A wonderful horse named Rocket was killed one year ago today - euthanized in the prime of his life.  This horse lived at my farm, and I cared for him every day for years.  The owners gave me no warning; they had the horse killed while I was away on tour.  I wrote this song to commemorate the loss of a friend.

Whenever I have a big tour coming up - like this next one to Germany and Switzerland - there is always a moment when I switch over from being nervous about it to being excited about it. That switch finally happened this week, and now I can't wait to hit the road and start playing shows in Europe. I always enjoy touring in Europe. Last time our wives (Tami and Brie) came with us - and we set aside a few days for R&R in Bourgogne France. This time, it's just the two if us. We will be seeing old friends and meeting new ones, playing old songs and a bunch of new ones, revisiting old favourite places and finding new ones. The tour kicks off in northern Germany on April 19 and ends in the French part of Switzerland on May 6. In the mean time we are making hay at Lake Studios, recording songs for our new record. The calm of the studio - before the storm of touring.

I have enjoyed some interesting collaborartions over the years - with dance companies,  film-makers, rock groups, and with classical soprano Alexandra Babbel.  For the first show with Alexandra at the Kelowna Community Theatre I arranged the Gershwin classic 'Summertime' for tap style guitar and performed it as a duo with Alexandra.  I also performed my tapstyle guitar arrangement of 'Do You Hear What I Hear' with Alexandra for her Christmas show at the KCT.
 
My song 'Africa Tap' was written while in Africa travelling with a film crew; a fascinating journey.  Check out the video below for another collaboration - a short film from gifted Kelowna filmmaker Paul Cotton which features my song 'escape velocity'.  This short film, 'A Pinch of Seasoning' opened the Vancouver Mountain Film Festival in Kelowna.