway. This is quite a friendly bicycle town, and there is so much to see and so accessible by bike. Also on the subject of bikes, the city introduced rental bikes all over town this year, and it seems to be a big hit. What a great idea!

In August, my husband had his special mostly yearly BIG birthday party. A crew of family and friends worked hard to put it on, but it was worth the work. Scores of people showed up to enjoy the food, ambiance, and mostly the music. Andreas is quite the DJ, and there was, as expected, dancing till morning light. Luckily we had the same crew to put things back to order again over the next few days. On the subject of dancing and music, one of my/our favorite “hobbies” is going out to hear our friend Cecile, known as “Organella”, a 60′s dance music specialist, whenever she DJ’s in our neighborhood (St. Pauli). Oh my god – we have found ourselves and friends walking out of the club into daylight sometimes! The songs and dancing so great that we totally have lost track of time. Whenever you are in Hamburg, you must check out her schedule (and her own music) on MySpace, if you like the 60′s and dancing!

In my real life, I am a “cantautora” (that term sounds more romantic than singer-songwriter!). I will happily be back in the States and in Texas soon to play some music. I have some dates around Austin and Dallas, then a tour (with Marvin Dykhuis!!) from Chicago to Boston in December (including a Xmas show on Martha’s Vineyard!). We have not played in the Midwest in a while and in the Northeast even longer, so we are really looking forward to this. I will celebrate Thanksgiving, my daughter’s 23rd birthday, my 50algo birthday, and her university graduation (!), all while I am in Texas. I am craving Austin culture, music and food like crazy! I can’t wait to see everyone!! Please check out the schedule on the tour page. I will have some great musicians joining me around Austin and in Dallas. The tour dates should all be really special too.

I’ll check in with you soon …

Love

Tish

P. S.: I forgot to mention my new recordings and WOMEX … I have been doing some writing lately, and I am very happy about that. A friend and great bass player/guitar player/engineer, Moe Jacksch, who plays with me on occasion, invited me to try out his new studio. We spent a couple of days playing some experimental stuff and came out with some really nice tracks. I don’t know where we will go from here, but so far they are really good and refreshing new sounds. Also, I just returned from attending the WOMEX world music fair held this year in Copenhagen. Wow – what a spectacular event in the world of music. I was so entranced by the colors and sounds of music and dance from all over the world. I don’t even know, if it was the right place for me or my music, nor did I know much of the business taking place, but I had a chance to hear music and meet musicians from around the world and hear panels with musicologists and music business legends like Joe Boyd. It was almost like a perfect world dream!