MY travels this week have taken me back to California, where I’m basking in 80-degree heat as I write, for a handful of small gigs around San Franciso. It’s a great scene around here, with a fondness for both Celtic music and singer-songwriters, and the audiences really know how to show their enthusiasm. Before I left Canada, last weekend, I managed to catch a concert in Vancouver featuring a double bill of Mark Knopfler and Bob Dylan. It was a good show, though not helped acoustically by being held in an ice-hockey stadium, and it was nice to see Scots fiddler John McCusker and Irish flautist Michael McGoldrick featured so prominently in the Knopfler band.

One drawback of my current adventures is that I’m missing so much good music at home. For example, tonight at Gateshead’s Sage, Seth Lakeman is in concert, and tomorrow Sedgefield Cricket Club has The Scratch Band to start off their new regular Friday night concert series. Friday also has The Young Uns at The Fisherman’s Arms in Hartlepool.

Saturday has my good pals Benny Graham and Chuck Fleming at Washington’s Davy Lamp; The Cornshed Sisters, the Sunderlandbased outfit who I have yet to hear in concert, I’m afraid, are at Stockton’s Georgian Theatre, and The Unthanks at Stockton’s Arc with their new presentation of Shipbuilding songs, which I’m sorry to miss, as a bunch of my own songs are included in the show. On Sunday, American Pie-man Don McLean is at The Sage, where Maddy Prior is doing a special singing workshop earlier in the day incidentally, while down at Guisborough Rugby Club Phil Drane is their guest. Phil is also at The North Briton, in Aycliffe Village, on Monday. So all in all, it’s another action-packed week, as I get New York-bound for the last leg of my tour. More next week.