On January 17th Hans & Blue Groove left for Celtic Connections Festival in Glasgow. The festival was a great experience once again and we played a sold out show at the Fruitmarket and I did a solo show at the Tron Theatre, where scottish harmonica player Fraser Speirs accompanied me on some songs. Unfortunately our digital camera played a little trick on us and we've lost all the photos.

From Glasgow we flew to Barbados with a taxi plane connection to the Caribbean island of Mustique where I was booked to play at the Blues Festival at Basil's Bar. The festival lasts 2 weeks and has been running for some years already. This was my 3rd visit. The programme is put together by Basil and Dana Gillespie and they managed to get a lot of blues variety this year. Dana played with her London Blues Band, who also were the backing band for Chicago bluesman Zach Prather and Memphis bluesman Eb Davis. I played an acoustic set with Alee Thelfa on drums and british pianist Diz Watson was also on the bill with his percussionist Tony Uther. The festival was a big success - even better so since the proceeds go to the "Basil Charles' Education Trust" that enables poor local kids to get an education. A live CD is recorded every year and also sold in favour of this purpose. (Basil's Bar online shop)

So here we were, having to spend 2 weeks in the Caribbean - Hard work; "You got to suffer to play the blues". Fortunately we have plenty of photos from our Mustique hardships.

Twice the whole lineup travelled to play at other islands: we did one show on the main island of St.Vincent where Roberta Flack headlined the show and another one in Bequia at Friendship Bay Hotel. Milica and me actually stayed one more night on Bequia to play one more show with Robert Wells Band and his band - Robert is a very big act in Sweden and the visited the Caribbean to shoot some videos.

Basically we had a great time; stayed in some beautiful houses, drank perfect pina coladas, went swimming and scuba diving in pristine water, met lots of nice people - some of them famous (I had a little session on the beach with violin madman Nigel Kennedy - where was the camera?).

When the festival finished we stayed a few more days with our Austrian friend Pinki and family and enjoyed the last few days of sunshine before taking off to a wintery Nashville.

In Nashville we met up with Cowboy Jack Clement and his partner Aleene and stayed in their house too. Jack had organised a gig a "Douglas Corner" where I joined him and his band. The place was packed and I was amazed to see that some friends of ours had driven as far as from Philadelphia and Asheville NC to see us. The concert was one of a kind and it was all recorded and filmed. While at Jack's place, I had the chance to record some songs up in his studio (came out really well and we may be doing some more in July). Nashville is always fun; Jack took us to a session at Goodletsville in an old country store where the food and the moonshine was great and the music even better.

Generally there was some tension building up with regard to the planned war on Irak. Pros and contras sort of held a ballance. On one occasion I was really amazed when somebody got angry on another person for drinking a bottle of Evian water. We can only hope that it's over soon.

From Nashville we left for Florida where we met up with Arlo Guthrie and family on our way to the gig at the Bamboo Room in Lake Worth. We enjoyed every bit of it and got our swimming gear out again and hit the beach before our return to the tail end of a european winter.