I had kept my calendar clear for Jamtigua II, the music festival due to happen last week in La Antigua, Guatemala. But alas, it was postponed a year for various reasons. However, my heart was set on playing in that little Cafe No Se, and I knew other musical adventures awaited me as well. And so it was that I found myself once again walking off a plane at the Guatemala City airport with my fiddle, and also, thirty pounds of quinoa (long story).

As you probably know, some areas of the country were hit really hard by Hurricane Stan, so besides playing, I was hoping to volunteer for a few days. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out, but I did get to witness some musical relief efforts. I spent the first day in Guatemala City with my friend Lenin Fernandez, who was the drummer in the Guatemalan rock band Alux Nahual. Alux was hugely famous throughout Guatemala and all of Central America, though they broke up a few years ago. Lenin had the idea of putting together a reunion tour to benefit the schools that were destroyed in the hurricane.

So, for the first 24 hours of my visit, I tagged along to band meetings, conferences with graphic designers, and breakfast phone calls to promoters in Costa Rica. It was an inspiring window into a group of people using music for social action, which was a major part of Alux’s project from the beginning. I felt priveleged to glimpse these planning stages of the tour - I only wish I could go to one of the concerts.

The next day we drove to La Antigua and met up with some of the Jamtigua folks – brainstormed for next year, drank beer, and had a good time. Stopped by Cafe No Se and played with Juanpablo. Then Lenin returned to the city, and Juanpablo and I went to Lake Atitlan, a breathtaking lake in a volcanic crater, ringed by forested volcanoes. This is where much of the hurricane devastation took place, and although a lot had been cleaned up, we could see evidence of it: swaths of brown dirt cutting through the green mountains, fallen bridges replaced with makeshift wood ones, and abandoned or half-destroyed houses.

We stayed at a friend’s house, played lots of music, wrote, and ate lots of oatmeal. I delighted in the new (to me) fruits and vegetables: guicoy, a small squash; guiscil, a large and somewhat graphic-looking green squash; and jocotes, delicious tart fruits with large pits which we ate right off the trees. We played an impromptu concert for a bunch of Mayan kids in front of the lake. It was probably the most stunning view I’ve ever played in front of, which may be why we were filmed by the TV station Guatevision before meeting Lenin again and setting off for San Marcos La Laguna, a tiny village across the lake.

San Marcos was hit pretty hard by the hurricane and still has no running water. There, we visited the wonderful flutist and singer Terry Rubin, who lives in a magical treehouse. Really. She built a two-story house up in a tree; you climb up wooden stairs to get there, and the branches are worked into the design of the house. Terry made a fire in the kitchen’s tiny fireplace, and the four of us played till late into the night. The next day, we saw the performance space she’s building–equally enchanted–a small cafe and listening room for acoustic music. I can’t wait to go back and play there.

Back to Antigua, then, and another night of music at the Cafe No Se. This time we had a bar-full of people singing along to Sail Away Ladies, which made me quite happy. It’s still a bit surreal playing old time in Guatemala, but things are closer than they seem; by the next afternoon I was in the Charlotte, NC airport and the x-ray machine guy was asking me in a southern accent, “So, do you play violin, or fiddle?”

links upon links, how cool is this…

(this illustration is by my grandpa Dick Briefer)

During some post-Thanksgiving googling, I stumbled upon a comic artist’s blog about my Grandpa Dick’s amazing Frankenstein comics, which links to my blog entry last year about playing in Golem, a band named for the legend some say was the original inspiration for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein!

he called me “granddaughter of Frankenstein"…pretty catchy, huh?

Last week Golem got on a JetBlue flight to sunny California and, after six hours of VH1 Classic, arrived in LA. After a stop for Cuban food, we picked up rented drums & bass and went to Hollywood Boulevard to play our first show of the tour.

We were delighted to be touring with Jewlia Eisenberg’s incredibly talented and sexy a capella trio “Charming Hostess.” Gorgeous voices, panting used as a percussion instrument, and song lyrics quoting Walter Benjamin’s mistress turning him on to Communism…we were floored.

Meanwhile, I had my own little drama going on. I had been sick for two weeks and of course got REALLY sick a couple days before tour. So I was barely holding it together, lying in the back of the van wrapped in Aaron’s cloak for most of the day and then somehow miraculously performing at night.

The next day we went to San Diego and played at a great little gallery called “Voz Alta.” Another great night with Charming Hostess, and we fell in love with the group of tattooed cyclists who came out and danced wildly to our set. That night, we drove down to La Jolla. I was so sick I could barely swallow and beginning to get dehydrated. Thankfully I got my hands on some antibiotics the next morning.

I think the rest of the band explored sunny La Jolla, but I’m not sure because I was in bed reading a Dorothy Parker autobiography and drinking Theraflu. However, I did get to see some seals lying on the rocks. And that night, we had THE MOST AMAZING SUSHI for Shabbat dinner. We went to Zenbu, a restaurant close to where we were staying. Thank God I was already better enough to eat again at that point. I thought I had had good sushi before, but this was like eating a piece of the ocean. We laughed and talked and drank sake with our waiter. There was nowhere in the world I would have rather been than night.

The next night, a bar mitzvah in La Jolla. On the way there, we stopped in a gas station and someone complimented us on our clothes (I guess we were super-dressed up for La Jolla, although in NYC no one would have looked twice!) He liked my boots, and when I said they were from Guatemala, he said “Oh, I used to live there, in the 70’s – I was in a cult and we lived on 1000 acres in the Peten.” We talked about Rio Dulce and he said “Yeah, there’s a ferry that takes you across to that castle.” I said, “Oh, well now there’s a big bridge.” Hmmm. A cult.

Sunday, the long drive up to San Francisco, and then a night-before-Halloween show at a club in the Mission. A million thanks to our friends in the Extra Action Marching Band for setting this up. This was one of our all-time most fun shows ever. The place was packed with people in costume ready to have a good time. Our boys had picked up a couple pinatas in LA and filled them with Mexican candy, and we decided to play a hora (traditional Jewish circle dance) while people swatted at the pinatas, one of which was in the shape of a huge can of Tecate.

Before we knew it, there was a hora going on in front of the stage, right beside a little mosh pit. Then the mosh pit and the hora merged. I never had so much fun playing Hava Nagila in my life; we were all smiling at each other and playing hard. I almost wanted to stay right there in San Francisco but we got up after a few hours sleep and flew back to New York. Well, as they say over there, we’ll be back.