I am lucky that for the last three years I have worked with Chris Mcfann & Erin Mikkelsen on an annual Staxx Brothers weekend at der Hinterhof. Leavenworth is a magical little place. We actually picked one of the slower weekends between seasons to bring more business and original live music to the community.
Chris is a visionary. He and Erin work so hard to support each other’s dreams. It’s easy to just ride the rising wave of tourism. Leavenworth is booming as a get away. The tree lighting ceremony weekends are packed beyond belief I am told. But Chris & Erin are ahead of the wave.
They found a wonderful life between the grounded realism of Wenatchee and the tithings of a never ending Hallmark Channel Christmas. Roads repaved by frosty microbrews and hip new ciders; where horses gallop down Main Street under Christmas lights in October.
Where tourists find out armed with iphones which shopkeeper’s memories they can have sent to their home via Amazon. There is the nutcracker at their doorstep before they return. Yet what experiences are ephemeral. What for sale is one of kind?
Sometimes I wish just once when I walked down the street, I heard someone speaking German. I might like a real polka. Hell I wouldn’t mind Kraftwerk, Can, Beethoven, or the eternal darkness of Bach.
I have this running joke in my head about a German knowing not a lick of English, panicking because no one can assist him in this Bavarian Town. But then I remember that every German tourist I have ever met has been quite fluent in English. And I remember that the reverse, the horror of an American helplessly lost in a town themed as an America town, is Imperialism, and just another shopping Mall in Hong Kong I got lost in between 7th grade & 8th grade.
Bavaria is still just the facade. What I love about Leavenworth is the fantasy of a dying American Logging Town that looked around and realized that it looked an awful lot like Germany.
I love their little shops. I dropped $60 before tax on two Goorin Brothers baseball caps at The Hat Store that are built to outlast a 100 compliments, and I had a little moment with my third cup of hot chocolate at The Chocolate Shop as I ventured to see if sugar free chocolate treats were a delight or an upset stomach.
“Honey this sugar is made out of corn alcohol, it might give you an upset stomach. It’s called Sorbital.”
It is actually a laxative. I was fine, it tasted swell. I love chocolate so much, I even love 2nd rate chocolate or the first rate sugar free kind.
I love Leavenworth. It is a popular destination for midwesterners who have worn out their wonder for Branson, Missouri, a resort town that is as authentically Country as Leavenworth is German, because I dig chocolate made of laxatives, I want to see Dolly World, and I wish you could see how cool this Leavenworth postcard looks in 3D. When I bought it from the teenage kid at some shop with an official Thomas Kincaid gallery, the girl tried to charge me .28 cents.
“Oh no Miss” I said to a kid half my age, “this one is a dollar.”
I don’t know when I will sing in Leavenworth again. Justin Smith loves Leavenworth as much as I do, and actually does outdoorsy Alpine things to match;
…like Yodeling, skiing, and wondering allowed if the horses drawing those mighty carriages on Front St are fairly compensated, or at least treated with dignity.
He suspects, reading their hunched gait and placid eyes this Equestrian brotherhood endures a Dickensian misery; working off debts by the crooked lash of Man, debts that no honest horse can pay.
After the show, as we were packing up he said, “man you gotta’ book this thing again next year.”
I appreciate his sentiment more than words, but there are things I must do first with real Pirates in the real Caribbean, before I play once again in this Impossible Germany of ours.
And this is as far as I can pull this carriage. I am leaving this here. On this mountain.
None of this seems real. Some of it isn’t. Maybe the key to life is know behind which door is real life and which just isn’t.
I am faced with doors that are dead ends and behind others are deadly trap doors and dark money pits.
Behind another is a pot of Gold as real as those mountains that loomed improbably over Leavenworth, Washington for millions of years, before the first tree that built these onve facadeless buildings fell. Those mountains will be here after all these dreams and even the beds of these icycle lined streams are swept away.
But we’re here now. Boom or bust. Men that will be dust.
The totem of my success will be whether I can write and record a song catchy enough to be worn to death by second rate cover bands. Outfits of local men with blood shot eyes, who get lost in their own thoughts remembering at which one point they strayed from their shot at traversing the world riding the stallion of a #11 hit.
I fantasize sometimes that I already have.
I may still because I have these pockets of fame based on friendships, thanks to dreamers like Jack Oliver Cramer. Jack is a man who grew up with a Father that built Winthrop its first castle. These mountains are the foothills of a land of dreamers, built on the graves of prospectors and schemers.
It was Jack that booked me at Wally’s when a show fell through. Chris McFann fell in love with the band at Wally’s. Then bought a bar we could play in.
I could have should have stayed up for nights drinking with Jack and Chris, but we’re older now. And I am clinging to the glory of last shot, and some tapered version of responsibility.
I got to Hangar 420 Snohomish early. Gave Patrick Gahan a high five and made more on tips selling weed than I could afford to pay myself band members equally most nights. And it’s more than most musicians are going to make in Bellingham opening for their heroes on the long road down.
When I got to work, the leader of Reggae Powerhouse Band in Kingston left me a long message on Whats App I needed to hear. I went home tonight and put those tips in my plane ticket to Europe fund, which is an authentic artisanal zip lock bag. Just the $1s. It was tbe recording fund. But forever changes.
How these tales will be colored by the strange clockwork of fate and how I play my next few breaks. Melencholy is a beautiful thing. It’s where the songs come from Wendy. When you’re alone remembering the laugh of a friend, the good times, and the regrets.
Davin’s new song has become a global earworm and Caribbean dancehall hit. Listen here on Reggaeville: DAVIN MICHAEL STEDMAN & ANTHONY RED ROSE – FREE YOUR MIND FEAT. SLY & ROBBIE WITH LENKY MARSDEN. The video is now available on Youtube.
– Musician and writer Davin Michael Stedman has many ventures, such as the AMAZING blog, 100milesofmusic.com, and is one of the driving forces behind the Staxx Brothers. This past spring he spent weeks networking in and reporting from Kingston, Jamaica. He will return there soon for more recording. His single with British band Sherlock Soul is now available as well.
